Final Reflections

As I write this last blog post, I'm sitting on a couch in Crema, a coffee shop on Carolina Avenue in Hartsville, SC. When I ordered my coffee I stumbled over my words, having tried to order in Spanish. I'm steadily making my way back to English, I'll get there soon y'all.

I ended up making it through finals with decent grades, considering my Spanish language classes and all. This felt like a huge accomplishment: I proved to myself I can actually be successful in a class taught in Spanish!

Sometimes you see random volcanoes from your airplane window...

I did my best to shove a bit more traveling into the end of my time in Mexico by heading down to Chiapas, the southern state that borders Guatemala. My friend Alex and I flew into Villahermosa, stepped outside the airport into the stifling heat and humidity, and walked right back inside until our bus to Palenque rolled up. We wandered through the Palenque Mayan ruins for an afternoon, probably my favorite ruin I've seen in Mexico!

I zipped off the bottom half of my pants so everybody knew I meant business.

The next morning we took an 8-hour bus higher up into the mountains until the town of San Cristóbal de las Casas. It's absolutely gorgeous, with brightly colored houses and churches nestled into the pine-covered mountains. And the weather was MUCH better: we could actually breathe without feeling like we were drowning in the humidity!

This was a view of some of the city from a hike we did up to a church.

Super cool murals were all over San Cristóbal. And that woman in front was from Holland; I gave her a bit of a history lesson, I felt so legit.

We took a little afternoon trip to a town nearby, San Juan Chamula. The population is overwhelmingly indigenous, which gave us the opportunity to see some of the old customs that these people are keeping alive today. We visited the main church, where all the pews had been removed and replaced with green pine straw on the floor. People were huddled around rows and rows of candles, chanting and conducting religious ceremonies that blended indigenous and Catholic practices. They drink Coke during these ceremonies to induce burping, and some feature the sacrifice of chickens. It was a moving and eye-opening experience, seeing something so foreign yet still so reverent and heartfelt at the same time.

I was super nervous about taking pictures (apparently it's a social taboo), so I kinda snuck this one from across the square.

So I guess I should take this opportunity to finally reflect on the whole of my experience in Mexico. First and foremost, Mexico is a country of contrasts and contradictions. Right outside my gorgeous, perfectly maintained campus is a poorly maintained public road with tons of potholes. Right outside the idyllic gated communities are massive, ugly factories. The wealth gap in Mexico is one of the largest in the world. People claim to truly desire political change, but seem too apathetic to do anything about it. The beauty of Mexico's countryside is offset by the ugliness of poverty. And the list goes on and on...

I still believe that Mexicans are some of the friendliest, and seem to be some of the happiest, people I've ever come across in my life. I'm going to miss the food which never ceases to excite. I'm going to miss my classes, and all my professors, who have been some of the best of my college career. Perhaps most of all I'm going to miss all the friends I made over the course of the semester; we came from all across the world, and one way or another Mexico brought us together.

I highly recommend studying in Mexico, or studying in any Latin American country. It is an invaluable learning experience, truly a time to grow and develop in really profound ways, and a chance to live like you've never lived before.

Thanks for reading my blog! Hasta luego.