As I write these words, I'm seated at a chic (but cheap) organic restaurant in Mexico City, complete with wifi and a collection of yoga videos and organic salads for sale. It's the kind of place you might be more likely to expect to see in the East Village than on the streets of a city usually infamous for its air pollution, bad traffic, and monotonous urban sprawl. And to be sure, there's some truth to those things. But there's also much more. There's a Mexico that is breaking expectations, rising to confront the very real challenges that do exist. In fact, there's most of Mexico that resists the characterizations of this place as a state on the brink.

In the short few weeks that I'll be in Mexico, this is what I'm hoping to write about: the surprises and the contradictions, and the story behind the story that we usually read. I'm here on vacation in part, but as any journalist knows, once you've traveled as a reporter, there's really no going back. You can't help yourself from asking questions, making calls, and writing. Without any illusions that one can pop in an understand a place in a matter of weeks -- or really, years -- I'll be asking questions and trying to at least capture some of the ongoing conversations on the ground.