January 25, 2013

  • Report # 965

    Hey everyone, I hope that you’ve all been having a great week. Just 11 months remaining until Christmas ! I’m just kidding ! I would assume we can all wait those 11 months and aren’t in a super big hurry for that day to arrive yet. As Tuesday was a super cloudy day I just decided to have a sort of lazy day. I didn’t go running and in the afternoon I went to Interplaza to see Django. I was telling a friend that it was a very entertaining movie, though definitely super gruesome.

    She was telling me that’s normal for Quentin Tarantino movies, though after checking up on wikipedia I determined that it was actually the first Quentin Tarantino movie that I had ever seen. I don’t know if that is a surprising fact, but from the lists he hasn’t made so many movies so I’m not too shocked. Afterwards I headed home and relaxed for a while. I took a short walk in the evening, taking some pictures and stopping at Subway.

    Wednesday was sunny and it got up to around 24 C (75 F). I went for a run in the morning and then headed home and had a shower before going for a walk. I walked up some hills near the mall that I always go to, and I found a street that heads all the way up the side of the mountain and there was a place to walk along the mountain side. There were lots of nice city views, so I was able to take lots of pictures. I didn’t stay up there too long as there was a fence beside me, and I didn’t really know if I was supposed to be walking up there.

    I headed down and then went to the mall and had a frappuichino from Starbucks and some lunch at a place in the food court. On the way home I stopped in the park for a while before heading home for the day. Despite my walk and run and stop in the park, I still managed to get home well before 5:00 pm. I got an email from the lady at Teleperformance asking me if I’ve heard anything from the migration people and I told her not yet, but I would let her know as soon as I do. After today will only actually be 10 business days since the company handed in my documents, so I have a feeling it’s going to make some time.

    I went for a run again yesterday morning and once again headed home, had a shower, and headed out to take some pictures. It was a super sunny day and probably one of the hottest days of 2013 here, as it got up to 27 C. (80 F) I ended up walking a lot more and taking many more pictures than I imagined. I was walking from 1:00 pm until after 4:00 pm, and I took over 300 pictures.

    I started downtown by a plaza there and walked through some park area and by the government palace before walking through some downtown streets, Barrio Antiguo and finally along Paseo Santa Lucía. I had taken pictures in most of these areas before, but it was such a nice day I thought it wouldn’t hurt to do it all once more. I had dinner at Chilis which was close to the metro station I needed to get home. I got home a little after 6:00 pm, and then spent a long time uploading all of my pictures to Facebook.

    Today is going to be another fairly hot day, and in fact from what I’ve seen the next week will be very warm. It seems winter here has come to an end…. at least for a week. After all of the walking and running I’ve done over the last few days, today will be a very relaxing day and I just plan on walking to the mall and seeing a movie. As I was reading the paper yesterday, the main story was about Florence Cassez, a French woman who had spent the last 7 years in a Mexico prison, for her alleged role with a gang involved in kidnappings.

    She had come to Mexico to work and she met a boyfriend here who was part of the gang, though she always proclaimed her innocence. From what I have read, some of the victims claimed to have heard her voice, though they didn’t actually see her. This issue created a thorn in the side in the relations between Mexico and France in recent years, but just the other day, the Mexican court voted to free this woman, and she has already been sent back to France.

    The front page of the newspaper from Monterrey, Mileno says: Falla la Corte y deja libre a la plagiaria (Court fails and lets the plagiarist free) And some of the columnists wrote some pretty angry columns. One writer even said that Mexico “es una porquería de país” Basically saying that the country is dirty, not good for allowing this woman to walk free. Another columnist wrote “Florence: nuestra (our) Amanda Knox” making comparisons to the young US woman who spent a number of years in an Italian prison on charges of murder.

    On Facebook I saw that one of my friends had made a post saying how horrible it is that the French people are celebrating the return of this woman, someone who she clearly believes was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of victims. She went on to say that at least Mexico has one less bad person, who is now in France. So emotions are really running high, and clearly a lot of people believe this woman is very guilty and has gotten off so easy with kidnapping and murder.

    As someone who has just read about this in the paper very recently, it would be easy with me to just say oh she’s guilty and got away with committing horrible crimes, but obviously I wasn’t there and I can’t be 100 % sure. Clearly a lot of people are upset about her release, so the Mexican courts and police and justice system in general didn’t handle this case very well. So while I certainly can’t say whether this woman is guilty or innocent, she should have been given another trial after some very good police and detective work was done, to really see if she was innocent instead of just letting her free on mistakes made by police and the justice department.

    I can definitely see the similarities with this case to the one of Amanda Knox. (those of you who don’t know either story can google them) Ultimately I can say I believe in both situations these women were released prematurely and not enough good police work was done here. If either one of them is innocent than ok, but just releasing them both without getting a real good investigation done and a proper trial is just plain irresponsible and offensive to the victims of the crimes that they are accused of.

    With that being said, in cases like these, it’s important I think that the people who read the paper, watch TV, don’t go out of there way and take one side or another, because none of us were there and unless we truly know the story, we can’t really jump on one side or the other. It’s just important that when someone is arrested of a crime and spends time in prison, police and the courts do their work properly, if not there will be more stories like these ones, and that just causes more pain than necessary to the family of the victims.

    For the next question:

    Do you tend to have strong opinions over stories like these and take one side or the other ?

    I will leave you all with some pictures I took on Tuesday evening and Wednesday afternoon. I hope that everyone has an amazing weekend. Take care and I’ll talk to you all on Monday, bye for now.

    References: Mileno Newspaper January 24, 2013. “México es una porquería de país” Ciro GómezLeyva. “Florence: nuestra Amanda Knox” León Krauze

Comments (4)

  • Crazy you’re talking Christmas. It felt like Christmas was yesterday!

    I’m jealous of the weather. It has gotten unbelievably cold here. It hasn’t been like this in years, so it feels even worse. Today’s high is 16 and low is 7 degrees. So cold, schools got delays/were closed. Schools, but not colleges. You’d think that colleges would at least get compressed schedules seeing that the students have to walk to classes. The high schools that closed, those student drive or get driven.

    The story of that lady does seem unfair and I wouldn’t be happy she was released so easily. I agree with everything you said. She should have had another trial before anything.

    Hope you enjoy the movie and weekend.

  • I am glad the weather is decent for you there. I just feel that you are wasting so much of your time and days waiting for someone to give you a job. I hope you hear from the immigration services soon.

  • I try not to take sides when I hear big news stories, but sometimes the evidence just seems so overwhelming I can’t help but pick a side.
    Haven’t seen Django- yet. My hubby is a Tarantino fan so we’ve seen pretty much all his other movies. The gore is a bit much for me at times, but the man can tell a good story!

  • I’m really jealous of your weather. It’s gotten cold here the past week. The highs are only in the lower 40′sF. Last week it was in the 70′s every day, so this is definitely a big change.

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