Views from the street

We rode in a van to the conference site today, but I had my camera handy to take pictures.  I chose to walk home with another participant and we stopped by a modern church along the way.

This shoe shiner had his little mobile cart pulled up right in the middle of a median on a very busy street.  I'm not sure why he picked this spot since it wasn't exactly a pedestrian way, but perhaps he wasn't allowed to part on the regular sidewalk (of which there is little in this neighborhood).  But he did have a customer.

I don't know the story about this blue car.  It appears to be broken down with the hood up, but the owner is standing by the truck with a cart of goods that he is hawking...again, perhaps a way to avoid regulations about street vending?

Private green spaces are immaculately manicured.  Public spaces...not so much.

Interesting public sculpture along the road. (And a lone biker, I haven't seen many of these, possibly because this area of the city is so hilly, perhaps also because they value their life and won't ride these streets!)

 The locals call this building "The washing machine" and you can see why.  Love the fun architecture in this area of the City.

Orange buildings are Iberoamericana

A local Catholic church that we walked past on our way home.  

Very modern and attractive, inside and out.

Volcano at sunrise and sunset

I woke up to a relatively clear morning to discover that the mountains that surround Mexico City were actually visible.  This is Popocatepeti volcano with a wisp of smoke rising from it.

Volcano at the end of the day.

Conference Day 2

We were hosted a different institution today, the CIDE Institute, which is just up the hill from Iberoamericana University.  Its quite a bit smaller than Ibero, but very attractive as well. It was another stimulating day of presentations and discussions, although I'm totally brain dead now.  Yesterday the presentations were mostly IR scholars, today it was Organizational Theorists.  It was really interesting to try to find the intersections of these two fields centered around International Organizations.  This was such a neat gathering of people from all over in a very collegial fashion.  Swedes, Mexicans, Canadians, Americans, an American at a Chinese institution, a Spaniard, a Dutchman working at a German institution.  Really interesting academic and non-academic conversations.

Our conference space

The ladies in the glassed in booth were translating for us.  They were amazing!  So quick and smooth I couldn't believe it.  Most of the presentations were in English, so I didn't have to listen much, but a few were in Spanish.  They translated all of the English to Spanish for members of the audience who wanted to use the headphones.

After our last session we had lunch (served at 3:30 pm!)  Sodexo can't top this!

Panoramic view from the patio where we had lunch at CIDE.  The orangey buildings across the highway are Iberoamericana.  In the distance to the left is a green space (with apartments on the horizon beyond).  This is a public park and I could just make out some play equipment on the top of the hill. Apparently its not fit for construction (because of the old landfill).  There is still a lot of outgassing of the waste below in this area.

Shopping Mall

Across from the hotel is a high end shopping mall.  We ventured there tonight for dinner at a restaurant.  Unfortunately, the restaurant was a steak and seafood place, so no authentic Mexican food for me tonight.  The steak was good, but after waiting an hour to eat, I was really ready to head to bed.

Koi ponds/fountains in the food court with leather couches.

Level 2 of the Mall

Entrance way.  If you look closely, you will see what looks like swimming lanes under the floor.  They are swimming lanes under a glass floor about 2 stories down.  An entire gym is on the lower level and a good portion of the upper floors are glass to look down into the gym.

Iberoamericana University

We walked from the hotel to the university today.  It was a short 10 minute walk, but I really glad we had a guide!  The navigation of the streets is a real challenge, and I consider myself to be pretty good with directions.

The conference is being hosted at Iberoamericana University.  This is a prestigious private universities in the country.  The campus is quite beautiful and the architecture of the buildings is really amazing.  It is built on many different levels, the walks, the gardens, the buildings, the library, everything is a maze of walkways and stairs and terraces.  It reminded me a lot of an MC Escher painting.

Beautiful green spaces.  The person who prunes the shrubs has a full time job!

Even the bathrooms were really nice looking - yes, that is marble on the walls, floor and sink.

This was our conference space.  There were two interpreters who translated all of our presentations into Spanish for the students who attended (they sat in the glassed in space in the back).  Only a few students actually listened to the translation.  Most of them were very fluent in English and asked great questions during the discussion time.

The classrooms are quite nice as well.

During our coffee break we were served a special kind of bread Pan de Muertos (bread of the dead).  It is a sweet bread.  The raised markings on the top represent bones.

We ate well for lunch.  They had a special conference lunch space that looked onto a garden.  We were served bread, salad, soup, a chicken dish and dessert all by multiple servers with silver serving dishes. Wine was also offered.  Sodexo could never measure up.

This is a Day of the Dead display where offerings of food and other items are made in memory of loved ones who are gone.  This was in the main plaza on campus.  The white shape on top is a skull made out of recycled water bottles (and it lights up at night).  This view is from the back.  The orange flowers are marigolds and are traditionally used to form the shape of a cross.

At the end of the day I stayed to have coffee with a friend of mine who works at the University.  He had me catch a cab back to the hotel, but the driver accidentally took me to the wrong hotel.  As we pulled away from that hotel I was worried that I wouldn't make it to my actual hotel, but a few turns around some crazy streets and I was on the right door step.  One thing I realized from this trip is that there are very few stoplights along the streets, there are lots of loop exchanges between streets, but few stoplights.  (On the trip from the airport I noticed that red lights are only recommendations -apparently -as my driver went right through two of them).

Cars / parking

How'd you like to be a valet for this car park?

Visit with Mexican hosts

I had an enjoyable visit with some of the other conference attendees and our hosts last night.  We talked about their vision for the conference and bringing people together from different fields to discuss perspectives on international organizations.  It should be a very engaging conference.

We ordered dinner from the hotel kitchen and got some delicious flautas!  I love Mexican food.

Mostly we talked about different university settings, Mexico City itself, and families. I didn't know that Mexico City was located on top of an old lake bed.  Apparently parts of the city are sinking, in some places as much as 9 meters!   I also learned that the hill that our hotel is on is actually an old landfill that they decided to cover it over and build a new suburb.  We talked about the sprawl of the city and the serious challenges of rampant corruption.  Our hosts noted that tax rates were about to go up, but it was difficult to swallow because the quality of government services is so low.

On of the hosts works an an elite university in the city where very wealthy student attend.  Some of them apparently even come to school with body guards, likely linked to the violence and kidnapping of potential ransom victims that is part of the social reality here.  There is a local joke that the university is the "only parking lot in the city with a university" - it has a large parking lot because of the number of students who are wealthy enough to drive cars, not common in many other universities.

I visited with a participant who was currently teaching in China.  He talked about  higher education in China.  At his school he had the top students in the country.  They are very math oriented and would far rather solve a problem than write a paper.  He teaches Business Ethics -  a real challenge in China.  He described how the first assignment he gives is for the students to write what they think about ethics- their own views.   Students stare at him with complete confusion and often ask him what they are supposed to read in order to write this paper. They don't understand what he wants from them, they really struggle to give their own opinion on the topic.  "what do you think" is not a commonly asked question in the Chinese education system.

He also shared a story about how the two hour lunch break in China is taken very seriously.  A friend of his who delivered a baby there was told she couldn't have an epidural until after 2:00 when everyone got back from lunch!

When he went looking for a pre-school for his 3 year old, he had to look hard for a school that had flexible hours and did not require that his daughter be in pre-school from 9:00 - 6:00 5 days a week and 4 hours on Saturday.  Talk about a different perspective on child care.

Hotel

Check in went smoothly and I was pleased to discover that my food at the hotel was covered by the conference (This is especially good since I was unable to hit an ATM machine at the airport and have 0 pesos on me at the moment).  Since it was 2:00 Wichita time, I was pretty hungry.  I put my things in my room and came back down to the lunch buffet.  It was a delicious spread with pork, fish, chicken, rice, steamed veggies, a full salad bar, soup, fresh bread, and a giant dessert bar.  I decided I better eat well since the norm for meal times here is considerably later than at home.

My room is quite attractive and roomy with a few of the smog filled valley and the city.

Believe it or not there is a city of 20 mil people beyond the tall apartment buildings in the cloudy (smoggy) valley.

Building across from the hotel.

No elevator lobby is complete without a shoeshine machine...

A sign you don't find in many places in the US. What to do in case of an earthquake and in case of a fire.  I hope I don't experience either on this trip.

Delicious breakfast buffet.  You have to guard your food carefully though, if you get up for anything, the waitstaff will whisk your plate away whether you are done or not.  I almost had to get myself three containers of yougert one morning because they kept trying to take mine away before I finished.

I love looking at familiar products with unfamiliar labels.

A drive through the city

I was regretting leaving my phone in the trunk of the car throughout my drive through the city, although I think my driver from the University might have been a little puzzled by my random snapping of photographs of street life.  With my weak spoken Spanish I don't think I could have conveyed to him why I was taking photos of trash trucks and things (its always the most common things that I find fascinating to compare in different places)...

Random observations in my 45 min drive from the airport to my hotel:
•  Not sure what the deal was with my driver, but he was really determined to make sure the car doors were locked as we pulled away.  I suppose this is a security measure, but when both of our windows were fully rolled down I'm not sure what difference the locked doors might make...

•  The driver offered me a soda as we started our journey:  Fresca.  It was good.  Its lukewarmness reminded me that in many places people don't like chilled or iced drinks.

•  The parking garage had the highest ceiling I've ever seen in a parking garage, and I think by its good condition that it was probably brand new. The airport itself was unremarkable:  largely, utilitarian. (It appears to be right in the center of town.  I thought we were going to land on some apartments as we were coming in)

•  I was startled to find that the drivers we encountered were really courteous regarding merging traffic.  From the moment we left the airport we were in heavy traffic and moving from lane to lane as various traffic obstructions came our way (kind of reminded me of a video game where you have to avoid the road hazards of bus, broken down cars, slow cement mixers, etc.)  No one honked, everyone took turns alternating as the lanes merged. (Not at all like driving in many of the busy US cities I've been in. No one tried to cut us off.)

•  We passed a construction zone right out of the airport and I was reminded again that a lot of the heavy equipment we see in the US for construction is not used in other places.  In this case the asphalt had been stripped up and a group of at least 10 workers with regular brooms were sweeping up the gravel remains so new asphalt could be poured.  There was one worker who was sitting on the side reading a paper while the others were working away.  It was funny to see.

• There were many large billboards all over which served as a reminder of being in an non-English speaking place.  Its kind of a game to try to figure out what different boards say based on pictures and my existing limited vocabulary.

•  I didn't notice a lot of green space as we were landing, but I did drive by several nice parks.  One very long one that stretched for several blocks in the median between the two lanes of the highway.  It had several different playscapes, one of which was new, and several that were old.  The mix of old and new is very obvious here.

•  I experienced a kind of visual overload as we drove along, with buildings of every sort on all sides, painted every different color.  Its clear that residents in many apartment complexes are responsible for their own exteriors on the building, because some would be bare brick and others would be painted nicely all on the same building.  Some balconies would have laundry, others would be filled with blooming flower pots, some piled with old chairs and other junk.  I'm always a little taken aback by the amount of military grade barbed wire that gets strung around balconies, on roofs, etc.

•  The highway was in decent condition, 3 lanes in each direction (kind of narrow lanes).  It was interesting that the three lanes were marked with 3 different speed limits:  70, 60 and 50 km/hr so that merging traffic could get on ok.  There were lots of traffic signs, but I'm super glad I wasn't trying to navigate myself.  The roads were twisty curvy a lot like Boston with mergers and splits every 1/4 mile or so.

•  At one point we drove through a poorer part of the city where a local transit hub was located.  There were a ton of taxis, mini buses, and a train of some sort that I couldn't see well. There were a lot of street vendors selling fresh fruit along the side of the road and a lot of pedestrians.  We had to slow down considerably through this area.  The buses were pretty full with lots of people standing.  Some were old with nasty exhaust (we had our windows down the whole way), others were newer without so much pollution.

•  There were some motorcycles on the road, but not a ton.  I was a little surprised to note that all of those that passed us were wearing helmets and protective gear (a good idea given how heavy the traffic is).

•  I did not see a ton of US retail outlets, although I did see Home Depot and McD's.  From the billboards its a real mix of European, US and Mexican retailers.

•  I have a soft spot for trash trucks for some reason.  I got to see two on our drive.  Both were loaded down with bags strapped all over the sides and on the top of the vehicle.  From what I could glimpse in passing, each bag seemed to be recyclable/re-usable items that were perhaps gleaned from their pick up. Although there was no obvious recycling when I visited the city of Hermosillo this summer, there is a recycling trash can in my hotel room, so that makes me happy that there is some recycling going on in the city (beyond what the entrepreneuring trashmen are engaged in).

Not a great picture, but you can see the stuff strapped to the top

•  Everywhere I visit I'm always aware of the presence or absence of graffiti.  This city is a really weird combo that I couldn't see a pattern to.  Many of the plain cement containing walls along the highway were completely clean, but small grocery stores along the side of the highway were covered in graffiti, while apartment complexes next to them were clean.  Part of it has to do with frequent painting I expect, but some of it must have to do with more appealing target space...

• Toward the end of the trip we climbed into the hills a bit and came to a business park area with very modern buildings, hotels, office spaces, etc.  One was under construction.  Its interesting to see the most modern building being built with workmen on amazingly flimsy scaffolding.  Glad it wasn't me up there.

After 45 mins of this visual whirlwind I was dropped off at the hotel and left to fend for myself until evening.

Trip to Mexico City

I don't normally blog my professional conferences, but I don't often travel out of the US for conferences, so I decided I couldn't resist posting some of my observations about my trip to Mexico City this week.

I left bright and early in the midst of a rain storm, but the view of the sunrise above the clouds was quite spectacular this morning.  Gave me a real appreciation for the beauty of this world.

As usual, my powers of observation were on overdrive even before landing.  We flew along the coast for quite a ways before turning inland to Mexico City.  I was mesmerized by the ever changing coastline with its barrier islands and waves.  The clouds were pretty too.

As we turned inland, the landscape below was pretty arid.  There were small tracts of farmland, but they were not very green this time of year.  I found it interesting that the farmland looks so different from the Midwest in the US where you have large tracts of land with a farmhouse on each field.  The areas that I flew over had lots of small fields on the outskirts of villages, but all of the houses were in town.  People just go out to the fields each day to tend them I guess.  A really different lifestyle from the isolated Midwest farmer who has to drive 30 mins to get into town.

Just before we started our descent, the landscape became much more rugged with steep hills and canyons.  There were some towns, but a lot of the land was not in use.

As we approached Mexico City, I was reminded of what I already knew, that the air quality in the city is pretty poor.  The city is in a valley surrounded by mountains.  You can see the mountains sticking up on the horizon, and the valley filled with smog.

I was glued to the window as we landed, taking in the largeness of the city (population approx 20 million).  Lots of planned housing divisions on the outskirts much like the US.  Lots of densely packed buildings in the center of the city.  We flew over an area with high rises.  I'm not sure if it was the "downtown" or not.  The visibility was pretty poor to see any great distance.  One thing that was obvious was the bright colors of the buildings.

We got on the ground and then it was immigration, customs, and a rendevous with my driver.