First week of uni

Monday was our first day of school. With 33 degrees we walked to the bus in our uniform. After New Zealand I thought it would have been the first and last time that I would use a uniform but nope. Sweating like a pig in closed shoes, long pants and a blouse we took the bus to school. The bus drops us off on the other side of street which means we had to cross the super busy and quite dangerous street. After a week I am quite used to it now to cross the street running like a fool hoping not the be killed. Or waiting for 10 minutes on the side cause there’s too many cars. The school looks a bit American, with a school campus, different buildings, and big ‘A’ letters from Anahuac (name of my university) everywhere. It also has a big American football field with seats around it. We took a year picture there actually. Anyway our classes started at 17.30 so after we literally looked for 20 minutes we found our class. As our subjects are from different semesters we are with people from different years. The class lasted for hour and a half and it was more of an introduction. The director of Tourism presented the teacher and told our class that they should take us foreigners out and invite us to their houses etc. Which was really nice of him. I really had to get used to Spanish, I understood everything but it is quite tiring to adapt in some kind of way. The only thing I truly remember from that class was that I was FREEZING. The air conditioning in these classrooms is insane! Like Dutch winter! Why! I wrapped a t-shirt I was wearing before around my arms and tried to keep warm. After that lesson I had a 3 hour class of Sustainable Tourism which I was really looking forward to. Because it was the first lesson we watched a movie; Hotel Rwanda. I had seen it before, really interesting and so sad. But it was good as I was so tired and cold. So with my hot drink and banana chips I enjoyed the movie. We finished our class at 22.00, which is a really normal thing. As Fenja and I walked towards the main building some people from our class asked if we wanted to go for a drink. Totally unexpected we said; yeah why not! We walked towards the car, which was already full. But that is no problem in Mexico haha. With one extra person lying on the back Fenja and I squished ourselves on the front seat. This was not really comfortable as we are Dutch. We drove to a bar where their specialties are Micheladas (beer with spices). As 7 people walked out of a tiny car the police officer next to us did not even look strange at us haha. Well I ordered a mango Michelada and oh my, a few minutes later the waiter arrived with 1LITER glasses of Michelada. I couldn’t believe it and as hard as I tried I could not even finish half hahaha. After that one of the guys knew a guy from a restaurant inside. On our way there we got stopped by several people asking if they could take a picture with us. After that weird incident we entered the restaurant and it even was a private event and the special thing about it was that it has a typical Mexican band playing there. Not mariachis but a different type. It was so incredibly loud but we really enjoyed it and we even danced a little. Afterwards we went to our house and suddenly it was 5 in the morning. We decided that it would be a good idea to sleep as our class started at 10 the next day.

The next morning after we were sooo tired but we made it to our class. This time with a sweater even though I almost fainted in the heat outside with my pants (and to think the people who don’t have to wear uniform still wear jeans and sweaters to school). We then had to wait 7 hours till our next class. We got a ride to the shopping centre where we went to the cinema and watched Fantastic Four. We then went back to school to go to our 19h class which finished at 20.30. This time we went home to sleep haha.

Wednesday we spent the whole day inside watching movies and gossip girl hahaha. We had a class at night but we decided to change two classes, including that one, because they were from the last semester of uni and were sooo complicated as you needed all the knowledge from the previous years which we didn’t have. Thursday morning we got picked up at home by some class mates, again way too many people in 1 car haha. We drove to a Taco place to have breakfast with our whole class. For this class we have to organise a ‘Taco Fair’ for the whole school in November. Meaning that we have to analyse and organise how to set up our own restaurants as we will have to take care of literally everything. So we sat there with around 20 people eating tacos at 9AM. Still trying to get used to eating warm meals in the morning but I prefer my smoothies and cereal. Afterwards we went to school to change our subjects and more important…. Subscribe to the diving course!!! Cannot wait! As Playa del Carmen (40 minutes from Cancun) has the second best barrier reef in the WORLD. When we finished that we had lunch at the same place we went last week; Natura. We ordered the same thing. Then we spent a good 5 hours on a beach where we finally found some shadow free of charge!!! We then walked a good 3.5 km along the beach side to one of the shopping centres. The sun was setting and beautiful purple and pink colours took over the blue sky. As we had to cross over the beach to the road we decided to walk through one of the massive hotels. We entered this seriously gigantic and fancy hotel and walked through the 500 pools to the entrance. People were singing some ABBA on the karaoke somewhere, quite bad but entertaining. As we walked out it was already dark and suddenly we felt so weird. Like we were somewhere else and visiting like tourists, hmm strange. We went to the store and took the bus back home. Which did not go as smooth as we expected. Normally we have to wait 30 minutes for our bus at the normal stop. This time we waited at another stop, one before the normal one. And like 6 of ‘our’ busses drove right past us! So we walked another 15 minutes and took a small combi bus home.

Friday a guy we met at uni took us to a reaaaally nice beach. We asked if he could take us somewhere more deserted and away from the tourists so he took us on a 20 minute road trip to Isla Blanca. Not in island but woah what an amazing beach and ocean! Unlike the hotel zone beaches there was not a lot of seaweed which made it possible for us to enjoy the green/blue clear and clean water together with the softest and whitest sand ever. There were almost no people there which made it even better!

Saturday we were waiting for the bus to the centre when a white van stopped. It didn’t have any signs on it or names of the places to where it was going which was weird but as everyone in the van got off at our stop we automatically went in and asked if he went to the centre. He said yes and as I asked how much I had to pay he laughed and said ‘nothing’. It was only after a few minutes that we realised that this van was not meant as public transport haha! I still don’t know what it was for, maybe only specific hotel people or yeah no idea. But well we just got into a random van and got a free ride haha, nice. At the mall we got these really cool ice creams! They mix this yoghurt milky liquid with any fruit/chocolate that you want and put it on a frozen plate until it turns into ice cream! That night we met some people which we met last week and had a drink again at the Michelada place. Afterwards we went to a club in the hotel zone, which is where the huge clubs are. On our way we stopped at somebody’s cousin’s house. We walked in the house without knocking or anything so we were standing in an unknown house and nobody was there. And suddenly people started walking in from all different corners haha! And they are so nice and did not even mind or find it strange that there were some unknown people in their house haha. They were so inviting. We then left to the club which is called Daddy-O and is more popular for the Mexicans although of course there were tourists as well. It was really big and it was designed as if you were in a cave! It is very common here to reserve a table at a club so you can sit and order drinks (you have your own waiter). People order literally bottles and bottles. The best thing? Air conditioning! The music was really good and we danced a lot! Something I found quite funny was that at the girls toilets there was a table with all sorts of make up so girls could just use those products for free and add some finishing touches haha! Also the toilet doors are way too low for us Europeans. Just standing in front of the door I could just look inside, if I wanted to. Only bad thing: I somehow lost my 500 pesos which were in the pocket of my jeans noooooooooooooooo.

P.S I just witnessed how the paint/paper is coming off of my magazine because of the heat. Well.