Education Abroad Student Blog

And now it is the end. I finished my last exam 2 days ago and I am leaving Mexico for New York tomorrow morning. I haven't kept as many updates going on this blog as I would have liked, unfortunately, and yet already this may be my last entry. To think that last time I wrote was more than a month ago and I had only got to describing some of the food.

Well, a lot has happened, and a lot has changed in that time, both in general and personally. I would not go so far as to say this has been a life-changing experience, but certainly life-shaping. It may sound cliché, but this opportunity really did put me in the position where I had to ask a lot of questions about myself, my identity and what I want out of life, believe it or not. Those are questions that I will be continuing to find the answers to as I prepare to head off around the world. Ahhh, yes it sounds like the feel-good, coming-of-age movie of the year doesn't it?

Well, first, the food. A lot of the other exchange students had a hard time adjusting to the food here. There are a lot of tortillas, meat and cheese and not always a lot of anything else... if you are a vegetarian it is hard to eat much other than cheese if you eat out a lot. But, to be honest, there are a lot of things to love about the food here and it is one of the things that make it so easy to fall in love with the place... not to mention the fact that it is so cheap.

Prices vary of course from place to place, as in Australia, and it is usually the place that determines the cost and not the quality of the food, also like Australia. For example, out here where the Tec campus is located, in an area called Atizapan de Zaragoza, you might get one Taco al pastor for $5MXN (5 pesos or roughly $0.60AUD) but in D.F. (Distrito Federal?the inner city district) you could pay as much as $15 at some places (though pastor is a cheap staple so perhaps it was not a good example) or roughly $1.70 AUD.

Well its more than time for a new entry as the last one is more than a month old now!!!

The view from Ben's window in Mexico City

Things are certainly different now to what the first few days here were like, for me. As might be apparent from the last entry, the first few days were actually really depressing. I was not suffering from culture shock (which I really don't think has happened yet, and probably won't?life here is too comfortable for me and I have too many of the things I am used to in Australia to feel truly alienated, and I have made plenty of friends here by now) but what must have been extreme homesickness. It was probably amplified by being tired from 2 days of traveling and having no way to contact people back home or even some of the few contacts I had here in Mexico already through Swinburne... no phone (it took 2 days for the landline to get connected and I had no sim for my mobile at that point) no knowledge of where to find a local internet café... I felt very disconnected, and the questions 'what the hell am I doing here?' and 'what have I gotten myself into?' recurred over and over again.

*¡Hola!* I am now writing to you as a resident of Atizapan, Estado de Mexico. I have been here since yesterday and have begun to slowly settle in.

Mexico City airport was a bit confusing stepping off the plane, but I finally managed to make my way to the right exit point (*salida* en español). I walked around the huge airport lobby section near the many *salidas* for a good 20 minutes, with my heavy backpack on my shoulders no doubt looking incredibly touristy and bewildered, before I finally spotted Señora Rodriguez, my landlord's wife, holding up a sign with my name. I approached her, and I seemed to kiss her on the cheek before I knew what had happened... I believe that is fairly customary but I haven't been here long enough to confirm. She grabbed her husband, and after a brief *hola*, we headed to their car in the carpark.

Hola! Me llamo Ben Convey . For those of you who don't speak or read Spanish and can't work out the obvious, I just said 'Hi! My name is Ben Convey' or literally 'Hi! I call myself Ben Convey'.

I thought I'd start this blog with such a greeting because it is unimpressive. Rather than demonstrating my masterful bilingual abilities, it represents a rather meek attempt at mastering the basics of a language. Because right now, I can't truly say hablo español bien (I speak Spanish well). The best I can manage truthfully is perhaps hablo un poquito de español (I speak a little bit of Spanish).

In about a fortnight, I'm probably going to wish that my Spanish skills are not as poor as they are. I will be arriving at Mexico City airport on New Years Day with a bulky backpack on my shoulders, and no doubt a somewhat bruised ego from what promises to be a foreboding journey through US customs on the way there. The reason I'll be there is because I'm taking a semester of exchange for my final semester of my Bachelor of Arts (Media and Communications) with Swinburne at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Estado de México . I will give you more information about the university on my next entry when I've actually physically seen the place and explored a bit.