Monday, my first day of class.

I woke up at 5:30AM.

I had a wonderful chat with my host last night and embarrassingly I can't remember her name.  Which... I just looked up on the emails she sent me, is ​Marcela​.  This place is perfect but loud. The traffic runs all night, and the major street is right outside my window; It is a constant parade of cars and motorcycles and buses and trucks.  It's a good thing I always travel with ear plugs.

I can't believe I forgot my sleeping mask. The ear plugs, they sort of cut the noise in half.  Even on the third floor it was loud.  The apartment where I'm staying is in Condesa, part of the old Hipódromo, Ciudad de México.  This entire area used to be part of a giant horse track owned by the Condesa.  It is mind boggling the scale of how big that track must have been.  I have this weird American distorted view that Mexico is the beach towns smashed up against the border.  130M people live in Mexico today and it is physically a HUGE country.

In contrast, the apartment is small but cute.

The room has a low bed, it's firm but comfortable enough.  There is a wonderful large armoir that is not shown in the picture, (because it's at my back).  It is large enough to allow me to put my clothes and suitcases away.  This made the room feel more spacious.

You can see my Brompton bike next to the bed.

My desk is actually quite wonderful.

This is almost the exact same setup I had last year in Puerta Vallarta.  I saw the computer stand in an article about digital nomads, and I can't sing the praises of the Logi MX mechanical keyboard enough. It easily switches between my phone and my mac. I still use the Logi "jellybean" mouse I bought in PV.  It is a shockingly functional setup.  Having the laptop screen at eye level makes for a much more comfortable work experience.

The rest of the apartment is cozy and comfortable.

Love the fisheye 0.5 lens on the iPhone 14.  You can really capture a lot of stuff in a tight space.

I made Italian coffee this morning - I may photo journal that in another post.  I also started my oats, put them in a bowl with a plate on top.  Marcela doesn't have measuring cups near as I can tell, so I just eye-balled a cup of oats and poured milk to cover it.

There's no sugar, no honey.  I may have to buy some honey, or this is my chance to cut sugar out of my life for a month and see how that goes.

Now that the sun is up, I feel a lot better.  What's interesting is that I won't have to walk Cookie the dog, so I might be able to use that time to do a workout in my room.  I think there is enough space on the carpet.

There is a washing machine in the kitchen, but no obvious place to dry things. (Postscript - The washing machine is an all in one and doubles as a dryer, but Marcela, my host also gave me a drying rack to set up in my room and it works great.)

Post-postscript: I traveled with my Tension Toner portable gym. I did in fact, work out this morning and it felt great.  If all I am doing is riding my bike and walking, I should be getting a lot of exercise.  If I can just control the calorie intake, I might come back healthier than when I left. Wouldn't that be wonderful?  One thing is for sure, there's not a lot of room to store excess food so I've got a fighting chance of improving my health if I don't eat out every night.

Español

Marcela is wonderful and kind and ella habla español conmigo, muy sencilla y lento.  Ella es muy amable y gentile.