A Good Ending to a Marvelous Dream

*Phew*  Finally catching up with my blog posts.  Thus saying, this is my blog post for Tuesday, August 11th of the year 2015.  Now known as the Last Day on Earth.  I mean, the Last Day in Mexico.

Ahem.  *Looks at notes written on phone, then travels back in time*  (Humor me and pretend I actually wrote this on Tuesday).

De ja vu, anyone? :P

Moving on.

Today I got up super duper late.  I guess the last day of school did not motivate me enough to heed my alarm clock this morning.  Nevertheless, I did get to school on time (the teacher was late this morning).  How did school go, you may ask?  (Besides the late teacher).

Well, in our first class we gave our final presentations, then ate tamales and drank horchata.  (If my stomach had been more agreeable, I'm sure I would have found it more scrumptious).

Our 395R class with our teacher

In my second class, we took our final exam.  (And also ate some candy that Conner brought):

After finishing the test, we waited outside the class while our teacher graded, laughing and talking with our Profe whilst doing so (good times).  Eventually we got our scores back (I got an A!), following which we headed out (we being Claire, Conner, Christina, Raquel, and I), saying goodbye to our school (Universidad Modelo) for the last time.

Instead of going straight home, we walked to an outdoor nursery that was about a five minute walk from our bus stop.  It was so cool!  And had lots of pretty plants and flowers.

Street leading to our bus stop.  (I love street shots, what can I say?)

Lots o' coconuts up in that tree.

A baby coconut!  (Well, not Conner.  The plant Conner is holding).

After that, we caught the bus (waited in the shade by the nursery til it came).  Then, Christina, Raquel, and I went to the Centro for the last time.  (We just rode the bus that took us home, all the way to the Centro.  It was a super long bus ride, and took us to a stop we were unfamiliar with, so we got lost for a split second, but it didn't take long to recognize where we were.  Which was somewhere by the Centro).  Anyway, at the Centro, we first got some ice cream at:

Which is actually a little north of Centro.  But man is their ice cream goooooooood!!!!!  *Ahem*  I had some mint (white, not green) chocolate chip and some other flavor (that has slipped my mind, awkward):

Left To Right:  Me, Raquel, and Christina

Cute little bike rack INSIDE the store.

After this, we went in search for Nativities (and also looked at some shirt shops along the way).  Which didn't take too long.  After that, we went to Colon's, where I got even MORE ice cream.  (YUM.  I wasn't going to, but then I realized that I hadn't tried the pineapple flavor yet!  It was unfortunate that this ice cream had some weird grey stuff in it, so I didn't eat all of it).  Then we headed home.  We dropped Raquel off at her bus before heading to our own.  Let me just say, it was the most epic last bus ride ever.  Why?  Because there was this band that got on our bus and they played music!  And it was pretty good sounding music.  (Pretty good talent.  Have you tried playing the guitar AND the pipes on a moving bus?  It's pretty hard).  I got a video of it, but just of the music.  I didn't want to be that one guy awkwardly recording on the bus.  We eneded up giving them some money for their little show.  The only awkward thing about this was that no one applauded when they finished their music...which I thought was strange.  But, anyway, here's the video:

When we got home, we found Elisa and the girls doing some back to school cleaning.  We chatted for a bit before doing our own packing and cleaning.  (During which we listened to some awesome Bolivian tunes).  When we were basically done, we went and had our last Mexican lunch (pork and rice) and chatted with Elisa.  We got a lot of recipes from her (since I want to come home and make some Mexican food for my family).

Following lunch, I came back to my room to work on my blog.  But instead, I discovered my phone was having some serious spazzing issues, so I spent that time figuring out my dumb phone instead.  (Luckily, it is now back to working.  I probably dropped it one too many times on the trip and it decided to rebel against me).

After leaving my phone to charge (I found out that if I turn it off, it charges), Christina and I headed to the store to buy some snacks and to buy Elisa some flowers.  I spent all but two pesos, and the pesos I'd previously pulled out to save for my blog book (perfect).

We came back and gave MM her flowers (she loved them.  Course, she went on to talk about our stay there, etc, calling Christina's stay awesome and my stay complicated, lol.  At least she was straightforward.  I didn't think it was complicated, but hey, it's always fun to find out what other people think of you, I guess).  The conversation didn't last too long though because we went had group dinner to get to (at Los Taquitos!)

It was the best dinner ever.  Why?  Well, first I should note that we were told our dinner would be paid for by the program (before we came).  When we got there, we asked Profe how much we could spend and he said, you can get whatever you want PLUS dessert (and there was much rejoicing).  So I got the most expensive thing I've gotten here in Mexico (158 pesos!):  papas con arravanje (at least, I think that's how you spell that).  It was the best, most delicious, most tender meat I've ever had in my life.  SO GOOD.  For dessert, I split with three other girls, so I got to try all three desserts:  queso neopolotin, creama española, and creama de coco.  For me, the crema española was the best.  It was basically horchata made into a cream.  YUM:  Following all that, we got a present from Profe (a little marble jaguar!).  Then we all said our goodbyes (SO sad).

Well, not all of us. Because most of us girls ended up heading to Raquel´s house (after a quick stop at our house) for a last night girl get together (it was SO nice to be walking in the cool of the evening.  It made the ten minute walk very enjoyable).  Which was awesome.  Words cannot describe the good time we had there.

Following that (and our final goodbyes), Christina and I headed home (stopping by Oxxo on the way), talking about what we've learned and our favorite parts of the study abroad.  It was a nice time to just chat and to drink in Mexico for the last time.  *sigh*

'Til Tomorrow

R J Carr