A and A and S and S

From left to right: Ashley, some lion, Adam.

Likely the last group of visitors we'll receive before the arrival of our permanent resident this June, Adam and Ashley came on down from Austin for the weekend. Adam is Sergio's old housemate/landlord of many years, as well as a teammate from Sergio's brief, undistinguished age-8 soccer career (go West U Cobras!). Ashley is Adam's lovely fiancee from Jersey. They're hitchin' up this summer!

Awww...

After we opened our gifts of JIF peanut butter and UT baby gear (Hook 'em!), we had a nice dinner at a cozy Argentine/Italian bistro in our neighborhood with inexplicable yet not untasteful photos of naked women on the walls. And speaking of tasteful:

It's all about aesthetics, people.

Saturday we hit the town so as to show our guests DF at its most bustling.

This place is nuts!

JACARANDAS!

I'll use this lightpost in my head.

S&S debate the next step.

This is an example of what Sergio calls "faith-based" recycling in Mexico City. Our guests are always surprised to see here that we throw all our bottles, cans, cardboard, etc, straight into the trash. There is no kind of organized municipal recycling system in this, one of the largest cities on Earth. Nor does there seem to be any kind of municipal garbage service. Rather, most trash is collected by private contractors, who then profit by extracting recyclables and taking them in themselves for cash. Thus, all garbage trucks have stacks of recyclable items in bags and bundles on top of them like in the photo above, and trash collectors are regularly seen rifling through your garbage bags looking for cashable items. It's a free-market dream, or nightmare, depending on your point of view.


More DF randomness: a pre-teen drum-and-bugle corps practicing on a lovely day in Alameda Park. Our favorite was a burgeoning punk in the back row rockin' his own sideways style:

Yeahhhh, BOY-EEEE!

And no trip to DF would be complete without standing in front of a monstrously large flag. "Enormous Flag Weaving" seems to be the third-largest industry in Mexico, after oil production, and "selling crap on the street."

Also, there's some drug trafficking.

Sasha took advantage of our trip downtown to shop for lampshades. For any imaginable item, there's likely not only a store but an entire district that sells it. We had heard of one such area for lampshades and after a few inquiries and popping into some strange alleys, lo and behold...

Victory!

The rest of us played little-to-no-part in the lampshade adventure but hey what the hell...

Sergio's drinking for three!

The next day we joined A&A for the first soccer game...

...but did not quite have the energy for the second:

The man loves him some futbol.

Instead, we headed home and prepared a nice Sunday dinner for our sunburned and weary travelers. It was great to see them, and we know theirs will be the loveliest wedding of the summer. Until then,

EMERGE FROM THE TUNNEL!

That is all.