And México is out...

Days in México: 140

This past week has been relaxing. I have watched a couple of movies that I have wanted to see for a while and have been to the pool a couple of times.

Monday afternoon (Perth time) I was interviewed on the radio in Perth. It was on 720 ABC which is the highest rating am station in Perth. As a part of the radio show's World Cup coverage, they are interviewing people from Perth who now live in the 31 other countries that are participating in the World Cup. It was recorded over Skype at 11pm local time for me so I sounded a bit tired and my sentences at times sound disconnected. I also hadn't had a conversation in English all day so at times I was lost for words. 
Click here to listen to the interview

Thursday night I went with my family to support Diego at his school. As a project, the students put on a fashion show that had an oceanic theme where the clothes were made out of recycled things or incorporated an idea associated with an aspect of the sea. There were some amazing dresses made from things like newspaper and fishing net that the students put a lot of effort in to. There were also some creative choices like a yellow submarine themed outfit.

La Salle Fashion Show 2014

During the week when I was at the mall with my family, we went in to the pet shop. I was having a look at the animals and came across one that I had never seen or heard of before- a chinchilla. It has the body and ears of a large rat, has the tail and fur of a squirrel and has the whiskers of and bounces around like a rabbit. It was probably the strangest animal I have ever seen!

Chinchilla 

Saturday was a busy day! In the morning I went to the outbound meeting for all the students who will be leaving my district in Mexico in the next couple of months. There are over 50 students leaving the district to go to countries all over the world. There is only one person going to Australia and her name is Lorna. She will be going to my district in Western Australia so I will get to meet her again in late January when I return.

District 4190 outbounds 2014-2015 

On Saturday night Diego, Dany and I went to our neighbour's 15th birthday party. In Mexico, the 15th birthday (XV años) is a really big event, especially for girls. It is celebrated with a big party for family and friends. There was lots of dancing after a heart-felt speech from the father and lots of photos.

Today (Sunday Mexico time), Mexico unfortunately lost in the World Cup football game against Holland. I watched the game with my family and next door neighbours with brunch because it started at 11am. It was a controversial win that I think it should have ended in a 1-1 tie because the umpire awarded a penalty to Holland in front of their goal with 2 minutes left of the game in additional time. The penalty was awarded because one of the players for Mexico was given a yellow card, even though he didn't do anything wrong. It now means that Mexico is no longer in the World Cup competition. 

Before the game

Summer Vacations!

Days in México: 133

I have completed my first semester at school in Mexico and I am now officially on Summer Vacations!

Tuesday was my last day of school and it was a really relaxed day. Most of the teachers hadn't prepared anything for the class because they knew that everyone would be too excited about the football game later that day to be focused on doing any work. All the students have another set of exams before their holidays start in a week. Next semester I am aiming to do all the exams because I will hopefully understand everything being said in class, but until then I will focus on learning more Spanish. I will return to school in 2 months for 5th semester of Bachillerato which is the equivalent of year 12.

Having fun on the last day- I am becoming Mexican

Tuesday was also the day that Mexico tied 0-0 with Brazil in the World Cup. Out of the class of 35, only 8 people were there for the final lesson, all the rest went home early to watch the football (me included.) It was an exciting game and I now have a favourite player- Guillermo Ochoa (the goal keeper for Mexico.) If you didn't here in the news, he did an amazing job and saved a goal on the goal line. If the ball had gone 1cm further, Mexico would have lost the game. Since that moment in the game I have seen a lot of posts about Ochoa. Here are a couple of them...

Lord of the Rings reference

Wednesday was the first day of vacations and I was able to watch the whole football game between Australia and Netherlands because it started at 11am local time. To celebrate, for breakfast I had a traditional Australian breakfast with a Mexican twist; a cold milo with a Vegemite and cheese quesadilla. My milo supply is looking rather low so from now on I have to save it only for special occasions.

My 'Mexicaussie' breakfast

Even though they lost 2-3, Australia did an amazing job against Netherlands. The teams were tied for most of the game and at one point the Aussies were winning, but unfortunately not for long. The next match for both Australia and Mexico is tomorrow, one at 11am and the other at 3pm so I will be able to watch both.

On Friday night I went out with Mamá, Dany, Brenda (friend from school) and Brenda's mum to a fashion show. It was black and white themed and showcased the work of 8 young, local designers. It was a really great night and I had lots of fun dressing up for the occasion.

Me, Brenda and Dany

The runway

The Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Games are about 150 days away and one of the stadiums is currently being built about 5 minutes away from my current house. We drove past the site yesterday and I couldn't see much but in the photo I took you can see the bleacher stands at the back and an open field in the middle. It is under construction and more progress will be made as the CAC games get closer.

It's currently a construction sight but this will be one of the new stadiums

Feliz Día del Padre

Days in México: 126

Monday was the last day of school for the seniors before they started exams. The rest of the school decided to surprise them towards the end of the day by hiding behind the balcony and then standing up and showering them with balloons. The balloons all had messages on them, wishing the graduates the best for the future. Then at recess break, the celebrations were joined with a band was playing Mariachi which is a typical type of Mexican folk music.

'Suerte' means luck in English

The seniors

Mariachi

For lunch that day, I ate cactus. Yes, you did read that correctly, cactus.
In Spanish it is called 'nopal' and I are it grilled to take out the crunch that raw cactus has. It didn't really have a taste like anything so I had it with lemon and a bit of salt to add flavour. Inside it had a sticky, saliva like solution mixed with a flesh like texture. I didn't mind it and would definitely eat it again.

Grilled cactus

At school, each group collectively earns 'minutos' for good behaviour. When each group has enough minutos, they can be exchanged for rewards. My group, 4B, exchanged our minutos for a day off school for last Friday. We also decided that on our day off we would all go out for breakfast. We went to La Parroquia, which was a restaurant I visited with my family a couple of weeks ago that serves traditional Veracruz food and we had a great time.

On Friday night the National Ballet of Russia was in Veracruz for one night only, so I went with one of my friends from school, Brenda. It was at the Teatro de la Reforma which is the main theatre in Veracruz. They performed Swan Lake, which is one of my favourite ballets. Lots of the dance companies from around the world don't visit Australia on tour because it is so far away so I'm glad I had the opportunity to go. It was a really great show but lots of the dancers were sunburnt because the sun in Mexico is a lot stronger then what they are use to in Russia.

Teatro de la Reforma

Brenda and I

The World Cup started last Thursday and the whole city has gone full out to support their teams. There are lots of Mexico shirts but I have also seen people supporting Spain, Brazil and Italy. Mexico's first game was on Friday (Mexico time) against Cameroon which they won 1-0. Australia's first game was on the same day against Chile, but they lost 3-1. I wasn't able to watch the game because I was at the ballet but I had a friend sending me regular updates.

On Saturday, we went out for seafood for lunch. I'm not a big seafood fan but I gave everything a go. My favourite was probably the tuna tacos which were made with blue tortillas. Blue tortillas don't have any food colouring in but they are blue because they are made from blue corn. I tried octopus for the first time on octopus tostadas, which unexpectedly had quite a lot of chili in! I still managed to eat it all and then drank a whole bottle of water straight after.

Tuna tacos with blue tortillas

Octopus tostadas 

Today (Sunday the 15th of June), is the Día del Padre (Fathers' Day.) For breakfast, we went to Xalapa (pronounced 'Halapa') which is the capital city of Veracruz. It's about an hour and a half away by car. Afterward breakfast we went to the plaza which was bigger than the plazas in Boca del Rio but smaller than the plaza in Mexico City. In the plaza there was an eating area which was set out as an old-fashioned outdoor square. The shops and restaurants were all two story buildings that each had a different design. The roof was painted to look like a sky with clouds in it. I really loved the layout because it was relaxing. 

Saying goodbye is hard (part 2)

Days in México: 122

I wasn't sure where the bus was going when we left Boca del Rio at 8am on Friday morning. I was with 13 other exchange students so they explained that we were going north-east on the Ruta Tajin.

We were all excited and talked a lot for the first half an hour, then we slept the rest of the way because there wasn't much else to do. The trip to the hotel took about four and a half hours and everyone was glad to get off the bus when we arrived. The first thing we did was pick our cabins. I was with Emma from Finland, Maike from Germany and Céline from Belguim. I shared a room with Céline.

The cabins

Belgium and Australian flags above our beds

After lunch we were given free time so we went in to town. Papantla is a small town with not many shops. The main building that stood out in the town was the church. It was a prominent style of architecture and was really big, but we didn't stop to have a look inside it. We found a nice cafe and I had a really delicious Oreo frappe.

Corpus Christi church in Papantla

My delicious Oreo frappe

It was raining a lot so we mainly stayed around the town centre which was marked with an outdoor, two level structure. We took lots of photos while we waited for the rain to stop...

Céline (Belgium), Emma (Finland), Me (Australia) and Maike (Germany)

 We were then joined by some of the other exchange students...

The design on the roof of the sheltered area

The rain eased off a bit so we went to the markets which were in the lower level of a building across from the town centre. The markets were a maze of stalls and passages that all looked the same. Surprisingly, it wasn't very busy. We then went back to the hotel because it was raining really hard and didn't look like it was going to stop.

Saturday was another rainy day. We all went by bus to Tecolutla which was about an hour away. The original plan was to go on a boat ride on the river but it was raining too hard for that. We took some photos in the brief pause of rain before walking down the road to the aquarium.

The river

Emma, Maike, Céline and I

A map of the region

The aquarium was small and had animals that you wouldn't normally find in an aquarium like birds and rabbits. In Australia, I'm pretty sure keeping animals in these conditions would have been illegal and I didn't like it.

We still had an hour and a half before lunch so we went to a turtle conservatory on the beach. Hundreds of baby turtles had hatched earlier that day so we were allowed to pick one up and name is. I named mine 'Squirt', which is the name of the baby turtle on Finding Nemo (a movie set in the ocean off the east coast of Australia.)

Squirt

Lots of baby turtles!

We went back to the hotel after lunch and the rain stopped so we relaxed by the pool. We were enjoying the sunshine until more clouds came and it started to rain again.

On Sunday morning we went to the Tajin. The Tajin loosely translates to 'The City of the Thunder God' and was build around about 600-1200 A.D. It is a World Heritage site but only about 35% of it is open to the public. There were quite a few pyramids on the site and there was a lot of walking involved. Before the entrance there were markets for souvenirs and food which we had a look at after walking around the pyramids.

The markets at the Tajin

The main pyramid is called the 'Pyramid of Niches' and has 7 layers of niches (large indented box bricks.) There are 365 niches in total, one for each day of the year.

Looking up from the base of the 'Pyramid of Niches'

The back of the 'Pyramid of Niches.' You can clearly see the 7 layers and the individual niches

There was a hill that overlooked most of the Tajin. From the top was an amazing view!!!

Out the front of the Tajin was the Voladores de Papantla (Papantla Flyers in English.) At first it looks like a pole with a square structure at the top of it, but then I realised that there are five people at the top and four of them had their feet bound by rope to the corners of the square at the top. The one person who wasn't attached by rope stood in the middle and played a drum. One of the 'flyers' accompanied him on the flute as the four attached by rope fall off the structure backwards. The rope that was attached to their feet was curled around the pole beforehand so they swung around the pole as they descend. I had my camera and iPod with me so my right hand was filming with my iPod as my left hand was taking photos on the camera.

We returned to the hotel to pack our bags and say our final goodbyes to three of the exchange students who weren't catching the bus back with the rest of us. We were all so tired from walking around at the Tajin so almost everyone slept for most of the trip back to Veracruz.

We used our flags as blankets on the bus. This is someone from Germany sleeping.

Some of the Brazilian exchange students had a bag of lychees, which is a type of fruit. I had never eaten fresh lychees before so I tried one. I remembered they were my Ouma's (grandma in Afrikaans) favourite fruit but I've only ever seen them as canned fruit.

A lychee

 To eat a lychee, first you peel off the outer shell to get to the white, fleshy fruit.

You then eat it, being careful of the black seed in the middle of it. I didn't mind the taste of it but it was a bit too sweet for me.

Part of the route we took coming home was along the coast. The scenery out the window was mainly rivers and fields of corn plants. Surprisingly, I didn't see any cactus plants.

Rivers leading to the sea

Corn fields

We arrived back in Veracruz at night and we said our final goodbyes. After spending the weekend having an amazing time with the other exchangers, it was hard to say goodbye, knowing that we will probably never be together like that again. It's bittersweet having friends around the world, it's nonstop fun when you are together but you live a thousand miles apart and hardly get to see each other.

Ruta Tajin, District 4190 2013-2014