All in all, the trip to Mexico and Puebla went well, besides the fact that sleep wasn't really a luxury I had. We left Fayetteville at 445 AM, and with a couple of short stops we arrived in Charlotte around 8AM. After saying goodbye to the family, I boarded the flight to Mexico City, where I arrived after 3 hours and 57 minutes of watching (luckily you didn't have to listen) Samantha Brown's Travel Trivia on the 1980's tv monitors aboard the plane.

After the plane landed, I passed through customs, an interesting task to perform as there are absolutely no directions on how to do so, and, such as my case, the informers give you the wrong sheet to fill out. Then, after stumbling my way through asking directions to the bus terminal inside of the airport, I began my wait for Phil, my friend who was supposed to meet me in the airport at 3, after his flight landed at 220. After a couple of conversations in which I continued my stumbling, I realized that it was 330 and time to find Phil. I decided to wait in front of the customs terminal which he would be exiting, and after reading arribado on the screen, I figured it wouldn't be long until I saw him walk out, easily recognized by the bicycle he was supposed to be carrying.

As I stood there waiting, beginning to think that the weight of my bags would give me lifelong backproblems, I looked at my phone and saw it was 445. I debated whether or not to leave Phil and head on to Puebla before it got too late and dark, as I knew that he had the hotel information and could find his way without me. I reached my decision around 5 and went to the bus terminal to buy a ticket for the next bust to Puebla. After realizing from the woman at the ticket counter that poco inglés really means poco, I hopped on the bus at 510, talked with a girl from Australia (who had just as long as a day as me due to the tranquilidade at the Brazilian embassy), and fell asleep until we reached the 4 Ponientes bus station.

After much smoother conversation with the front desk workers in the beautiful Holiday Inn in the Centro Historico (it used to be a colonial mansion) and dinner in a department store/restaurant called VIPS (pronounced veeps, not V.I.P's), I recieved an e-mail from Phil saying that he had the flight never took off from Nashville due to engine probelms, and didn't make it to Mexico. It was a good decision to leave D.F. after all, and after a long day of traveling, I watched a little bit of the Fiesta Bowl in spanish (a little ironic?) feeling like I had accomplished something, and fell asleep.