Adventures in Mexico - Part 1: Arrival

To fulfill the requirements of my 'International Studies Option' with my engineering degree, I have to write a report on my exchange. I hesitate to put it up here, because it's not great writing. It's pass/fail and since I have studying for five final exams bidding for my time as well, I'm pretty much just winging it. However, I thought that a couple of you might be interested in a more detailed description of what happened on the exchange.

Stepping off the plane in Mexico, the first thing I noticed was the change in temperature. Sweat beaded across my forehead. Having spent Christmas in northern Alberta where temperatures averaged -20°C, suddenly being in a place with no snow and temperatures above +20°C was quite a shock. After reclaiming my luggage, I waddled toward the customs desks with my giant camping backpack on my back, a smaller backpack on my chest, a guitar in one hand, and my laptop in the other. Customs in Mexico are quite different than in Canada. The screening process consisted of pressing a button which supposedly randomly activated either a green or a red light. Putting my guitar down, I pressed the button and hoped for green just so that I wouldn’t have to put the rest of my luggage down again. Luck was on my side and I continued past the customs desk and into the airport lobby where I started looking for a sign saying ‘Tec de Monterrey’. I found the bus and joined the other exchange students waiting to be taken to the university. Inside the bus a game show was playing on the tiny televisions mounted above the seats. The show seemed almost ridiculous with exaggerated expressions and overstated silliness. With time I would find out that soap operas and this type of game show were incredibly popular in Mexico.

The drive to the campus was long. Looking out the windows I was a little surprised to see cement block shacks with tin roofs. Kids were running amongst the colorful laundry hung outside the houses. The surprise didn’t come from not knowing that such conditions existed in Mexico, as three years earlier I had gone on a service project to build a house in an area of Mexico with even worse living conditions. Instead the surprise was from realizing that these conditions existed even in Monterrey, the city often regarded as the economic capital of Mexico. Later after seeing the campus I would have an even greater surprise at seeing the wealth of the university and the people who attended it. Trying to understand how these two universes could exist right beside each other was one of the greatest challenges of my exchange.
The rest of the day passed fairly quickly. We went on a tour of campus and then to a welcome ceremony in the school auditorium. The tours and greetings were offered in both English and Spanish, and my suspicions were confirmed that I couldn’t yet understand spoken Spanish.

I had been assigned along with other students planning to stay in residence to a different temporary room for the introduction week. The rest of the week consisted of lectures on Mexican culture, how to obtain our student visas, and residence life. We also had to sign up for courses, and move to our permanent residence building. Evenings were spent exploring the city’s nightlife with other exchange students. The only real mishap happened one morning after we had moved into our permanent residence rooms. I had just met my roommate Francisco the night before. He was actually a Mexican-American and could speak Spanish, but wanted to improve. The next morning we were awakened to an announcement over the residence PA system. I couldn’t understand it, but Francisco said that they were telling all students to go to the bus waiting outside of the main residence hall. Our schedule said that the lecture on extra-curricular activities and sports at Tec was still half an hour away, so we decided to ignore the announcement and go back to sleep. Soon enough there was a knock on the door and the floor supervisor told us to get ready and go to the bus. As we approached the bus, another one of the residence staff shouted at us “corre, corre!” (“run, run!”), and pointed at the bus. When we got on we realized that we were definitely in the wrong place, since we were the only exchange students on the bus, but it was too late, the bus was leaving. We were taken with the Mexican students to a ranch some thirty minutes from the university. It turns out we had accidentally gone to the residence orientation instead of the exchange student orientation.
The following week classes began.