Spring Breakers

Carly Martin

03 Apr 2026 — 6 min read

Generational last few week run for me personally. Traveling, seeing world famous touring artists, starting new jobs. I think I've discovered how to get through March in New England and I think it involves packing it chock full of concerts and classes and maybe leaving the country for a week or more.

April Ins and Outs

I know you've been waiting for these.

Ins

papier-mâché
cacti
non-aerosol dry shampoo
rocket launches

Outs

GA concert seating
commuter traffic
dry texture spray
geese

¡Viva México!

Because of my full-time student status, this year I got a bona fide spring break. Nat and I took advantage of this by going to Mexico for 10 whole days. It was gorgeous, super interesting, and there were only a few tummy related issues.

We started in Mexico City where I was shocked to discover that my high school/college Spanish was mostly serviceable. Happy to say that very few conversations got flipped into English even though I could only remember how to conjugate verbs in the present tense for the first few days. Nat says this was good as it showed locals that I 'only live in the present'.

Highlights from 6 days in CDMX included:

walking around the Roma neighborhood and trying the famed guayaba roll at Panadería Rosetta (I fear ThirdCliff's guava cream cheese croissant was put to shame).
exploring Coyoacán and visiting the Frida Kahlo museum and her neighbor, Leon Trotsky's house. Call me crazy but putting gift shops into the homes of pillars of the Communist Party feels ... perhaps a little sacrilege?
taking a spin around the Polanco neighborhood and checking out the Soumaya private art museum.
getting accidentally tipsy at a lucha libre show.
watching performers jump off a 98ft pole during a danza de los voladores.
buying the local convenience stores out of pedialyte.

On Tuesday we took a short flight over to Oaxaca which is where the real fun began. Mexico City is excellent, don't get it twisted. But Oaxaca just had so much more of everything going for it - the food was outstanding, the weather was gorgeous, the people were so friendly - overall I think it was just a little more interesting than Mexico City.

In just walking around we discovered the prevalence of wood carvings (grabados) to the local art scene. There was a whole network of studios/galleries that showed just printmaking pieces that we found while exploring. Between talking to the artists and a little googling, we found out that printmaking is super popular in Oaxaca because of a political conflict that happened in the early 2000s. Teachers built an encampment in the city center to strike after demanding higher wages and better school infrastructure. Police cracked down on the protestors, resulting in the deaths of 17 people. Making grabados was a quick, low cost way to make a lot of signage, banners, and other distributable paper materials. The art form has stuck around and taken hold of local artists since then.

We had many a gorgeous meal in Oaxaca. There are a ton of places that are super approachable and affordable that also were Michelin star'ed. Standouts were Levadura de Olla, Las Quince Letras, Empanadas del Carmen, and the esquites guy right by our hotel.

One of the most important ingredients to the area is cacao and that is heavily reflected in the food. We had many iterations of mole (traditional Mexican sauce made with chiles, spices, nuts, seeds, and chocolate) and tejate de olla (fermented, hot cacao drink). Everything was unbelievably delicious.

Another big part of the culture in Oaxaca are alebrijes. Alebrijes are little animal figures made out of papier-mâché and painted in bright colors with intricate patterns. If you've ever seen the Disney movie Coco, they are depicted as kind of spiritual guardians in the underworld. They have become a huge piece of Mexican folk art, but they only came into existence in the 1930s and have no connection to any kind of mythology or even Día de los Muertos.

An artist named Pedro Linares Lopez (1906-1992) began his career in Mexico City making Judas figures and other piñatas and became popular when his sculptures were purchased by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. In his 30s he got extremely sick and in a literal fever dream, encountered these wild, fantasy, hybrid animals which he claimed told him they were called 'alebrijes'. When he recovered, he was compelled to craft sculptures in their likenesses. Thus the tradition was born.

In Oaxaca, artist Manuel Jiménez Ramírez (1919-2005) saw the creation and popularization of alebrijes in Mexico City and began carving similar figurines but injected his own Toltec traditions into the kinds of people and animals he was depicting. He also integrated local materials like copal wood and ixtle - a fiber made from agave and yucca plants - into the final sculptures, localizing them even more. His art became widely popular with museums in Mexico and the United States and alebrijes soon became a popular souvenir for tourists.

We got to see a bunch of Jiménez Ramírez's work at the Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzman in the center of the city. It was extremely cool.

Overall, would highly, highly recommend traveling to Mexico.

See Ya!

recs.

a song i'm loving:

Are You Listening Yet? - Harry Styles

a movie i watched:

I haven't seen anything new recently so an all-timer rec: Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022). I love this movie. I know there are divisive opinions on it, especially among some readers of this newsletter, but it makes me sob so.

a book i'm reading: