This mural depicts a Mexican military cadet jumping from the tower of Chapultepec Castle in 1847 carrying the Mexican flag in order to prevent its capture by the US forces during the Mexican-American war. It is located on the ceiling on the main staircase up into Chapultepec Castle.

In the lower right side of the picture, you’ll see a horse carrying a U.S. flag. It is an odd feeling seeing pictures and monuments honoring heroes who defended themselves against my native country.

In 1947 President Harry Truman visited Chapultepec Castle and places a wreath on one of the monuments honoring the Niños Héroes who defended the castle after everyone else had left.

The smog hasn't been as bad as I was expecting in Mexico City. I'm told that part of the reason is that they have recently had a lot of rain and it tends to clean the air out. Several people said that when the smog is bad, you can feel a pain in your throat. I'm glad we missed the bad smog.

It seems like smoking is more common here than in the US. All the rooms have an ashtray and at restaurants all of the tables have ash trays as well. I suppose that if the air of your city is just as bad as smoking, there isn't much incentive to quit.

Chapultepec CastleWe went to see a castle in Mexico City called Chapultepec Castle. Its construction was started in 1765. It changed hands several times before being completed. At one point they tried to sell it for 1/5 what had been spent on it already, but there were no buyers. Eventually it was purchased by Mexico city in 1806. It was abandoned for about 11 years around 1810 and in 1833 was made into a military college.

In 1847 six teenager cadets died defending it the castle from U.S. forces during the Mexican American War. They had been ordered to leave, but stayed anyway. Local legend says that the last cadet died jumping from the top of the castle wrapped in the Mexican flag in order to keep the U.S. from capturing it.

Mural of Cadet JumpingThe cadets are honored with statues and paintings on the castle grounds and throughout Mexico City. There is a large painting of a boy falling through the air with the Mexican flag. In the background you can see a U.S. flag being carried in the attack.Flag Flying on Castle

In 1864 Maximilian, the Mexican Emperor, setup residence in the Castle. During his stay the castle was greatly expanded. After the overthrow of Maximilian it was turned into an observatory for a brief time and then back into a military school as well as the presidential palace. In 1939, a law was passed that turned into a national museum.Castle GardensCastle

In Mexico City the smog in here isn't as bad as I thought it might be. I understand that during the really cool times of the year, it is worse because there isn't enough heat to move the air up and carry the smog with it.

Mexico City and the surrounding areas is one of the most populated places in the world. It has a population of over 19 million. This beats New York with a population around 18 million. Tokyo and Sheol are the only two cities with a larger population than Mexico City. There are about 10,000 people living in every square mile. By way of comparison, Los Angles has about 1,000 people living in every square mile.

Mexico City is built in a valley surrounded by mountains. The mountains create something of a "bowl" effect trapping in all the smog. Several years ago the city's mayor, Manuel Camacho, announced a plan to install giant fans to blow the smog out of the city. They were going to create large incinerators that would heat the air in the most polluted parts of the city and raise the air off the ground so the fans could blow it away.

There were also some ideas that involved cutting large holes in the nearby mountains to let fresh air in. I don't know what happened with any of these ideas. Currently older vehicles that run less efficiently are only allowed to drive every other day based on their license plate number.

We are in a chartered bus traveling to Mexico City today. We left at about 11pm yesterday and drove through the night. The bus is nice, but it still isn’t a great place to try to sleep. They show movies, but best I can tell they were obtained by setting up a camcorder in a theater and recording the movie.

The group we are traveling with is from the church in Durango. They are going down to a conference. We are going to checkout Mexico City and watch our friend’s little girl during the conference.

In Mexico, Mexico City is refered to as just Mexico. This caused me a minor bit of confusion when people kept saying they were going to go to Mexico.

We’ve been told that the taxis aren’t safe to take alone in Mexico City—at least for us gringos. Evidently they have a few abductions each day from taxi cab drivers. It sounds like kidnapping people from the US and holding them for ransom happens occasionally and it is worth being careful.

Paying bills in Mexico is quite a bit different than in the States. In the US you don’t usually want to let your phone bill or cable go unpaid because it will be cut off and you’ll end up paying a large fee to get it turned back on. In Mexico, the postal system isn’t very reliable, so many places don’t even send out a paper copy of the bill.

Many times the way companies let you know that your bill is due is by cutting off your services. With phones this means you are no longer able to place out-going calls, until you pay up.

It seems to be very uncommon to pay bills through the mail, so most bills are paid by going to the place of business or the bank. There are some types of bills that can be paid at certain convenience stores as well.

We looked at a nice very large house today that was renting for $300 USD per month. The surrounding houses were not quite as nice though and it was a long ways from our friends and the church. There is a very beautiful place for sale downtown for $400,000 USD. It has 9 rooms and a pool and from what we could see looked very nice.

I get the impression that house prices are fairly random and that there isn’t any type of standard way to evaluate the pricing of houses. In the US house prices are public information so it is pretty easy to see how much houses in a given neighborhood are selling for. This tends to keep the pricing from fluctuating too dramatically. That doesn’t seem to be the case here.

In Durango there are people at the stop lights that try to wash your windows for you. Since we look like gringos they tend to single us our to wash our car windows. Telling then “no” doesn’t seem to work. Usually they try to squirt soapy water from about 20 feet away. That by the time you realize what is going on you don’t want to tell them to stop because your window is all soapy. Generally you give them about a peso, so it isn’t very expensive, but there are only so many times you can have your window washed each day.

We went and looked at two houses that were for sale downtown. They were nice but a bit pricey for what we would want to pay. They were both in the 700,000 peso range. They were both in a gated area with a little guard shack, that didn’t look like it had been used for quite a while. We might be able to rent one of them if we wanted, but I’m not sure if we would want to buy all the furniture necessary to furnish it because both were pretty big.

This morning we woke up and discovered four inches of water in the floor board of our car. The local dealership said we could bring it in but they didn’t know if they would be able to take a look at it or not. We dried it out the best we could using the leaf blower and headed out toward Laredo. I called a mechanic on the way and he said we should get it checked out because the water could damage the computer under the seat. We finally located a dealer who said he could fit it in to look at the car in San Antonio.

In the US we have warning signs on everything. As a society we do everything possible to protect people from their own stupidity. Mexico isn’t like that. In Mexico you are expected to be intelligent and use common sense.

I think that most of this has to do with their legal system which doesn’t allow outrageous lawsuits. You can sue for the time you were off work and medical expenses, but that is all. There are no million dollar lawsuits for mental trauma because you tried to trim your hedge by holding a lawnmower above your head.

On the plus side, people are expected to think and for the most part they do. If someone gets hurt it is their fault–not because of a large corporation who should be sued for millions of dollars.

On the negative side of things, there are a lot of little safety issues that we take for granted in the US. For example, I couldn’t find anyone who understood what a ground fault interrupt breaker was. In the US every bathroom has one so if you accidentally drop your hair dryer into the bathtub, it will cut the power. Not so in Mexico. Some of the wiring in the bathrooms is very scary to see–but people are allowed to make their own mistakes and the government isn’t trying to legislate that people do smart intelligent things.

I do appreciate building codes in the US. It is nice to know that your bathroom will have GFI outlets and a vent, the water heater will be properly vented, and you’ll have a cold air return to properly circulate air. However, as we create more and more laws in the US, it is refreshing to be in a country where the government isn’t trying to legislate common sense to people.