Monday – October 12th (Today we’ve seen…):

• A very, very, very, very… very… VERY big and old tree (Árbol del Tule)
• A weaving-factory (old classic Mexican style)
• The Petrified Waterfalls (Hierve el Agua)
• The City of Mitla
• A Mezcal-factory (“El Famosa”)
• A part of the Spanish internet (ordered tickets “home” to Guadalajara)
• The ceiling of the Hostel
• Our pillows
• The Sun burning us with 30+ degrees of Celsius for every point except the previous 3.

Today was meant to be a trip of around the same length as Monday (8 hours!), but something went wrong. Long story short(er): We were picked up by the wrong Tour-company, and thus only got to see Monte Albán – which we were actually quite happy about in the end, even though it waas quite a confusing series of events. We didn’t realize that it was another company until we got back to Oaxaca, since the company we though we were going with also had a small tour with only that destination. Add the quite apparent lack of information, and… yeah… So much for attempting a short version of the story.

Tomorrows trip back to Guadalajara is going to (or well, will most likely be) alot more relaxed and short, as it’s a direct flight to Guadalajara. For now I’ll do my very best to drink away my roasted red skin, with the help of cold drinks…

Additional rant-note (22:30):
I hate beggars and people that insists on selling you unnecessary crap – while you sit at an outdoor restaurant. It gets annoying and frustrating when you have to say “No Gracias!” once per minute (and that’s not even exaggerating). Worst is the children that often almost lie themselves on the table and the old people that underlines the “insist”. Getting back to Denmark will be great, in regards to that – but probably only that…

Saturday and Sunday – October 10th and 11th (Silly French!):
Just before getting on the airplane from Guadalajara, we stumbled into two French, of which one Charlotte knew from some weeks back. We found out we were heading on the same plane, and had the same final destination… and thus the epic journey started. Upon arriving in Veracruz, we got a bus-ticket at around 22 (7 hours drive to Oaxaca), which meant quite a few hours to spend in Veracruz.

Around 5 hours, dinner at the beach, lots of walking, and stocking up for a party at around 5 in the night (the time of arrival in Oaxaca) later, we got on the bus. Semi-comfortable trip, that left me with a slightly hurting neck (stupid “comfortable” chairs) and a convinced feeling that “Mean Machine” is indeed a better “popular sports-star gets busted for heavy drunk-driving, thrown into jail, where he forms a team of the inmates (including the “cool prisoners”, and the “chained insane beast”) to beat the guards’ team”-movie than “The Longest Yard”. And no, it has nothing to do with the fact that it was a Spanish-synced version I saw.

Anyway, we arrived at Oaxaca around 5, and joined the French and their friends for a few hours until we decided it was time to crash a hostel for some sleep (from 7 to 13 approximately). Needless to say, we didn’t get much done during that day, except drifting around a bit in the city, looking for things to do Monday/Tuesday, got a bit to eat… and semi-stoned a bit more, until joining the French again during the evening. To sum up the evening up fast: the French are (some of them at least) silly, insane and and a nice bunch.

Interlude:
I wrote earlier that I couldn’t quite put my finger on any exact differences between Guadalajara and Oaxaca. I found one – but it might be because of the close proximity to the center of the city: People are honking their car-horns like horny young rabbits on speed during mating-season. Combine that with the fact that houses are NOT isolated from sound here, and my frustration should be logical [insert large amounts of creative swearwords, colorful curses and not-for-the-weak terms of disgust here].

As a closing statement for Sunday, I would like to add that the addition of “You’re hot/sexy” at the end of every sentences (when speaking to a female or male, respectfully), is very splendid for the “King’s Cup” every drinking game.

Never the less, we’re currently on our way to Oaxaca, and in this moment sitting in the national part of Guadalajara Airport, set to board a plane to Veracruz… where we’ll (either tomorrow or later) take a 6 hour bus-drive that’ll bring us to Oaxaca (the city, that is). Should be exciting and very beautiful. Which leads me to what happened yesterday…

Friday, October 9th (Language Barrier!):
A busted camera, at the worst possible time (as the trip to Oaxaca lies virtually just ahead), and in the worst possible way (almost), as I got an unintended push, and – possibly out of surprise – dropped the camera. At first, it didn’t look like anything had happened. The “shell” hadn’t even gotten a single scratch, but the lens was “bend” (the camera was turned on when dropped). Good thing it is insured, but I’ll get to that when I get back home.

Besides that, the evening was really good. We met up with alot of the other exchange students (or well, more appropriate to call them our friends) in order to have dinner and see “Inglorious Basterds”… To say the least, going to a sushi-restaurant in Spanish is mildly confusing on many different levels. First of all, the mix of Spanish and Japanese names is confusing. Next, it’s food, which makes it even harder. Thankfully, we found an English menu-description, which made it a lot easier. Even better was the drinks (nom nom Appletini)!

Had I remembered how much of the movie that wasn’t in English, along with the fact that it was now naturally subtitled in Spanish… I probably wouldn’t have gone to see it. Add the comfortable chair, cold beer and the fact that I had seen it before, made me slip into sleep quite a few times, despite gunshots, explosions and other such loud sounds. As confusing and all as the day may sound, it was good.

… but even with my great hunting-skills, one got away, and I have an idea why (sorry in advance non-wow-players, but don’t worry, the point is easy to get by reading the descriptions): the mosquito in question was a rogue (sneaky thief-class). I had quite a few good attempts at killing the blasted insect, but either it evaded my hits, or vanished in thin air. Revenge is sweet though, as I got my revenge his morning, and got the bastard the first time I spotted it. Seems like it wasn’t Vanish, but rather Shadowmeld.

Anyway, nothing really exciting has been going on down here the last few days, as my better half has been extremely busy with study-related stuffs during daytime, which caused me to stay at “home” monday – thursday (except wednesday, as my mosquito-bite-covered feet clearly remembers) during the day. We still got to experience stuff during the evening however!

Cinépolis VIP (Monday – October 5th):
Seemingly a popular trend down here (and understandably so), it’s basically the way to watch movies. First of all, you sit in a nice armchair (adjustable, with leg-support), and there are waiters who can take orders of beer, small meals, hot beverages and likewise stuff. Also, the armchairs are in pairs of two, so you could turn them into a nice sofa, and sit in that with your partner. Also a nice bonus. So, all in all, it was a very enjoyable way of seeing Surrogates. So, if you’re ever down here, try it out.

Lucha Libre (Tueday – October 6th):
Being a fan (read, I love seeing it whenever I get the chance) of WWE and WCW, I found this a must to see. It would seem that every tuesday, there’s a few hours of mexican wrestling in downtown Guadalajara. To put it bluntly, it was far from as professional as WWE, but that was somehow to be expected as well. Never the less, it ended up quite decently towards the end when the big names (seemingly, I have no idea who and what they were – probably mostly because of the spanish language-barrier), as they could indeed do some funky tricks. Some got disqualified and a few got carried out after some pretty serious stunts (not as violent as a proper faceslide though). The most notable thing however, was the whole crowd-atmosphere that was going on. People were yelling all kinds of really harsh things to each other at random – and I won’t go into what exactly they said, first of all because of the mentioned language-barrier, but also because most of the stuff was something that would result in getting into serious trouble if you yelled it in a pub, or the like. Beer was a once again a given, naturally. Visit Arena Coliseo (where it probably is every time).

The last week of my time in Mexico will most likely be much more interesting however, and grant opportunities to take pictures (cameras wasn’t allowed tuesday), as we’re going to Oaxaca saturday to wednesday, to see ruins, mountains, and all kinds of stuff which isn’t behind walls, in the middle of a city, or such. Safe to say, I’m really looking forward to it! I’ll however probably do a post before taking off, as there should still be some stuff happening friday worth telling about. I hope.

Friday – October 2nd:
Quite a bit of impressions to make up for a loss in one evening at least, as I was thrown head-first into social relations the next day, when we (with “we” meaning Charlotte and I) went to the University, as she had to attend to a lecture. And already here, a notable difference between Denmark and Mexico was shown: you had to attend every single lecture. Back home, it’s your own responsibility. As it didn’t seem too appealing to me to join in on the lecture, I was asked (or well, told, but I didn’t have any objections) to join a few of the other international students, in a perilous adventure by car through Guadalajara, to buy fútbol (soccer)-tickets for later. Quite an amusing trip as I had only spoken to the two I was going with for around 30 minutes, before being detached from Charlotte…

And what a game it was! Two local teams from Guadalajara at a semi-big stadium (probably room for 30,000 people). Even though the game seemed to be pretty one-sided at first, as one of the teams scored within the first 5 minutes, the opponents got it turned around and won 2-1. Really exciting. On top of that, add Sol (yeah, the beer), nachos, the lovely company of others and a hilarious half-time show (with hilarious slapstick-alike comedy of people tripping painfully in every possible way imaginable, being tackled by one of the teams mascot, etc.). Oh, and then there was the weather. Dark clouds were slowly spreading over the stadium during the start of the match. Thankfully, there was no rain, as the storm didn’t get close, but it gave some really beautiful background lightning strikes. Needless to say, I was rather happy. Even though the rest of the evening continued with more beer, more socializing and drinks, I wasn’t exactly off the jetlag yet, so the evening didn’t go on for that much longer.

Saturday – October 3rd:
The saturday didn’t really include many interesting things to tell, as most of it was spend trying to get Charlotte a new phone, get it registered, and getting money on the account. In Denmark, that would seem like a trivial task, but not down here. The language barrier didn’t cause much of the trouble – mostly because Charlotte’s spanish has gotten really nice while down here – but more the silly amount of the Mexicans needing to register every – single – thing, in all ways possible. The phone had to be bound to a person (including the passport number – what the hell?), even if it wasn’t an actual subscription. In the end, we succeeded and there was much rejoicing.

In the evening, we met up with quite a bit of the other international students, and had a nice dinnerparty with plenty of food, beer and general good times. Words of Pastafarianism were given, and pasta was eaten.

Sunday – October 4th:
Sunday turned out to be the cultural forefront of these first few days. We decided to go on a minor bus-trip to downtown Guadalajara, and take a tour-bus from there to Tlaquepaque, and see the stores and the general area. The ordinary bus-system is quite different from the “organized” system in Denmark. Besides being hilariously cheap (a ticket costing 30% of the smallest ticket possible in Denmark, can take you everywhere in Guadalajara, pretty much), there’s a quite different view on getting on and off. You can basically just wave wave at the bus, and it’ll stop. In the same way, when you press “stop” in the bus, it’ll most likely stop as fast as it can, instead of waiting till the next real stop. Rather nice instead, gives more freedom, and removes everything I hate about busses in Denmark (where missing the stop you intended to stop at, mostly means walking for quite a while). Basically, the advantages of caps mixed into the ordinary buses. On a related note, caps are cheap as well!

But, before we allowed ourselves to board the tour-bus that would take us to Tlaquepaque, I had to get some new shoes, as my old ones were in a rather sad shape (read: utterly devastated). A pair of funky Converse-shoes later, everything was suddenly right. The trip there was quite exciting in cultural way, as we got to see the various different parts of the city, and different important buildings. Tlaquepaque proved to be a galore of different shops with souvenirs and interesting things you’d want to have, but not as “touristy” as it may sound. In the end, I got a really nice sombrero (which I’m still wondering how I’m going to get home) and got to eat lunch while seeing/hearing a Mariachi-band with dancers and the whole thing.

… And I think I’ll leave it as that for now. Lots of exciting stuff coming up the next few days, so expect a new post soon – which is hopefully slightly shorter too, as it took me close to two hours writing this.