Amy’s Journal

So, I just got back from spending my winter quarter abroad in Mexico! (essentially i got to miss winter completely, since the weather is gorgeous here already). I would have written earlier but the piñata dog ate my camera. No really…my camera got smacked by a flying stick during the smashing of the piñata at my farewell party and I didn’t want to post without the pictures!! (Luckily I managed to recover most of the pictures).

Where do I even begin? So many things to tell, so little space. Well, I will start by saying that I was studying at CEPE, which is part of the University of Guadalajara, but at their campus in Puerto Vallarta. The classes were amazing, and entirely taught in Spanish. My teachers did not even speak English, and I read novels in Spanish! This is a picture of Ruth, my awesome Mexican literature teacher, who is a writer herself. She gave me a book with some of her short stories in it before I went home.

But, as my dad likes to tell people, I was double-majoring in mexico–studying spanish and the beach! I swam with dolphins, went whale watching, and boogie boarded, body-surfed, and swam non-stop. I also went on some adventures into the mountains, where I rode a race-horse and galloped faster than I ever have in my life and jumped off of cliffs into freezing river swimming holes. Here are some pictures from the various adventures that I had.

Baby dolphin kisses!

Boogie boarding in Sayulita with friends

Attempting to jump into the water with the hundreds of wild dolphins, only to scare them away and get stung by a huge jellyfish that wrapped itself around my stomach while I was in the middle of the ocean.

Crossing a stream on my crazy energetic horse Azteca who nearly ran me all the way to the next time zone (actually the next time zone was only about 10 minutes away so that really was possible).

One question that I get a lot is, was it hard to find vegetarian food in Mexico? Actually no, since essentially you can get rice, beans guacamole, salsa, cheese, and tortillas about anywhere you go, and I could eat tacos every day for the rest of my life and be pretty much content. But, I didn’t have to because believe it or not, there were TWO fully vegetarian restaurants in Puerto Vallarta, one that was really close to my school, owned by a family friend, that I ate at every day. It is called Planeta Vegetariano, which means vegetarian planet. The food was amazing! The other one is called Mary’s and was a little farther away but absolutely delicious.

This is a picture of me outside of Planeta…yummm im craving their incredible buffet right now. Well, I’m actually off to India tomorrow to complete my travels for the quarter so I should stop writing and get packing, but to sum it up, I had an amazing quarter in Mexico…I am pretty much in love with the country…the roads, the cobblestones, the people, the culture, the smells, the noise…I love it all and I hope to spend a lot more time there in the future.