My first month in Mazzz

Clavadista!
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So today officially marks my first month in Mazatlan! It´s seriously been one of the fastest months of my life! I want to write everything, but I don´t even know where to begin!!

Let´s start with the reason I´m here (school). I had my frist exam yesterday and it was pretty tough. It was in business spanish and it was about 5 pages that we had to fill, mostly writing in spanish and using vocab (I made over 100 spanish vocab flascards, thank goodness I did that!) No one finished the exam in time so she´s going to grade what we have. Yikes! Today, I have my first speech! A ten minute speech over Argentina in spanish for my social and cultural history of latin america. I made a powerpoint presentation, and I think I´ll do just fine. I need to go over a few more things and polish it up a bit.

JUMP!
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Also, I just went back to school yesterday for the first time since last Thursday. Carnaval started Thrusday and since then, it´s been utter chaos in this city! I hung out mostly with three canadians, and my australian friend, Rebecca (Bec)! We went to the Plaza Machado, where they had a food festival and a LOT of people. It was so full that it wasn´t even really fun because you couldn´t walk anywhere, much less move at all. Then the next night I went to "the second largest house in Mazatlan" to watch the combate naval. The house was INCREDIBLE. It´s 7 stories built on a cliff overlooking the ocean... pretty ideal. And the combate naval is a representation of the french- mexican battle. There was a big warship out in the bay and they "battled" with fireworks. They shot tons from the shore (mexico) and a few from the ship (france). It was spectacular (and what made it really great is that they dont really have safety laws, precautions, etc... so the fireworks were insanely close and everywhere and so many of them!) I´ve never seen a better firwork show in my life. The following 2 nights of Carnaval were so much fun... we went to Olas Altas and paid $2 to walk along the biggest block party ever. You walk(push your way) down the street and you basically walk from stage to stage and dance, dance, dance! Also, there are people from all parts of mexico selling boots, hats, trinkets, t-shirts, and tons of food. My favorite food was tromba(??) Its pork cooked like gyro meat and they shave it off onto tacos... wow. The best. Then the last night (that I went out anyway, I took the last day off for a bit of sleep and homework) we went to the parade. It was amazing. The floats were SO big and there were a ton of people and confetti and music. Everything you´d hope for in a parade. When I left there tho, it took me 45 minutes to find a cab (I eventually ended up stopping one that only had one person and riding with them for a while first) Then, from a place that should have taken my 12 min tops to get home, it took me 55 minutes! Thats how many people and cars there were. It was crazy.

"Somos Clavadistas"
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What else?? Oh! I went to a cooking class on Friday! It was a lot of fun. We made tamales, which is a looooong process! Our teacher had already prepared the meat and masa (corn mix). We put the mix on the corn husks, filled them with meat and wrapped them up. We also made tamales dulces (sweet tamales) that weren´t filled with anything, but we added lime, sugar, raisins, and green food coloring to the masa and put them in the corn husks. The were kind of strange, but not bad.

Also, I joined a bowling team here, haha. It´s not serious at all, but if we win we get gold metals! So far it´s me, Bec, Kelle (guy from Sweeden) and Brendan (from Canada). I´m assuming were going to be pretty bad, but it should be a lot of fun. I´ll take pictures for sure!

Sea Urchin!
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I saw clavadistas!! They are these guys that dive off of a certain cliff here. The cliff is 45 feet high and the part of the ocean where they dive in is 7 feet deep... they have to wait for a big wave to jump so that they dont hit bottom! Its pretty scary, but I´ve seen them twice now, and so far, no one has died :) Also, something else cultural that I love about Mexico, is that when youre riding the city busses, sometimes musicians will jump on and play music for you, and you can tip them if you want. I always do because I love it. (Especially yesterday... a drummer that looked like Johnny Depp hopped on and played the bongos and sang sweet music. I liked him!!)

Shino and me!
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Anyway, I should probably get back to this powerpoint presentation, now. I´ll write more later!

Nos Vemos!!

<3