I wrote most of this post while in bed at half 10 on a Wednesday..unfortunately not because I don’t have important things to do (barely having thought about my research project being a particularly scary one…) but because I was very very ill 🙁 After contracting some hideous throat infection which meant I could barely eat I was put on antibiotics and sent to bed (sound good, although I will now have to make up this time by working Saturdays…). Of course I used this time wisely by catching up on The Apprentice and watching Shutter Island and A Beautiful Mind, both of which it turned out were about mental illness which was a weird coincidence…
One thing this experience made me realise is that when you have nothing to do you miss home a lot more! Being ill so far away is really really tough, even though my host family are looking after me well. It’s not the same having to explain how you feel to a doctor and not knowing the words for most of your symptoms…Since being ill I haven’t really stopped feeling homesick and to be honest the last week was probably the hardest since I arrived. Not being able to be at home for Bonfire Night was especially hard since it was the first time I missed Tarbarrels since I was a child!
But anyway, it’s been a very busy couple of weeks and I have now completed over a month here. Work has begun to get easier as the students understand my role more, despite a wobbly start. I made posters advertising my classes but it turned out most of the times people were already in lessons so no one turned up… cue new posters after about 3 days. Onwards and upwards! Gradually more people are starting to come and one student even brought me some chocolate from Oaxaca the other week which was really kind.
I do feel like my approach to conversation classes is a little informal though..I taught them about Jesters in my first ever class, as well as the phrase ‘single and ready to mingle’…and the other day I did a lesson on indie music which made me realise most indie songs have a lot of slang and inappropriate vocabulary – so all these Mexican students now know the meaning of ‘getting high’ and ‘scumbag’….
Apart from work I’ve been doing a lot more exploring the city, both as a tourist and just finding my way around and getting lost (a lot). I do also have a new boyfriend, Arturo, after assuming all Mexican men would be far too short for me (he’s Chilean). I manage to come out of the wrong metro exit EVERY TIME I go to visit him, it’s like some really rubbish depressing version of Narnia.
Sooo in the last couple of weeks I’ve been bridesmaid dress shopping with Laura (Mexican dresses are a little more extravagant to most of the ones you’d find in Britain…)
Though I have also found a really nice shopping centre near where I live that has Zara, Mango AND The Body Shop (heaven). And Arturo took me to the most amazing supermarket ever where I actually found Whittards tea – obviously it costs about £20, but still…
I’ve been to Coyoacán where I had churros with baileys and managed to get the majority of it over myself (they were really good though). We also went to the Palacio de Bellas Artes which is beautiful and has amazing murals on the walls. One night me and Laura went to the Lucha Libre, Mexican wrestling. It was pretty insane and very very fake but hilarious. Though it was slightly uncomfortable that they have a ‘pink fairy’ wrestler..not the most politically correct!
And we went on a very cultural trip to a tequila museum – I can’t remember much about how tequila is made except it’s from some kind of cactus. 
They do give you free samples of tequila and mezcal though! Here’s us enjoying some…
One weekend Arturo took me to Tepoztlan which is a beautiful town about an hour and a half out of the city, it was so nice to be out in the country! Even if it did end up being the rainiest day they’d had in about a month. We looked round the market and I bought a little Day of the Dead skull, then had crepes in a cute little cafe (Libelula = dragonfy, new vocab for you :P) 
Then we climbed a MASSIVE hill – I blamed my tiredness on the altitude, standard – to see the pyramid at the top which was really beautiful.
Even with these weird little racoons that tried to steal food from my bag.
Day to day life has just been more getting used to the food and to the transport – though Maricarmen incredibly sweetly bought a vegetarian cookbook and has now made me bubble and squeak, and spinach pie! 
I have also witnessed my first protests here as all the universities are on strike over the disappearance of the students in Iguala. This issue really seems to be bringing Mexicans together, and the protests I’ve seen were not just students but people from lots of different walks of life who have all been shocked by this story.
In other news I’m getting very sick of the commute to work as it feels like I waste all my time and money sitting on the metro. Although now that getting the metro doesn’t stress me out as much I’ve started to notice the surroundings more..on the metrobus they even have little informative series. There’s one on origins of plants, one on famous criminals, even one on Disney princesses (did you know Merida is the only princess with brothers? Well I do…) – it’s so entertaining I actually sometimes nearly miss my stop. The metro is a bit different though and mostly adverts on how to be a good, considerate person. And also adverts telling you to use condoms which is just really random…
However, the most important thing and what this post is really about is the Mexican weddings I’ve been to! A couple of weeks ago on Friday evening I went with Chris, two of his friends and Jenny to stay in her house near Cuautla. It’s in a gated community with signs everywhere showing what will happen to you if you try to rob the houses which seemed a little scary though I was assured it’s not that dangerous an area! Her house is really cute and it has a swimming pool shared with the rest of the street.
Even though we arrived at midnight I thought it would be a good idea to have a drink with Chris and his friends and ended up going to bed at 4am not feeling so great…and felt even worse the next day when we had to leave for the wedding at 12! Standing up for the ceremony wasn’t fun… but it was in the most beautiful place ever, a big garden with a river full of koi carp running through it and little bridges. There were even cages of parrots and toucans (here’s one of them eating my hair when I tried to have a picture with it).
The ceremony was fairly similar to an English one, except the groom has his ‘padrinos’ which is like a whole group of best men, and part of the ceremony is them putting a little rope round the bride and groom to link them, and giving them the rings as well as coins to signify wealth. They gave fans out to the women for the heat, as well as little bells to ring when the bride and groom went past.
After the ceremony we were given cocktails and canapes (though I was taking it slowly at that point so only had one pina colada..). They also had an ice cream machine with as many toppings as you wanted which I was a lot more excited about.
I met a lot of Chris’s friends and everyone was really nice though I did get pretty lost understanding them – basically this weekend consisted of not realising when I was meant to laugh at jokes and learning a lot of slang which I will never be able to use in a Southampton classroom…
The table was beautiful as well and in a marquee which was open on all sides so you could see the garden – we even had our own personalised bottles of mezcal, though I didn’t drink any because of this hiding at the bottom of it…
The food started at 3, I had a salad followed by mushroom soup followed by a bigger plate of salad (there was no vegetarian option). Then the best pudding ever which was a chocolate volcano with vanilla ice cream. 
And drinks were free ALL NIGHT! I kept expecting to have to start paying but the waiter just kept bringing us more..I drank a lot of ‘cubas’ as well as a gazillion ‘caballitos’ of tequila, jaeger and these weird little blue frozen ones. I skipped the baileys and mezcal because it looked a bit like gone off milk.
After the meal the bride and groom had their first dance which almost ended very badly when the fireworks set off near the stage set the end of her veil on fire…after that they started dancing salsa. I was wondering what else was still to happen since it was only 5 o’clock but nope, that’s when the dancing started! They even gave the women personalised flip flops so they didn’t have to wear heels!
I was scared of dancing salsa but it wasn’t as bad as I expected, though one guy did tell me I ‘need to learn’… It wasn’t all salsa though and I got very excited whenever an English song came on. At one point we were all dancing in a circle and everyone started chanting ‘Londres, Londres!’ (I didn’t have time to point out technically I’m not from London…) – this was not what I signed up for. But (thank God) at that point Saturday Night came on so I ended up teaching the routine to a group of Mexicans. Thanks for that life skill Sidmouth International School discos..I knew it would come in useful some day.
The dancing did have a few little interruptions – like when there was a Lucha Libre song and they gave out masks, and another time when they gave us all cowboy hats for some reason. Also they do the traditional throwing the bouquet here, to Single Ladies by Beyonce which was pretty amazing, and they also throw the bride’s garter – though not until every man at the party has had a shot first (standard). The wedding was beautiful but did have a rather dramatic ending when the groom punched the bride’s dad…
Then last weekend I went to my second Mexican wedding in as many weeks! This one was a friend of Arturo’s from work and was in Guanajuato which is about 4 hours from Mexico City, so we left at 5:30 on Saturday morning… It was worth the early start though because Guanajuato is definitely the best place I’ve been in Mexico, a really beautiful colonial town full of little streets and amazing buildings. Underneath the town are loads of now disused mines, and our hotel was actually in one of these which was really cool (though did mean I was nearly blinded when I went out in the morning and saw natural light!)
When we arrived on Saturday we went for lunch with Arturo’s friends and seemed to bump into people from his work on every street corner! I was pretty excited though because he works at the music channel Ritmoson, so when I watched the channel the other day I recognised a lot of the presenters from meeting them on random street corners in Guanajuato!
After lunch (I still could barely eat anything after being ill so sadly even salad was a struggle), we took the funicular up to see the statue of Pípila and amazing views across Guanajuato.
When we came down we visited Callejon del Beso, a street famous for being the meetingplace of forbidden lovers who would go there to kiss in secret. 
Then went to the university where the steps were covered in beautiful candles and flowers for Day of the Dead:
In the evening after an ill-advised nap which meant I had to get ready very quickly we went to the wedding, which was in a little garden outside a restaurant. It was so beautiful, though freezing cold at night so most people were wrapped up in coats and scarves! There was a lovely family atmosphere and both the bride and groom had children who were involved in the wedding and did reaadings which was really sweet. 
The food was basically constant rounds of snacks but we managed to strike a deal with one of the waiters that he’d bring me any vegetarian food first so I didn’t go hungry..cue me being brought a LOT of empanadas and various fried vegetable things. In my defence I was still on antibiotics so tragically couldn’t drink at the wedding..so I made up for it with food 😉
As it was a Mexican wedding there was many hours of dancing which was really fun – though after requesting Bailando by Enrique Iglesias we were very disappointed that the DJ put on some speeded-up remix version. All the hours of salsa practice for nothing…my dancing to YMCA was of course excellent however, and I even knew the Danza Kuduro dance better than Arturo (I’m basically more latina than him…)
On Sunday we tried to go to the Museo de las Momias but underestimated how far it was from the hotel (and how massive this hill was!) 
We were told we could take this path which ended up going through a cemetery – which turned out to be one of the craziest experiences I’ve had in Mexico so far. Because it was the Day of the Dead every grave was covered in flowers and candles and there were loads of people there just hanging out and eating food with their families by the gravesides. 
These guys were very busy running around with ladders to put flowers on cremation plaques: 
And one family had even paid for a band to play to their dead relative! 
It was so completely different to anything I’ve seen in Britain and a world away from any visit to a graveyard at home. After talking to my Mexican students they said Mexicans always laugh at death, celebrate it and remember the person instead of being sad, which seems like a much better attitude to have than the complete denial in most countries. Although it felt a little uncomfortable to be a tourist on such a family-oriented occasion, the atmosphere in the cemetery is something I’ll never forget.
So unsurprisingly there was no time for the mummy museum, but we did buy some souvenirs and then went to eat some snacks bought from nuns in a church, and saw these people wearing amazing Day of the Dead outfits, as well as some more great ofrendas! Then we headed back to Mexico City..though Sunday traffic coming back after the weekend made this a much longer trip than it should have been. However once we did get on the metro an impromptu concert by a street performer and a group of drunk people did entertain us for our whole journey on the blue line…
Apologies for this absolute essay of a post and well done if you got to the end of it! I’m so grateful to have been able to share the very special days of people who don’t even know me, and see how happy both couples obviously were. Though mostly it’s made me very excited to return to Britain in a little over a month and go to my brother Jack and his girlfriend Laura’s wedding..where I’ll know everyone and will be able to understand everything everyone says! And of course will actually be able to sing along to all the songs… Counting down the days now!