This past Sunday was a lot of fun. After the New Years Eve clubbing, more than half of the group that I’m with in Cuernavaca met up at 10:30 am to get on a bus to Tepoztlán. It is about 45 minutes from Cuernavaca. It is known as a touristy town because of all the small shops and the temple that was built on the nearby Tepozteco Mountain. Once we got to Tepoztlán, we all just wanted to get up the mountain. Little did we know, just climbing up the [...]

The past couple of days have been insane. I have constantly been on the go. There is just so much to do here!! Okay so I will start with New Years Eve day… On New Year’s Eve day we had our first test. For 2 hours before the test, we just had a review session which was really nice. We pretty much quickly covered all the things that we had learned during the week right before the test. For me, I thought the test went pretty well! I hate the [...]

Here are some more pictures of our house. The house is kind of small but it is really comfortable. It is one of the better looking houses that are around here I think. Last night we had “pizza of Mexico”. Gloria likes to make food with the colors of Mexico and they are always delicious. The past two days have just been filled with a lot of class stuff. I’m beginning to find it hard to write in English actually. Sometimes I will just type in Spanish or have been [...]

Yes, this is what I woke up to the first morning. The guys that I am living with are great. We all bring a lot of different things to our household. The woman that we are staying with, Gloria, spoils us so much. We were talking with some other people that are here with us and it seems like their host families are nothing compared to how great Gloria is to us. Every meal we are treated like we are kings. She was explaining to us that when we are [...]

Today was for sure one of the longest days of my life. First of all, I pretty much decided last night that I just wasn’t going to sleep before leaving for the airport because I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep anyways. I was actually quite impressed with how fast I got into the actual airport. I left my house at 3:50 am and was in the actual airport, past security and everything right at 5:00 am. Being 2 hours early for my flight, I just kind of [...]

Getting ready for this trip was kind of a struggle. I just got done with finals on Thursday night, the 22nd. I was home in Sartell and saw some people on the 23rd. The 24th and 25th I was busy celebrating Christmas with the family. Christmas night, I found myself struggling to get everything in line. I am now fully packed and ready to go and it is 12:30 am on the 26th. I thought about sleeping for about 3 hours until I needed to go but 1) I’m too [...]

Last week a couple of us visted the town of Tepoztlán, about 45 minutes from Cuernavaca.  The town itself has its own rich culture, but the main draw is the pyramid of Tepozteco which sits on top of a mountian ridge 2,000 vertical feet above the city. The pyramid is on top of this ridge. We made the climb in 31 minutes.  The pyramid itself is not very impressive, but the view from the top is incredible.

Last night Mexico played the US in the final round of the Gold Cup tournament, so we decided to go watch along with everyone else in the zócalo where they have a massive screen set up for football games and movie nights.  I don´t follow soccer much at all, but how often do you get a chance to route for your own team in a foreign country?     During the second half it started to rain which messed up the satalite reception, which finally cut-out with about ten minutes to [...]

A few days ago, we visted La Fiesta de San Antonio which takes place every year (one local told me for the past 400 years) in the barrio of, appropriately, San Antón here in Cuernavaca. The day-long celebration consists of about half a mile of amusment park rides, tiendas, fireworks and revelers. Young people also give twelve coins and pray to San Guadalupe to meet their soul mates at the church. The evening culminates in a giant close-and-personal pyrotecnic display and dancing. Last night we got the first significant rainfall [...]

On Sunday we made a day trip about 3 hours north to what is left of the ancient city of Teotihuacan (I will be posting those photos on Flickr in the next day or two).  At its epoch the city was home to around 250,000 people before it disapeared for thousands of years. Teotihuacan probably suffered an ecological disaster. The city’s year-round water supply came from springs at the base of the volcanic mountian that towers over it, just like Cuernavaca and countless other cities in the region today. During the rainy [...]

I’ve seen lightening from our roof almost every other night since we got here about a ago, even if we haven’t really seen any rain.  This time it was right above our heads. My roommate and I hung out there for a while to watch until the rain started pouring, when we went to run back inside.  The problem was the door to the balcony and roof had blown shut behind us.  In Mexico people are very serious about protecting their property, and they have to be.  Every house in Cuernavaca is either [...]