reflexión

Summary of my semester in Mexico:
Pictures taken: 6121
Days in Mexico:160
Classes cancelled: 24 (out of 108)
Weeks where I had every single class: 4 (out of 18)
Days traveling: 48
States visited: 14, and the DF (Mexico City)
Favorite City: Guanajuato
Favorite Centro: Querétaro (historic), Puerto Vallarta (touristic)
Favorite Place: Puerto Escondido
Only casualty: ipod (lost in Hidalgo)
I didn’t even really get sick, not even from the food!

Things I’ll miss about Mexico:
-my wonderful host family
-the ease and low costs of traveling
-seeing adorable babies everywhere
-how nice everyone is
-so many vacation days from school
-walking to school
-the plazas downtown
-fresh fruit, cajeta, and nieve
-pretty, mountainous views

Things I’m excited to get back to:
-family/friends
-understanding every single word that someone is saying to me, and being able to say exactly what I’m trying to say
-bathrooms that are generally clean, have toilet seats and toilet paper, where you can flush the toilet paper
-lakes
-clean drinking water…I can’t wait to be able to drink a ton of free water in restaurants, and to be able to find drinking fountains again
-my car, and very few speed bumps
-eating what I want when I want (the eating schedule was so varied, lunch was anywhere between 2 and 5, dinner between 8 and 11)
-turkey sandwiches. Most Mexicans felt the same way about ham as I feel about turkey
-a shower that’s always warm and has decent water pressure
-Hope College, where I actually understand the system
-Air conditioning and heat
-debit card and money, most of the ATMs in Mexico give you 200 or 500 bills, and it’s hard to get change, especially if you’re wanting to buy things in the market that cost 20 pesos.
-safety…kids don’t sit in seats, they bounce around…some times the drivers have babies on their laps! Also, cars don’t stop or make room for ambulances.

Obviously I thought a lot about language during my 5 months. Language absolutely fascinates me…the fact that some words are so similar and others are so different from English, that the sentence structures can vary so much.
People in Mexico are kind of funny. When someone finds out that you speak Spanish, they immediately ask “do you speak well?” How can you answer that? I feel like when I find out someone speaks English, I’d ask how long they’ve spoken or where they learned…not if they speak well. Also, sometimes when I meet someone and listen to them talk for a while, they say “wow, you speak perfectly!” when really all I’ve done is listen. Listening and speaking are SO different. I’ve said before that they’re usually excited when they find out that you speak Spanish, but they’re also pretty excited to show you that they speak English. Even when I greet someone in Spanish, usually they ask ‘where are you from?’ in English. Also, it’s quite amazing how well people can understand me, despite the fact that I have absolutely no Spanish accent and my pronunciation in general is just not good. (I blame this on my speech impediment that I had as a child…) Anyway, when someone who doesn’t natively speak English speaks to me, I usually have a hard time understanding them, but I’ve had a quite few people here tell me that they can understand me perfectly. I think this probably has to do with the fact that English is harder to pronounce, as the vowel sounds change so much from word to word. All of that being said, I have improved a lot during my time here, but not as much as I would have liked to. My listening has improved a lot faster than talking, that’s for sure.

What a semester it was. I was sad to leave, but definitely ready to come home. Thank you so much to everyone who read along, prayed for me, and encouraged me throughout the semester.

Two more photo albums:
various photos from downtown Querétaro: el centro
various panoramic photos from all over Mexico: panoramics