Learning to Pronounce Tequisquiapan

This blog post is a tad late, I don’t know why I’ve put it off for so long!! But as tomorrow I’m starting new travels, I thought I’d better make sure everything was up to date before I set off!

About 2 weeks ago (I think?) I went on my last hang out trip to the Feria del Queso y Vino (Wine and cheese festival) in Tequisquiapan, Queretaro. I’ll cut to the chase now, it looks like a daunting place name but I’ll break it down for ya: Te-kis-ki-a-pan. Ok, that’s that done, although being able to pronounce crucial Mexican words like Tlalpan, Xochimilco, Tlahuac, Tlaquepaque, Huitlacochle, Popocateptl (my street name), or Iztaccihuatl, you do feel really proud of yourself!! The only bummer is knowing my vast Mexican vocab will probably be of zero use back in Southampton….

Anyway, Tequisquiapan is also the geographical centre of Mexico! Who knew. Here is the centre, in all its pointy glory:

However, before we got there we visited the Pena de Bernal (The n in Pena should have a tilde, but I cba to work out how to add that right now)… It’s the third biggest monolith in the world, AKA a hella big rock (beaten only by Gibraltar and Ayers Rock).

It was over 30 degrees C, and there was barely any shade, so the climb was tough. We made it about 2/3 of the way and decided the views were good enough, especially as we were hungry and only had a 3 hours in the town.

This is a Michelada (a litre of Beer + worcester sauce + lime juice + salt + Tabasco/Valentina + Maggi sauce, served in a cup rimmed with chamoy (chilli)….. YUMMY.

Afterwards, we (Tania and Katya and I) treated ourselves to some Micheladas and burgers – well deserved! Although they forgot to put the meat in Tania’s burger, wtf haha!

Then we carried on to Tequis, and settled into our hotel. In the afteroon we went to a pool party organised by Hang Out, which was good but we were there for soooo long so it got kinda boring.

The next day we spent at the Feria, which was fun, though much classier than I’d expected. I was hoping for a Mexican octoberfest, but it was more like “would you like to try a spoonful of this overpriced wine?”…. Ah well they had a great band playing, they did loads of MExican covers of British bands, like the Spice Girls :’) At one point they even used a rubber chicken as an instrument… it got weird.

We actually got back to CDMX at a reasonable time, about 10pm, which was good as I got lots of sleep before work. Which was my last week EVER at the Anglo!!! Wooooooo!

I mean I’ll miss my students loooooaddds, they’ve been so kind, welcoming, friendly to me. We always have such banter in class! We had a kind of leaving party on Thursday including a banterous quiz, shortbread (I made it), Tea (from England) salt and vinegar crisps (I found some here!!!) and plenty of drinking games. I taught them Irish snap, Ring of Fire, Mr and Mrs, and a few more maybe. Obviously, Anglo staff, if you’re reading this,  we didn’t use alcohol, just Squirt – I will never not find that brand of lemonade funny :’) .

My baes xxx (Also shout-out to Jacky and Aurora, who left before this was taken, and also Yolanda, Julie and Rafa, from my Tuesday/Thursday class)

So I finished work on Friday, and since then I’ve kinda just been chilling, packing, doing last minute touristy stuff in CDMX (I visited the Museo de arte mordern and the Palacio Nacional), all good things. Now I’m super excited because tomorrow I get to see RHI AND HANNAH! They’re coming to cancun baby! I’m so lucky to have friends who’ll come visit me this far away!!!! Can’t wait! Safe travels gals, see ya tomorrow xxxx