So one of the things I've been doing has been straightening up the house a little bit -- especially the den which had become a bit of a collection point for stuff that didn't know where to go -- in anticipation of having a house full of people on Thursday. Thanksgiving dinner will be at my mother-in-law's house, but in order to give her free movement for cooking (and peace and quiet) we're having everyone over here for hors d'oevres. We did that last year and it worked out very nicely.
In the course of straightening the den I found some pictures I took a couple years ago (November '98) when I was in Mexico. I was there for a bit over a week and a half. Arrived on a Sunday, taught all week, had a weekend free, and then a two day class, finally flying back home that Wednesday. On that free weekend, a colleague and I visited Teotihuacan to see the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon.
That's the Pyramid of the Sun behind me. It is huge. No, I mean it is truly huge, much larger than it appears in the photo. It's even larger in real life... and the closer you get to it, the larger and the more overwhelming it becomes.
This is the view from the top of the Pyramid of the Sun
, looking toward the area where I was standing when the first picture in this series was taken (the exact spot I was standing is not quite two-thirds of the way up this picture... see the combination of grass and pavement that matches that in the first picture... that's how far away I was standing when my friend took that picture.)
This is taken from on top of the Pyramid of the Moon, showing the central area and the surrounding "temples"... that's the Pyramid of the Sun on the upper left.
That's the Pyramid of the Moon in the background behind one of the temples.
I hope these pictures are clear enough for you to get a glimpse of these amazing structures without using so much bandwidth that they take a long time to load. I reduced them in size quite a bit, hope I've not lost too much detail.
If you aren't using a 14.4 modem you might want to Click here to see a full screen version of the second picture... that pyramid really looms over you, filling the sky, totally awesome.
By the way, my description of that trip can be found in these three entries:
Sunny, low thirties, looks like a pleasant day... Buffalo, NY is closed today due to two feet of snow they received yesterday (on top of the foot or so that they got over the weekend)... ah yes, upstate New York winters... Here in Rhode Island we have predictions of snow flurries on Thanksgiving day... so it could be a bit nippy weather for running but otherwise not bad at all.