Blog from Mexico

well howdy folks i am here in mexico city, and it is quite amazing. it's hot, yet not as hot as i thought it would be. i got sniffles and right now sitting here at the internet cafe my eyes are rather irritated...could be the pollution, as i was told that many foreigners have this problem when coming here. could also be the flowers here...they are the most brilliant bright purple i have ever seen! "i love being purple!" speaking of that, i saw a painting on the side of a building of SpongeBob (who is called Bob Sponge here) and Patrick, and i also saw a Stitch pinata. pretty cool. it's neat to see how popular culture is translated here.

i am amazed at the drivers in this city, including Ricardo who has been driving us around everywhere. they are like acrobats. they rarely signal or stay in one lane in particular...apparently their driver's training does not have any rules or regulations; they are simply told to "go with the flow" and make up their own rules for traffic. so the cars are constantly weaving in and out of each other, its like a video game, like frogger or something. and the roads are hacked up with potholes and like a very complicated maze with seemingly very little rhyme or reason to them. YET i have not seen ONE single accident! compare this to our recent trip to michigan, where drivers training is very strict and "by the book" as i remember it, and how many accidents did we see? quite a few in that short amount of time.

the response we're getting from students at these schools is pretty good...i am continuing to see that there is much interest in stop motion animation here. my theory, which i have discussed with Ricardo and Mario during our travels, is that there is a strong artisan tradition here of people using their hands to create things. plus there is the tradition of things like the Day of the Dead figurines and such, so i think this lends a subconscious pull to the puppet animation medium, in a different way here than you would find in the US and Canada. With the connections we have established, perhaps i will find myself doing some workshops down here at some point. That would be neat.

ok, on to the next venture.