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Day 6 in Mexico - Never Have I Ever!!!

So… My morning started out pretty typical. I chatted with my host mom then walked to school 20 minutes before classes started. During morning break a mysterious guy sat between my group of friends/fellow study abroad students. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Right after that, in my conversation class he went to my classroom peeking in the window, not once, but TWICE!! We gave him some glares back and he finally left. Fast forward to after school and I’m sitting at the end of a bench and the same guy sits next to me, about 2 feet away.

Well I got up to go talk to someone across the courtyard and my group decided we would leave for lunch soon after. So one of the girls that was sitting near me gets up to grab her stuff but she couldn’t find her phone, which she had just had during the class. We spent about twenty minutes looking for it before declaring it stolen, probably by the mysterious man. Everybody was bummed about how it could have been any of us because we all have highly sought after iPhones that in a country like Mexico would be worth a lot when it comes to being stolen and being put on the black market.

We decided to go eat lunch at this market where the meat is displayed and though all the vendors have the same meats they’re constantly yelling out how there’s is the best. My friend, Emily, and I were the only ones eating from the vendors because everybody else had packed lunches. We decided on a meat stand (solely because there were two women working instead of the 20 other men surrounding them #feministmuch?). We sat down and a waitress came to offer us toppings for our tortilla and carne asada that was to come. We picked out three and then a man came around offering us drinks so we got two Coronas. The meal arrived and it was HUGE!!! There was so much meat and tortillas that we offered them up to the other girls so we wouldn’t be wasteful. The meal was good and after splitting the bill it ended up being on the pricier side for local food ($12 USD). It was definitely a great experience and now I know that next time if I eat there two could feed four and that could definitely help keep the cost down!

After eating we returned to school to meet up with everyone and we walked over to volunteer with Oaxaca’s Street Children. Originally we were supposed to try to help them with homework or English but the three kids that I interacted with said they didn’t have any homework and didn’t know English so my group of volunteers just used it as another chance to speak Spanish with native speakers. We left there after about an hour and a half.

It wasn’t until we left that it started raining so a group of six of us girls decided to walk the direction of home and find a taxi. Well the rain stopped by the time we came across a street with some taxis so we just decided to save some money and walk. Not even 5 minutes later it started raining again. We continued walking. But then all hell broke loose and the rain was unbearable. We stopped under a pavilion in the Zocalo (an open air market where the teachers are currently protesting/camped out). We stayed there for about two minutes and the rain lightened up to a near stop. But by the time we had reached the end of the Zocalo the pouring rain was back and I had had enough and luckily as I was the last of the group to cross the street at a red light I noticed an empty taxi right in front of me so I got in and the other 5 girls followed suit! Keep in mind these aren’t your fancy New York City taxi hybrids. This is a tiny little Nissan from the 90s. Well the configuration we formed was 5 on the backseat and 1 on the front passenger seat. And now I understand where the expression “packed in a car like a bunch of Mexicans” hails from. Because we truly were. And though I’d seen taxis like that before throughout the city, apparently it was very uncommon for tourists to do this. So uncommon that a guy on the back of a passing motorcycle took a photo of us. Then that gave Emily (in the front seat) the idea to take a photo of all of us. Even the taxi driver took a selfie with all of us packed into the car!

Never have I ever experienced such a mess in one day! What a day!

DeMya

6-16-16