Last Friday Night...

We leave one week from today! Crazyyyy! So we've been making lots of plans and trying to do fun things to make the time go really fast. Not that we don't love Mexico... We're just excited to go home. 

On Friday night we had a sleepover in the school! Good idea right? Yeah we thought so too.

Nothing too exciting happened, other than us freezing in the middle of the night, moving into the school, and spending the rest of the night on a hard tile floor. Except Bonnie, who made a bed out of some chairs. What a thinker.

So after that lovely night, I went home to grab my shoes and money and head to Zumba. Oh boy. 

First, I opened the door to be faced with some lady that I felt like I had seen before but couldn't place. But I just figured it was a relative and took it in stride. Out loud: "Buenos dias!" In my head: "Strange lady in my house. What are you doing here?"

After expertly handling that situation, I confidently head up to my bedroom. I opened the door, walked in, and what did I see? A full grown man sleeping in my bed! Whom I had also never seen before in my life. You can bet I was out of there lickity split. But I wanted to go to Zumba and my shoes were in there! So I collected myself, snuck back in, gathered my supplies, and headed down to ask my host sisters what in the world was going on.

I opened the door to Diana's room expecting to see my two lovely little hermanitas and yep, you guessed it! There were more strange people sleeping in their bed. At this point I was rather confused. So I asked where the ninas were and they pointed me over to Belen's room. Of course! Finally I found them. I tried to ask them who was in the house, but they were pretty groggy and all I could get out of them was that they had gone to bed reallllly late. Like 6 AM late. Wow.

Eventually I found out they had some kind of party that night (and morning) with some aunts and uncles, and everyone was a little intoxicated so they decided to let them crash all over the house, including my bedroom. Out loud: "How funny! I'm glad you had a good night." In my head: "You're telling me you let a drunk man sleep in my bed?!" Haha. What an experience.

Anyway, it was good. The rest of Saturday I just chilled around, went to the mall with Jen, and took a nap. Then that night we had ANOTHER party in our house... Birthday party for an aunt. And then I went to bed! Because Sunday we had big plans.

Since it was our second to last weekend in Mexico, we decided to do one last hoorah in Puebla. Because we love Puebla.

Some highlights from the trip:

Shopping! We spent a couple hours in a street market called El Parian, where they sell lots of really Mexican stuff like bags, local candy, little souvenirs, etc. Here's me with a yummy candy that I like. It's made out of pumpkin seeds!

Yummy yummy.

Funny story. While we were there, Bonnie and I were walking past this group of four Mexican men when I hear them say, "Preguntale a la guerita!" Which means, "Ask the white girl!" And seeing as there were not too many white girls walking around, I knew they were talking about me.  So I turned around and said, "Ask me what?" Hahaha I wish you could've seen the look on their faces. So shocked.

Apparently they had been wondering whether or not we spoke Spanish, so we said yes, and they asked us the usual questions... Why are you here, when do you go back, do you drink? We're teachers, in a week, and no but thank you. And then of course they wanted to take a picture with us. Typical run-in with Mexican men...

Also, we went to a soccer game! Well, we tried anyway.

There's us in our Puebla jerseys. Puebla's my new favorite soccer team... no big deal.

Unfortunately, we couldn't find any tickets. It's hard for us to buy stuff online here since we don't have Mexican credit cards, plus someone had told us it would be pretty easy to find some at the stadium, so we just headed there hoping for the best. But they also told us ticket scalping is legal here... We may need to get some new sources.

It turns out scalping is not legal, and finding tickets in the same area for seven people at a decent price is pretty difficult. It was fun dealing with the scalpers though! It was like a million little drug deals happening all over the place, except it was tickets instead of drugs.

The scalpers walk around saying, "De sobra, de sobra!" Which means they have extra tickets. So we would approach one and say "Cuantos?" And the deal would begin. We almost got there with lots of them, but either they didn't have enough tickets, wanted too much for them, or didn't actually have tickets but could sneak us in... Which we were not ok with.

The point of the story is, we didn't get into the game. Here's how we felt about that.

Sad. Very sad. Hearing the screams of the crowd while we stood outside... very depressing. But hey, good experience anyway!

So we went back to the Zocalo (park in the center of town), ate some dinner, got some ice cream, walked around, and headed back to Tehuacan!

It had its ups and downs, but it was a nice weekend and a nice day in Puebla!

And we go home in one week! Wooohoooo!

Buying Food

This post is dedicated to the joys of buying food in Mexico. And that is not sarcastic... At least mostly.

Food here is so cheap! Today I spent the morning/afternoon with my mom and part of that included buying the ingredients to make lunch, which is the biggest meal of the day here. We bought 8 potatoes, a bunch of spinach, 5 tomatoes, a head of lettuce, three whole chicken breasts, and some sour creamish stuff all for a grand total of 100 pesos! Which is like $8.33. Can you believe that? So crazy. It would be at least three times that much in the states!

Plus it's all fresh. And I mean fresh like the chicken on my plate in the afternoon had been a live chicken that morning.

I am going to miss it so much. At the market basically all of the fruit ranges from between one to five pesos, which is like a dime to a quarter. And it's so delicious because it's ripened on the tree instead of in a box! Mmmmmmmm.

I know I will have sticker shock when I get back to the states and go grocery shopping for the first time... Especially when it comes to avocados.

Part 3: Huatulco

After our unfortunate little stint in Puerto Angel, we headed out to better beaches. Before we left on vacation we had thought about hitting up Huatulco (wah-tool-coe), but all the hotels online were really expensive so we decided against it. But after sitting in Puerto Angel for a day we decided we'd risk losing a little money and just head out... And it paid off! We ended up finding a pretty cheap and clean hotel just a couple blocks away from the bus station!

Huatulco was beautiful. I didn't love it quite as much as Puerto Escondido because it's a lot more touristy, but we still had tons of fun. One thing I really liked is that because lots of tourists go there, no one expected us to be able to speak Spanish. So while we were shopping they would say, "Come in, come in! Good prices, only two dollar!" And I would say, "No, gracias." And they would get really excited that we spoke Spanish. "Hablas espanol? Huberias dicho!" (You speak Spanish? You should have said!) It was also funny that they gave us prices in dollars... It feels like I haven't used dollars in forever! It literally meant nothing to me. I would have to say, "Tell me in pesos, I can't judge the worth of this in dollars anymore."

Anyway, here's some pictures.

Bon Bon and I soaking up the sun.

One really fun thing we did there was go on a little day excursion thing. This big boat took us out and we saw nine of the THIRTY THREE beaches in Huatulco, went snorkeling, and ate some guacamole on the beach. Pretty fun!

Ready for an adventure!

And no, I'm not as sunburned as I look in that picture. It's just the red canopy reflecting on me.

Beach :)

After snorkeling. So fun! The water was really clear and we saw some pretty cool fish.

Another thing we really like about vacations is getting to feed ourselves. Don't get me wrong, Mexican food is way good, but it gets a little tiring sometimes having your face stuffed EVERY SINGLE DAY. So while we're out we enjoy eating exactly what we want, when we want, and how much we want. Oh the joys of independence. And even though we usually end up eating lots of ice cream and other desserts because we're on vacation, it's still nice to get to choose. Here's me with a delicious spinach and fruit salad, my favorite!

Yummmmm.

And here's some of the other girls doing who knows what.

Unfortunately, we had to catch another night bus on the way back. Usually when we travel we don't have any problem getting tickets, but this was high travel time and by the time we went to the bus station the only tickets left were for the over nighter on Sur, which is the really cheap and sorta crappy bus brand. We tried to have fun with it though... "This is SURtainly going to be terrible." "I'm not SURprised there's no bathroom on this bus." Admit it, we're hilarious.

It ended up being all right, though, because we bought some sleeping pills in a pharmacy before we left. They didn't seem to affect the other girls too much, but they knocked me right out! I only woke up a couple times all night.

After eight hours on that bus and four more from Oaxaca to Tehuacan, we were home! I'm already missing the beach pretty bad. Can't wait to go back someday!

And... THREE WEEKS FROM TODAY I'LL BE BACK IN THE STATES! Weird. And exciting. Can't wait to see you all again!

Part 2

This part is pretty short.

Thursday morning we woke up and headed out of Puerto Escondido (aka Heaven on Earth). It was a sad parting experience.

We took a bus to a little city called Pochutla and then caught a taxi to a town called Puerto Angel. We were sad to leave Puerto Escondido, but some trustworthy looking sites online had said Puerto Angel is awesome as well, so we thought we'd give it a try. Bad choice! It was all right, but it was a very small town with only one not-so-good beach and nothing to do. So we were quick to change our two nights to one and head out the next morning. I didn't even get a single picture there... because there was nothing to see. But it was a good experience to see some dinky little Mexican towns! So that was good I guess.

That's it! End of Part 2.

A Week in Paradise: Part 1

Hello there! I apologize for not posting for a while, I tried to do it a couple times on vacation but the internet was too slow. But here I am! You want to hear all about our week in paradise? I know you do. I'm going to do it in parts because the whole week all at once is a little overwhelming. So here goes part one! The best part in my opinion.

Not yesterday, but the Saturday before that (March 31), we headed out. First we took a bus from Tehuacan to Oaxaca, chilled around in Oaxaca for a few hours, then got a night bus to Puerto Escondido. It's a ten hour long ride so we thought doing it over night might make it less miserable... but boy were we wrong. I managed all right, but poor Sara got really sick and Jen got a total of 30 minutes of sleep that night... yuck. Luckily, though, we all survived and pulled into Puerto Escondido around 7:30 am.

Here it is on a map:

That lightish blob is the state of Oaxaca and the star in the middle is the capital (also called Oaxaca). Then look down and left from that and you see Puerto Escondido! It's a wonderful place.

So that first day we were there (Sunday) we just found our hostel and chilled around on the beach some. Actually not gonna lie, that's about all we did in Puerto Escondido. They have four or five different beaches, so we spent our days beach hopping, sun bathing, and playing in the ocean. Then around 5 or 6 we would head out to dinner at our favorite restaurant, El Cafecito. We definitely ate there four times in four days. Yummmmm. After that we would do some shopping and then tuck in!

Here are some pictures.

This is a the main beach, La Playa Principal. Oh how I miss it. This one had great sand and lots of people, which made it cheaper to rent a table for the day... Yay for the law of demand!

Just some boats.

I love the beach!

The last three pictures are from our first night out at dinner, before we found El Cafecito. But it was delicious nonetheless! Those things you see us eating are tlayudas, a dish typical to the state of Oaxaca. It's basically a giant folded over crispy quesadilla... kinda. And super delicious. Mmmmmm food.

This is us on a boat! This guy took us out to see a sea turtle (pictures coming) and also to see all the beaches.

Remember how I told you I had crazy toe nails to match my finger nails? Here they are! They matched very nicely with this rope. And got a lot of comments from all the surfer bums we met on the beach.

Turtle! It was a little less cool than we were expecting because they just had this one that they passed around from boat to boat to show to tourists... we didn't catch it from the ocean or anything. Still cool though!

Our hostel! Hostal Shalom. This was way fun. Cheap and full of fun interesting people to meet. I definitely recommend hostels to young travelers. They are the best way to go, hands down.

And me riding the camel out front. Hahaha.

Just a random sculpture on top of some rocks.

A beautiful sunset!

Oh so you remember how I said we met a lot of cool people? Well these guys were two of them. Their names are something like Walter and... something else. Haha. And they're Belgians! Straight from Belgium. We met them at a party at a different hostel and they went out to dinner with us (at El Cafecito of course!) the next day. Such funny guys! Plus we learned some good stuff from them. Like that the Belgians actually invented French fries. And that people in Europe speak a lot of languages... their English was perfect. Sigh.

Good ol' Belgians.

Funny story number two. So while we were spending this week in paradise I realized something about myself. And that something is that the beach makes me a lot more carefree than I normally am. Not crazy, just less obsessed with things like spending money on dumb little things... like henna tattoos... haha.

As we were walking around window shopping one evening, we walked past a guy doing henna and thought, "What the heck, let's do it!" So three of us (Jen, Bonnie, and me) decided to get matching ones. Amanda also got one, just not the same. And what did we get? "Te Amo," which means "I love you." While we were planning it, it was directed at Mexico in general because, well, we love Mexico. It wasn't until after they were dry that we realized that the three of us girls had just gotten matching "I love you" tattoos... awkward. But oh well! They'll fade away in a few weeks.

The fun thing about them is we can point them at random things that we love, like this here surfer.

His name's Angelo. He's half Italian/half Mexican. And not only is he a surfer, he's a PROFESSIONAL surfer. Yeah. Enough said. Bonnie had the biggest crush on him though. Just reference Sara's blog, sarajacqueline.blogspot.com, for the whole story :)

Overall, Puerto Escondido was awesome! We were way sad when we had to leave. When we were making our vacation plans we thought it might be fun to go see some other cities so we made reservations in Puerto Angel... which we ended up regretting but didn't want to pay the cancellation fee so we went anyway. This is how we felt about leaving...

So. Utterly. Depressed. Well except Sara, who missed the "look how you feel about leaving this place!" memo. Bonnie's face sums it up pretty well though.

Puerto Escondido seriously was like paradise. It was great weather, beautiful water, soft sand, really nice people, and very cheap. I will most definitely be going back there sometime in my life.

Coming up... Part 2!

PS. We experienced another earthquake while we were there! And again didn't even know it. It was while some of the girls were surfing and the rest of us were chilling on the beach, and the only thing different was slightly bigger waves. It wasn't until we went on our little sea turtle expedition that we found out there had been an earthquake! But I have now lived through two Mexican earthquakes! Haha.

Funny couple of days.

Guess what?


Bonnie left me!!! Ahhhhh. She's been wanting a new host family for over a month now, not because of any problems or anything, but just to get a chance to be on her own and do it herself. We depended a lot on each other... too much probably. So finally they found her a family and she's gone! And now the attention's ALL on me, ALL the time. I'm not sure how much I like that. And I have no one to make snide comments in English to! I just have to keep them all to myself. Luckily we see each other all day every day at the school, so I'll survive. The real kicker though was that they took her bed down when she left! And now my room looks soooo lonely.

See that big empty space? Bonnie used to reside there. Now it is just sad emptiness reminding me of that other bit of emptiness in my heart. Oh Bon Bon. I miss you.

On a happier note, I have crazy nails again!

Diana did these for me. She gave me the choice of neon yellow, blue, green, or pink, and this is what I chose! Yay for watermelon fingers. I have an accompanying set of phosphorescent blue and yellow toes, don't you worry.

And today something happened for the first time in the three months I've been here.

It rained! And I mean real Mexican rain. Big fat drops, thunder, lightning, flood-the-street kind of rain. Just look!

It has rained before, but nothing even close to this. I loved it! We were hoping none of the kids would show up because of it, but unfortunately their parents seemed to decide that English is in fact important on today of all days, and most of them came. Here are two of them in their cute little jackets, or in Adrian's case, Christmas sweaters. What a little teddy bear.

 

I assumed the crazy storm would be the biggest part of my day, but there was more to come!

As we were sitting downstairs chilling after dinner, Chucho claims to see a rat. I have to admit I kind of didn't believe him. Nor did I think we would do anything except set a trap. That is until my host dad asks if I'll help them kill it. Uhhhh... I mean sure, I'll help you chase the thing down but heck no I will not smack that thing to death with a broom! (I knew that's how they would kill it because Bonnie had to kill a lizard that got into our grandma's house that way last week).

So, as I predicted, they all grabbed brooms and took their battle stances while Chucho went to get Duke, our dog that lives on the roof. (Someday I'll tell you about Duke. He's... different.) Long story short, we chased the thing down for a good fifteen minutes before Duke finally caught it and ate it. Saving us the duty of beating it with a broom! Hurray. It was a teeny little thing... I felt a little bad for it. All it did was come inside to avoid drowning in the rain and ended up Duke's dinner. But oh well.

The whole thing was quite entertaining. As often happens here in Mexico, I had a hard time not cracking up about how serious and dramatic they were making the whole thing. I also found out that big man 17-year-old Chucho is afraid of mice. Hahaha. Poor kid. I think he was embarrassed that he was afraid and I wasn't, but he'll get over it.

So yeah, it's been good! Funny, interesting, and all very Mexican! Which I love.

Just one more month here! Crazy.

Just some thoughts.

After being here for almost three months, I feel like a lot of Americans have some stuff wrong about Mexico. Don't feel bad if you didn't know some of the stuff on this list. It's likely that the reason it sticks out to me is because I thought the same thing before coming here!

1. Mexicans are very clean. I feel like a lot of white people have this feeling that Mexico and its people are dirty and/or unsanitary. This is completely untrue. As a people, Mexicans are extremely neat, tidy, and germ-conscious.

2. Mexico is not a giant drug factory. This country has a HUGE problem with drugs, don't get me wrong. But number one, keep in mind that Americans are their biggest buyers. We are the source of the problem. And number two, most Mexicans go about their lives coming into as little contact with drugs as you or I do in the States.

3. Mexicans aren't all dirt poor. A large number of them live in nice houses. It's just that the people that are poor are POOR. Think dirt floors and sheets for doors.

I could go on, but those are the three big ones that stick out to me right now. Did any of those surprise you? I want you to take a minute and imagine yourself walking down the street. You see a Mexican man working on a house and you hear him speaking Spanish to the other Mexican workers there. What are your first feelings? Be honest with yourself. Do you wonder if they are living in the United States legally? Or if they're in a gang? Do you feel a little resentment at them having taken a job a white person could've had? Just think about it. And I only say that because all of those thoughts and more have gone through my head many times back in the States.

I am convinced that our country is suffering from an unspoken racism against Latinos, and particularly against Mexicans. How many Mexican jokes do you hear every day? I'm not saying every joke that involves Mexicans is bad. Believe me, I'm more than aware of the idiosyncrasies in their culture that can be really humorous (like the fact that they really do jam pack as many people into the car as they can to drive across town). But most jokes are much more mean spirited than not, and I know they'll make me cringe when I get home. I know I'm preaching to the choir because you're all good people, but I think we can all be a little better about this. Just be aware of it. Mexicans are good people. They come in all shapes, sizes, education levels, and levels of income imaginable, just like Americans. So think twice before you throw a blanket stereotype over a whole country of individuals.

Ok, that's it. I'll get off my high horse now and stop lecturing you. Just think about it!