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!

Part 5.1 Parciales y otros cosas

Cancion de la semana

Cancion del dia

Cancion de la proxima semana

Hi again all,

Again a whole bunch of things has happened in two weeks and it'll be hard to add it only in one post, I'll try my best.. This time consisted of our first partials in the school, for which I didn't want to stress too much. I also did again pretty much sports and hanged out with my buddies so everything's going really good here! On the negative side, I caught a fever and my jaw seems to be a bit dislocated at the moment..

I think I haven't told already about the climate here in Guadalajara so I'll add some text about that. Besides that, a very funny topic is the different Spanish accents among foreign people. A ranking of the worst accents included in the second part of this blog update, don't miss that! I want also to say a few (swear) words on two really annoying things here: Topes and Mosqitoes.

Week 35 - 30.8.-5.9.

The week started with some normal school stuff, as in Spanish class, culture class and - the best of all subjects- doing business in Mexico. On Tuesday in capoeira we agreeded with a guy to practice together tricking in the TEC grass. He's practiced Taekwondo for 6 years so I'm really looking forward to learn some cool kicking moves from him. I will teach him to do some flips, respectively. On Tuesday night I drove to Amy's (crazy Aussie :D) place which was because was easier said than done. Firstly, I was supposed to grab two more girls with me to her place, but it was dark as hell and I couldn't find the mall next to them.. On the same trip I got lost into a big road that lead outside the city and didn't have any street lights. It was a big road and I trusted that there were no street bumbs, but obviously they had built a huge tope in the middle of the dark road. I went only like 60kph, but still it wasn't too pleasant an experience and I'll really try to avoid those in the future.

Well I got finally to Amy's place and we had a good time there. On Wednesday (my day off from school) I woke up late, did some tricking and we started to plan our trip to the south of Mexico. We were planning to travel to Oaxaca and Puerto Escondido - the best surfing place in Mexico - for 8 days during the Mexican Independence day.

16.9,2010

Some little history lesson here in between.

Mexico celebrates its 200th independence day on Thursday the 16.9, which at the same time is the date for political revolution. Before 1810 Mexico was governed by the Spaniards, who (a group lead by Hernand Cortez) arrived here in 1523 and overcame the local tribes (e.g. the Aztecs). The time between 1523-1810 was called the colonial time and the history books tell that it ended, when the ingenious (original Mexican indians) people, lead by priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, rioted against the white Spaniard power and managed to free Mexico. Spain itself was conquered by the French at that time, which had a big effect on the way to independence. Actually the war was more of a civil war, where ingenious people fighted with the Spaniards (and some mix of these two) against other ingenious people and Spaniards. The war continued for 11 years, until one general proclaimed himself as the emperor. However, this government didn't last for long and the first president of Mexico was elected in 1824.

The thing that I find the most interesting in Mexican history is the fact that only a handfull of Spaniards (more came later on) were able to conquer whole Mexico. It's a long story that included alliances, betrayals, cunning tactics and other cool stuff, u can read more about those times in here.

After the colonial period there was a war with United States (1836-1853) that resulted in Mexico losing almost half of its territory that is known as Texas today. After that period there was a political shitload of hassle, which finally ended in 1910 known as the political revolution. Since then there have been two main political parties, the Institutional Revolution Party (PRI) - known as the liberals - and National Action Party (PAN) - known as the conservatives. The PRI governed the land from 1929 to year 2000 and now the PAN is governing the land. In the last election the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) almost won the election, but Felipe Calderon from PAN managed to win by a close margin.

Anyway, the independence day is coming and whole Mexico has prepared itself with country flags, hats and other tillbehör that you can see in a lot of houses and cars. The week is considered to be really dangerous too, because of the big drug war going on as I write. Partying in really popular places isn't recommended and we are most probably going to stay in more quiet places also.

Back to the week 35. On Thursday I had the Spanish exam, to which my preparation didn't go as planned (basic concept: facebooking until 21 and prepping until 02). I didn't feel that it went too well, and I thought that if I get under 80 out of 100 (83 is needed if you want one extra weeks of those bloody faltas). Well anyhow I got a 94 out of 100 which was 1) positive surprise but 2) teh unmotivationator. I still feel that im not learning fast enough so gotta keep wokring.

On Friday I went first to capoeira for 2 hours and tricking/ trampoline jumping for another 3 so that made a good workout. It was really fun, but I think it was partly the reason that resulted me catching a fever. Saturday went pretty much sleeping and "doing some school work" beside a pool. In the evening I had a really good Mexican soup called Pozole that was kind of a normal meat soup with all kinds of vegetables and spices that you could add for yourself. The food place was really cool and I want to go there again, but it has the same problem as so many other places here in Mexico: The restaurants are usually really small and don't go by name. They are open only some time of the day and other times when they are closed it's impossible to recognize them. Sunday went pretty much the same way as Saturday but just a bit more lazier. I just did some home stuff and decided to play some poker online. I was super-tired in the end, which resulted in too big a loss and I decided not to play too much poker online during my stay here in Mexico.

I'd rather not talk too much about my pokerplaying, because I feel that many people have so many misconceptions about it. I feel, however, necessary to add a small piece of text about it, even though I may regret it afterwards. During my two last years of studies in Finland I played some time pretty actively besides school in my free time, mainly because I needed money and didn't want to do normal work. At the end I did pretty good, but the pots that could have almost been someone's monthly salary made my hobby pretty stressful and with my network at the time drying up simultanously, giving up playing that active or at least moving to lower stakes wasn't too hard a decision.

I really have almost only good memories from poker and I still really enjoy playing it (for fun obviously) with my friends. The secret of my positive memories is that I nearly always could turn my brain off from poker when needed, which was really important. Besides that, I didn't think the winnings and losses as it was real money until the very end, so I think that was a good place to stop. I don't know if I will be still playing too much after my coming back to Finland, but the game (especially my game, nl hodlem) is getting every day harder to beat and I would really have to make an effort for it. I wouldn't lay my odds to it, but you never know, right?

I was actually planning to play actively during the summer and get some extra money for the trip, but because I got really excited from tricking and found some really cool tricking friends (thanks a lot guys!) to hang out with, I decided not to stress about having to look at computer screen when the sun shines outside. This option ended up to be far better and I think I had the best half-summer in Finland ever and after that I left to have more fun here in the new world!

Anyway, back to my week. One thing jumped to my mind about this week: Mayan Multiplication. These guys developed a much smarter system to multiply numbers than us and it can be done pretty easily up to hundreds of thousands and even above. In the system the numbers represent graphically with diamond shape lines, you can check it out here. At least I was impressed!

I could tell so much about the pre-colonial cultures of Mexico, but don't have time to do it and I don't think that it will interest you guys anyway.. Google Teotihuacan, Olmecs, Mayans, Aztecs if your interested.

This was my blog update for this time! I didn't attach any fotos this time, I hope you didnt fall asleep on your keyboard (describes pretty good my current situation pretty accurately). Anyway, I'll try to post the second part of this blog update before we leave to Cancun on Tuesday!

See ya!