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"Como puedo tener la otra mitad de tu corazon? (How can I have the other half of your heart?)," my friend asks a petite blonde waitress inside a crowded bar, an isthmus among a sea of bars, connecting locals and and tourists alike on a cool Friday night in La Condesa, the stylish, tree-lined neighborhood in Mexico City. His words tumble out unevenly, his pronunciation and words slightly off, a sign to the waitress that while his interest and desire are genuine, the words are not. The gold half-heart necklace she wears around her neck shields her from any further mangled sentences (of which thankfully there are no more coming). As his words boomerang back to him, the moment is too much for our other friend, who uncontrollably spits out his drink in laughter. We all laugh, including the waitress, and a memory is etched, one almost certainly forgettable for her but indelible to us. My friend, the romantic, closes the scene with a declaration: "I'm going to learn Spanish before I head to a Spanish-speaking country again! Just watch." Mexico City -- there is something different and unique about this sprawling metropolis, this capital city that's more than 7,000 feet above sea level. No defined cliches about about needing to go "beneath the surface to find the 'real' city and citizenry that provide the beating heart of the city." Or how the city "exudes a history that you can reach out and almost touch." Or being a city that "when it grabs you, it never lets go." While you might be able to close your eyes and match another city or three to one of those phrases, any and every cliche and application of it to this place would dull what is Mexico City. Maybe it is a city dueling between what it was, what it is, and what it could and hopes to be. And one could point to decrease in pollution from previous decades, the rise in tourism, or even the name itself [from DF to CDMX]. Ultimately, though, Mexico City just is. Occasional trucks slowly driving down wide boulevards in the southern part of the city, with men yelling from megaphones, "Microondas, lavadoras, secadoras! Microondas, lavadoras, secadoras!" Teenagers freestyle rapping in the evenings on the steps of the Angel of Independence Older people dancing on a sun-draped Sunday afternoon in Allende Park, located in the famed Coyoacan neighborhood in the southern half of the city Thousands of kids, adults young and old, and tourists and locals biking, skating, and rollerblading down Avenida Paseo de la Reforma (this street and others are closed to cars every Sunday from 8am - 2pm) as hundreds of people, led by zumba instructors, dance the morning away Vendors at a Cruz Azul La Liga Mx game selling ramen noodles (yes, the same Styrofoam cups from your childhood) and snacks you would never find at your local NBA or NFL game I didn't expect to find so much in Mexico City. But I did. And the beauty of all of it is that in finding so much, I found the singular thing that mattered the most: myself again. Maybe my friend will return to Mexico City one day, perhaps to find the waitress he fell in love with. Perhaps to confirm his fluency in Spanish. Or perhaps he will return to find himself again, and discover how he can make what he felt for four days in Mexico City permanent back in Chicago where we live now. And maybe I'll do the same.