Touring the State of Puebla

The BCA group left Cuernavaca early Saturday morning with all of our possessions to transfer our lives to Xalapa for the rest of the semester. We made a trip of the move by spending several days in various cities in the state of Puebla.

Our first stop was in the city of Puebla, which is famous for being the site of the battle against France on the fifth of May in 1862. Cinco de mayo, yeah? It's also known for its Talavera (a specific kind of ceramics), and its azulejos (textiles). Many shops, especially on Avenida Seis, have counters full of candies and a backdrop of pottery lining the room, and a lot of the buildings’ walls are surfaced with tiles. It’s quite charming. In the surrounding area are several archeological sites and, of course, too many beautiful cathedrals. I also toured a few old clandestine convents with hidden rooms so that nuns could secretly be nuns during the Reformation in the mid-19^th century, peep-holes leading into a sanctuary so that they could discretely view mass, and self-flagellation tools so they could… be nuns during the Reformation.

We took a day trip to Cholula, the oldest still-active city in all of America. There, we walked through tunnels made by archaeologists in the largest pyramid by volume in the world. I would not have recognized it as a pyramid because it’s covered with earth and topped off by a cathedral, in line with the Spanish habit of building on top of Mesoamerican structures.

Our last stop was in Tlaxcala. I’ve already forgotten everything about this city except that we made a trip to an archeological zone called Cacaxtla, where many murals of battle-scenes are still intact. From there, a few of us walked to another pyramid, from which we could see the volcano Popocatepetl. Coming back that evening was one of the best hours I’ve had in Mexico so far.

One more thing: February 2 is little baby Jesus day. I don’t know what the actual holiday is called, but apparently it’s the day Jesus was taken to the temple to be blessed. So it’s a Catholic tradition in Mexico to buy a little baby Jesus doll, dress it in elaborate clothing, stick it on a little wooden throne, and take it to the church on this day. There were plastic dolls in every single tienda I passed. This last week I saw more people walking around town with newly-purchased dolls than I think I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. And no one throws around baby Jesus. These things were handled with love. They were cradled, surrounded by flowers, and wrapped in blankets. More than once I found myself realizing that the infant a person was holding protectively close to his/her chest was not, in fact, alive.