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.

Mexico City and Shrek Madness

Honestly these past two weeks have felt like a hurricane... But like a nice, warm, Mexican hurricane that you really don't mind too much. My USC bud Alex and I left for Mexico City last Wednesday at 3:30 in the morning, and since then I've been going 100, 24/7.

Alex and I also met with the university president, really great guy! He's on the right.

That first Wednesday we got to the city pretty early in the morning, so we managed to check a lot of the stuff off our list we had planned for the week. This included the National Anthropology Museum, which is just enormous, and probably requires at least one whole day to take it all in. But we ran through and got to see some ancient artifacts from all of the biggest pre-Hispanic Mexican civilizations, including the Olmecs, Mayas, and Aztecs.

My role model.

Afterwards we hiked up to Chapultepec Castle, which has great views of the city. Honestly I can't describe how big Mexico City is... like 25 million people or something. MASSIVE. But the areas we saw were very clean, and felt safe! And the metro system works extremely well. I was pleasantly surprised!

This is Chapultepec! It's in the middle of a gorgeous public park.

We took an Uber to the Frida Kahlo Museum, which is situated in her old house in the neighborhood of Coyoacan. It's a lovely neighborhood, and it was so cool wandering through the house where this almost legendary figure created her greatest works.

Fun fact: Frida's house is REAL blue, and she has a sick garden.

Last up we wandered around the main plaza in Mexico City, Zócalo. For you James Bond fans, this was where the epic helicopter scene from Spectre was filmed!

The next day we woke up real early and caught a bus to Puebla. The drive through the mountains was gorgeous, and Puebla itself is a cute, colorful colonial city with awesome cathedrals and museums.

Just a real nice place to walk around!

Friday morning we woke up early again to explore the ENORMOUS pyramids at Teotihuacan. It was absolutely exhausting, but really magical wandering through this ancient city... It was pretty touristy, and people kept trying to sell us these jaguar roar-makers. I came thiiiiis close to buying one...

It's all very large...

Saturday we hit up Tlatelolco, the site of an awful student massacre in 1968. Quick history: Mexico was about to host the Olympic Games, but student manifestations (similar to those in the United States and elsewhere across the world) were causing problems. So the government solved this problem by exercising extreme repression, and resorting to mass-murder. It was a haunting and powerful moment, standing in the middle of the Plaza de las Tres Culturas where the killings actually took place.

Here you can see some ruins and an old cathedral beside the plaza. This is why it's called Plaza de las Tres Culturas: pre-Hispanic, colonial, and modern.

This is the monument to the ones who were killed October 2, 1968.

Afterwards we headed out to a big sports facility where the Vive Latino musical festival was being held. There must have been like 100,000 people there... It was massive. We saw a ton of great concerts, and only got rained on a bit! Even though my phone was pickpocketed at the Two Door Cinema Club show, it was totally worth it.

We're just so hipster and cool...

This is the main stage.

The next morning we explored the National Palace, where we got to see the breathtaking murals of Diego Rivera. The main one is about the size of a basketball court, and is so full of symbolic storytelling that it's honestly just overwhelming.

You can't tell from this pic just how huge this thing is...

That afternoon we went to the second half of Vive Latino, where we saw some more cool Latino indie bands, along with a hardcore rap group (couldn't understand the lyrics at all!). It was a great experience to close out the Mexico City trip.

Back in Guadalajara, I started the trudge of rehearsals until our first presentation of Shrek The Musical (I'm playing alto sax). Wednesday we practiced for 12 hours straight! 3 pm to 3 am... But it was all totally worth it, because the first performance last night went really well! I'm amazed by how professional the whole thing is. It's like they rented a Broadway musical and just sat it down here in the middle of Guadalajara.

Here's a pic of the dragon prop during rehearsal.

View of Princess Fiona from the pit!

We In The Short Rows Now

Yep, we in the short rows now. I have less than a month left of Tecnológico de Monterrey, and I gotta say, it weirds me out. Now that I've gotten over this last round of partials, I've got some more free time to enjoy this city and this country. But I gotta hurry up because there isn't much time left! That's enough crisis-mode ranting though... I'll fill you in on what I've been up to lately, and what the next few weeks hold.

For one, I'm mildly famous on campus now. I mean, just look at me up on that big screen:

I'm the anti-social one on the bottom right, smiling strangely into his phone.

We've also started full rehearsals for Shrek the Musical (I'm playing saxophone, and the whole musical's been translated into Spanish... have I mentioned this?), which is just way too fun. Honestly I can't speak highly enough of the musicians: they're remarkable. A couple of our main singers got second place or something like that on The Voice Mexico. Suffice it to say that by April 28th, our first performance, it's gonna be lit.

Here's a glimpse of lil Lord Farquaad during rehearsal.

This past weekend, as somewhat of a reward for the hard work put into partials, Tec's international students welcome group Triple W threw a party on a three-story boat in Lake Chapala. It was pretty much as absurd as it sounds. But only one person fell in! So in the end it was tame enough. The sunset over the lake was beautiful... but instead of a picture of that here's a pic of a couple impressive mustaches:

And the one in the middle isn't even Mexican. 

This coming weekend I'll be visiting Tequila, attending a Caloncho concert (my favorite Mexican musician), and rooting on the Chivas for the first time in El Clásico Tapatío (rivalry match between the city's two soccer teams). Then next week I'll be heading to Mexico City and Puebla for the first time! More on all that to come.

Quick closing comments: today in culture class we had super low attendance, so we just ended up talking pretty casually with the professor the entire three hours. At one point the conversation turned to World War II. We had a German, some Japanese folks, and an American (me) in class, so we ended up having a really great discussion, in Spanish (still super cool to me that I communicate with Japanese people in Spanish!), about the effects of the war on our countries. Then the conversation moved to American influences in Mexico and elsewhere around the world. This gave the Spanish and Finnish girls a chance to really chime in, and I gotta say, it was one of the most interesting class discussions I've ever had.

Spring Break Detour Through Europe

Since my last blog post in early March my study abroad experience has taken an unusual turn... I visited my girlfriend (and some other friends) in Europe for two weeks! I know that study abroad students love to travel, but even I can admit that this was a little ridiculous. But before I talk about that, I should mention my Sayulita surf trip!

The second weekend in March I went with a huge group of Tec students to Sayulita, a tiny little surf town about half an hour north of Puerto Vallarta on the west coast. The weekend mostly consisted of me embarrassing myself on a surfboard in front of the locals, but it was worth the shame. Sayulita is a beautiful place, with palm trees and white sand everywhere, along with a population of what must be at least 70% Canadians. I'm pretty sure I heard more Canadian English than Spanish... My phone was still broken at that point, so I'll just snag a pic off the internet to let you guys know what Sayulita is all about:

Nice little aerial view. You can't tell so much from this picture, but the surf was perfect.

And then the following weekend, I hopped on a flight and headed to England! I spent a few days in Leeds, then flew down south to Madrid to spend about a week there with the ol' "ball and chain" (Gabby if you read this, I swear I don't mean it). It was really interesting getting to see Mexico's motherland, and I figure I should reflect a bit on the differences and the similarities that I've noticed between the two. 

One of my favorites: Crystal Palace, in Parque El Retiro.

First off, the accent really isn't all that different! They speak faster, use different slang, and have what sounds like a bit of a lisp, but I was surprised by how much I could understand in the end. Also, it was very strange for me seeing people other than Latin Americas speaking Spanish fluently... I'm just not used to it!

I've gotta say, the food is way better here in Mexico. In Spain they just don't use as many spices, so I think the food is less interesting, although the Iberian ham is pretty amazing! 

Gabby is in awe of the jabon iberico.

Much of the architecture in Madrid is very similar to the colonial style here in Mexico, especially in well-preserved colonial cities like Zacatecas and Guanajuato. The people in Spain are also very warm and welcoming, but nothing can really compare to Mexican hospitality.

We went to a cathedral in Toledo, where we saw some old relics from the good ol' silver empire days. Here's a pic of a fancy-looking king statue, probably made from the silver taken from mines in Zacatecas or Guanajuato:

Seriously, what a baller.

So after this two week detour, I'm back on track to finish out the semester here in Guadalajara! It's crazy to think that I only have six more weeks of class here, then finals, and then back to the States. Now is the time to shove in every last bit of the Mexican experience I can handle! Stay tuned.

What Do You Mean It's March?!

Good evening blog readers! I'm back after a brief hiatus (they don't mess around with mid-terms here), but happy to say that I've gotten to see and learn a couple new things since my last post. As you can tell from this post's title, it's kinda shocking to me that I'm already in month number 3...

Quick little story: yesterday in salsa class, while dancing with my Cuban instructor, she finally got around to asking where I was from (obviously because she was so blown away by this white boy's salsa skills). I told her the United States, and she told me with a little chuckle that she's still waiting for her visa. Just an interesting dynamic, especially while dancing.

Since my last post in February, I've completed my first round of Spanish-language midterms, started the migration portion of my class with Lalo (favorite professor), and traveled to Tapalpa, Zacatecas, and Michoacan. One of the main reasons that I chose to study abroad in Mexico was to study Mexico-United States immigration, and now I've reached the point in my class La Historia de Mexico Contemporaneo in which I'm doing just that. We're reading three of Lalo's books about immigration, his main field of research. Honestly, I don't think I've ever been more interested in a class before! The one thing that gets my goat is that all three books are in Spanish, so I'm afraid I can't really appreciate them fully yet. But this is the kind of material to which I'm sure I will return time and time again.

During the weekend in the middle of midterms (midterms last two weeks) I went with some friends to the small mountain town of Tapalpa, where we went hiking, relaxed, and enjoyed a local strawberry festival. As part of the strawberry festival, a local cathedral/museum hosted an art exhibit put together by some local elementary school kids. This drawing below caught my eye, not just cuz it's a huge strawberry, but because of what is written to the left! Basically it translates to: "They give work to the men and then they put chemicals on the strawberry to make it bigger and take it to the United States."

Our group on a big ol' rock at Las Piedrotas

Two weekends ago I took a bus with my Canadian friend Sarah to Zacatecas, a silver mining town about 5 hours north of Guadalajara. It's a bit similar to Guanajuato, with gorgeous colonial buildings lit up at night, and small, meandering streets that are all too easy to get lost in. We hit up some really cool museums, toured a silver mine, and ended up returning to the same mine that night to hit the night club there, 300 meters underground! This was basically the vibe (for all you Adventure Time fans): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UCvKV012nU

IN DA CLUB

La Catedral de Zacatecas

Main government building (friendly reminder that yes, I am in fact in Mexico)

The old Convento de San Francisco that is now home to el Museo Rafael Coronel, the world's largest collection of masks. 

In Michoacan we saw Santuario El Rosario, the largest monarch butterfly reserve in the world. As cheesy as it sounds, it was a really magical place. When the 200 million butterflies open their bright orange wings, the trees seem to catch on fire! And then begins the butterfly hurricane... We also visited Morelia, Patzcuaro, and Isla de Janitzio, an island in a lake surrounded by mountains with a huge statue of Morelos, an independence hero here in Mexico, looming at the top. The statue is actually taller than Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro! Last on the long travel list for the weekend was Tzintzuntzan, a ruin of five pre-Hispanic castles that overlook the lake. Despite the rain, it was still magnificent.

Quick disclaimer: these aren't my pictures because my phone died this past weekend.

Mariposas!

Morelos looking like a baller (Isla de Janitzio)

Tzintzuntzan

Just as a little closing note: when I'm traveling through the countryside here, I swear sometimes it feels like riding a bus through a Dr. Seuss book! Look at these...

Maybe you can't tell from the bus window pic, but seriously, I've never seen anything like these crazy things.

Guanajuato

Two weekends ago (wow, doesn't feel that long...) I went with my fellow USCer, Alex, to Guanajuato, an old colonial city located around 4 hours east of Guadalajara. We had a three-day weekend for el puente, the long weekend that comes with Constitution Day on Monday. We met up with several other Tec students throughout weekend, but the two of us stuck together the majority of the time. I'm gonna write a bit about the trip, so get ready for some irritating enthusiasm...

View of the city

The city is so beautiful! Guanajuato has to be one of my favorite places I've ever visited, and not only in Mexico. It was founded in the mid-1500s, and quickly grew to be the world's largest silver exporter. The city itself is built into the mountains, with old mining tunnels now being used as roads beneath the city. The majority of the old colonial buildings have been preserved, only with fresh paint jobs in spectacular colors. The streets are narrow and winding, and I often felt VERY lost, but thankfully it's a relatively small place (especially compared to Guadalajara!). There is a courtyard complete with fountain around nearly every corner, along with cathedrals and museums. Alex and I did our best to hit them all, but we just barely fell short...

Catedral de Guanajuato

Guanajuato has a really interesting, and as far as I could tell inexplicable, obsession with Don Quixote. The city is home to one of the largest culture festivals in the world, the Cervantino Festival, and there are statues of Quixote and his faithful sidekick Sancho Panza throughout the city. There is also a Don Quixote museum, complete with sculpture, paintings, pottery, and books (of course), all in honor of the ol' man. Don Quixote de la Mancha is one of my favorite books of all time, so I was super hyped to get to see all of this random artwork!

Actually bought a print of this one for my room...

The Universidad de Guanajuato (UG) is in the center of the city. Because of this, the city has a very cool, hip college town vibe. One of my friends back home who studied abroad at UG for two semesters hooked me up with one of her friends, Richi, who met us for coffee and showed us around some of the bars where the students hang out. It was very cool seeing the contrast between the touristy Guanajuato and the real city that Richi lives in. I love them both, and hope to return some day!

The guy on the right is Richi (and oh yeah that's Alex on my left)

Lastly I'll leave you with a link to a YouTube vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eFy0wrr7T8
The song is Palmar by Caloncho, one of my favorite Mexican artists, who I got to see at a free concert downtown this past weekend.

THREE RANDOM PICTURES

Cool murals

Pretty street, you can see the colors 

Alex and I at the top of La Bufa, a cliff thingy that overlooks the city

El Hornito

I just got back from El Hornito (the lil oven), a restaurant down the street that's quickly turning into my go-to. It's completely open to the air, and since it gets pretty cold here in the mountains at night, the servers could tell that Enya, Alex, and I were a little chilly. So they brought out three blankets and laid them across our shoulders. Needless to say we left a solid tip!

Seriously, the people here are the best. Anything I've needed, even if I haven't asked for it, has been graciously provided. Since I'm taking three classes in Spanish, my professors have offered aids to help me through. And everyone I talk to (especially the ones that have to endure my fumbling Spanglish) greets me with a smile... and if they're female, a kiss on the cheek. It just seems to be the pace of life here. And it's something that I really love.

Out of my four classes, there is one in particular that I want to write about today: History of Contemporary Mexico. It's less of a history class, and more of a politics class. More specifically, contemporary Mexican politics, and the history of how the country became what it is today. The class is taught by Dr. Eduardo González, who many consider to be the best professor here. And while the course isn't easy, I'm learning exactly what I came here to learn: what exactly is going on south of the border? It's not all pretty, believe me. But it is exposing me to the true soul of this country.

AND NOW LOOK AT MY PICTURES

Lago de Chapala

Puerto Vallarta

Puerto Vallarta (big ol' rocks)

Chapultepec

Climbing gym wit da homies

Tlaquepaque

Sergio Bustamante Art Gallery

Me squinting into that fire Mexican sun