Part 3. 6-15.8. Prisas y fiestas

I've got to know many cool people here in Guadalajara. Therefore I want to continue writing in English, at least for a while :). Maybe next, when I/you get frustrated with my bad writing, I'll switch to Spanish.

This blog entry starts from Friday 6th of August where the last blog entry stopped. I write about the rest of the orientation week and also something on the first actual school week (jaiks!). I'll add once again my thoughts on Mexican culture and focus this time on religion, prices and the art of bargaining, and last and most importantly, my experiences in the busses here in Guadalajara.

The story begins on Friday, when we had a school trip to the city of Tequila. We were supposed to leave at 9am, but at the time we got there, we found out that someone had magically changed the leaving time to 10 am. The busses finally left at 10.30 and we watched a killer movie - The Green Mile (or 1/3 of it) - on our way to Ciudad Tequila. First we went to see a huge Tequila brewery in the city. The tour around the factory with a English speaking (thank God) guide and 3 security guys was really fun and it was interesting to see the manufacturing process of Tequila. I'll just add some little info about it here:

Tequila

Tequila is made from an Agave plant. There are actually over 150 different species of Agave, but Tequila is made only from blue Agave like shown in the first picture below. It's mainly produced in the state of Jalisco, and in my knowledge only small areas in other states have the "right" to produce Tequila. The restriction comes from the right soil, climate and of course the greedy people. It can contain up to 55% alcohol, but nowadays it's rarely made over 45%.

There is three type of Tequila: Tequila blanco, Tequila Reposado and Tequila Añejo. Añejo (and extra Añejo) are considered the best Tequila, because of their smooth taste. I'll explain the differences of them when explaining the manufacturing process.

First the Blue Agave is chopped into pieces, so that the leaves are ripped apart from the main plant. This is shown below:

After the chopping process the plant, or "pinapple" is thrown into an big oven for like 24 hours, where the sugar of the plant will drop into vein. We got actually to taste this "sugar", didn't like it too much :S. The ovens and the "baked" pineapples are shown below:

The sugar of the pineapples will ultimately go to a big canister, where it will be mixed with a right amount of water. This mix will look like this:


When the mixture is right, the sugarwater will be transferred in a pipes to huuuuge, open-air containers, where the liquid will stay for about three days.


After those three days the sugar in the mixture will fragment and become more sour, it will contain about 4-5% alcohol. It's actually pretty similar to a normal beer at this stage and it's called "the must". After this step, the liquid will be transferred into a distillation process, where the actual Tequila is distilled from the other liquids.

The most left bottle shown in the upper picture is the must. It's distilled many times, until the actual Tequila is finally separated. This step is the end of the actual manufacturing process and the liquid contains now approximately 55-60% alcohol. After this you can decide, whether to make Tequila blanco, reposado or añejo. Tequila blanco is bottled right after the manufacturing process with a desired amount of water added. The colour of it will stay transparent. Tequila reposado and añejo will be first taken into big barrels, where they spend a certain amount of time. Tequila reposado has to be over 2 months in a wooden barrel, giving it a gold/bronce colour. Tequila añejo has to be in the barrel for over a year, whereas extra añejo spends over three years in the barrel. They will be also coloured light brown/copper, depending e.g. on the age of the wooden barrel.

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We got to also see the old part of the factory, from 1870s. It was fun to see that even though the equipment is nowadays much more developed, the manufacturing process works on the very same principles and not too much has actually changed. A pleasant experience was naturally the tasting opportunity at the end of the visit! A friend of mine has taken some good pics of the factory and he'll probably upload them soon in hes webpage. You can check it out at www.rouvencanzler.de. Ps. There's also some good photos of our city in the same page :)!

After the factory visit we went to the city to buy some booze. On the way back to the Campus we saw another 2/3 of the film Green Mile. In the evening we had a party at Cherry Lobby which was also arranged by the school. The whole place with its airport-like -security checks was a bit too much for me and we decided to go other bars in that night. All-in-all we had a really good time in other places.

On Saturday 7.8. I woke up late and had a bit headache first (wonder why). In the afternoon we saw a movie "Sangre por Sangre", which was actually pretty good and showed a bit more about the carnalism -culture that is often shown in the streets in Mexico. On Sunday we had a traditional Mexican lunch, which was very nice. In the night we went to see the Inception in the movies. It was sometimes really weird and extravagant, but overall I still liked it and the special effects were really stunning!

The school started on Monday the 8th of August. All of the courses had a typical beginning of telling 10 times not be too much absent and so on. Besides that, there was positive buzz or "pörinä" all the time in the school in general and I was pretty sure that I would enjoy my year studying here at TEC :). I have only 4 courses, which will leave me plenty of free time to get to e.g. know the city and do some sport activities.

I don't have any school on Wednesday, so we decided to go out on Tuesday night also. The place we went into was called WallStreet. It was a bit posh, but still more relaxed than the other clubs we've been to and we had a good time there!

Wednesday was my day off, which I pretty much spent with my friend in chilling at his top-class pool. Thursday I went tricking and swimming after school and I was pretty much done. I was super hungry when I finally got home in the night and wanted to try a fruit never tasted before. It was rather good until I saw a fckn living worm inside the fruit in the middle of it. Wonder how many have I been eaten already..

On Friday 13.8 we went out to a place of 5 French guys. The house was uber nice, but I would've not still want to live only with people from the same country here in Mexico. Well their French, what can you do.. Saturday was another chill day for me, but I still achieved to hurt my pinky when tricking on the nearby grass. That's what happens when you are doing a round-off fulltwist and change your mind in mid-air :S. Well it's not too bad now, and I'll be probably heading to do some more suicidal attempts on tomorrow..

Today I went with a friend of mine to his place to do some school. After that I prepared a typical "Finnish" pasta that I used to make a lot of times back in Tampere for Susana, Diego and el abuelo. I think I did pretty well and they liked the meal a lot :)). In the evening I went to have a birthday dinner with my schoolfriends in a Japanese Sushi place called Nikoy. The place was really good and the sushi rolls were very taestful with a decent price. The best thing was in the end, when they had mexican-style birthday ceremony. The best part of it was after the flame-shot, when Saana - the birthday start - was asked to bite the cake without her hands. Just when she tried to do that, the waitresses pushed her head straight to the cake, bwuhahahahaaa! :D The whole face was just full of the birthday cake and oh boy, how bad we laughed. Later on I heard that that's the tradition here in Mexican restaurants. Luckily she didn't get pissed off from it and we had a good time.

I'll just tell now some viewpoints of mine about the Mexican culture in my series of

Views of Mexico by a local foreigner

Religion

Catholism is the main religion here in Mexico and about 90% of people living here are Roman Catholics. Religion is really, really a much bigger thing here in Mexico. You can hardly see a place or even a car without seeing the cross or some little fresco on the walls or hanging in the windows. As I said in one of my previous posts also, people go often in the church to pray and also make cross signs to their cheasts. I haven't digested myself into too much of this, but it seems that the younger generation isn't too religous anymore or so it at least seems.

The religion plays an important role in Mexicos history too. After the Mexican independence in 1821 the separation between the liberals (later renamed as Partido Revolucianario Institucional, PRI) and the conservatives (Partido Accion National, PAN) was made. The church favored very much the conservatives and before the Revolution in 1911 it had a huge role in people's lives. However, after 1911 the liberals started to be in power and especially after 1929 (when PRI was founded) the leaders started ignore the church. PRI was in power until year 2000, when the concervatives won the election. The church has played again a bigger role after this, because the concervative leaders were more fond of the church.

I heard the story above from our class in Doing Business in Mexico (yes, we talked the whole first two classes about the history, religion and cities of Mexico..). However, I don't know why church plays such a big role after all in Mexico, because the government didn't appreciate it and none of the country leaders never even went into a church between 1928-2000. Maybe the normal people weren't too manipulated from the government, who knows :P.

Prices

Mexico is a cheap country to live in. The everyday things, like milk, bread, tacos, fruits, cost about 1/2 as much as back in Finland and even the living expenses are really low. Besides the cheap food in the markets the restaurants are REALLY cheap in general. Depending on the place, you can have a good meal for 2 euros. Everything is cheaper when you go farther away from tourists or city centrums, as imagined. The things that are ridiculously are all the cakes, donuts and other sweet stuff. You can buy good donuts for 3 pesos, or 20 cents and all the cakes shown in the picture below cost about 60 pesos, or 4 euros.

Some things are of course pretty much the same price as everywhere else, including electronics and good brands. Besides those, the internet or the phone subscriptions are actually pretty expensive and they cost maybe even more than in Finland. Freaking monopolies.. Hey and by the way, why the hell do you have to walk in an actual BANK to pay your bills here. Oh come on, that's so 1990's :S.

Some prices are negotiable, mostly in smaller stores or e.g. with Taxis. You should always ask the price of the trip beforehand, otherwise they will rip you off. I've noticed that the real price is about 30-40% lower than the first price the driver asks. They prices vary quite much, especially with longer trips, and it's very useful to know the route beforehand you go to the taxi. If the taxi can't find the location right away - which quite often is the situation - he will charge you more and it isn't that much negotiable anymore. A good way is also with the taximetro, which isn't usually the cheapest way, but provides a decent price. Sometimes when driving with a taximetro the drivers will purposely go to a wrong direction first or just take a slower route. So again it's good to know the route beforehand :).

La cultura de los camions

I usually take the bus to school, although it would cost only 30 pesos - or 2 euros - with a taxi. There are two reasons: The first is that the bus costs only three pesos for me and it's practically nothing. I have to use 4 busses (or 2 taxis) a day, so it counts up to some euros monthly and it's good to save in something.

Besides the price, the busses are a really good way to get to know the local culture. First of all, the busses don't have any timeschedule. Secondly, there are no official bus stops in most of the places. Instead, there are some places in the middle of the street that have developed into a bus stops and you can't know the beforehand. This has created some troubles for me a few times, when I waved and watched busses go by me for 45 minutes.

Another world is when you get into the bus. In many cases the bus is literally packed with people and sometimes you feel that the only thing that is missing are those little children thrown in the top of all people. And nevertheless how full the bus is, it will always stop for more people, and it isn't only one time that my backpack has jammed between the doors when I've hopped into the bus. It may sound harsh and bad, but it's actually a fun and different culture trip every time you get into the bus. You see every kind of people there and you can really feel the "Latino Heat" coming :D. If you are a girl, the things are not that easy, because i've heard many stories where the guys try to touch the girls in the bus. Not happened to me, YET.

A fun thing is also the design of the drivers space. I think that the drivers can pretty much choose for themselves, how to use and design their nearby place. Many guys have painted the front of the buss after their favorite band or brought some extra widgets to their space. They usually have also some religious stuff besides them or in the front window, but these things vary also a lot. A really bad example of the bus drivers place is down below. I couldn't manage to take a good pic of it :((.


Oh yes, one fun and notable details are the ticket checking persons that I saw once. Instead of that typical image of an old and angry woman or man the ticket checker was a young girl with a miniskirt. Me gusta!

That was my blog entry this time. I hope you liked it and I hope my English didn't sound too bad! :) I'll be writing anytime soon more, I want to tell you guys for example about the climate, music and macho culture of Mexico and Guadalajara.

Hasta Luego!

Kalle (Mexican way: Korle, Karle, Koule, Kole, Kaje etc.)

EDIT: A bit more storiez about the religion. Super interesting text, You'll love it!