Upon our arrival to Mexico City my mom and I had about 3 days to explore the city of Mexico before starting our language classes at CEPE. We purposefully booked rooms at a hostel in the center of the historic district even though it was about an hour away from CEPE by transport for two reasons.

First, we heard about a hostel, Casa de los Amigos, through my mom’s coworker and decided we wanted to stay there after learning it was a nonprofit aimed at helping refugees. You can’t find Casa de los Amigos on any of the big hostel websites and although it wasn’t the most comfortable or cleanest hostel I’ve ever been in- there was a great breakfast offered for 40 pesos (2 dollars) in the morning and I enjoyed getting to know people from all over Latin America.

Second, we figured that we would spend most of our time this summer in the University district, and wanted to explore a different part of the city. I am so glad we made this decision, largely because we learned Mexico Pride was a mere 4 blocks from our apartment.

Although the sun was blistering and the air stagnate, mom and I set out to experience the last week in of pride in full Mexico Glory. It wasn’t hard to figure out the direction of the parade as we followed the many groups of people decked out in the rainbow towards Av. Paseo de la reforma.

With the general, global swing towards right these days it can be hard for me to remember all the people out there living their best lives. It’s hard to describe my emotions as I walked past children still in diapers and adults back in diapers; all of us together celebrating love, is love, is love.

We spent the following couple of hours wondering among the hordes of people who showed up for Latin America’s biggest Pride parade. Although many companies tried to turn pride into walking advertisement for all companies fighting for the dollars of our increasingly growing numbers, I really enjoyed celebrating the last weekend of pride with the 19,000 people who showed up sporting flags, shirts, headbands and more.