Somehow it’s been nearly a month since my last blog post and I’ve now completed over two months in Mexico City! I haven’t written partly because I’ve been busy working on my research project (I handed in the report on Monday which means I can relax for about 2 days until the next deadline…) and also because I’ve mostly just been here in the city doing normal things and going to work. Doing the progress report wasn’t as bad as I expected in the end, though the risk assessment made me laugh. I don’t really feel like doing a few interviews with students I’ll probably already know from school is going to put me more at risk than anything else I do every day in this city…
Although I haven’t been up to loads there have been a few big events…most importantly that I moved on Friday! Although it was lovely to be looked after and feel safe living with a family the distance from work was getting really tiring so I decided to just start looking for somewhere else. Arturo immediately found a room which I saw on Thursday evening and moved in on Sunday, so it was all quite fast. It was kind of sad leaving but does mean I’ll never have to get the microbus again…The 2 other Mexican girls I live with have only just moved in too so there are a few teething problems, like to have hot water the kitchen tap has to be turned on…and I currently only have electricity in my room with a giant snake of extension cords which is slightly dangerous. But the girls are so lovely and it’s in a great area right next to a metro and loads of shops (I’m paying more here but luckily one of those shops is mega-cheap Walmart…), and about 20 minutes from work. And we have a neighbour who is amazing at the piano who I’m determined to meet and make friends with this year… Obviously I have to cook for myself here – cue me having to call home for them to remind me what recipes I normally eat… Here’s my new room!! 
At the moment we don’t have internet in the flat (apart from when we occasionally borrow it from a neighbour shhhhh)…So I’ve been spending far too much time in Starbucks and only buying the cheapest drinks possible. At the moment I’m trying to get in a Christmassy mood since I’m going home in 1 WEEK TODAY 😀 😀 😀 I haven’t been so excited about anything in possibly forever…My 2 weeks at home are gonna be very busy with my brother’s wedding and Christmas as well as Arturo coming to stay for a few days so I’m sure it’ll go really fast. Therefore I’m determined to make the most of every day and have already demanded a different pudding every day as well as an English breakfast on the way home from the airport. It’s gonna be a full programme of festive activities (prepare yourselves everyone I know) 😉 Mexico City doesn’t have the greatest Christmas atmosphere although they do have some great decorations here..most of my festivities have involved negotiating deals for Christmas presents from market sellers…
Work has been good this month and I’ve been getting regular students coming who are lovely…they keep giving me presents which is incredibly sweet (I think this may be because they think I’m not paid and feel sorry for me though…)
I’ve made friends with the guy who works at the coffee shop next door in the hope of getting free drinks at some point..he did tell me I’m his favourite customer so my plan’s going pretty well so far. I did a class on gameshows the other day and we played Would I Lie To You which was really fun and revealed a lot about my students that I didn’t know..like that one of them had left her fiancé 2 weeks before her wedding…scandalous!
I’ve done a few things outside of the school with some students too, including going to a really lovely tea shop where you take your shoes off and basically sit on beds which was fun – they let me choose the flavour and for some reason I picked a weird toffee one but it was still tasty 🙂 
I also went to Bellini with Susana which is a REVOLVING restaurant at the top of the World Trade Centre!! It was really cool but pretty expensive so we basically just ate salad – you don’t really feel the movement but it was weird when I realised the toilets were no longer right behind us but on the other side of the restaurant…
The other day we went to Coyoacán and took the ‘tranvia’ tour which is in a little tram, it was cool to see the whole area…it really doesn’t feel like part of the city at all! 
Then we went to the Museo Frida Kahlo which I hadn’t managed to go to yet, it’s a beautiful house and was cool to find out more about her life and see her clothes and paintings…even if you do have to pay to take photos(!) 
After that we had a lunch with a set menu which was soup, spaghetti, tacos and jelly. A little odd..but it all cost 50 pesos which is 2 POUNDS 50 so I was very happy.
I’ve also been out a couple of times so I have now experienced Mexican clubs! Basically like British ones except people are better at dancing and sometimes you have to do salsa which is rubbish. Also buying alcohol is really strange, instead of just going and getting your own drink you order communal ones – like a bottle of spirits or a big crate of beers which they bring to your table. Which obviously meant I kept forgetting to pay anyone and ended up basically spending no money…Also taxi drivers here are more lax with numbers allowed in, we managed to fit 7 people in the back of one which was interesting to say the least! I’ve been to a couple of Latin music concerts as well with Arturo which was fun though not knowing any of the songs is a bit weird when everyone else is going crazy and screaming the lyrics! In the end I made him tell me each line in advance so I could sing along too…
Also earlier in the month there was a long weekend so Laura and me went to Veracruz for a few days. I carted all my stuff to work on the metrobus in the morning so we went to the bus station straight after. We bought the cheapest ticket which stopped in a million places – and didn’t actually leave for another few hours… So we did the only sensible thing and found a shop which sold beer to very classily drank them in the bus station. The journey took 7 hours but wasn’t too bad – although the coach disappointingly had no TV, and no toilets. When we asked when the breaks would be the driver (who seemed to have fallen in love with Laura) basically just said whenever we told him to stop he would. This seems like a slightly flawed policy in terms of efficiency of arrival times etc but it worked for us.
Unfortunately I also discovered that all Mexican bus stations only seem to have one shop which sells snacks like crisps and chocolate but no real food, so I lived on pinguinitios which are basically like mini rolls…not the healthiest of weekends!
We arrived really late but woke up a bit once we got to the hotel and discovered the Costa Rican Olympic team were staying there too! There was some American and Caribbean games happening so there were Olympic athletes all over the town…the meeting area was right next to the swimming pool so we could spy on them every time we went there..as well as feel guilty about lying next to the pool eating chocolate instead of actually swimming.
On the first day in Veracruz we went into the town, which I have christened the Southampton of Mexico because it’s basically quite an ugly city by the sea – even my guidebook called it a ‘grizzled port city’…
Despite this I did actually love it there because the atmosphere was great, kind of a Caribbean vibe with fun music everywhere, and everyone was so relaxed. We went to the Gran Café Parroquia which is famous for its coffee – you order lechero and they bring you an espresso then pour it into your glass from a unnecessarily dangerous height.
We also had molletes which is basically just cheese on toast with frijoles but are my favourite thing ever.
They’ve become my new hungover comfort food…along with esquites, corn on the cob which they put in a cup and cover with mayonnaise and cheese and lime, mmmmm 🙂 Here’s an nice photo montage to esquites for your enjoyment:
We did some souvenir buying (after a lot of puzzled looks I discovered the word for a fridge magnet is actually ‘imán’, not ‘magnetico’…thanks Arturo for that false information) then went on a tour bus which was open on all sides so it felt a lot like you might fall out at any moment. 
We couldn’t actually hear any of what they were saying but it was fun anyway. I’ve never been called ‘guera’ (‘blondie’) so much in my life though…people stared even more than in Mexico City!
We decided to take advantage of it and played a game which involved getting waved at by the most people on the street. I won the game because I managed to get a wave from a group of very serious looking soldiers with guns (this is still under dispute with Laura though…)
After that we went for very early 2 for 1 cocktails and made friends with the guy that worked there (fondly nicknamed Gustavs)
After going swimming and playing Never Have I Ever with beers by the pool (in case you were wondering, no it doesn’t really work with 2 people), we went for food.
When I ordered melted cheese tortillas I didn’t realise it really would be cheese with tortillas…
While trying to digest that we went back to the bar and had more cocktails. Then on Sunday we went to find a beach..basically everyone I talked to said Veracruz is nice but the beach is horrible and we should go to Cancun instead. Only having one weekend this wasn’t really possible but we were determined to make the most of it! We went to Boca del Rio and got a ‘lancha’ (basically a tiny boat) round the bay. 
We managed to get a discount thanks to Laura’s hard bargaining which involved looking sad and saying ‘somos muy pobres’ – ‘we are very poor’… They took us to the Isla de Sacrificios where in the past they used to do human sacrifices, and then to ‘Cancuncito’, a tiny sand bar where the water is clearer and it’s supposedly like Cancun.
Unfortunately the tide was up so we only got out for about half an hour to take photos and swim a bit. One of the guys from the boat kept giving us weird sea creatures to hold ‘for a photo! for a photo!’ – after about 30 photos I had to break it to him that we probably had enough now…
The highlight of the trip was this random guy who we asked to take a photo of us…when we got the phone back this was what we found:
When we got back to the beach we learned it’s better not to eat at the cafes actually on the beach, after I bought the most expensive orange juice of my life. We bought esquites instead and some guy attempted to serenade me and said he just wants to be ‘very very good friends’, so after that we decided to head back to the safety of the hotel…
On Monday we had to go back to the city which was very depressing, arriving back and having to take the metro wasn’t much fun and I definitely had post-holiday blues for the rest of the week! I’m excited to plan my next trip though which will be at New Year. My friend Faith’s coming and we want to go to Oaxaca hopefully, although at the moment we have done a slightly worrying lack of planning…
So here are some more things I have learnt 2 months into my year abroad…
1. If you come to Mexico City, bring a coat. I was very unprepared for it to be 5 degrees in the morning! Also I didn’t think I would but I have definitely adapted to the temperature, sometimes I can’t believe it when I see how many degrees it actually is..the other day I saw some tourists in harem trousers and vest tops and I was wearing about three cardigans and a scarf….
2. Everyone bribes everyone in Mexico..when we went out we got stopped for having beers in the street and one of the guys just paid the police officer to leave us alone, which seems to be a very common occurence – and even more so in the government according to my students.
3. Also some Mexican laws are shocking..I found out yesterday the minimum wage here is 60 pesos a day which is only about £3, and the taxes are among the highest in the world.
4. British people don’t take much seriously..I didn’t ever really think about our sense of humour until I came here and realised I find it very hard to talk about serious things without making sarcastic comments or laughing it off (which people here tend not to understand and think you’re just being rude…)
5. Also people are a lot more sincere and open in the things they say to and about you..some of the things my students say would sound very strange coming from a British person. It’s hard to respond properly and not just be awkward and say something like ‘LOL! Thanks pal…’
6. Street names are impossible to pronounce. And so are supermarkets…’Chedraui’ anyone?
7. Speaking 2 different languages all the time can get confusing..it’s got to the point where after speaking Spanish for hours with friends or Arturo I forget I’m speaking it which is a good sign..but it doesn’t help having a Chilean boyfriend in Mexico as a lot of the words he teaches me aren’t actually used here…And going to see a Romanian film with Spanish subtitles the other day was almost one language too many!
8. As good as you get at a language it’s still easy to confuse words..the other day I said ‘patrocinador’ for patronising which actually means someone’s your sponsor and pays for you. And when I saw ‘no te pierdes’ on an advert for Buenos Aires I was very confused since I thought it meant ‘don’t get lost’ (not much of an advert)…it turns out it’s more like don’t miss the opportunity!
9. People sell anything for money here..on the beach in Veracruz no one was selling ice cream, but there was a guy selling different types of cheese…! Some of the things people do are just dangerous, like fire throwing or a guy on the metro who lay down on broken glass to get money.
10. Apparently I was born to live in a country with natural disasters..on my first night in the new flat the next day everyone was asking me if I’d felt the tremor the night before..it seems I managed to sleep through my first ever earthquake :/
11. It always surprises me what people do and don’t know about Britain here…the other day a teenage class already knew what a Yule Log was, but none of the adults had ever seen or heard of a parsnip! And no one seems to know who the prime minister is or who’s next in line to the throne yet they all know the entire life story of Princess Diana and constantly ask me if I think the conspiracy theories are true…
12. After bringing some Marmite to my food lesson I’ve learned that the ‘love it or hate it’ slogan is definitely right…
Next time I update you will be after my trip back to England so I will tell you all about the wedding 😀 (Though not technically related to my year abroad…) Hasta pronto!!