July 15, 2013

• Report # 1022

  Hey everyone ! I hope that you’ve all had an awesome weekend and are having a great start to the week. I’m typing this up from the room I’m staying at in Puebla for a few days. My last full day in Vancouver went pretty well. I watched the last two episodes of Cachito de Cielo, so no more telenovelas for me for a long time. Now that I’m in Mexico I’ll be speaking and listening to Spanish every single day, so there is no more need to see telenovelas. I went for one last run around the block before jumping in the pool and swimming around a few minutes before dinner.

  My parents had their friends over for dinner and we had home made hamburgers, fries, and some cake for dessert. It was a great meal and I was absolutely stuffed afterwards. I smartly decided to start packing my bag that evening and I got 95 % of my packing done before going to bed. In the morning I finished up packing and I was able to find a nice bag to pack a lot of my shoes and a few others things that would act as a carry on. Both of my bags were just under the allowed weight, so I had succeeded in packing well….. so I thought at the time. I went for one final run to Tim Hortons on Saturday morning and came back home and finished up all the final few things that I had to do.

  I said good-bye to my mom and brother and the pets before loading up the car and having my dad drive me to the airport. Once arriving at the airport I got out and said good-bye to him, and went in and checked my bags in relatively quickly. My grandmother had also stopped by before I left, and said good-bye and wished me well, so it was nice to be able to say good-bye to everyone before I had left. As I was passing through the security, I learned the hard way that it is not possible to carry on shampoo, shaving cream, sunscreen, and Maple Syrup.

  The only option I was really given was if there was someone outside that could have taken all of those items…. which of course there wasn’t, so they ended up in the garbage. I was obviously very unhappy about it, but I really should have known better. I have flown so many times, but I think because I’ve never really had a carry on bag aside from my laptop or camera before, that I just didn’t think about anything. If I had known better before I easily could have put different items in my carry on bag and avoided that whole mess. So I passed through without my items that had been thrown in the garbage… yes the garbage. Even though most of them had never even been used they went in the garbage. At least they could have donated them to some charity !

  The Maple Syrup upset me the most because I bought it for a friend and now she won’t even get it. Well nothing I can do now. I have learned my lesson and I definitely would not be so sloppy in the future. I had about an hour to wait for the plane so I just used the computer to pass the time, and then we all got boarded on pretty quickly. On the plane I watched two movies, the Incredible Burt Wonderstone, a comedy about two competing magicians with Steve Carrell and Jim Carrey, and Picture Day, a Canadian movie about a rebel girl repeating grade 12 who has interesting relationships with a friend that she used to babysit and an older guy who is the lead singer of a band…. very interesting.

  I had some pasta on the plane as well as bread, salad, a chocolate pudding, and some juice, so you really do get treated pretty well on the airplanes these days. The flight took 5.5 hours, and I got into Mexico City just before 9:30 pm… which is two hours ahead of Vancouver time. I got off the plane and passed through the customs, explaining to the guy that I will be working in Monterrey. There wasn’t really anything I had to do there, as I will be doing all of that at the migration office when I go. For now I just have a temporary visa that’s good for 30 days. The next step will be to go to the immigration offices with my passport, and meeting with a person there, and showing them that I have the work approval, and of course that I have a place to stay.. an address in Mexico.

  I have a friend in Monterrey who has been helping me check places out, but she hasn’t found anything that nice yet. I talked to her last night and she told me that on Thursday we can go look, so it would be nice to find something by Thursday and to be able to go to the immigration offices on Friday. If I can’t get it done by Friday I suppose it will be ok as I’d have the weekend to find a place, and I would be able to go first thing next week…. which would still be well before 30 days. I’ve already talked with Arturo and he said that I didn’t even need to ask him if I could stay with him as he said “my house is your house.” I’m certainly lucky to know him and have a chance to stay there for a few days once again.

  It will be my third time staying there, as I stayed there for a couple of nights spring of last year, and then again for a week last November. It will be nice to see his parents once again well as they have always been very nice and friendly. I am certainly hoping to find a place sooner rather than later though as I really need to call the lady from Telepeformance and letting her know that I’m in Monterrey and ready to being working. So I met a friend, Deniz at the airport in Mexico City and she was with her sister and a friend of her sisters. Luckily they noticed me walking by, else I probably would have passed them looking for her somewhere else. We went for dinner in the Wings restaurant, the same restaurant that I spent the night there last year !

  This was a very odd night as we waited forever for someone to come and take our orders. And once we gave our orders, we waited forever to get our drinks…. in fact my Tortilla soup came before the drinks came. The drinks finally came, and the queso fundido that I ordered as well, and we ate and talked for a while before heading upstairs to take the bus to Puebla. Deniz and I said good-bye to her sister and friend and we boarded the bus and waited to head off to Puebla. On the bus I talked with a Korean guy as he was trying to talk in English with some other passengers, but they didn’t really understand him. There will be an international Tae Kwon Do tournament in Puebla this week, so there are tons of people from Korea and many other countries visiting.

  The bus ride took about 2 hours and we arrived in Puebla pretty late. We took a taxi and I made it to the hotel/hostel place that I’ll be staying for a few nights. By the time I got into bed it was close to 4:00 am, and I was up at 9:00 am, so I certainly didn’t get much sleep. Deniz came over and we took a bus to the central of Cholula, which is the city where I am staying at. We had a nice buffet breakfast and then we checked out a plaza and some very nice streets. Later on we took a bus to Puebla and we went inside the largest cathedral in all of Mexico, and it was just super fascinating. I love going into the churches in Mexico so much, they are just so historical and wonderful places to be.
   We also toured a museum about the Battle of Puebla, where the French invaded Mexico, and stopped in a shop and tried some traditional sweets from Puebla.

  My favourite part of the day was probably taking a two floor trolley, sitting upstairs, and touring all around the city, passing through so many historical streets, seeing so many colonial buildings and bridges, and passing through an amazing park with amazing views of the city… it was incredible. The climate really changed though as it went from being kind of hot and sunny to being super cloudy and windy. After the trolley tour, we toured the Puebla state government palace and another church, and by the time we were outside it was pouring rain. Luckily there were so many sales people on the street taking advantage of the change in the weather selling umbrellas and rain proof wear.

  I bought an umbrella for 30 pesos (like 2 dollars and 25 cents) and we were able to stay dry. There was some lightning and thunder as well, but very little, so it was a nice little store. Before the weather changed we lined up in a super popular taco place and stood in line waiting for a table. We certainly were not cold in there as we stood by the grills where the taco meet spun around slowly engulfed in flames… it was certainly hot. Once again I had Queso Fundido and some gringas, which are a tipe of tacos with flame broiled meet and cheese… delicious. I also was able to drink Horchata, which is one of my favourite Mexican drinks.

  Later in the day we walked through the Paseo San Francisco mall, which surprisingly had a lovely garden outside on the back entrance to the mall. We walked through the garden for a while before heading in and checking out Cinemex. We decided to see Pacific Rim, which was a crazy futuristic movie about some war between humans controlling giant robot machines trying to protect the planet from these giant monsters that looked like mutant dinosaurs. It was an entertaining movie filled with cool special effects and lots of action, but I really wonder sometimes who comes up with these movie ideas !

  After the movie we took a taxi back and I got home, talking to my friend in Monterrey for a while, and relaxing a bit. Denise will be over today at 10:00 am and we’ll be ready for another full adventure-filled day. Puebla is absolutely an amazing city ! It’s full of history, culture, many colonial things, and the climate is perfect. I could definitely see myself living in Puebla one day, though of course I am ready to get back to Monterrey and start working. I can definitely say I already feel fatter ! After eating queso fundido two days in a row, plus the hamburgers, fries, and cake from the other night, and the week of amazing food at my grandmother’s house, I’ve definitely put on some weight, but that’s ok !

  I won’t worry too much about this now. I will be walking lots during my time here in Puebla, and of course when I get settled in back in Monterrey, I will get back to running and with the running in the heat, and not eating as much, I’ll be back to how I was before I left Monterrey in March, sooner than later. Anyways for the next question:

  What is your opinion on tipping in restaurants ?

  I think it comes down to service. If someone gives exceptional service, they deserve to be tipped very well, and if it’s decent, well they still deserve something. However if the service is absolutely horrible, like it was at that restaurant in the airport in Mexico City the other night, than customers should be fully within their rights to leave the servers absolutely nothing…. especially when the restaurant is pretty empty and the service was horrible !

  I will leave you all with 30 pictures from Calgary as I decided to lump all my Calgary pictures together to get them all posted in one entry. I wish everyone all of the best with everything. Take care and I’ll talk to you all on Thursday, bye for now.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  • 3:10 am
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