The Big Catch-up Part 2

Days in México: 275

Friday the 24th of October was an interesting day. I went with my school year group to the Tecnológico de Monterrey campus in Cordoba, a city about an hour and a half south of Veracruz. The university is new compared to most of the universities in Australia. We listened to talks from past students and talked to the tutors about the courses we want to study. It is a beautiful university and I had fun with my friends and catching up with some of the other exchange students who live in Cordoba and go to the school that shares some of the facilities. I want to study international or public relations and would like to do another exchange in university to a Spanish speaking country.

The university

On the bus with school friends

The next day I caught up with my first host family. We had lunch and saw the movie 'The Judge' which is a movie that I really enjoyed. It was so nice to spend time Mamá, Papá and Diego again. I do miss them but at the same time I am comfortable living with my current family. It felt a bit strange not having Dany with us to complete the family but she is now on her exchange in France.

Lunch with my first family

The last week of October was really busy! Día de los muertos is the Mexican traditional day to celebrate the dead. It is a really big event and I had parties on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights to celebrate it.
On Thursday night I went to a costume party hosted my the Villa Rica Rotary club. I had traditional Catrina makeup and a bright orange flor de muerto (flower of the dead) in my hair. It was the most popular costume idea and over half of the people at the party were Catrinas.
   

Lots of Catrinas

Another tradition is preparing an alter for the dead. They are decorated with flowers, skulls, food, drinks (normally with alcohol), candles and pictures. An alter was prepared at school and everyone was asked to submit a name of a family member who has passed away, to create a memorial.

The alter at school

All the names of the relatives

The name of my Oupa (Dad's dad)

Luckily classes were cancelled for Friday because that night I had 2 parties; a prefiesta with my school year group and a Halloween party afterwards.
The prefiesta was a pool party and arrived at the same time on a tram. It was a lot of fun and hopefully there will be another prefiesta before I leave in 2 months.

The tram

With friends at the prefiesta

The Halloween party was a costume party so I wore my costume my Hawaiian girl costume from the Colonial Night back in March. Most of the other exchange students from the city were there as well so we had a good time.

With friends from Brazil, Turkey and Japan

On the Saturday night my family had friends over and we had a little party. I was in charge of decorating the alter for the dead with some help from Jazmín. We had flowers, colourful paper cut-outs, candles and sugar skulls. One of the foods that was served was manzana con chamoy which is basically a Mexican version of a taffee apple but it isn't as sweet and is covered in chilli. The first bite was probably the worst because I didn't get any apple, only chilli but it wasn't too spicy.

The alter

Sugar skulls

Manzana con chamoy