The long-awaited announcement of Felipe Calderon’s victory over AMLO — as Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is known here — comes at the end of this traveler’s three weeks in Mexico. “Why don’t you cancel your trip?” my husband had asked when the news reported the election protests that shut down the main avenue Reforma and closed off streets to traffic around the Zocalo were growing violent. But I had finally landed a real travel writing assignment after a year of trying, and I had a deadline. I didn’t want to back out. “I promise I’ll be careful,” I said.

That was a Saturday afternoon. Sunday, at eight in the morning, I was ascending the steps of the Zocalo Metro station and out into the chaos. My first impression was that the horror reports I’d heard and read about must have been exaggerated. In front of Palacio de Bellas Artes, a small street fair had been set up. All of this was blocking the thruway, of course, but with a Ferris wheel and other little rides for kids, the smell of sizzling street food wafting up from improvised taco stands and a perfectly rhymed stolen-election rap blaring through speakers set up outside one of the tents, it occurred to me that this was a protest — Mexican style.

I remember the political situation after I arrived in Mexico City to live for four years because of my mother’s foreign service career. Just after I arrived, then-presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was assassinated at a Tijuana rally. It was the tail-end of the PRI’s 71-year, one-party rule, and the moment I became fascinated by the unusual workings of Mexican politics — a system I still think is difficult for an outsider to understand. Things feel milder here these days than they used to in the mid-’90s, even with blocked main streets, talk of stolen elections and the noisy bang of fireworks going off downtown, which I could hear from my hotel room. Witnessing the events of the past three weeks up close showed me that even in a time of great turmoil, Mexico’s true spirit shines through. I heard no gunshots, saw no riot police. Instead, what I did see were impromptu soccer games, “No to election fraud” signs strung up on Ferris wheels and people gathered peacefully for a purpose. And, while it’s inconvenient to have main roads closed off, it’s also amazing that this has gone on so long. It made me recall the Republican convention protest in New York City a few years back when hordes of bicyclists blocked traffic; the police were there getting them out of the way within seconds.

Later, as I headed to the campus of the left-leaning National Autonomous University of Mexico — the largest university in the Western Hemisphere — I was expecting to see something big. Instead I saw students walking between classes, kicking a ball around on the field, working out in the outdoor gym. “I thought something would be happening there,” I said to my friend Pepe on the phone when I got back to my hotel. “This is Mexico,” he said. “We don’t fight. We talk.”

As the local news has now started showing some of the protesters packing up their bags, another chapter in Mexico City’s history nears a close. Soon, cars will stream up and down Reforma again, tourists will wander through the Zocalo, and amongst these cosas de la vida, Mexico will enter its new era.