Hello Readers!
18 years ago, on the special day of December 11th, a fantastic and world-changing event occurred... Naw, just kidding. Just ordinary old me being born. And now, many years later and thousands of kilometres away from home, I was lucky enough to celebrate one pretty big milestone! Finally a responsible and wise adult (or at the very least an adult). All of last year I comforted myself as all my friends left me to join the world of adulthood, with the idea that my birthday was going to be marvellous, and in MEXICO. However, as the date got closer I started getting a bit worried, because who knows what sort of things to expect from people you've only known for a maximum four months! I was going to settle with a familial birthday lunch, and be satisfied. However, I'm happy to say that my birthday celebrations far surpassed even my original expectations! It was not only a wonderful, memorable day, but an entire WEEK of fun birthday and Christmas related events. I'm so grateful for all of the birthday wishes and generosity from all of my friends and family back home, here in Mexico and from all around the world! It was amazing to receive birthday wishes in various languages, from people from my high school back in Canada, and even from people here in Mexico, some of whom I'd only met weeks before! It made me realize how many international connections I have made because of Rotary- thanks to this exchange I've had the chance to become great friends with so many amazing kids that I never would have met otherwise!
Anyways, enough pondering. Here's the debrief of my week. (Also, apologies for it being almost a month late- better late than never I suppose!)
Day 1:
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| During the Machete dance |
Monday marked the official conclusion of Spanish classes. It consisted of a
cena for the adults and an assortment of presentations for our families and Rotary members. Bambi (the Taiwanese girl) read a poem, each of us got up and talked a bit about our take on the classes, and what we'd done in them (activities, grammar, etc.). Afterwards the two boys, Gosia and I snuck off to go change into our traditional dance clothes. We then surprised the Rotarians by performing the 'Machete Dance', this traditional Mariachi dance from Nayarit which involves a lot of skirt twirling for the girls, and some macho sword swinging from the boys. We definitely weren't at professional, undulating skirts level. But considering our foreigner inexperienced status, I'd say we did pretty fantastically! After that, all of the exchange students got up and performed a latino hip-hop-esque routine, a type of dance called cumbia. It turned out pretty fantastically, and was so much fun! (On a side note, I think living in Mexico has begun to have quite an influence on me- losing some of that Canadian dancing awkwardness. I'm no latino girl with the hips yet, but it's getting there. Just you wait Canada, by the time I return to you I'll be a dancing master!) After we performed we were met with some extremely enthusiastic applause and the parental paparazzi. After employing the camera-ready smile for a rather excessively long time, we filed up to recieve our Spanish class certificates. They actually look very official, stating we completed 120 hours of study at an official university- Huzzah! To finish off the night, each of us received what I will eloquently call a swag bag. It included a CD of photos from all our outings as a class, a RYE coffee mug, a traditional woven bag from Nayarit, and a fantastic black hoodie all decorated with Rotary Youth Exchange mottos and symbols! It was an absolutely fantastic night- and a great conclusion to the ever-entertaining spanish classes.
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| Claudia, our awesome Spanish teacher |
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| While not flattering in the slightest, the dresses were pretty fun to dance in- look at how much twirling capacity the skirt has! |
(I'm going to try and hunt down a copy of our dances so you can see our valiant attempts. In the meantime, check out this professional machete dance, just to get an idea of what it's all about.)
Start at 3:00 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwFdh4Po6XE
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| The conquerors of the Cerro! |
Day 2:
On this day I dragged my bum out of bed at the break of dawn, and met up with Johannes and Gosia to go up Cerro de San Juan. I arrived at my old house at 6:30 (now the house of Johannes), and immediately went up to my old room and sprawled on the bed. The thing I miss most about my old room is the enormous, heavenly soft bed. Seriously, it's big enough for two people and their pet iguana. Anyways, it felt a bit odd to be back in my first home, but after helping myself to the classic yogurt and granola bowl at the urging of Sandy, it felt just like home again. It was awesome getting a chance to talk to my last host parents, especially Hector. I realize now how fond I'd grown of them, and how lucky I was to be their daughter, even if it was only for a few months.
We were accompanied up the Cerro by Hector and Gosia's sister Anais. Johannes and I went ahead of the rest, and enjoyed the lovely panorama of the city at the top viewpoint before going down and joining the rest. It was so hot, but a gorgeous day- we had such an awesome view from the top! At the bottom we visited the coconut stand for an energy refill. Although sceptical at first, I tried the coconut with chili and lemon. It is pretty delicious. We returned to Johannes' house, I took a shower in my old bathroom (yep, felt just like home again), then ate MORE breakfast that Sandy had made for us. I'm beginning to understand the origin of my weight gain...
In the afternoon Johannes and I headed downtown and toured the market while munching on some delicious ice cream. It was a pretty fantastic day!
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| 75 cent ice cream will be the death of me... |
Day 3:
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| Welcome to the world of adulthood :) |
While I didn't wake up suddenly wise or anything, I did start the day off very excited- finally 18! I went to the kitchen and started making myself breakfast, when I heard one of my host sisters yell at me to come upstairs. I was a little confused and a tad peeved at the brusque order, but I started heading up the stairs. At the top to my surprise, my entire family minus Alex was standing there, each holding something! The mum was holding a mini cheesecake with a candle in it, and the three kids each had a little something in their hands. They started singing Las Mananitas- the Mexican version of the Birthday song. It goes on forever, and by the time they finished I was blushing and grinning like a fool. I was so surprised and grateful they had gone to the effort- not expected at all!
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| The most fanatastic card ever from my friend back in Canada, also my best baking buddy. |
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| A few little birthday surprises from my friends and family! |
After breakfast I went to the university for the English conversation classes that Gosia and I have been running. The lesson kept getting interrupted as various people called to wish me a happy birthday. Both my previous host parents called and hilariously sang over the phone a very garbled but enthusiastic Happy Birthday in english. In an awesome turn of events, just as the lesson finished up the head of the Language centre told us that one of his former students, also a bartender, was giving an impromptu class on mixing drinks. A class on Mixology seemed a pretty coincidental, not to mention useful thing to know on the day of my birthday! (Not in Mexico, obviously- got to remember the rules!) It certainly was very informative, we learned the type of glasses one should use for certain types of drinks, and the overall efficient way to set up a bar. However, the best part was at the end of the class when he asked for a volunteer to help him demonstrate mixing a drink. Not only did my hand shoot up, I yelled ME. MEEE!!! No one else was quite as enthusiastic as me, so I made my way up to the front and learned the professional way to mix both a Clemencia and a Sangria. I spilt half the mixer down the side of the glass, but after a wee bit of help, both the bartender and I proudly showed off our lovely cocktails!
En route to the mystery restaurant for my birthday
comida, the family stopped at the Mexican equivalent of Costco and got a MASSIVE amount of baking groceries for me. I'm mentioning this because for those of you that don't know me very well, I absolutely adore baking. So, this was very exciting for me! As not many people bake here, very few are equipped in the kitchen with both materials and ingredients. My host mum is no exception, so it was super thoughtful of her to set me up with everything knowing that I will be the only one using it all! So many new recipes I'm looking forward to testing out on my host family.
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| Ceviche de camaron |
We arrived at the Marlin de Tepic, a gorgeous seafood restaurant. We were joined by Cindy and Sergio (the sister of Alex and her husband), who had very thoughtfully brought me an asortment of Huichol artwork and bracelets. We had various dishes including
ceviche de camaron, p
escado sarandeado, and some shrimp pate. The lunch was absolutely delicious, and it was followed by
pie de guayaba, and yet another rendition of Las Mananitas! In short, it was an absolutely wonderful birthday made so by the generous efforts of my family, which I really appreciated.
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| Family shot in the restaurant's entrance |
Day 4:
The Castillos invited me to their house for a birthday lunch on Thursday, and we decided to tie that in with baking gingerbread cookies with the kids! I got picked up by Sandy and Johannes from the kid's school. Upon entering their
privada, the guard at the gate passed on this enormous cake that had been dropped off earlier- for my birthday lunch! Right there in the car, got another rendition of Las Mananitas (from now on it will be called LM). Sandy had made this huge lunch of salmon, pasta and salad. I was extremely stuffed but still had room for the chocolate and caramel cake, of course!
We started on the gingerbread cookies after lunch, which turned into a huge, five-hour production. The recipe made about 50 cookies, all of which were beautifully decorated with icing and Smarties through the efforts of the entire family. Sandy even tried her hand at decorating! They turned out awesome, and although the dough was a bit tricky to deal with (I used an entire kg of flour that day), the cookies actually resembled pine trees, snowmen and chubby men! The end result of five hours of hard labour was a giant platter of gorgeous, spicy and festive cookies. I was pretty stoked to share one of my Christmas traditions with them, and they had a blast experimenting with the icing. I left with one cookie to show off, a gigantic slab of Snickers cake, and in a very tired but satisfied mood.
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| Look at that kid's face. What a cutie |
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| Cutting out the cookies- harder than it looks, but ! |
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| Very concentrated on icing. |
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| Rubi becoming a master icer (is that a thing?) |
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| Look at those puppies! Pretty impressive (or at the very least individual) |
Day 5:
Friday was my birthday party with friends. I met up with Mariana in the morning to buy food for the party. As our budget consisted of the allowances of various broke exchange students, we bought some absolutely horrendously cheap food and drink. Radioactive yellow "pineapple juice" and cardboard "guacamole chips" were a few samples from our party menu. I went home and whipped up a chocolate cake with strawberry icing. (Yep, definitely made my own birthday cake and brought my own birthday candles).
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| Not the most aesthetically pleasing cake, but it was yummy! Candles were sent to me by a friend from Canada- put to good use! |
The party was very generously hosted by the parents of Gosia, and all the exchange students slept over, which meant one fantastic, crazy night. Before cutting into the cake I got yet another LM, followed with the version in Portuguese, German, Finnish and Polish! It was so cool- international friends are awesome ! We played card games, I taught them some Canadian party games, and everyone generally had a blast throughout the night. Can't wait until the next birthday party!
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| Group shot! A bit blurry, but you get the idea |
Day 6:
I was a tad tired from the night before, so I returned home to recharge before the party in the night. My family was hosting a posada (a pre-Christmas party), which involved about 30 rowdy family members of varying ages dancing to banda, drinking tequila and generally having a blast. Las Posadas is traditionally a nine-day celebration to celebrate the pregnancy of Mary. If you want to celebrate perfectly, for the nine days before Christmas you attend/host nine different posadas.
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| Alex and Maribel decked out in festive gear while sampling the tacos |
Apart from the usual tequila, tacos, and tamales, there are a few special components. First let me introduce you to officially my favourite Mexican holiday drink- ponche. It is a sort of cider made with Jamaica, various spices, a lot of whole fruit (prunes, apricots, guayaba, pineapple, apple, etc.) and pecans. It's awesome, you drink the juice and then fish out all the nuts and fruit saturated with the juice. Which are delicous to eat. Yummm. At some point during the party, the guests divide into two groups and do a singing reenactment of Mary and Joseph asking for shelter (or
pedir posada, if you want the official Spanish term). It involves a lot of trilling words, all the guests holding candles, and a nativity scene hanging out somewhere.
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| During the posada, check out the nativity scene |
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| Eduardo and Johannes- they look like brothers, right? |
Later on, piñatas filled with candy (or traditionally fruit) are brought out. It's not just for the small kids- they have multiple so everyone can have a go! The traditional activity is not for your average birthday entertainment- there are special holiday piñatas with a very symbolic meaning! Seven points on the piñata to represent the seven sins, the stick is symbolic of virtue, you're blindfolded to represent faith, and the candy that falls out of the piñata represents the generous gifts of God. This was explained to me by various people, and then I went and researched it to be sure. With or without the religious connotations, it's always a good time whacking things and getting sweets. While you do this, the rest of the party members sing a song which is religious. But also hilarious to listen to while you're spastically waving around a wooden stick.
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| A few of the traditional posada piñatas |
In case you're curious, here's a rough version of the song I found on the internet:
Dale, dale, dale, (Hit, Hit, Hit it)
no pierdas el tino (Don’t lose you aim)
porque si lo pierdes (because if you lose it)
pierdes el camino. (you lose your way)
Ya le diste una, (You hit it once)
ya le diste dos, (you hit it twice)
ya le diste tres, (you hit it three times)
y tu tiempo se acabo, (and your time is over)
¡se acabo! (it´s over!)
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| Me giving it my best go... |
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| But I think my sister may have won the award for effort! |
Anyways, it was overall a very Mexican party. Johannes and I reenacted our
cumbia dance from the Spanish class presentation for the family member's entertainment, we drank
ponche, chowed down on
tacos de asada and
chorizo, and celebrated!
Day 7:
Pretty relaxed morning with the family (I think we were all recovering rom the night before). In the afternoon, we went out to Italianni's for pasta, then to the movies to watch the Hobbit Part 2. During dinner, surprise surprise (just when I thought it was all done with for the year), the waiters surrounded our table and serenaded me with Happy Birthday in Italian. And then Spanish. They presented me with a slice of yummy bread pudding with lovely writing in cinnamon (I think it was birthday wishes in Italian) around the plate's edge.
I've decided being the recipient of a birthday song (in any language) is extremely awkward. Perhaps I've never noticed before because I've only had to go through it once a year, as opposed to at least 2 times a day for almost an entire week! What are you supposed to do while it's happening? Grin like a fool, clap along, sing for yourself, or blush bright red? However, I am pretty happy that I was serenaded in one week so many times and in so many different languages. How many people can say that they've gotten the Birthday song in over six different languages? I needn't have worried that my big day would be anticlimatic- the celebrations went on for an entire week! My birthday was nothing like what it would have been like in Canada, but instead a much more memorable and unique occasion. I honestly couldn't have imagined a better birthday, and I am so grateful for everyone and all the effort they went to to make it special. One thing is for sure- I will never forget my birthday in Mexico!
If you made it to the end of this long post, thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed!
Saludos,
Wendy
