I'm working on a backlog of posts right now, so even though this will be dated early December, it's actually Christmas eve. Bells are ringing from several churches, but otherwise it's a quite night, not much celebrating. It could be too early, or it could be that Mexico just isn't that big on celebrating Christmas. I've never lived in a culture that was so hard working an so devoted to family. These are things that I grew up hearing people talk about -- hard work and family -- but I've never actually seen it like I see it here. Which is not meant to denigrate people in other places, hard work is not a zero sum game, but here work and life flow together with no real strong boundaries like you'd find in the States, for example. My favorite example of this is bus drivers. In the United States if you drive a bus, you wear a uniform and, aside from your face and body shape, you are largely indistinguishable from whomever is driving the next bus. Chances are, when you get off you park the bus and go home. It's not in any meaningful way, your bus or even your work, you are by design an meaningless cog in a profit wheel where most of the profits go to someone other than you. I could make a good case that this is an awful way to live, severely limits your humanity, leads to depression and dissatisfaction with your work and life, and is one of the more profound and overwhelming problems in American culture, but we won't get into that here. Instead consider the Mexican bus driver. His bus is his bus. Her bus is her bus. The dashboard is given over to shrines of La Virgen de Guadalupe, or whomever their patron saint might be, along with photos of family, friends, wives, children, what have you. Usually there's a crucifix and some pithy quotes about god, country and most importantly, family. Mi familia, Mi Trabajo, Mi Vida, was one I saw. I don't know where the buses get parked at night, but I do know that the next day the same person is driving the same bus. Mi familia, Mi Trabajo, Mi Vida. For me this helps to make sense of > I wanted to test myself. And that long ride nearly beat me. It was so hard. Many times I almost quit but my friends who came with me kept me going. And I kept them going. Many strangers gave us food and a place to sleep. We experienced a big change in our hearts. We learned that our families are our greatest treasure. I want to keep working hard for my family and for Mexico -- Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe! a pilgrim quoted on changes in our lives. k Temple to Tonantzin on the hill of Tepeyac Before the Spanish conquest, there was a temple of adoration to the goddess Tonantzin, which was attended by settlers from all over the Anahuac country, as the federation of tribes was called. Stories collected by the Spanish friars give an account of this: the Mexicas and other Nahua people believed that on the top of the hill of Tepeyac the mother of the gods appeared: “The goddess, was very venerated by the natives. According to them, she appeared to one of them at a time in the form of a young girl in a white robe, and revealed secret things to the person “. Fray Juan de Torquemada in “Monarquía India” – 1615. Cerro del Tepeyac Fray Bernardino de Sahagún said in his texts that in the mountain called Tepeaca or Tepeyac, they had a temple dedicated to the mother of all the gods, they called Tonantzin, to whom they made many sacrifices; Men and women from all the regions came saying “Let’s go to Tonantzin’s festivity”. The Mexican historian Edmundo O’Gorman warns in some of his notes that by the year of 1530 the Franciscan friars built a hermitage dedicated to the Spanish virgin trying to replace a pagan rite with a Catholic one.