Soccer, Wine, Shopping, and a Monolith

                Before I post more about my teaching experience and what I’ve learned about Mexican culture, I thought I would first write about a few should-have-been-on-my-bucket list-items that I’ve now checked off.  After this weekend, there are many new things I can now say I have done.

                To start, Friday night I went to my first professional soccer game with a few friends from my TESL group.  After going into the stadium with a general admission ticket and figuring out we were on the side with the wrong fans, we exited in order to re-enter on the other side.  However, we thought it would be nice to sit higher up in the stadium, so we tried going in the entrance that lead to the upper seats.  Apparently with our tickets, it wasn’t possible, but the guy snuck us in anyways.  Querétaro ended up losing 0-1, half the stadium lights went out for 30 minutes, and I got attacked by a giant moth the size of a my face. But despite that, I had a fun time and even caught on to some of the chants and grabbed a t-shirt that was shot into the crowd.

 

              I can now also say that I climbed one of the tallest monoliths in the world.  What is a monolith you ask? It’s a giant rock.  Like this one that I went to in Bernal:

              Not only can I say I climbed this huge rock, but I can say that I climbed it in sandals.  If only I had known before the excursion that we were going to climb the rock and not just take pictures of it, I might have come prepared with tennis shoes. Oh well, I like challenges.  Let me give you some examples of what the climb was like:

 

Now imagine climbing that with sandals that have no grip. Let’s just say that there was a lot of climbing with hands on the way up, and a lot of sliding on the way down. Not to mention a lot of sweating from the heat (not so many trees that provide shade while hiking up a rock).  But in the end, the view was worth the climb!

At the top!




At the bottom there are several stands that sell many different types of rocks that are from the area. My Mom will be surprised to hear I’m not coming home with a bag of rocks like I would from the beach when I was younger.  Still fascinated by rocks, however, so I was in heaven!

 

Gorditas

Afterwards, we all went to a restaurant to order Gorditas, which are very famous in this area. Delicioso! In Spanish, “gordita” means “little fat one,” and it’s kind of like a thick tortilla made of masa and stuffed with various fillings.  Mine was filled with chorizo and potatoes.  I had also ordered a bottle of orange soda, and after about the tenth sip I realized it had a big black thing floating in it.  Passing it around the table, my friends were trying to guess what it could possibly be, but I came to the conclusion that I didn’t even want to know. Following lunch, we spent some time walking around the town and shopping.

Streets of Bernal



Bernal

Later that day we went to a Freixenet winery, which involved a tour of the wine caves and a degustation! Now I can say I’ve been on a wine tour in three different languages! After that stop, we went to Tequisquiapan, which is a town mostly populated by indigenous people.  There were lots of markets, so we shopped for a couple hours until we took the bus back home.  It was a tiring but fun-filled weekend of firsts!

A church in Tequisquiapan