The saying that many hands make light work couldn't be more true for my initial experience of cramming into a tiny 4 person apartment, searching for delicious tacos, and of course working in a city I've never stepped foot in.

First, to address the room that couldn't fit an elephant (pictured below). Coming from the Midwest United States, the land of suburbs and ranch houses, my room is easily the smallest that I have ever spent more than a few hours in. Upon seeing that my suitcase was almost as big as my sleeping quarters; my reaction was a mix of concern for where I would put my extraordinarily overpacked amount of clothes and absolute petrifying terror at the thought of what we would do when my 3 other roommates arrived. But with their late and extremely jet lagged arrival, my Midwestern inability to maximize space was picked up by a kindhearted American Oxonian, a parliament loving Brit and a stoic yet silly Frenchman.  It's certainly not pretty (thus why no after picture is being posted) but with two of us living out of suitcases and some wonderful shared community spaces it has become a home. Together, as a loose association of people who have never met before, we made it work!

Mexico City is full of hot, spicy, sweaty, and smoky kitchens in the back of Michelin Star restaurants and on the side of gridlocked avenidas. It is simply impossible to not eat well. But I've already found that it is even easier to discover amazing food with the help of 14 other hungry and gastronomically minded young adults asking local residents and frantically searching Google Maps for the tastiest sustenance within a 20 minute walk. Or perhaps as the late Anthony Bourdain suggested, "the best meals occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself." Alongside my fellow scholars, I have had remarkably fresh sushi, comforting sweet and sour Pineapple Chicken, chicken tenders (I'm not using an adjective to describe them so readers can insert their own jokes about Americans and fried food) and of course more tacos, sopes, and tamales then I can count. My personal highlight of the comida chilanga that I have had so far is the technically Monterrey inspired Frijoles a la Charra at Taqueria Orinoco (I didn't take a picture of the beans but la Taqueria is pictured below). The savoriness of pinto beans bathed in a lucious pork-infused broth was a warm greeting on my first night in CDMX and the freshly chopped onions and tomatoes complemented the lucious green scenery of the Colonia Juárez location. I will leave it up to the reader to decide whether it was truly the food or rather the people that I ate it with that made for such a memorable meal.

Of course, I am in Mexico City to do more than just fret over a very communal apartment and search for culinary delights. For my Leadership in Action project, I'm working alongside 3 other amazing and talented Laidlaw Scholars to help Rennueva, "una empresa dedicada a la innovación para la protección del ambiente," to expand their recycling operations into the Quintana Roo province. Our work has only just begun so I don't have much to discuss in that regard but I do want to mention the visit that the entire make_sense cohort made to Rennueva's recycling facility in CDMX. Hector (the CEO) and his team warmly welcomed the group with delightful pastries and sandwiches from a local bakery, provided a few Habanero peppers for us to challenge our spice tolerance (I admittedly drank a glass of milk to stop the burning), and gave an an extremely engaging demonstration of their plastics recycling process (I was worried I might lose my hand to the grinder). But I want to emphasize many of my colleagues who are not in my project group yet asked questions that elicited information that has already been extremely beneficial in our work. The visit was a great experience and also a powerful reminder that answers to extremely challenging questions and even questions you never thought about asking can come from anyone. The people who you live and work with collectively know more information (and have more novel ideas and questions) than you could ever learn in a thousand years so why not lean on them. Let their many hands make your work lighter and of course return the favor, even if unintentionally.

Have a good one :)

- Spencer