No pictures . .. . yet, but we're doing fine in Mexico City!

Well, I forgot the connector from my camera to my laptop, so unless I can find one down here, I won't have pictures to share during our journey, but maybe that will force me to be a little more colorful in my descriptions. I am taking many pictures so far, which is unusual for me, so I'll try to keep that up so I have something to share when we get back. Our flight to Mexico City was slightly delayed, because of weather problems in Mexico City, but we made it in around 30 minutes late - 11:30am local time (no daylight savings, I guess?). We were all together in the middle of the American Airlines flight from Dallas, so it was easy to keep track of each other. Passport control went well, as did customs. No more than a 15 minute wait at either of these. All students kept ahold of their passports, so far! Then, looking like haggard pilgrim/tourists, we got 30 students through the long walk from the airport to the metro, and through three stations stops on the metro until we arrived at the Cathedral station. The metro system in Mexico City is huge, and everyone uses it - 33 million people here in Mexico City, so I hear. Nothing was nice about the metro, but everything worked just great! We probably rode for an hour and arrived at our hostel at 2:30pm. We were very hungry at this point, since we had not eaten since the donated bagels we eat before going through security at DFW at 4:30am. The hostel checked us in pretty quickly, and we were eating at a great restaurant (cheese enchiladas for most) in the historic city center. Restored a little bit by the food, we then went directly to the Mexico City Cathedral dedicated to Our Lady. The Cathedral is built near the site that the Aztecs selected for their capital city. They considered this site to be the center of the world, and human sacrifices were performed here. There is a slight revival of indigenous culture here, and there were Aztec dancers throughout the afternoon and evening in the square outside the Cathedral. The Mexico City Cathedral is magnificent. A high baroque Church characteristic of the counter-reformation. As much gold leaf as you can possibly imagine, and many, many shrines to Our Lady within the Church. I was able to go to the Stations of the Cross that started at 5pm, followed shorly thereafter by Mass at 6pm, which I attended but did not concelebrate. Most of our students went as well. Our hostel is right across the street from the Cathedral, and thankfully, it has its own restaurant and bar attached right to the hostel, so we did not have to venture out after dark for anything. The complimentary dinner at the hostel was pretty bad, consisting only of iceberg lettuce (no dressing) and cut up sausages and hot dogs, which we could not eat since it was Friday during Lent. So Ryan Dennihan and I made a quick run to a 7-11 to grab snacks for everyone, and we had a few drinks and celebrated our safe arrival in Mexico City. The downtown is really beautiful with its architecture and all the people. Lots of outdoor markets and shoes and perfume for sale in particular. The bar at the hostel had great music for dancing and a lame attempt at karaoke later in the evening, but we were really having a great time. We are now waiting for breakfast to start at the hostel, then we are off to the metro again, then to the bus station, then to the town of Queretaro, where we will meet our vans to take us to the Santa Maria mission in Colon. Vaya con dios!