A pretty quiet day today ... ate my first, home-cooked beans this morning for breakfast, along with my store-bought tortillas and some Jumex mango juice. Mmm. Greg had hard-boiled eggs, his wheat tortillas, and some of the juice. Oh, and his drug-like coffee.

I´m dragging a bit today, so instead of touring the countryside, we decided to see the museum attached to the Santo Domingo church a block from our temporary apartment. Except the museum is closed on Mondays. However, the church is always open, just like Denny´s, so we had a look-see inside. Seen those brightly-painted clay nativity sets? Imagine the walls and ceiling of a church, covered in them. Every square inch. With a lot of gold leaf. That´s the inside of Santo Domingo. I didn´t take any pictures because people were actually using the church as a place of worship; I´ll try again some other time.

But we do have fabulous pictures of Monte Alban, and of the pre-Columbian art museum near our future apartment which, if this link works, I will post shortly. Some of the statuary includes this representation of Xipe, a piece showing just how fun being an upper-class child (or slated sacrifical victim?) in Meso-America is, and how difficult it must've been to find a good hat. But some -- actually, quite a bit -- of the pieces were whimsical, like this one. The pose, with the arms spread wide, is a religious pose, according to the museum's English-language literature.

Here's an example of Monte Alban-style art; I'll post one from Mitla so you can see the difference.