My Quest in Querétaro: April 2014

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

It's almost finals week!

I realized I hadn't updated this blog for a while and then I realized that I won't have that many more posts until I'm back in the US! That's a scary and exciting thought to behold! After Semana Santa, I feel like among the Americans at least, there is a longing to go back to the US again and go back to our "normal lives" and what we perceive to be "normal." Nothing new left to explore, we have explored all that there is (within reason - I don't know of anyone who went to the North of Mexico). I have only 3 more class periods of each of my classes and then it is finals week! YIKES! On the bright side, my professor nonchalantly told me that we won't be doing the last four assignments of the semester that are on the syllabus and that we will only have to do our little essay over 2 books we read - the essay which I have already completed 90% of! That was music to my ears! Back to the longings to go home: Anyways, my original flight date for going back to the US was set for May 22, but then I realized that my last final is May 16. What on earth could I do for that time in between?! I thought and thought and talked to people and a ton of people are heading out (those who don't have their visas) back to their home countries before the 22nd. My roommate is leaving like the 13th or 14th I believe. After not coming up with anything I could do to occupy my time with or find people to hang out with for that time, I thought "hmm, maybe I will see if I can go home earlier" After all, if I go home earlier that means I can see my family and friends a lot sooner, and I won't have to pay for rent for those extra days. So I called Hotwire and talked to 2 very kind gentlemen - It pays to be kind to customer service because then they will be so nice and informative to you! Anyways, they told me there would be a fee of $200 for changing my flight date, but then there was also the airfare differences as well. After the man figured it out, and did the deductions necessary, it was only going to be a $5.00 fee to fly back on May 17th instead of May 22nd! I was so thrilled and definitely took that opportunity and accepted that offer!

Also, I was recently reading my friend Jenn's blog about her internship study abroad adventures in Scotland and she was explaining manners and such and the differences between manners of people from different places and then that got me thinking to the manners in Mexico and I have to say, I have become so accustomed to the manners here, where I find it rude to not kiss someone or be kissed on the cheek upon greeting no matter if you are male or female. How ironic because it's the complete opposite in the US! I have also become accustomed to the occasional cars beeping their horns or whistling at me when I'm walking to or from school. That's something you never have to worry about in the US, but just because Americans aren't being outright with their actions about seeing an attractive person walking along the street, it doesn't mean that they aren't thinking it. I've learned to definitely be aware of what I'm wearing and of my modesty. I would like to say that I dress modestly all the time, but when you get whistled at or a car beeps their horn at you, you definitely think about your modesty a lot more and try to be the modest you can be with 80 - 90 degree weather. As a Christian, the last thing I want is to cause other people to fall into lust, and with the whistling and horn beeping, it definitely made me realize that people notice other people and notice you a lot more than you think they do, and like I also said before - in American, just because people aren't being outright with their actions, they are definitely noticing you.

Those are my thoughts for the day! It's currently about 5:30 pm and I have yet to eat lunch, and dinner. so it will be combined. haha. I'm finally adjusting to the eating times here! breakfast whenever you get up - which was about noon for me today (I had a movie night last night on netflix!) and then ate my breakfast at like 12:30 which was a dense french toast with a concoction of chocolate oatmeal syrup instead of regular syrup. And then lunch is usually at 3 pm but I wasn't hungry so I worked on my homework and dinner ranges from like 7 pm to 9 or so. I guess I will be having a really late lunch and an early dinner and then a second mini dinner at like 10 pm before I have another movie night! (Perks on only having classes Tuesday and Friday).

Hasta Luego!

Saturday, April 19, 2014

more spring break pictures

My delicious pita. SO GOOD. It was quite hard to eat though. I had to use my hands and to many of you who already know - I don't like using my fingers to eat foods, I love using silverware.

delicious iced cappuccino that I ate with my burrito in the picture below. It doesn't sound like it would go good together but it does! The cappuccino mellows out the spicyness of the burrito.

Little mayan village

a machine the mayans in this village use to make blankets - when they don't make them by hand. Hand made ones are definitely more preferred though and more beautiful.

CAVE!

we went swimming in this cave. the water was about 70 degrees, so it was really cold compared to the ocean which had to of been at least 85 degrees.

Chichen Itza

Now that spring break is over.

I'm back from Spring break no unfortunately! It was so much fun though! I got to do a whole bunch of things that I can't do in the US or in Michigan like snorkel, swim in caves, visit a million pyramids and a Mayan village. It was really cool! I am glad to be back to reality - well, kinda. I only have classes Tuesday and Friday now that Salsa is officially over with. And tomorrow is Easter! I have no idea what my host family is doing for Easter, but I do know that it's obviously Semana Santa week so people have been spending a ton of time with families and extended relatives since like Wednesday. I have officially began a countdown until I will be back in the US. One month from this coming Tuesday! I truly am excited to get back to the US because I am missing my family and American traditions and customs now. Everything in Mexico seems like normal now - no more fascination or beginner's traveling excitement. The "honeymoon" stage of studying abroad is over. haha. When I say I have one month left until I'm back home - that means 2 weeks of classes left and then 2 weeks for finals. But I only have 1 final exam. The other 3 are projects/presentations, which means I have to work super hard for the next 2 weeks to get everything done! Spring break came at the right time because it was a needed break, especially before these "work weeks" that are ahead.

I'm putting pictures up of the rest of my spring break trip in a different post because the pictures take forever to load! Anyways, towards the end of our trip, we went to Chichen Itza, which is a pre-Colombian city built by the Mayans and a cool fact is that the earliest hieroglyphic date discovered there is equivalent to 832 AD. After visiting this place, we swam in a cave! It was cool! and the water was very chilly - like 70 degrees and there were these black catfish looking things in the water! It was kind of creepy! I have swam with so many fish since I've been here though, it's crazy. I have swam with fish far away from me at the bottom of the ocean, and swam with fish in a cave.

That's about all that I had left to say about my spring break trip! Hasta luego!