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Signs of Mexico

While travelling in Mexico, I discovered an amusing pastime of watching roadsigns and taking pictures of them. From what I gather it seems that in the past they’ve had trouble with someone abducting the signs; what do you think?

No Destruya Las Seรฑales “No Destruya las Seรฑales,” that is, “Don’t Destroy the Signs.”


Obedezca las Seรฑales “Obedezca las Seรฑales,” which means “Obey the Signs.”


Cinturones de Seguridad son ObligatoriosYes, you have to wear your seatbelt, even in Mexico! (In fact I would recommend it, seeing how some people drive down there.)

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Ma Noweyiteko Mitstiochiwa

Huastec monolithI have returned! From the wilds of Mexico, from the high mountains of San Luis Potosรญ, I have brought tidings of the people, language, landscape, and culture of the Huasteca.

My trip to the Potosian Huasteca went very well; I made some new friends and I was able to talk to lots of people there and improve my Spanish. Although I had previously visited the states of Coahuila and Tamaulipas, I had never before journeyed so far south (if you’re not sure where San Luis Potosรญ is, take a look at a map). I discovered a totally different side of Mexico on this trip!

As I experienced first-hand the culture of that region, I couldn’t help but think, this is the real Mexico! This is a place where everyone knows their native tongue as well as Spanish, a place where they make such bizarre dishes as a giant tamale. This was no Tex-Mex!

There is so much to tell about my trip, and so many pictures to show, that I am going to dedicate a good number of my subsequent blog posts to sharing these things with you. As you may remember, I did the same thing on BenjaBlog when I got back from North Carolina, but this trip was much more interesting than that one.

I hope you’ll come back regularly! This blog is dedicated to providing you, the reader, with interesting things to read and look at, and I hope I am achieving this goal.

About the title: I considered using Spanish for the title, but I decided to instead use Nahuatl (pronounced NAH-wahtl), the language of the Aztecs. The phrase means God bless you, and I would like to thank Luis Alberto of Coxcatlรกn for his help in providing me with some words from the language (stay tuned for more information about the indigenous tongues of Mexico).

ยกHasta luego!

Tomorrow, muy de maรฑana, I am going on a week-long trip to the state of San Luis Potosรญ in Mexico. This explains why I am blogging on thursday today, and I will be back in time to blog next friday.

Of all the foreign countries I’ve visited, Mexico is my favourite (although I’ve never been outside North America), and I’m really looking forward to travelling farther south than I’ve ever been. Not only will I be able to improve my Spanish, Lord willing, but I also hope to meet some people down there who still speak the old Indian languages (talk about Precolumbian!)

I plan to take plenty of pictures, and hopefully I’ll get some blogging material as well. ยกAdiรณs!

Ain't got a homepage

…at least not until now! Although I’ve made quite a few websites for myself and for others, and even though I’ve had the domain name benjaminbruce.us for quite a while, I have just recently gotten around to making a central website to be a hub for all my other ones.

So, if you’d like to, please check it out! It was lots of work making the design for this website, but I finally got it looking like I wanted it to. It’s even trilingual, so hopefully more people will find it that way.

An update:ย  I recently purchased the domain name benjaminbruce.com (whoever had it before finally let it go), so I am in the process of switching everything to this domain.ย  BenjaminBruce.us will still work, but I’ll be phasing it out, so go ahead and change your bookmark if necessary.

Welcome to Ziphen Central

In an effort to tidy up my web presence a bit, I have decided to take the most drastic step of getting rid of Blogger and switching to WordPress. Nothing against Google, it’s just that I was tired of the boring template and all the formatting trouble it was giving me.

Having said that, I now officially welcome you to my new weblog, christened Ziphen Central. The history behind the name “Ziphen” goes back to my early years in homeschool, when I did a certain assignment which required me to create a menu for a fictional restaurant (a very interesting activity, to be sure). Being the creative person that I am, I couldn’t settle for just an ordinary name, so I came up with the imaginative name Ziphen’s Restaurant. A few years later, I liked the name so much that I gave it to my room, which was, for a time, the capital of the Republic of Niwic. Because I still like the name, and because it is the name of a very special place, I cannot think of a better name for my blog.

In closing, I hope you will continue reading my blog, though it is now in a different location, and please update your bookmark if necessary. I hope to someday make my own theme for this blog, but a Marscape will have to do for now. And, if you ever want to go back and look at BenjaBlog, it will still be there for those who want to search the archives.