The past week, the lucky students at my school had exams. This knowledge brought a sense of dread and angst down upon them, but gave me the opposite emotions- it meant a week long vacation! ( I have a feeling I'm going to die next year in university, I think this year has caused my work ethic and motivation to shrivel up from misuse.) But in any case, now is the time to enjoy the lack of homework and excessive free time. I must say that I have developed a very close relationship with my laptop this year and gained a lot of knowledge about tv shows and movies here, perhaps a bit too much. However, that's how exchange goes. Weeks go by when you're flying around and every minute is filled with breathtaking experiences and cultural learning opportunities, and other weeks you basically hang out with friends or make do with your own company and the ever-comforting Netflix. Exchange is certainly a study in extremes- emotions, activities, cultural differences. There's sky-high, the lowest you've ever experienced, and then occasionally somewhere in the middle. But any difficult moments are instantly forgotten when you have one of those ' WOW moments'. I speak of the moments when you are one hundred percent ecstatic that you are on exchange, and you wouldn't change your decision or your host country for anything. Lately this seems to be happening almost constantly, which is amazing. I admit in November I was having a pretty tough time adjusting to the limitations of a Rotary exchange and life in Mexico in general (going through that requisite blue phase of exchange), but ever since then life has just been getting better and better. Ever since January, as promised, the months have been flying by. Starting next weekend I have almost three weeks of vacations, in which my parents will visit for a week and then I will go to the district conference in Queretaro with all the exchange students for four days. And then starting May 21 I embark on the final, FANTASTIC Ruta Maya trip. I can't believe it's almost the end- less than 80 days left on my exchange.While I am excited to go home to my mountains and family/friends, I already feel so lost and a bit panicked when I think about leaving this place, and ending my year as an exchange student. It's an irreplaceable experience, and with so little left of it I want to make every moment count.
With that philosophizing out of the way, here goes my week!
Monday I went to CrossFit with Sara. I consider myself in pretty good shape right now, going to the gym or running every day. But my goodness, I thought I was going to die during this workout. Basically they give you a workout filled with various exercises with multiple reps. And then they give you a time limit to complete it all. So you can't even recover between the strenuous exercises to regain strength. I was whimpering by the time I was on the fourth round of squatting while throwing medicine balls, weight lifting, and modified chin ups. For about ten minutes after we had finished all I could do was lie on the floor breathing shallowly. But that's CrossFit for you. If you have anything less than a grimace of pain on your face, you're not working hard enough. After recovering enough to walk, I returned home to shower and make lunch. Sara and I met up later in her private community for some relaxed sunbathing. Lucky bum has a pool!
Tuesday I visited my former Spanish teacher Claudia's elementary school to give a presentation on Canada. I was a bit skeptical of the response I would receive from a bunch of distracted kids, but I was blown away by their attention and enthusiasm about my exposition! I gave three presentations in three different classes. They were all so cute, and all the kids were fighting for my hand and chattering away to me in spanglish. When I was leaving they all ran and hugged me, and begged me to stay with them, and then to come back the next week. It was so touching, and they truly seemed inspired by the photos and information I had shown them. Many told me they were coming to Canada, and I hope they do!
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The class! While their attention span is a bit suspect in the photo,
I promise they were lovely during the presentation! |
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| Hee saw this on the bus ride back (it says looking for a girlfriend). I wonder if he has any success with that up there... |
In the night I gave my official Canada presentation to the Rotary club. I was way less nervous than I was for my presentation in Canada (it was sort of a trial run so my sponsor club could see what Canadian things I would be educating others about). And apart from a few hastily corrected Spanish errors, I think it went very well, if I do say so myself! Everyone seemed very intrigued, particularly by my many photos of the nature in Canada. I felt very proud to be representing my country, and I do hope I managed to sufficiently communicate how awesome it is up North!
The next day I was invited to a Mexican baking
session by Monica, the wives of one of the Rotarians in my club. Not only did I learn how to make
pastel de tres leches, I also learned
rosca de naranja,
galletas ne nuez, and
galletas de ate. All absolutely delicious, and terrible for the diet. Monica and Chayula (her friend who hosted this baking extravaganza) whipped, creamed, and decorated while I looked on trying to memorize the recipe and helped where I could. It was great fun, and I think I adequately memorized enough to reproduce it back in Canada. Yummmmmmm. Monica insisted on leaving me with this enormous tres leches cake, the granny and I were working away on it for quite a while, and I made sure to share it with anyone and everyone who I saw the next few days!
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| Monica decorating the cake after I injected it with the three milk mixture |
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| Rosca de naranja |
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| The gorgeous finished products |
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| Enjoying with a cup of Earl Gray tea later on |
Thursday Sara came over and we spent the afternoon making authentic yeast cinnamon buns and then a healthy cumin curry chickpea salad for lunch. It was quite satisfying to taste the fruits of our labour, not much tastes better than a cinnamon bun fresh from the oven!
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| The granny was a bit in shock over how messy the prep was (we cleaned up afterwards, don't worry) |
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| Mmmmm... hopefully even with the bad photo quality, you can see how beautiful they are! |
Friday I was back at the pool with Sara getting my sun tan on. Then, I went to Mariana's house for the weekend. We went out to a bar, socialized, and generally enjoyed our Friday night.
On Saturday, We woke up late, and then had this feast that Mariana's mum had made for us. Afterwards, we went to a
tianguis, an outdoors market filled with everything from food to pirated DVDs. ( It was actually super ugly and mostly filled with second-hand clothes of questionable quality, but interesting to see at least!) We spent the afternoon lazing around, but roused ourselves enough to make 'cookie shots'. Mariana had found this recipe from inspiration of one of the creations of an ingenious new chef. His were absolutely beautiful- basically shortbread cookies forming the cup, then coated in chocolate and filled in milk. Ours..... not so much. In fact I won't even include a photo of ours because it's too embarrassing. Let's just say it was a complete
desmadre and leave it at that. But ah well, trial and error, right?
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| In the tianguis |
In the night time, we joined up with some of our friends from school to go to the Feria, a carnaval that was in Tepic for the month of March. They had free carnaval rides, many interesting stalls with food and other items for sale. Many of the more prominent clubs and bars in Tepic had also set up temporarily there. We started off on the rides, then a little bit later went to the club Mandala. It was a good night, finished off by some late night instant soup from Oxxo on the walk back home (yummmm).
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| Many, many people at the feria |
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| Another club located at the fairgrounds |
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| The clubbers |
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| Aline, one of my friends from school |
Sunday I was picked up early by Monica (of the cakes and cookies) and her family. We were off to an American BBQ! Through the husband of Chayola (they also attended the barbecue) who had designed their house, Monican and Oscar had become friends with a couple who lived outside of Tepic part-time. They were moving back the following Tuesday, so this was like their goodbye party! I officially met Oscar, her husband (I had seen him before in the Rotary meetings but never really talked to him before), and the two boys who were in their early teens. We drove out of Tepic in the direction of the Cierra, that is to the East away from the ocean and into the hills. It got gradually even hotter and drier as we carried on. Oscar pointed out the acres of mango trees lining the road, stating that in about a month or so they would be filled with ripe mangoes ready to be eaten. With Mangos being one of my favourite fruits of all time, I was very excited. Previously only having ever seen mango in a crate from Costco, it's pretty interesting seeing the small green fruits growing all over the countryside in great abundance!
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| A mexican moment... we were following this taxi when it went over a speed bump. To our surprise, the back flew open, and before it was hastily pulled shut again, we saw not one but TWO people lying there! As we passed it, we say at least six people in the back seat. Oh Mexican road safety (or rather lack thereof). Also not the many mango trees lining the road) |
After about 45 minutes, we turned off the highway into small lane lined with beautiful bougainvillaea plants. Up the hill we went until arriving at an absolutely gorgeous cabin overlooking a lake. It was spacious, airy and filled with little decorations that somehow just marked it as a cabin- I'm not even sure how to describe it. There's just something tangible that differentiates a cabin from a home! I met John and Andrea, the couple from Oklahoma that spent half the year living in this gorgeous place.
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| The view from the back deck |
Monica and I got to work helping out Andrea and her maid in the kitchen, while John and Oscar started into the beer stash (Division of work was a bit unfair, but seeing as lately I've made it my mission to learn as much as I can about mexican cuisine, I didn't mind). I made
ratas, hollowed out peppers filled with cheese and wrapped in bacon. I couldn't wait to try them when they were cooked, they even looked delicious raw! Monica then taught me how to make corn tortillas. She had brought almost 2 KILOGRAMS of dough, and I basically worked through the entire lot! It was a bit tricky, making sure that the tortilla was the right thickness and size, and then cooking it sufficiently but not burning it. Also, placing them on the pan was one of the most difficult parts- you had to place it quickly but smoothly so that it all started cooking at the same time, but also so that the corners didn't fold onto the middle! While cooking the tortillas, there was a specific routine you had to follow. First you had to wait about a minute, then flip the tortilla once (with your bare fingertips!), wait a bit longer, flip once more, and then wait until it started bubbling before removing it. I'm pretty sure I burned off all the nerves in the ends of my fingers by the end! I was working on the tortilla production for about an hour and a half. As you can see by the attractive expressions in the photos, I was very concentrated on my task. I was actually having a pretty great time, by the end I definitely had gotten the hang of it! Meanwhile, the rest of the guests had arrived. I was surprised to find that out of the 25 or so people, I actually knew a few! Mario and Veronica were there, Gosia's previous host parents (I also had my 18th birthday party in their house). They're lovely, hilarious people and it was great to see them. Also, coincidentally, I knew one of the fellow Americans that attended this party. In January when I went to Mazatlan for New Years, I met an American living in Tepic while we were walking on the beach. We had a good chat, but I returned back to the hotel expecting to never see him again. So I was pretty amazed to turn around to introduce myself to another guest and realize I recognized him! I guess the American community is pretty small in Tepic so it really isn't that surprising he showed up at an American's goodbye party. But for me, it was still completely unexpected!
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| BAM Look at that stack of beautiful, fresh tortillas |
The guests were an interesting mix of Americans living in Tepic, Americans who had married Mexicans, and then Mexican couples. The languages were English, Spanish and then a garbled hybrid of the two. I was pretty amazed at how 'American' the barbecue actually was- the food, the drinks and general atmosphere were very similar to the summer barbecues I love back in Canada. I hadn't realized it, but I'd actually really missed them! Homemade hamburgers with bacon, cheese, and pickles, various tasty salads, baked potatoes... the spread was amazing. I basically threw any care about 'dieting' to the wind and helped myself to everything! And then came the desserts..... more
pastel de tres leches, a peach pie made by Andrea, ice cream supplied from Veronica's ice cream shop, and brownies. It was absolutely amazing and even though I was stuffed from the dinner I made space to try out all of them!
After dinner a group of us walked down the path to check out a water hole. Apparently in rainy season there's a sweet waterfall, and you can jump from the cliffs into the water. However, the water was a bit scant at that point in time, so we refrained from jumping in. We came across a few mango and guava trees and loaded up on all the ripe guavas (so exciting, I love tropical flora, most of the time in Canada when you come across fruit in the wild it's poisonous). Upon our return, I went back to socializing with the Mexicans and the Americans (bilinguism, boo yah!). Listening to the painful gringo accents of the Americans speaking Spanish made me very happy with my level of Spanish achieved, I must say. I also got complimented by many about my competency with the language, which is always a prized compliment that exchange students like to hear! T'was certainly an ego boosting day, that's for sure. Later on, I got some absolutely gorgeous photos of the lake as the sun was setting. Cuyler (the man from Mazatlan) also sent me some of his to add to the collection.
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| My new friend Lorena and I at the water hole |
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| This is normally where you jump from (a bit dry at the moment) |
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| Baby mangos |
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| Ripe Guavas |
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| Andrea & John, then Monica & Oscar to my right |
I honestly had the best time, I swear I didn't stop grinning the entire day! It couldn't have been more perfect. It was amazing that even with the language barrier everyone managed to have an absolutely fantastic time. (I'm now envisioning my retirement somewhere in Mexico during the winter months, but I also want to be one of those wizened ski bombers on the ski hill, so we'll have to see which I'm more interested in once I've aged a bit!) I'm very grateful to Monica and family for adopting me for the day, it was an amazing experience.
Thanks for reading!
Wendy
