this picture is worth about 400,000 people!

i need a t-shirt that says something like: i survived the line to get into the frida kahlo 100th anniversary exposition in mexico city´s palacio de las bellas artes and can live to tell you about it.

yes, this picture is for real.
yes, those are people and not ants.
and yes, i was one of the first people to get into the museum.

after hearing from my cousin, a painter here in guadalajara, that mexico city was hosting the largest, most complete exposition on my favorite feminist-mexican-surrealist artist, frida kahlo, i knew that i had to make the 6+ hour bus ride to go see it in person. sure, mexico city is one of those places that even mexicans don´t like to venture into, but somehow that heightened the adrenaline for this adventure. my uncle forewarned me that the lines had made international news, so i was aware that it might easily take 3-5 hours to even get in.

but regardless, the mission was on.
saturday (the second to last day of the exposition) morning we arrived in mexico city and quickly made our way to the palacio de las bellas artes at 7:15. there in line, i left my accomplice, stephen, to hold my spot in line as i went in search of some coffee and pan dulce. we took turns holding our invaluable spot in front of the museum and of course made friends with our neighbors. although we were over 3 hours early, the people ahead of us were there at the front door at 5am, so this experience as you could have imagined was pretty bonding. in fact, i think it put waiting for the coveted iphone to shame! there were literally thousands of people (just take another glace at the picture)-i think the news reported that there were upwards of 400,000 people on that one day, so the fact that stephen and i got inside within the first group felt like we had won the lottery!

there were snack vendors and police men, museum security guards and art fanatics. one sleazy new yorker, tried to offer us money to let him and his wife in line with us when there were clearing thousands of people behind us. proudly i can testify that we didn´t give into his offer albeit he did laugh that we actually considered it a moral matter about letting him cut in. and even if we had, we would probably have been arrested if we had given in. so yeah, one can say, frida kahlo is kinda a big deal!

after all this, i feel like i´m a part of history. i haven´t really any pictures to show you what i actually saw when i was in the museum, but i can tell you it was pretty awesome. the best i can offer you is a picture of a door that has her picture on it and a couple of postcards i picked up at the gift shop. sometimes seeing is believing. but even if that were the case, a picture is worth more than a 1,000 words.