"Swallow your vomit, get on the plane, and kick some ass." - Hannah O.

On the corner of Calles Tabasco and Valladolid, one block from the clean but smoky little hostel on a Brooklyn-esque lane in Colonia Roma (where, incidentally, no one had ever heard of me, despite my secure! online booking and so forth), I found myself sipping Pacifico and nibbling my vegetarian salad, quite more alone than I´d ever been before.

Everything previous went smoothly, from my encounter with the sweetest man from Oaxaca who offered up his mother´s contact info (she has an empty house and a view of the cathedral, he said) to my first drive through the city, which reminded me that big-city highway madness is one of my favorite thrills.

And since I´ve already plowed through eight or more pages of my journal in less than twenty-four hours, and since there is already too much to tell, I´ll spare you for now. But perhaps you´d like to read a list, which most people I think prefer, anyhow:

1. The size of the city is utterly daunting. HUGE beyond my already inflated imagination.
2. Themes so far include sex, fast cars, cigarettes, and sex. Naked women in advertisements seem to sell anything.
3. Must find "Torta Liz", saw it nearby on the drive.
4. Hostellier has a perfect Gael accent in English (Sunny´d swoon).
5. Was serenaded from street-level by a saxophone player and his clarinet-tooting son while perched on the stone balcony of the hostel.
6. Slept on a mattress on the floor last night (they can give me a bed tonight) and managed to sleep beautifully, dreaming of, in no particular order: getting smoothies with Chaya, having to go to work at Pasqual´s, sleeping on an airplane, and thinking I was sleeping on Tug´s couch.
7. I´m lonely.
8. Slumped over a plate of tostadas lorenzas last night, I wrote at the very bottom of the last page, "I just want to sleep. So bad I want to sleep".
9. Did you know that the Zocalo is second only to St. Petersberg Square as the largest city plaza in the world?
10. I´m going there right now.