Busy Busy Bees!

Ever since October started, it's been a very fantastically busy two weeks. So many things have happened! I'll start with last week (it's gonna be a decently long one, sorry).

After a rather late night (on my part), the family got up early and drove to a Rotary breakfast event in Compostela, a nearby "pueblo" (little town) 40 minutes outside of Tepic. It was a very delicious breakfast of tacos and a variety of fresh fruit (yummm I love you Mexican food). I still can't get over the fact that it's absolutely average to have a bunch of bananas hanging from the tree, and no shortage  of locally grown tropical fruit around. The Rotary club there was looking for some help with funding for their lake cleaning project, and so they invited the three Rotary clubs from Tepic to come check out the lake.  After the breakfast, we all took a walk around the lake, it was very beautiful! I got to meet some members of Rotaract (the university version of Rotary), who then invited me to their club's lunch.  That was a great time, and following the Rotaract lunch I went back to Daniela's house (a Rotaract and ex exchanger) for a few hours. It was a fantastic day, got to meet a lot of great ex-exchange students, and I'm looking forward to doing more things with Rotaract, they all seem really sweet!

During the Rotary presentation, with the lake in the background

While touring around the lake

The stylish German showing off the tree

The not so stylish Canadian showing off the INSIDE of the tree.
It was completely hollow inside but still had green leaves, pretty cool!

Previously mentioned banana bunch

Rotaract, Johannes and a few younger siblings!

On Monday, all the exchange students minus Bambi (the girl from Taiwan)  trooped downtown to our Spanish teacher's kindergarten school. We went to four different classrooms with our flags, introduced ourselves first in Spanish then in our native language, and then took pictures with all the little munchkins. It was pretty interesting, to say the least. The kids ranged between ages 4 and 6, and all possessed extraordinarily short attention spans. I honestly don't know if any of the kids paid attention to us, but they sure were excited about the flags! They also enjoyed making random shrieking sounds every once in a while, gnawing on the back of their chairs, tipping the chairs up and falling off.... it was a bit frightening.  Anyways, I hope we got them thinking about other countries, and I now have huge respect for the patience and control of Kindergarten teachers across the world! After leaving the kindergarten, six of us squeezed into one taxi (that was one uncomfortable ride) and went to the mall for Italian food. It was so delicious, a pretty nice break from tacos. As delicious as Mexican food is, a girl's gotta have her pasta!

Photo of us, the teachers and the students from the classes. Look at the kids in the front row- I wasn't kidding about their attention spans!

I'm not ashamed to admit I scooped up the cutest child I could see and demanded a photo.
D'awwww,  just look at him!

Mmmmm pasta, how I've missed you...

At Italianni's.  I'm perhaps a bit too happy about my pasta and pina colada!

Tuesday night, after my Spanish classes a friend picked me up and we went to the 2 for 1 movie night! We watched Elysium, and while I enjoyed the explosions and dramatic, bloody action scenes, I feel I may have been more impressed by the movie had I understood the plot twists. (My Spanish isn't quite up to the movie comprehension level yet, apparently). Thursday night  after classes I went to salsa classes at the university with another friend. Although I don't have the ability to sway my hips like a Latino girl, it was still super fun! I also showed the group the very basic Jive dance, just to prove Canadians (sort of ) learn to dance as well!

Salsa class! (The chico in white was the dance instructor, along with being in his fourth year of med school.
Watch out, ladies!

Friday we went to the museum with our Spanish class, and a little later went out for my friend Mariana's birthday. I slept over at another friend's house, and we ended up on her roof eating Nutella and toast while having a pretty great conversation in the wee hours of the morning. I also got to see how beautiful Tepic is at night, you can just vaguely see the hills, and because of the flat roofs and lack of tall buildings you can see across the entire city. It was a fantastic night!

The majority of the birthday group! (spot the pasty white exchanger)

Mariana, the birthday girl!

The following morning after going on a hunt for elusive ingredients around various convenience stores close to my friend's house (and picking up some juice in a bag!), we made some delicious coconut banana pancakes.  Her parents came home just as we were polishing off the remainder of the pancakes. They immediately offered for me to try all of this random fruit that I'd never seen before.  Some tastes very strange, others were delicious! One was called a guamara (the fruit to the far left that looks like a potato). This process to this one was ripping off the tough skin, then scraping off the brown flesh around a giant pit. It was a pretty strange taste, for sure.

We walked past a street vendor equipped with various baskets of fruit and one very high powered blender.  Resulting in a very excited Wendy drinking fresh pineapple and orange juice from a plastic bag!

Making breakfast all aesthetically pleasing before devouring it with great enthusiasm

The array of exotic fruit and Caro laughing at my blatant tourist-ness

That night, there was a Rotary party at this absolutely GORGEOUS event location.  It was a beautiful garden area with a plaza, where we ate. One of the members of my club owns this salon de eventos, so I hope I get to return there! This particular party was for this visiting German family who three years prior had hosted the daughter of the club member. Pretty cool to see that three years after exchange some families and exchangers still have a deep enough connection to bring them together for another visit! Anyways, the food was delicious, the music wonderful (some gentle Mexican serenading),  and the location beautiful! The Rotary members all drank varying amounts of tequila, and by 1 am were still going strong, singing along to the band, having spirited conversations, and just generally having a grand time. This is a pretty great demonstration of how awesome the Rotary parties are here in Mexico. I by this point was a little tired because of the possible lack of sleep the night before (by 1 am the concrete bench was feeling pretty dang comfy to me), but I was so happy I'd gone! I was also, however, very pleased to crawl into my bed at 2 am and catch up on some beauty sleep.


(Apologies for the terrible quality of these pictures, iPhones don't take the best pictures at night with a lot of humidity)

Lime trees! I love Mexican flora 

Diego (one of the Rotarian's kids), Hiram  (oldest host brother) and I sitting on one of the many bridges in the property

River running through- so awesome!

You know the place is awesome when even the BATHROOM is cool!

One jolly saint and two happy exchangers

My dad Hector (far left) and fellow Rotarian singing their hearts out at around 1:30 AM

A rope bridge! We may or may not have spent a few minutes jumping up and down on it like 5 year olds.

The stream running through the grounds

Sunday was a perfect day of relaxation- woke up at 10, took a taxi to the Ne Kie Best Western Hotel, and spent the afternoon lounging around the pool with Rotex and exchange students.

Not a bad place to spend a day

Some pretty hilariously uncoordinated jumping photos

Hasta luego!

Wendy