1. Sounds from the islands and canals of Xochimilco.

I always feel cheated when I fly into a strange new place. At 500 miles an hour and 30,000 feet in the sky, there is no way you can feel the changes of the land or the people as you leave the familiar for the unfamiliar. So as my plane banks low over the sprawling Mexico City landscape, I have that apprehensive feeling in my stomach that I’ve had before. How can I get close to the people in such a short time, how can I possibly find slices of life for these dispatches that will have any real meaning when others have spent a lifetime trying to describe this complex Mexican culture?

The Mexico City airport is like the city, teeming with people. With some difficulty, I move my cases of camera and sound equipment through and around people who are filling the seats and sitting on the floor as they wait for their flights. I pray that I won’t have to unload the coils of computer cables, sound and video gear for some suspicious customs agent while I try to explain that this is for the new wave of ommunications on the Internet. At the final hurdle in the customs gauntlet I punch the button that gives me either the green “pass through” light or the dreaded red light which randomly stops travelers for a complete baggage check. I get the green.

I set up the studio in my hotel room and discover that the speaker plug on my computer has stopped working, forcing me to do sound editing through a 1-inch speaker on the computer. I remind myself that I have to get beyond the equipment and the electronic mumbo–jumbo and focus immediately on trying to get under the skin of one of the largest cities in the world.

Mexico City is probably one of the most interesting ongoing social experiments. How can 16 million people (this number is growing daily) continue to show such resiliency while their country is attempting to define itself–and in spite of the devaluation of the peso, massive unemployment, and regional political unrest? The answer lies with its people.

So today I head out on the hazy Sunday morning to find out how an average Mexican family might spend the afternoon. Go to the audio page to hear a five–minute report from the remarkable canal region of Xochimilco and the picture page with images from both Xochimilco and Chapultepec. Stay tuned to see what more I come up with over the next eight days.