Mummies, Convents and Chocolate

My uncles and cousins are really protective men to the ladies of the family. My mom is the only daughter so since I am her daughter I am treated...like a daughter more than a niece by my uncles and as a big sister by my cousins. 

Most of my family really enjoys historical places, ghost (or torture) stories and food. I love spending time with each of them and seeing how different each of them are talking about history: how the natives were chased out or tortured and how the colonists built the now famous churches and convents. 

My first expedition was with one of my uncles, my aunt and mom. We tried to go see the church where I was married but for the second attempt couldn't see it. The entire neighborhood is very beautiful though.

 I renounced, accepting the fate that I can only re-visit that church with my Chef, otherwise going alone without him isn't a fair representation of our union. The church is 500 years old and hopefully will last another few years so we can come back together to walk in the place where we condemned ourselves for life promised eternal love and romance.

Seeing that we couldn't enter the church, our little tour group headed to see the mummies at the Templo del Carmen San Angel. My mom and uncle used to go here as children so they were really excited to go again. This time was even better for them since they got to use their senior citizen card and enter the museum for free! Gee, I can't wait till I'm 65! I felt left out!

I loved walking around the grounds seeing the tropical meditation garden that the friars of the past had. 

We entered one open atrium and were blown away by the intense perfume of orange tree flowers.

My mom and I (easily bewildered and amused pair) energetically and joyfully sniffed around to see where the aroma came from while my uncle and aunt quickly informed us that it was just from flowers. "Flowers!" we both eagerly exclaimed and hurried to inhale them with closed eyes. 

My mom loves smelling flowers of any type and these flowers didn't escape her! I was so happy to see her having a good time. She really works hard taking care of grandma and a day out on the town is rare for her. Before to leaving the house my mom needs to make granny breakfast, help her move to the sun room, get a safe and strong grandma-sitter and make sure granny is feeling ok and has everything she needs for a few hours. Granny is now my mom's new baby-girl and it is so sweet to see the childlike love from granny's eyes on my mom and to see my mom be a mommy again. Yet it is such hard work to be a mommy in your 60's. So seeing my mom joyfully inhale the perfumed flowers in the garden made my heart happy. 

Then we descended to the bowels of the church and were quickly greeted by human sculls. 

BOO!

Apparently, the mummies were well to do parishioners because they have good clothes on: suits and ties for the gentlemen and skirts with shawls for the ladies. All of the mummies have shoes! 

Your average parishioner would not have been able to afford such luxuries. What struck me was that all of the mummies had well-kept teeth! I imagine that they didn't have so much processed sugars and carbs to rot their teeth back then. My dentist would be proud.

A few days later my uncle took me out downtown for a fun afternoon. We knew it was going to rain so took the metro to avoid traffic then encountered a long line of people at the exit since the rain started coming down in torrents. We didn't let the rain stop us and charged on to each church to see as much as we could.

My uncle explained that the colonists built many many churches when they arrived. So we church-hopped from one to another down the street. The tropical rain caught up to us so we ducked into an old palace, house of Augustin Turbide, turned into a modern art gallery to stay dry. 

It didn't take long for the rain to catch up and soon a river was flowing down the street and into the gallery!

The gallery employees all did their best to scoop out the water but to little avail.

In the end we went to a nice bar and had a hot cup of coffee to ward off a cold. 

There my uncle told me several ghost stories of  hundreds of years ago. I could tell that he had told these stories many times so he was happy that I hadn't heard them and that I was more credulous than his kids.

The next day I was able to convince my "little" cousin to take me shopping for clay talavera in an area I really like.

 He is such a champion and quietly obeyed. Living with a Chef who attended military school has trained me to shop quickly, efficiently and always barter (even in department stores "isn't there a coupon?" usually reveals that there is). I didn't want to annoy my good-hearted little cousin so went in 10 minutes to buy what I wanted to decorate my house with. 

And only 1 plate cracked on my way home!

After depositing the goods in his car, we went to the prettiest and little known convent I have ever seen. The church is Templo de San Diego and the convent attached is the Templo de Nuestra Senora de Los Angeles.Here are my favorite pictures. I encountered a very nice cat, so naturally these are my favorite pictures. I will name the cat "La Imperdonable" ("the Unforgivable One") like my grandma's telenovela.

Now for pictures of the convent:

 My little cousin is a very solemn young man and quite seriously explained the story of the war god, Huitzilopoehtli, to me. 

He founded a very important avenue called Churubusco where different tribes could come from far away. His symbol was the "Colibri" or hummingbird, which I loved! 

How awesome is it for a tiny dainty frail hummingbird to be the symbol for war? Incredible, right?

Anyway, my little cousin was not so amused with my amusement. Every time I saw him so serious I told myself, "He is really going to make a great lawyer one day!" and felt so proud of him. I can see him now defending the people...

 Solemnly meditating

Anyway, he seriously took me around the friars quarters explaining to me how they ate on fast days, regular days and feast days. 

Fast days

Feast days

Table for the big wigs

Every day

What did scandalize both of us was to find out that the friars were forbidden to have any type of chocolate because chocolate was considered so deliciously tasty it was a carnal sin to indulge in it! I guess my sins are far greater than I thought...Milky Way, Reese's peanut butter cups, 80% dark with cherries, gelato di cioccolato fondente, a random handful of chocolate chips, and hot fudge sundaes from McDonald's have been some of my favorite treats in life! 

Woe is me!