6.2 Semana de cumpleaños

Hola de nuevo,

Cancion del dia

I was much behind on schoolstuff, so I decided to do them first before updating the second part. Here it comes!

This update is about the first (half) week in GDL after our trip to the east coast of Mexico, some viewpoints of Mexican culture also included!

Weeks 38 and 39 - 23.-29.9

After the beautiful beaches and sceneries, you guys can just imagine how motivated we were to get back to school on Thursday the 23th of September. Well, it ended up pretty well, because the classes (nor homework) weren't too stressful and the weather was really good.

The rest of the week was all about different parties, including my birthday party. On Thursday I was still on "hangover" and tired from out trip, so I didn't go out that day. On Friday there was another theme party in a posh club chalet, but I decided not to Dress to Kill, and went instead to play poker to a birthday party of my Mexican friend. I achieved a huge profit of 20 pesos from that night so it was a success!

On Saturday the 25th it was time for my own birthday party, which we organised on the pool of my friends, Sam's, house. I got myself up from bed from the previous night and accomplished to put my swimming shorts on at 3pm and the party was scheduled to start at around 4 pm, so I was in a bit of a hurry. After doing some shopping we finally arrived to the pool and a little surprise was waiting: The whole pool area (it's a common pool) with the table areas was full of Mexican families, supposedly there was a birthday party of some of their children going on. If the timing wouldn't have been this bad, it would have actually been pretty cool to watch because traditional customs, including piñatas, gossiping grandmas, lots of sombreros and so on. Well, we still decided to go for it, and achieved to get some space in the grass in the middle of scramming kids playing football.

The kids party didn't hamper our fiesta, mainly because there wasn't too many people coming first to the pool, probably due to the party on the previous day, and we got some seats nearby the pool and just enjoyed the sunshine with some piña coladas. The kids hitting the piñatas were actually really fun to watch and I really would have wanted to have my camera with my at that time!

Later in the evening we went inside the house and much more people came after 8 pm. Some guys even bought me a birthday cake and I sure had to try the Mexican tradition with it! It is about having your head smashed to the birthday cake, here's the result, por favor


Later on we left to Old Jacks to hear some live bands and it ended up really good! The only setback was my right eye, which reacted a bit to my contact lenses (or the cake) and turned totally red.. Well it's already much better now, so no worries!

On Sunday Susana prepared a birthday lunch for me and it was just so good, including a kind of soup with a lot o meat and vegetables, tostadas with guacamole and a fruity dessert. Susana's littlebrother, my "uncle", Paco and Diego showed me also how to play with a traditional Trompo (gyroscope), which is kind of their version of our yo-yo in Finland. They were really good at it, here's two pics of the fun

Paco spinnin' the trompo with his nail

Style comes first, right?

After the weekend it was time for another school week. Both days in the school went pretty smoothly, and I kept still on getting birthday felicitaciones. Thanks guys! On Tuesday evening we had another poker night, this time organised by a student organisation Conexion GDL. The night was really good until I started to drive home. I didn't know the destination where we were playing, so when I left there after 02 I just wanted to get quickly home and didn't check the routes too much. I got really lost and drove through the dark streets of Zapopan and Guadalajara for about 1h 30min before finally getting home. The most annoying thing was that every time I stopped to ask the right direction from someone, they gave me the totally wrong way and in most cases I just ended up to a dead-end street.. I heard this happens because the Mexicans don't want to loose their face and say simply say that they don't know now. The thing that wonders me is that what is the embarrasing thing about not knowing a route to somewhere. To me it would be more embarrassing to tell a wrong direction to someone and then later on see him return with a angry face.

That's what has happened so far! Today was my day-off from school, so obviously I haven't done much of anything.

Time for some cultural stuff! But before:

Ximena Navarrete

She was elected as Miss Universe of 2010 about 3 weeks ago. The funny thing is that she happens to be from Mexico, Guadalajara. I'm with good company here!

Climate in Mexico

First of all, Mexico is a really big country and there's a lot of different climate areas as u can see on the picture below
Guadalajara is located somewhat in the southeast corner the climate is treated as subhumid. This has meant so far that the temperature stays between 25 and 30 degrees in the day and in the nights it lowers down to maybe 20 degrees at summertime. So pretty much like finnish or European summer so far (when we get lucky..). There is not too much humidity and the sun shines a lot, even during the days in the rain season . In the coldest times of winter (October, December) I heard that the temperature goes down to 15-20 in daytime and to about 5 degrees in the night. So actually it can get rather cold here during the winter, but hopefully the coldest time shouldn't last for too long.

The coasts of Mexico are much more tropical than the inner land. This is of course due to the sea, but also because many inner cities are at a quite high altitude. During the rain season the coastal areas have a lot of tropical rains which are really wet but don't usually last for too long. These areas are also superhumid during the rain season, so sometimes the rains are a really welcome surprise. Here's some rain stats for geeks like me.

Mexico has also more dry-hot type of weather, mostly on the yellow parts shown in the map. In baja california it was rainy season, but it didn't rain at all and the land was pretty much deserted (exluding the green golf courts for American tourists).

Accents of Spanish, part 1: International

I'll divide the accents of Spanish to two parts. First part is about the foreign accents of Spanish and the second part on native Spanish accents. I'll write the second part sometime in the future, when I've got familiar with more accents than now. Please, don't take it too seriously!

Let's first take a look at the language tree of Indo-European languages - which Spanish is also part of. All the major languages spoken in Europe are pretty much on that list, including English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Scandinavian languages and others, but not Finnish. However, Romance languages (latin based), which for example Spanish, Italian and French is part of, differ from the Germanic languages (English, German etc.). The closer relation between the Romance languages in the language tree can be also seen in real life, because at least the French speak remarkably good Spanish for being French! In relation, the English and German speaking people with the same experience of Spanish have usually way more problems in understanding and speaking the language.

The language tree also helps to understand the learning process of many new languages. Once you have learned to speak one language of a certain group, you are in better position to learn also other languages in the same group. That is because these languages have better 1. Amount of similar words, and 2. The similarity of language structure. At the same time, you are able to improve your 3. Language learning process, and learn the new language better that way. Basic stuff.

Okeys, the theory leads us to talking about the worst spanish speakers and funniest accents. When comparing other Germanic languages with each other, I feel that Scandinavian people learn the best. This is because they have had to learn new languages since childhood so they have a good language learning process. The English speaking people have not, so their Spanish accent funniness ranks pretty high in my list. Other people from middle Europe rank in between Scandinavian and English, but German people surprised me by not managing too well. They have usually learned other languages, so that's not the problem.. maybe it's just that german language is so "hard"-spoken while Spanish is way softer.

When speaking of languages outside Indo-European group, I know only to talk about Finnish and Asian languages. There aren't too many similar words when comparing Finnish and Spanish, and that's why I find the words of Spanish the most difficult to learn. However, we aren't in that bad of a position, because the structure is basically the same as in other germanic languages and the way to say the words (spelled how ir's written) is similar to ours. The Asian languages are the tip of the iceberg in this matter. They don't have similar structure, nor similar words, nor too much learning process. These make them it really hard to learn new languages. By Asian languages I mean mainly Chinese, Japanese, Korean and treat them as one.

Time to rank the

Top 3 of the funniest accents of Spanish

Third place... BRRRRRRRRRRRR

3. GERMAN accent (schhh,rrrrr,...)

And next.... the beloved

2. ENGLISH accent (cumpleaños=cumpleiianjoous)

And finally the one that tops it all..

..wait for it...

yep, guessed right

1. ASIAN accent (wat?)

The English accent is the funniest to listen to, while the German the most annoying. The Asian tops them all, because you just can't understand what the are trying to say :)

As I said, don't take it too seriously. And no, I don't have too much free time.

This was my blog post this time, hope you liked it! All comments are very welcome!!

Saludos,

Kalle

Part 6.1 Stressful times.. not!

Holllaaaaaa que padre!?

Phiuw, quite a lot has happened since last blog update, I hope that I can still remember the most important things that have happened!

Cancion (y video) del dia

I’ll separate this update again in two parts. The first part is about our trip to Cancun, in the east coast of Mexico, during the Mexican independence week. The next part will be about my last week here in Guadalajara. Because of the pressure from numerous fan posts, the long anticipated topic on climate and Spanish accents will be finally released with the second part!


Quintana Roo y Yucatan 14.-22.9.

BUUUYYYAAH.

That was our feelings, when we arrived to school on Tuesday with our luggage. Our plane left at 2.35 pm from the airport situated about an hour away from the school, so we could still go to the class from 10-11.15. The whole thing going first to school for one hour and from there leave the airport was of course inconvenient, but with these falta regulations… what can you do. Well anyway after Spanish class we were supposed to leave at 11, but there happened to be a fire alarm practice at the same time, so we had to walk this stupid detour guided by the guards with all of our luggage.. Nevertheless we could leave pretty quickly after the episode and arrived to the airport with much spare time to spend in Burger King, where the other group of guys also arrived a bit later on.

Our traveling group consisted, besides me, of guys from Holland and Switzerland and girls from Britain and Finland. The rest of us were prepared with all together about 8-10kg of luggage, whereas the British girl had a 19kg luggage besides the hand luggage and she got a bit into trouble when checking in the overweighed bag. Well it worked out finally, but still.. women.

State of Quintana Roo

We were going to head straight to Isla de Mujeres and not stay in Cancun because we heard that it’s only good for partying and there’s not really much to see. Well we didn’t experience Cancun ourselves, but at least Isla de Mujeres with its colorful streets, small shops, Caribbean style bars and restaurants seemed really interesting!

Typical house in Isla de mujeres

Our hostel there was called Poc – Na which Samuel “The tourist guide” had found in lonely planet. It had a really good location, for costing 120 pesos (or 8 euro), with a good beach in the backyard and in addition the atmosphere was really chill there so we really loved it!

Hostel wall painting

Our backyard in Poc-Na

Our first night there was mostly just to chilling in a restaurant nearby and walking the streets nearby. The food in the restaurant was delicious, but we could immediately spot the effect of tourism in double priced menu and some extra drinks appearing in our bill. After the restaurant we went to the beach party in the beach bar of our hostel and had a good party there!

On the next day we went to the nearest beach. We wanted to do some snorkeling and for that we bought some cheap ones in the nearest shop. They turned out to be really shitty and it would have been practically the same experience without them.. I got really mad and wanted to buy some good ones, which we found, surprisingly enough, in a snorkeling/diving shop. The other one lasted for about 5.5 seconds, our Swiss dropped the snorkel in the floor when received the box and the glass broke into a thousand pieces. Time to practice some negotiation skills! After blaming each other for 15 minutes we got to a decision to buy a new pair for half price, so it worked out pretty well.

The afternoon was cloudy and we didn’t do too much things but just get to know the city and visit a turtle farm with also some other animals.

Sea horse

Mini-turtle

On Wednesday evening there was the Mexican independence party. Others went to party in Cancun with also some other guys from our school, but we decided to stay in the island with Samuel the Swiss, because we reserved a trip to go snorkeling with whale sharks on next morning at 8 am. The season for them was just ending and we didn’t want to miss the chance of seeing them. We still went out in the island and there was a really big and crowded Mexican fiesta in the town square with a performance stage. It was really nice to see grandmas and children celebrating in the same time in that scale, although the reason they are celebrating is strongly criticized. I think I’ve mentioned it already before, but Mexico has many problems and especially the political situation is in pretty bad condition with all the corruption problems etc. We saw a really good movie earlier in the week considering this subject: El Infierno. It illustrates excessively the current situation in Mexico but with a lot of humor and sarcasm. Five stars!

We had to wake up at a bit over six in the morning, but I woke already at 5.45, because our friends called us from Cancun. Our British girl was missing, which wasn’t the best possible news when thinking about the place and timing. Well, we decided to still go to our trip, because there wasn’t too much that we could do anyway and we would be back at 2-3 pm.

The swimming with whale sharks went good, but Samuel got seasick from the waves and it rained also a bit in the end. For me it was really good, I even bought an underwater camera for it and managed to take some pretty good shots of that huge animal. I have still to develop the pictures; hopefully I can add them here thereafter!

When we went back to our hostel, the others were in the hostel seeming really worried. There still wasn’t any news from her and they couldn’t have reached her since last night. Finally at 4 pm one of us received a call from a Mexican house that she was in. They had taken her for the night when they saw that she was lost and pretty drunk. I think we got pretty lucky there and it could really have ended worse, hopefully she learns something from that.

Anyway, we were supposed to leave to Tulum in that day, but this episode kind of ruined it and we had to stay another night in the Hostel. The afternoon of that day didn’t go too well for me, my friend’s water bottle opened in the same bag that my cell phone was in. After noticing the things I tried to use the phone, but the screen just stayed black and it started to get really hot! There was nothing you could do, so I just left the phone in my room (explosion-safe distance away from any bed) and went fishing to calm myself down. Luckily my camera, which was also in the same bag, wasn’t affected by the water. The next day we left early in the morning to Tulum, a small town that was located a 2.5 hour bus ride away from Cancun. Advised by other travelers, we ended up to hostel called Zazil-Kin, where we could sleep in beach huts about 50 away from the beach. It place was really beautiful, some pics of the huts and the beach shown below.

Huts of Zazil - Kin

Backyard beach in Tulum

We enjoyed the beautiful beach the rest of the day and headed to the town in the night to see some other friends from Guadalajara in a salsa bar.

On Friday, after enjoying the morning beach, we visited the Maya ruins in Tulum as a preparation for the bigger ruins in Zhitzen-Itza. The location of the ruins was just beautiful and it was more about admiring the scenery. Pics included:

Ugh

Ruins or a beach?

Small ruins in Tulum

After the ruins the other guys wanted to go to see another ruin in Coba. Some of us thought that two ruins are enough for this trip, so we went to a cool cenote near Tulum to do some cave snorkeling. Actually, because of some hassle, the guys didn’t have time to go to Coba in that day, so they just went to drink beers in the beach while we were swimming with the fishes, turtles and bats in a beautiful and clear fresh water cave.

Cenote

After the snorkeling we bought some beers for us in the huts and later on had a really chill time playing some card games.

Next day on Saturday we were supposed to go to Playa del Carmen in the morning, but the guys the guys wanted to see Coba and they came to Playa del Carmen later on. We others went, Girlspeed, earlier to Playa del Carmen and did some shopping and just got to know the city. It rained like 10 times during the day, which suited good for shopping (but not walking in the streets between shops). Playa Del Carmen was pretty different from the earlier places, the amount of tourists just quadrupled and everything was priced in dollars instead of pesos, in addition usually with a shitty exchange rate to pesos. Nevertheless there were much to see in the city and overall I liked it! In the night we went partying in the local clubs, ungtsaka ungtsaka buum buum buum.

Sunday was about chilling out in Playa Del Carmen. In the evening we had the biggest setback of the trip: After 5 pm selling alcohol was prohibited because of some reason. However, as cunning as we were, we went to the right store (the smallest street store) where we could buy some beers (totally overpriced). It was the funniest time I’ve had buying beer: the other guy in the store went to the street to look for police and looking innocent as he can, while the other guy grabs beers from the fridge as fast as he can, probably shitting in his pants while doing it. Then the guy grabbing the beer wraps the beers first in a newspaper and then to a black plastic bag and having a look like he would be dealing drugs. We paid him happily and walked proud back to hostel. All the travelers in the hostel admired our beer and we were the official agents to provide information about illegal alcohol that night. Samuel and Geert the Dutch prepared some spaghetti for us and we played some card games up till late in the night.

The next morning on Monday we (5 of us) rented The car

Designed for five people?

..and drove to Zhitzen-Itza. We left at about 11 and the drive was approximately 3.5 hours, so we arrived about 2.30 pm to the ruins. On the road to Zhitzen Itza we had the first experience of corrupted police. They were standing in the side of a road construction and they stopped us accusing that one of us didn’t wear a seatbelt. Obviously that was not true and when we looked around, we saw that all the cars that were stopped were miraculously driven by non-Mexican people. Well, we were tough and kept on arguing that we all had our seatbelts on. The police took my driver’s license and went off to talk with his buddies. He came back in a minute and said that we can continue, so Buuyah, mission accomplished! The most funny thing about that episode was that our friend Samuel was sitting on the front seat and when the police stopped us, Samuel started to blame himself by shouting: “Oh shit! I knew I shouldn’t have kept my sunglasses on! Why did I wear sunglasses when I knew police was there!?” The rest of us were afterwards laughing so bad for that and his reaction, it became a common joke for the rest of the trip and still going strong!

It was filled with tourists, especially during these days, because of the special occasion that happens twice a year. In the days near to equinox you are able to see the shade of Kukulkán, a Mayan god that was in a shape of a snake. You are able to see it only during these days, going downhill the stairs of the main pyramid and ending to the snake head on the bottom of the pyramid. A good picture of this phenomenon can be seen here.

This proves the Mayan skill in mathematics and astrology and it is one considered to be one of the seven new wonders of the world. It was really impressing, and in addition to the main pyramid there was also a big ancient ball game arena, temples and smaller pyramids. We didn't get to see the shade of snake in its best form, because some clouds came in front of the sun in that time! Some pics below:

Me and Geert in front of the main pyramid in Zhitzen - Itza

Ball game arena in Zhitzen - Itza

The other guys left already on Tuesday morning back to Guadalajara, whereas I and the girls stayed there for one more day. We saw some announcements of skydiving and decided to go for it! The scenery was beautiful for doing it and the price wasn’t too bad, about 180 euros. Well, next day when we arrived to the place we found out that the plane is fixed in Miami at the moment and we couldn’t do it. We were pretty disappointed of course, because the weather was really good and we really basically just handing in our money. Afterwards we decided to go snorkeling in Cozumel, an island near Playa Del Carmen. The snorkeling was also cool and we saw many cool corals and fish there. The most awesome experience for me there was to swim through a swarm of fishes with a number of thousands! The island itself was also really pretty.

Street view in Cozumel

In the evening we prepared ourselves for the trip back home and went to eat some Chinese food. It was pretty good, but I just made me miss all the delicious food that I ate last summer in Taiwan... yammy!

All in all, despite the setbacks it was an awesome trip!! Even though we could have seen more things, our gang was really cool and we just enjoyed the company of each other the whole time.

This was the first part of this update. I'll try to write the rest tomorrow, see ya!

Part 5.2 Cancun, baby!!

Hola todos!

I’ll make this chapter actually much shorter than planned, because I’m leaving to Cancun tomorrow morning and I have to go to sleep soon! Good stuff about climate and accents coming soon in the next post, I know it's hard but try to be pacient and don't cut your wrists just yet.

Week 36 – 6.-12.9.

The whole week went pretty much with the same pattern as the week before: Sports, hanging out with friends and doing school stuff way too late. On Friday night we went to play poker with Diego, which was chill until the very end, when I had my first big cultural conflict here in Mexico. I don’t want to talk about it too much here, but let’s just say that some things that these guys value high doesn’t just make any practical sense and it’s really hard to explain that to them. I’m guess I’m too rational and Finnish for being a local among these guys. However, this situation was the first really weird one and but mostly I’ve had a really good time with them!

On Saturday I went to do some capoeira for 3 hours in the morning and after that I went with my Mexican friend Viri (who I got to know already in Finland) to a grill party. There were only Mexican girls and gay guys with me, but the food was really freaking good and I had a really good time there! After that I went with Amy and Rouven to a live bar – Old Jack’s. The place was packed and I was with a car, but we had nevertheless good time there.

On Sunday we went to see a local market. It resembled really much all the markets I've been to in Asia, including lots of animals, food, really useless crap and women's underwear. I bought swimming shorts (with 0% discount after 10 minutes of bargaining, I'm out of shape it seems..), a light to my car and peanuts.

The market with Amy and Rouven

After the market we went to really UG coffee place, which we found after 10 minutes of searching. It was so cool and I had my first really good cup of coffee AND tee there (which took about 15 mins to preparate). We ate also some homemade pizza there, which was also delicious. I'm certainly going there again, if I ever find the place..

A photo of Guadalajara on the way home

I told you guys already something about our plans for the Mexican 200th independence (and 100th birthday of political revolution in 1910, forgot to mention that..). Our original plan was to head south, but there was a big flood down south that could have ruined our roadtrip so we decided not to take the risk. Instead, we looked at some cheap flights and booked em pretty ex tempore to Cancun! Lots of

this

..and

this..

and..

this

and..

this hopefully included

We were only 3 at the beginning, but other people got apparently jealous and now we're like 15 going there. We'll be staying in our own group of 6 for the most time though, but I want to have a big gathering some day too!

I hope that the trip will be cool, at least the photos look pretty cool. We will be back on next Wednesday 22.9, so my next blog update will be coming shortly after that I think. Hope to also finally add some pics to Facebook too. And if I don't make it back, I just promised my bocho to my "uncle" here, sorry guys.

But anyway..

That was all folks, see ya!