photo fun

Waiting for the parade at Carnaval in Veracruz. (Note the massive beer cups...and these weren´t the biggest available...)

After the parade was over the floats were just hanging out on some side street, people were climbing on them and taking pictures...so we did too.

The first night in Tlacotalpan. Elena and Tina are trying to figure out the ripstick...a skateboard like toy that some kids were playing with in the plaza. ps doesn´t the city look magical/haunted?!

Tlacotalpan by day...bright colors, beautiful buildings.

I absolutely had to include this...Elena and I are very, very excited...why? well... it was our first ride in the back of a pickup truck here in México, haha! trust me, it won´t be the last...

grilled rabbit

Hey all!

I feel mildly overwhelmed in starting this because I haven’t written in so long and I’ve done sooo much. I’ll see if I can’t just highlight some things.

So I had a brilliant epiphany, just yesterday actually, that everyday I spend here I fall in love a little more… with the city, with the people, with the lifestyle… The city is huge, so I doubt I’ll ever get to know all of it, but everyday I’m a bit more comfortable with it and get to know different places and areas of town, which is really fun.

Ok so here goes… A couple weekends ago I went to Veracruz with Elena, Tina and Gabrielle, for Carnival, which is Mardi Gras, Mexican style. What it entailed was a billion people (more or less), a huge parade, a massive free concert by Jaguares, beer in very large containers, more people, dancing, LOTS of food (mango on a stick, yum),more beer, ….you get the picture. It was fun for one night, a little too crazy for more than that (the festivities last a week). The parade scheduled to arrive at 8 where we were sitting showed up promptly at 10:30, and then we only saw 25 minutes of it because we thought it ended… turns out, it hadn’t, there was just a very long pause in the middle with out floats and people and whatnot... It was good though because we went to catch the end of the concert, which was awesome. The next day we traveled a little further south to a pueblo called Tlacotalpan; it was probably one of the most beautiful little towns ever. It is almost impossible to explain, but the town was so perfect and beautiful it was terrifying, we were pretty sure we were living a horror movie. Elena and I are working on the script, I’ll keep you posted…Anyway, we spent the night sleeping 5 people on two pushed together double beds and one on a cot, it was cozy :) The next day we wondered all around town, ate…a lot (I can’t stress this enough), took a boat ride, watched the filming of a Mexican soap opera, attempted to rent bikes (failed)…

Oh! Something important, I discovered the key to meeting people, there are really only two factors. 1. go out on the town (duh) 2. go to school... at the actual Mexican University. Easy enough, right? My philosophy class the UV has been really cool because it is a really great way to meet people that don’t usually hang out with “gringos”. They told me that it is pretty rare that there are foreigners in that department, so everyone is really friendly and wants to chat. Last week the teacher didn’t showed up for class, something that is far from uncommon here, especially in the beginning of the semester, but everyone just hung around chatting for an hour. I thought it was a pretty productive day as far as practicing Spanish goes :)

Ok last weekend went something like this:
-Ultimate Frisbee game à my team lost
-Party and delicious dinner of pizza and pasta provided by Gabrielle (from Italy…) and Rodrigo
-Unintentional bus tour of Xalapa..turns out the buses do not run circular routes and sometimes stop atop mountains in the outskirts of town…
-Day in the sun at the pool with Elena, Hector, and Jacob, followed by dinner and guitar hero (My skills are rusty…Jenna, what are the chances we can permanently borrow GH from Isaac next year?)
-Naulinco with Ana, her mom, and Elena. It is a funny little town where every shop sells shoes…well, boots mostly…and anything else made of leather. And I’m not exaggerating when I say EVERY shop. oh yeah, this is where the blog tittle comes in, Ana´s mom was shocked that we hadn´t eaten rabbit before, so we had to get some on the way to the town. I, of course, made some smart ass comment about the lack of meat on a rabbit, as it turns out, they are not only delicious, but one was sufficent for the four of us...haha.
-Um…you can also insert the words [hanging out/gathering of friends/party(!?)] between most of these events…

This is really long and I have sticky, yellow hands from a mango, so I’m going to go. But really I have more to say and pictures to share, so I’ll do that soon. love.