Onward and Upward: Four Years of Blogging

November has, thus far, been rife with disappointment. On a personal level, I have slowly been making peace with my mother’s passing, less than two months ago, while weathering a relationship break-up that felt like a sucker punch. Regarding the former, it took several weeks to even register the fact that my mom was gone. As for the latter, I’ve been trying to assess what I must have done wrong, but am slowly coming to the conclusion that I will never know for sure. All I can say is that I haven’t been sleeping well.

On the world stage – and for the second occurrence in my lifetime – the better candidate for the United States Presidency won the popular vote but lost the election. And the other day, I logged onto social media to learn that one of my favorite mood poets, Leonard Cohen, had passed away at age 82.

At times like these, I tend towards the melancholy. I spent much of yesterday doing some archiving and came across a few blog posts from 2013. I realized that it was Election Day, 2012, when I moved to Mexico City and established gringopotpourri.com. My blog has changed a lot over the years. For one thing, the writing is better now than it was then. Darker, perhaps, but also better. The regionality of the content has also shifted from being mostly Mexico-focused to being largely Tennessee-focused.

To “celebrate” my blog’s four-year anniversary, I thought I’d share a few of my favorite posts for you, along with comments on how those posts either came to be or how they hold up today. And as always: Thanks for reading!

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A Friday at Teotihuacán

I am way behind on this blog. I have so many ideas for topics to write about and so little time to actually put them all down on paper. This entry – about an early summer daytrip to the archaeological zone of Teotihuacán – is a long time coming. Said daytrip took place two months ago (!), and I’m only just now reporting on it to you, Loyal Reader. (I will often wait a bit after visiting somewhere before commenting on a place to let its impressions fully soak in, but this is just ridiculous.)

As you probably know, Teotihuacán is a large complex of ruins near Mexico City that is most famous for its pyramids, the Pyramid of the Moon and the larger Pyramid of the Sun. You may even recall that I ranked it as #5 in my Top Ten Mexico – The Country blog entry of January 2013. At the time that list was compiled, it had actually been ten years since my last visit to Teotihuacán. My photographic memory for travel details is like, say, my dad’s memory for baseball statistics. That is to say, I remembered my original visit like it was yesterday, and remain confident that my #5 ranking is just about right. Still, ten years is far too long to go between visits to a place as magnificent as Teotihuacán, so it was on a Friday in early June, with previous plans having fallen through, that I decided to make up for lost time.

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Top Ten Mexico – The Country

Greetings, Loyal Reader! If you’ve gotten to this point, you either like top ten lists, as I do, or you’re just trying to appease me. Hoping it’s the former and not the latter, it’s time for another list! (My previous top ten list – Top Ten Mexico City – can be found here.)

There is so much more to Mexico than just its capital. Of course, Mexico DF is the biggest and best city in the country – and you’d better believe it’ll make my country-wide top ten list – but you’ll also find beaches, ruins, and smaller cities and towns of note. Any Americans reading this blog, take note: many U.S. cities offer direct flights to numerous destinations in Mexico. Los Angeles, Houston, and Dallas seem especially well connected. Start packing!

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