Miricles and torture

Trains
On the Metro in Mexico City we saw a blind person with a stick leading a blind person without a stick. So we actually saw the blind leading the blind. The hawkers that come through the carriages only sell one thing each, here is a sample: scissors, (good for cutting hair) for 50 cents, a book light for $1, chewing gum, CDs, lollies. The one mistake I made was to file off a busy train in the following order: Charles, Greta, Josh. (Any idiot would know that the order should have been Josh, Charles, Greta.) Big mistake! Nobody waits for people to get off before they get on. This means that the only way to get off is to push. You really have to push Mexicans (who generally are tall if they are over 5´2¨), so you feel really mean. I had told Josh about it, but I had not reminded him. So he got stuck on the train. I was yelling at him to push, he tried, but looked bewildered. I reached my arm in, he reached out and grabbed it and miricles of miricles out he popped.

The real miricle
Tony decided that even though his stomach was giving him trouble, he would do the trip to the site of the 1968 massacre, the Shrine of Guadalupe and the pyrimids. Sure enough at the shrine he went to the toilet one last time then declared himself cured. People line up to pray for a miricle, but all Tony had to do was visit the little boys room and hey presto. He impressed everyone on the bus with his modern day Mexican miricle.

Torture and Creativity
While Tony and Josh climbed pyramids, Charles lay in the bed in our hotel room making the most of the easy toilet access. In between bringing him Gatoraid, I went out to visit the National Museum and the Museum of the Instruments of Torture. The National Museum was really wonderful and I was surprised by the number of really tender European style portraits. I decided that because I had been to the very building where they held the Spanish Inquisition, that the torture exhibition had some context. It did have context, but I am not sure that I am glad I went. The exhibition had signs in English so I could read all of the information. Apart from the detailed physiological explanations, each instrument had a footnote explaining when it was last used. Of course many of them are still in use in much of the world today. The really horrible part of it was how creative and inventive the instruments are.