Sigur Ros!

Sorry that its been so long since i have posted anything. This past week i would have to say was my longest and hardest of them all. I don't know why but my mood just wouldn't improve. It was raining here almost every night which was pretty amazing. The rain is literally like a waterfall just cascading down and the lightning was indescribable by any spoken tongue. I was hanging out with some of my friends this Friday at an Italian restaurant called Marco Pollo and had really good Italian food. It was interesting seeing Italian food made by Mexicans. I had a few Sangria and then we all walked outside. Right in front of Marco Pollo is the City´s big Cathedral and it was all lit up and looked so amazing. There was lightning flashing behind it. You literally would have had to see it, it was one of the most beautiful things i have seen here. Anyways, we walk back to my friends house and it starts sprinkling rain and I'm like, "Oh cool it will rain in like a few minutes and it will be nice." Hahaha not. It started to down pour like 3 seconds later and so here was 8 Americans running for their lives from Mexican Tropical Rain. We all hid underneath a little ledge of a balcony and we were waiting to cross one of the biggest road in our town, at 10 at night, with rain. Mind you there are 50,000 cars driving around too. So, i decided that we're all going to run for it when the light changes and we can go. But when the light went red, it only went red for half of the street, and right when it changed too, seriously, like 5 bolts of lightning strike maybe a mile away! At this point I'm already in the middle of the road running through traffic as a river is flowing over my feet and i get across and my friend who was wearing flip flops was one of the last to make it.

But there was a problem...

She gets to the other side with her glasses fogged and yells, "I LOST MY SHOES!" They were in the middle of the street! MY friend Courtney says "We have to go back for them" Noelle: "No, They´re gone! Don't" As Courtney runs back into the raging river, through traffic to grab black flip flops at night. The problem was Noelle was not going to walk home without shoes because there is broken glass everywhere and its dangerous. We get to the house, drenched looking like we just went for a swim and we were planning on going out in less than an hour.

It was no less than 3 minutes after we get to their house that the power goes out. No electricity to dry our clothes nor see where anything is. Great. My friend Nick lived there too but it a little separate building and he said i could change into some of his clothes. So i walk outside and I'm standing underneath the garage and I'm like one, two, three and i start to run to the other part of the house. Right when i get out into the open lightning strikes literally three houses away. Its one of the most amazing/horrifying things ever. First there is a white light, blinding as it strikes the ground, and it disappeared in little segments fading in sections, as thought it was shrinking into itself. As it folded into itself the surrounding area dimmed but as in got darker the sound of ear drum breaking thunder fills the body and you just stand there, petrified unable to move. It was pretty amazing, but after that i refused to go outside without everyone else. We went to a few clubs and danced till like 4 in the morning and then hit up one of the local taco-rias and had amazing food! I crashed at 5 into the blankets on my bed and slept for like 4 hours till i had to get up for the concert i went to the next day.

I wake up at 9. Feeling... amazing for the day to come.... I brushed my teeth got ready, checked for spiders in my shoes... ect ect and hopped into a cab and headed for Las Gallerias, which the cab driver had no clue where it was. So i sit in a cab for like 30 min driving across town, having no clue where I'm going. I think the best way to get to know a City is to get lost in it. Well lost within reason. There are some really nice and developed modern places around Cuernavaca. I was dropped off at a mall that was like 5 stories high, and looked like tent thing next to the clock tower in Downtown Spokane, but with a white cover over the building. It was huge. My Friend Joanna and i decided on Wed that we were going to go see Sigur Ros live in Tepoztlan. It was lucky that we heard about it too because it was just in time.

We arrived where we were apparently suppose to pick up our tickets and no one knew where we were suppose to go. No one! We even went to the buses outside for the event and they sent us up to some Mega Mart to pick up the tickets which we couldn't get there either! We went back to the buses and they then told us that the print out of our purchase that we had was our tickets! AH! It was so nerve racking. So we get on the bus, and we´re the only 2 Americans which I'm not really use to yet because at the University there is a majority of Americans. We get there and the event was apparently for 6,000 people in total.

We get there and we stand in a line for like 20 minutes that is well over a mile long and we wait. We don't even have our "official" tickets yet just a piece of paper with they guy who said that we were OK to get on the bus. So we were worried we wouldn't get into the event at all. But we managed to. Our tickets were on a will call type thing at the front entrance so we were good. The walk to the concert area was about 10 minutes from the front gate. The concert itself was held in Tepoztlan which is up in the mountains about 45 min away from Cuernavaca. It was an amazing place to have a concert. The stage was placed in between these two mountain things, and the mountains wrapped around the whole area. It was like a flat platoue, and then out pops 500-600 foot tall mountains. There were food tents to one side of the event which were packed like no other all day long! We arrived at 2 and they had bands playing all day. It was exactly what i needed; a nice long day laying in the sun listening to music and meeting friends. Its the Life!

The funny thing about the event was it was an Ecological awareness concert and they told everyone that it was a non smoking event and one that was without alcohol too. Well everyone was smoking, and they were advertising and selling BEER! It was really confusing for the first few hours why they were selling beers but then i realized that it was Cerveza (Beer) Sin (with out) Alcohol. What is beer without alcohol?! Crappy tasting water? It doesn't my logical sense to want to drink something that taste like beer and not be able to get drunk off of it. The reason why you want to get drunk is because of the horrible taste! Just kidding, kind of. But it was interesting to sit and mingle for a day with 6,000 other Mexicans. My friend Joanna and i encountered a group of 3 other Americans who were living in Mexico and teaching English. I thought that was really cool, but other than them, there were no other Americans.

We met up with Joanna´s friend who told her about the event, he is Canadian. And we chilled for most of the day. The big events were a brief down pour of rain that forced the greater half of 6,000 people under one little Red Bull tent. It was an interesting sight to see. Id post a picture but the last picture i tried uploading almost crashed the computer lol and i would have lost this entire blog! So I'm going to wait a while.

The main event was the Sigur Ros concert at the end of the night which everyone was there for. It was one of the best concerts that i have ever gone to in my life! They had one amazing song where the beat was really fast and uppidy, and they had lights of all colors going and then BOOM! They blew out Confetti! It was awesome. The best way i can describe it, is that it looks like New York´s time square on New Years eve! IT was great! Es specially in the mountains and sunset. Amazing.

What happened next was kind of ridiculous i think. I don't know if the event co-ordinater realized that all 6,000 people are going to be leaving the event at one time. Nonetheless if you could imagine an evacuation of what the Titanic looked like with everyone trying to get off the boat at once.. yea, it was Chaos! That path towards the stage i told you about was over flowing, and people were walking through the dense brush on both sides with flashlights trying to cut and move faster. People started chanting Don't Let Them Pass! IT was a mob! We finally after an hour of walking through the same path that took us 10 min before, get to the entrance where no one knows where anyone is going and people flow into the street and stop traffic. Its 11 at night at this point and all the buses are lined up on the right hand side of the road and they all were filled. The problem is that they brought people to the event in trips over the course of 5 hours and I'm assuming they planned the same for the trip home but who is going to wait till 4 in the morning for a bus back? NO One! Not only that but everyone was swarming the street so that no bus could even move. So Joanna, James, his friend, and I walked with the crowd through the street and we eventually got to the front of the people walking. It was such an amazing adventure! Walking in the dark through the mountains of Mexico not really knowing where you re going or if you re even going to make it home that night. I loved it. Because we were walking on a mountain we could see the entire city below and OMG! IT was amazing! Lights stretching off into the distance. It was like nothing i ever had seen before.

I saw for the first time a Firefly last night! It scared the Sh!+ out of me! I was walking in the dark on the road and on both sides of the road there is just jungle and i see a glint of what i thought was an eye, and I'm like !!!!!!! So i keep walking looking the same way and i see it again but closer to the ground and it looks like its following us, whatever it is. Then my friends says oh look Fireflies and I was so relieved lol, i thought it was the Chupacabra or something. Anyways we found a cab and paid to take it back to Cuernavaca which wasn't too bad and we went out to a Taco-ria and it was great! I got home at like 1 i layed on my bed and crashed. IT was a great night and concert! I would love to type more but I'm in a cafe that doesn't have a bathroom so i have to walk back to my house now, Its been fun hope everything is going well!