The trip

Record of my adventures / food diary
Covering gap year travels and my year abroad in Mexico!
....And now also providing procrastination from my internship

Friday 30 August 2013

Adjusting to life in Mexico

So just finished by 3rd week of classes (been here for 4 weeks now) and they're starting to get better / easier. On the other hand, was totally unprepared for the amount of work they do here, it's kinda like being back at school! So on top of the monthly 'partials' and the final test at the end of the semester, there is a combination of homeworks, essays, projects, presentations and quizzes, depending on the class. Most give some form of homework every lesson, so for those modules where I have 2 lessons a week, it's 2 bits of work a week! Definitely a big change from having had 1 piece of coursework in the past two years of uni! 
Means I'm also realising I don't have as much spare time as I thought between classes, work and my extracurriculars.
Next week is the beginning of the partial exams, they're spread out over the 2 weeks, as the teacher gets to decide which lesson within that time frame you do it. Surprise though, if the exam doesn't take up the whole lesson, we have to stay and they'll just start the next topic! Wooooo
I think most of them should be ok, though my supposedly easy class 'Cultura de Mexico' is making us write a min 5 page essay when we have to do all the research etc considering that we haven't covered anything we can write about! Plus 'Business Law' has set a min 16 page group project as well as having a partial?! Not too bad as split between the group but no idea whatsoever how m gonna fill 4 pages on my topic!
However I also get the impression the exam setting is more relaxed as my 'Capital and Money markets' teacher asked whether i wanted to do the test in English or Spanish. I said I would like to try in Spanish and she said that if I had any questions during the exam I could just ask her or respond to bits in English if I forgot the words! So that's pretty cool :)
Still got quite a lot of revision to do over the next week as we seem to have covered an awful lot so far and the teachers don't upload the presentations so if I have any gaps in my notes think m gonna have to hit the library and check the textbooks!
Cause most of my classes are in Spanish I'm with Mexican rather than international students, but so far most people have been really friendly and helpful. Even though I understand what's being said in Spanish, it is nice to have someone explain it to you! 
Last weekend I went to get my hair cut as was just beginning to annoy me, only to realise whilst I can understand my lectures on law, accounting, etc i had no idea how to say any of the words relating to a haircut, or how to effectively explain what I meant. Luckily miming and talking around the words I wanted worked out ok and for £6 I'm pretty happy :) especially considering how much it costs back home!
This week we had a bit of a food shortage as we didn't make it to the supermarket on tues, so ate out tues/weds night. Had quesadillas one night and what is kinda like a sandwich with kebab meat another. Both were really good, and still haven't gotten over how cheap it is to eat here. The kebab sandwich was particularly good, I think it's pork and comes with pineapple and some other sauces - kinda tastes like the toppings on shark and bake!
The weather here is a bit random but for the most part it tends to be quite hot and clear blue skies in the morning and then by late afternoon it starts to rain / bucket is probably more accurate! Had some massive rain storms past week! Also the few odd cold days but for the most part sticks to the same pattern!
Today is Charly and Matthieu's Birthday (2 of guys in my house) so we're having a party for them in the  house. Been 'people proofing' this afternoon, which involved giving the sofa a new cover made from bin bags! #prepared Also, Hanna (roomate from Brazil) recruited us in making snacks - almost feels more like a dinner party with our trays of bruschetta and bowls of snacks! Hopefully it will have stopped raining by the time everyone arrives cause otherwise dunno how they'll all fit inside! 
Then tomorrow we're going to Xochimilco just outside Mexico City where you can 'ride in colourful boats around the canal' should be cool. Then we're staying in a hostel in D.F so we can go out in Mexico City on sat night. Then need Sunday to work and prepare for Monday! So a pretty busy weekend :)

Decided each post should have at least one photo so:
(View from our roof)


Vamos a la playa, a mi me gusta bailar!

So 10 hours on a bus with broken air conditioning and no windows, having had no sleep, was not the best way to start the trip! We arrived at the beach (supposedly near Acapulco) possibly suffering from dehydration and heat exhaustion! We were in the middle of nowhere, miles from anything, with just one small restaurant to get food / drinks. Not exactly the set-up we had been led to believe before! By the time we arrived just wanted to go in the sea to cool down, but we had to setup the tents first. Let me note here, I hate camping by the beach, I don't recommend it and I won't be doing it again! If you get over the discomfort and unbearable heat (which you can't avoid as opening the tent would mean being eaten alive by mozzies) then it's the fact that sand gets everywhere and 2 weeks later I'm still finding it in my bag/stuff!!
The plus side to being in the middle of nowhere was the beach - so nice. And as far as you could see in either direction there was no one/nothing else! Just us and out little collection of shade! (Definitely needed - soooo hot). The beach and water more than made up for everything else! Water was so warm aswell!

During the day we just chilled by the beach, played volleyball and attempted to skimboard (in my case just a succession of faceplants/impressive falls!) oooo, also saw a giant turtle on the beach that a Mexican guy had spotted from like 1/2 mile away! Went turtle hunting in the evening but didn't see any. Had an awkward moment where we were sure we had seen turtles in the distance so all start running towards the shape shouting 'turtle' only to get a bit closer and realise turtles don't have legs.... Maybe turtle hunting after drinking was the downfall!
Friday / Saturday night there were 2 parties with an open bar. Was interesting tasting mixtures but no-ones going to complain when it's included! Friday was neon/paint party and Sat was just 'white Tshirt' party. Also on Sat there were a whole bunch of Chinese lanterns. We didn't quite get the timing of all together down, so was like a few here and there but still looked pretty!  

Beach parties were pretty awesome and cause was almost full moon meant we had a good amount of light all night aswell!
Trip back on Sunday wasn't as bad or long. Thankfully we stopped for food like an 1 1/2 in at first place we passed and all raided the small supermarket! However the AC was still not working very well despite them assuring us it had been fixed...


Wednesday 21 August 2013

Spanish Overload!

So first day of classes was kind of a shock to the system!!
I have to take more classes than I'm used to at home and you have a limited number of absences after which you auto-fail the course! So no more sleeping in just cause I don't wanna go to class.
Monday I started at 8.30 in the morning and didn't finish until 10pm (Thankfully I had two breaks of 1 1/2 hours but that was it for the whole day).
I am now taking 7 courses - I was originally taking 6, had a brief moment of joy when the exeter website said we only needed 4, only to then be crushed when they decided 6 was better. Anyways, when I went to change one of my courses that was too hard, I somehow ended up agreeing to keep it and take on another easier course as a back-up?! Very unlike me, can't imagine it will last! Everything had to be finalised last week as after that you could only drop courses not add them. My problem has been that Exeter has to approve all my module choices, and I'm not allowed to do anything which overlaps - so no economics and no maths at all. Finance ones are debatable it seems! And they were not the quickest at replying, which wasn't helped by the time difference meaning there was only like a 3 hour window each day to communicate! So I ended up with 7 courses, 5 of which are in spanish! Originally only 3 were going to be but one changed to spanish when i moved the time it was to fit it into my timetable and the other was changed to spanish but no-one told me. So I turned up to 'Capital and Money Markets' expecting it to be in english only for it to be in very rapid spanish! (I'm still not even sure if I'm allowed to take this course as apparently it's too similar to one I already did - even though it's predominantly on the Mexican financial system?!)

So I have almost all my lessons on mon / thurs, with my extra one on weds. Meaning on mon I have every class except the extra one - hence the insanely long day! The first lesson of everything was pretty tough. Let me take you through my day:

8.30 - 10: Business Law and Intellectual Property (Spanish); teacher speaks really quickly, oh and also all the classes here are really small, so the profs learn all your names and then pick on you! Wasn't overly keen on the whole circle time introducing yourself as no-one can pronounce my name, it is now simply kris or kristen at best, they don't like the 'ir'.

10-11.30: Mexican Culture (Spanish); much more relaxed as it's all foreign students and there are no parcial exams *. Plus he gave us the lesson off on thursday as he was busy :)
*The system here is actually nicer in terms of exams as you have 3 parcial exams each semester and then one final one, so it means you're not trying to cram a years worth of stuff into a 3 hour exam! England take note!

11.30-1: I have time enough to nip home or catch-up on whatever homework I almost certainly haven't done!

1-2.30: Advanced Spanish (Spanish, claro!); woop made it into the advanced class, it's pretty small as there are only 5 of us, and the range of ability is quite wide as some moved themselves into the class as found others too easy and the levels in between didnt work with their timetable! So far is pretty boring though, we've spent 3 lessons on Simple vs Compound sentences?! Useful .... I think not. Although on thurs we only had a 45min class as her computer broke down so that was it - no back-up!

2.30-4: My second break of the day with just enough time to go home, have some lunch, again catch-up on work and then head back to Tec for my awesome evening of classes! woo

4-5.30: Intermediate Accounting (English, finally): This one's quite an easy class as the teacher speaks incredibly slowly and it's all quite simple (so far), to the extent that the german girl in the class thought she must have missed something as it was too easy! I also like this class as he started by telling us that no-one fails his class :) My kinda subject! (The pass rate here is 70% - hoping that's easier to obtain than in england considering that's a 1st back home!!)

5.30-7: Capital and Money Markets (Spanish - was supposed to be english): This is by far the worst and hardest class I have. The prof speaks so quickly and moves all the slides on before I've even had a chance to read them! Plus in the last class the mexican guy I was sitting next to told me his friend hated the course so much he actually changed his degree! Doesn't bode well. I'm gonna try and stick it out though as having a sound knowledge of the mexican financial system plus the vocab would be useful. I've got one module extra aswell so I'm ok if it doesn't end well!

7-10 (Yep I'm still in class): Financial Statement Analysis (Spanish - again was supposed to be in english): Had an awful first lesson as I didn't know any of the right vocab, I could understand it in context but couldn't think of the words on the spot. That combined with my failure to know to know the date of Mexico's Independence Day meant I was treated somewhat like a child for the remainder of the lesson. Most of it was stuff I already knew, though was too afraid to volunteer my information after 2 hours of being belittled. This week was a marked improvement, even though I hadn't achieved my goal of memorising all the accounting vocab, the cash flow exercises were pretty easy so me and my partner got extra points for the pop-quiz by finishing first

So that's mondays, thursdays are the same minus the last lesson, so I get to finish at 7. Then weds is 4-7 something called Group Dynamics, think maybe a bit of a joke as last week apparently they just played games for 3 hours?! Will see as have this later today. Could do with an easier course though!
The facilities on campus are pretty amazing, they have a massive american football field, tennis courts, basketball courts(indoor / outdoor) and a 50m swimming pool. All are free to use, the downside is you have to sign up for activities and between sports and cultural activities (anything from drama to cooking / martial arts) you are only allowed 4 of which the gym counts as 1. So i'm doing gym, tennis twice a week, crossfit (kinda like circuits) and drum lessons (finally got to give it a go after previously settling for the trumpet as the 2nd loudest instrument I could think of). There were so many options it was quite hard to only choose 4, but the benefit of being here 1 year is I can always try different ones next semester :)
So the first week of classes went by in a bit of a blur. Classes all mon/thurs, activities during the day and went to party at one of the other exchange student houses on tues - they have a really nice house aswell with a pool table and a small pool they bought for the garden, we're thinking we should do the same!
Then we left on Friday morning at 6.30am to get the bus to the beach for the weekend. Of course I had been convinced that it would be a good idea to go out to the 'Tequila Party' the night before. They crammed more people than possible onto a coach it was a 40min trip to the club. (I can't even begin to describe how many people were stuffed into the coach seats / aisles.) I was not a fan of this as I sometimes get a bit of motion sickness and the combination of terrible driving, having to stand up and neon flashing lights for 40 mins was not the best start to the night! Not to mention all the french people were singing songs I couldn't understand for the entire trip, seriously it was like a never ending supply! On arrival though all the girls got given a free 350ml bottle of tequila. Not the greatest fan of tequila and definitely not a believer of 'it grows on you' cause believe me, it hasn't! But I do love me some free stuff :) Anyways didn't get home till around 4, so had a quick power nap  before getting up again to go catch the bus. I had been emptying the memory card for my GoPro before we went out on the computer and managed to forget to put it back in the camera. Meaning I had my cool camera with all it's accessories and no way of using it all weekend! Bummer!

Thursday 15 August 2013

You know you're in Mexico when...

So first weekend in Mexico, and all I wanted to do was sleep. The journey here knackered me and then was suffering a bit from jet lag for the first few days.
Saturday some of us went into la D.F to wander around. However, everyone we asked couldn't tell us how to get to La Condesa which I think is where we wanted to go (I was just tagging along at this point too tired to care where we were going). So, we ended up getting off at the wrong bus stop and walking around for like 2 hours. Was nice though to see part of the city even if everything was shut!
Don't think I mentioned in the previous post but when I came in to land it was night and all you could see were the lights of the city going on forever. It's HUGE! Also, there were all these random dark patches on the ground that I though were water, but as we descended further realised they were just massive hills everywhere!
Anyways, Sun had a nice lie in, then went to the supermarket to pick up some food. We just buy all the food together and then split the cost, so everyone can eat whatevers in the house. It's nice, as it's much easier considering we don't have much storage space! Speaking of, the landlady here is so nice and helpful. We mentioned that they might want to consider buying another fridge in the future as it's kinda small for 8 people, and the same day she went out and bought one! As well as a few other little things for the kitchen we'd mentioned.
Monday was the first day at Tec (uni) of our orientation week. Was a really long day as we were there from 9-6 having talks / activities. Got to meet the other international students. Would never have guessed before I came but they are literally all french! There are 80 international students here and over 50 are French! Suppose it's good for me to try and remember my A-Level french, but so far all I have really learnt is various ways to swear and rude phrases. Was so tired by the end of the day just wanted to go home and sleep, but the group for international students at Tec (Amikoo) had arranged for all the exchange students to go out to a Tacqueria for dinner. Was like 30mins away so went by bus*. Was such a mexican evening, with all are tacos (which were awesome, apparently there are a whole bunch of different types of tacos, so naturally my plan is to try them all!), a mariachi band throughout the evening, and of course the compulsory tequila shots. I'm not a fan of tequila but I think it might be growing on me (possibly through neccessity and/or repitition).
Tues again was an early start but thankfully a much shorter day! We had to all do a spanish test first thing that morning, in order to place us for spanish classes. Although the colombians / other spanish speakers had to do it too which seemed kinda odd! Anyways, we were done by lunch time so we went in the afternoon to go and buy phones / sim cards. Also got food for a BBQ and whilst there discovered alcohol / wine was on 3 for 2 so naturally had to top-up.


Weds ...... no more tequila ever!!
We went through like 2 litres of tequila, and for someone who doesn't like it, that's an awful lot. Not to mention we polished off most of our beer collection.
Also had to attend another talk at Tec, where we signed an agreement re: student behaviour. 'You know you're in Mexico when your school has random drug tests!'
Thurs / Fri were free days and a chance to change courses if you wanted. Since I have to get everything signed off by exeter I just picked random things and hoped for the best. Most importantly though, made sure I had nothing on fridays.
Fri there was a salsa class in the afternoon for the international students, you may or not know, i can't dance to save my life, but luckily for me, neither could most of the exchange students! We were then supposed to go to a salsa club in the evening, organised by Amikoo. We went for pre-drinks at one of the other student houses for a few hours before all bundling into taxis. See *. Except it was even worse, driver was going so quick and speeding over the bumps. He didn't see one of them and I'm still in shock that the car didn't just break on the spot! Unfortuntely, when we arrived at the club (I was in a taxi with two of the guys from my house - Jakob and Xavier), Jakob had forgotten his ID. So after much unsuccessful pleading, it was back in another taxi for a nauseous 20 min ride back home. There were 2 others who couldnt get in either, so the 5 of us got into one taxi. Went for possibly the dryest, worst tacos i've ever had and for drinks at the other peoples house, when i'd realised i'd left my phone in the taxi. Luckily had a really nice driver who offered to bring it to the house the next day, for a small something of course. But so much more convenient than having to buy un nuevo!
Saturday was a chillout day and then we went shopping in the afternoon to this mahoosive centro comercial, where they had literally every store. Was very expensive though, some shops more than at home!
Sunday we went on an Amikoo trip to La Marquesa which is like 40 mins or so away. Though by time the bus arrived and it drudged its way there took more like two hours. Another example of mexican timing - often it seems everything is just 5 mins away perpetually! We'd gone prepared for a warm day at the park so when we arrived and it was freezing and raining, it wasn't quite what we'd had in mind! The activities on offer for the day were horse riding, paintballing and quad biking. I don't really like horses and the quad biking was just round a small track and looked kinda slow. Everyone was up for paintballing until he said you didnt get any protection or anything. Just a gun and mask?! Eventually, we found out it was in fact possible to rent overalls, which we all opted for. Paintballing here is called 'gotcha'! Which i think is a much better name :)
Anyways, was an interesting experience as everyones masks fogged up as soon as we started so was kinda of point in a general direction and shoot! Turned out as quite a long day and classes started the next day so I sent myself straight to bed when we got back in preperation for my 10 1/2 hours of class on monday! wooo

*Side note, the drivers here are appaling. There are no lanes anywhere and people always look like they're going to crash into each other. Also, there are all these random speed bumps all over the place, and the cars all speed up in between them. The whole terrible driving thing made a whole lot more sense when someone explained to us that they don't have to take a driving test here. You just go and apply for your license!

Saturday 10 August 2013

Always with the rushing!

Thought would be easier to split the post into pre/post arrival in Mexico.
So needless to say the whole 'I'm going to document the time leading up to my year abroad' was quickly abandoned.
But I did manage to sort flights, accomodation and visa all in good time. Although I have no idea where the past two months went, time just seemed to fly by and before I knew it, it was time to go.
Unsurprisingly, I didn't even attempt to sort my stuff out until the last minute. But even I didn't think I'd be stupid enough to try and sort/pack everything the night before but of course I did. It then turned out I needed a few things so hit the shops up first thing in the morning before we left for the airport. After, throwing everything in the car, spent the first 20mins of the journey panicking about what important thing I'd left behind, but turns out did a pretty good job and seemed to have everything.
I also took every advantage of the hand luggage allowance with a giant duffle bag which had my tennis racket sticking out of it, my rucksack and then what jumpers/jackets hadn't fit in the hold bags. By the time I'd finished rearranging my bags / collecting money, ended up saying a very quick bye to the family as needed to get through security.
I had a connection in Toronto, so was like 7 hours there, 2 hour connection, then another 5 hours to Mexico City. Flight was absolutely packed, no free seats at all. I found myself across the aisle from an interesting family with 2 kids who provided amusement when my tv wasn't working. My favourites were:
-   'Mommy why is this apple so squishy?'
-   'That's a plum sweetie'
And the little boy going:
-   'I know what you guys sing at school, O England (to tune of O Canada)
Although the mom provided her fair share of entertainment too when she asked another kid if we had tooth fairies in England. She also spent the first 20mins of the flight very loudly complaining that the internet had lied to her about the film selection on-board as she didn't have Lord of the Rings which she was so looking forward to seeing, until finally discovering it under the letter L!
Got my first taste of 'mexican timing' when my connection was still stated as on-time even though 5mins before it was due to leave we still hadn't even started boarding!
Arrived in Mexico City at 11.30pm, and was pretty quick going through security etc. Then my lift was waiting when I got into arrivals hall (the landlady and her daughter picked me up). I'm actually living in Estado de Mexico which is north of Mexico City so was about a 40min drive. By time I arrived at house after like 18hours of travelling, all I wanted to do was sleep! I was introduced to my new housemates and then allowed to go to sleep.
My room is quite small but it's great cause it has so much storage space, which I was seriously lacking in Exeter. And the house is really nice. There's 4 rooms and 2 bathrooms on each floor. Then the ground floor is a big open living / kitchen space. We've got a little garden outside aswell which is nice. There's 8 of us in the house; 4 french guys, a german guy, a colombian girl and a girl from Brazil, so we've got quite the mix of languages in the house!