My thoughts were so loud I couldn't hear my mouth

So, after a blissful month of travelling around, “leaving my heart” in Oaxaca/Puebla/Guanajuato (because I’m a pretentious student on my third year abroad, doncha know?), I came back to semi-reality here in Colima. I returned with a lot more “ganas” than I had had before the Christmas holidays, and threw myself into making more friends and integrating myself more into the international community in the city. This turned out to be a brilliant move, as it has resulted in experiencing a LOT more of what life here has to offer, in the company of some really beautiful people. More on that later!

A few weeks after I got back, my salsa teacher moved back to his native Oaxaca, handing management of the club over to me and my friend Claudia. Yes, I feel like Napoleon Dynamite: I came to Mexico on my year abroad and learned to dance salsa, before taking over ownership of a salsa group! Next step: world domination. Claudia is professionally trained, and a beautiful dancer with LOTS to teach me, which is really exciting. We both give classes, with her obviously taking the reigns as far as teaching the more advanced students goes, but it’s really fun and definitely not something I envisaged doing when I took off from London Heathrow last October!

The biggest news from February was that I decided to move out of the house I was living in, and move into the house of one of my friends. This was probably the most important thing I’ve done since I got here - not because there were any problems with the family I was living with - but in terms of my independence, and making the most out of every opportunity that is offered to me, it has proved an invaluable decision. That's about all on that!

Late February and early March marked the departure of a few friends here, so I pulled the party shoes out of the closet (not that they’d had much opportunity to gather any dust), and got my sweet groove on! Here I am at a fancy dress party, dressed as “drunk girl wearing a dress AND A MASK”.

For those doubters among you, yesthatcountsasfancydress.

We also went in a group to Manzanillo to spend the weekend at the beach, bidding our farewells to a much-loved pinche Canadian, Thomas! A couple of days at the beach, and a night sat by the pool in our hostel, drinking tequila and singing along to a guitar (repeat earlier comment about pretentious students). I went to bed at 3 or 4am, when the conversation was still flowing, but my world was spinning around just a little bit too fast for me to add anything worthwhile to it, so I stumbled my merry way to bed. The next morning, we spent an hour trying to wake Thomas up, who, it transpired, had drunk an entire bottle of tequila to himself, and stayed up to watch the sunrise. Here he is, passed out like an angel on his bed, before being rudely awakened by some ginger Brit mounting him like a pony.

We Brits are a frigid bunch.

Anyway, after another fantastic month of fun and larks, I contracted the flu, and spent almost three weeks straight in my bed every night, feeling sorry for myself. Because I am really intelligent, I decided not to go to the doctor or take any medication, resulting in a throat infection that left me looking and feeling something like ….

... That.

This gave me the kick up the arse I needed to get some advice from a doctor, which – luckily - came in the form of a student who diagnosed me in one of my English conversation classes, saving me the hassle of having to find a doctor myself! I am now on the mend, though still not functioning at 100% capacity.

A couple of weekends ago, one of the most wonderful people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting here celebrated his birthday, and a group of 9 of us went on a camping trip in paradise to mark the occasion. The pretentious student is about to rear its ugly head again, for those of you wanting to skip to the end. It was one of those experiences that everyone who was involved came away from feeling like they were part of a secret that is indescribable in words, so even if you wanted to share it with someone else, it wouldn’t be possible. So I won’t try to explain to you what it was like – I will just show you some pictures and tell you how lucky I feel that at the age of twenty one, I am living the kind of life that most people in Britain spend their whole lives working towards. They slave away so that they can put away money to be able to travel when they retire, but that’s such a huge risk! It might sound immature to say that I want to live my whole life like this, in Mexico, doing the things I love, so that when I retire I can look back on the life I’ve already lived and say, “I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing all along, because so far it’s been fucking fantastic”. There aren’t many people who get to say that, but I am determined to be one of them, and I will find a way to do it. That’s not to say I have no intention to work – I love working and I thrive off succeeding professionally – but I don’t believe that working hard and having fun are mutually exclusive, and I will keep trying in the hope that someone says, “Write me a regular column”, or “Report on politics in Mexico for me”, or SOMETHING that gets my heart pumping and allows me to live in a country that I am falling head over heels in love with.

Jealous?

"I am very fond of sunsets. Come, let us go look at a sunset now."

So. Bloody hell. I feel like a little girl who was sent to her bedroom for causing a fuss at the dinner table, and now has to come downstairs to apologise. I have spent a long time avoiding writing a blog post, purely because the idea of trying to remember all the things I’ve done since my last post back in late November - let alone putting cyber pen to cyber paper to write it all down – was a bit of a terrifying prospect. In fact, given that this is the first paragraph of the post, it still is a terrifying prospect.

Let’s rewind to late 2011, when I said “Au revoir” to Colima and started my travels with a ten hour bus journey to Mexico City. This sounds more horrific than it really is, since we travelled overnight and the seats are comfortable enough to curl up and sleep in. I spent a few very cold days in Mexico City – living in the hottest state in Mexico makes any vaguely cold climate pretty unbearable – with a very generous and kind family who treated me like one of their own, feeding and clothing me, while patronisingly assuring me that one day I would discover God. At this early point in my travels I felt bright and optimistic enough to debate with the family, assuring them that I will not be finding any God and, yes, I’m quite certain that – if I have children – they will be adopted and, yes, I’m quite certain I will be capable of loving them in spite of that. In fact, I will probably them love more for the fact that they didn’t make their way into the world by violating my personal space for 9 months, before making an unsightly exit via my lady bits. It’s a marvel that mothers don’t spend their lives resenting their children for the trauma inflicted on them during pregnancy and childbirth.

This is probably an inappropriate moment to step away from the story of my travels and deliver you all the news that my best friend is pregnant!! Now, these are some things I think of when I think of Julie:
Sneaking out between classes to smoke and drink vodka like two delinquents;
Competing in chapel to see who could sing the loudest - and ugliest - without getting punished by a teacher;
Dating each other’s exes;
Tearing pages out of the bible to roll joints (“Sorry mom, sorry God”);
Ordering pizza to the boarding house while stoned at 3am, and having to climb out of a window to get it in order to avoid the security cameras and automatic lights;
Those panicky five minutes after hearing the words “Lucy and Julie, can I see you in my office please?”, as we desperately tried to come up with a believable cover story;
Having to make my parents her guardians so that she could live at my house every time she got suspended from school;
Sharing a tiny single bed together almost every night at school, even though we are both seriously wriggly bed companions.
We got up to a lot of mischief - most of my best memories of my teens are shared with her – and we will continue to get up to mischief together until we are old and grey, but Julie will be the best mum ever, and hopefully I’ll be the best aunt! Congratulations, you angel.

Back to my travels, and I hopped on the plane to England to spend Christmas with my family. Honestly, it was a bit of an out of body experience, and I spent the whole time feeling like a bit of a ghost because it was weird trying to readjust to life back there in such a short space of time. It was amazing to see everyone, and there is no Christmas like a traditional Hughes family Christmas, but I spent the majority of my time there feeling guilty for the fact that I was pining for Mexico. I was happy to touch back on Latin American soil and get on the bus to Oaxaca, bubbling with excitement for the month of travels that lay ahead.

I could tell you a thousand things about the month I spent travelling; the amazing things I saw; all the new things I experienced .. but I think, ultimately, all my gushing would make it an intolerable read. And the memory of it all is much better than any description I could give you, so I will leave it at that.

I do want to quickly mention Puebla, because I fell in love with it, and being there convinced me that there is a city here where I could spend the rest of my life. I spent a few magical days there, living with a family who thought I was the devil for being atheist, and spent every moment they could trying to save my soul from the pits of hell. Which was awfully nice of them. Crazy Catholics aside – it was the only real fault I found with the city – I had an amazing time there, and am very excited to be going back over the Easter vacation with a couple of friends from Colima. We’ll be stopping via a few cities on our way to spend Easter in Cancun, and I am pleased as punch that Puebla made the shortlist!

After travelling for about a month, I finally arrived in Guadalajara to meet my mum at the airport. We went from there to a resort in Puerto Vallarta, where we spent a week doing absolutely nothing. It was bliss. It was also the most hilarious place I have ever been – the resort’s unflinching pride in being a little piece of the United States plonked on the beautiful western coast of Mexico was all at once disturbing, infuriating, and entertaining. We entered our hotel, The Mayan Palace, where we were greeted by a huge totem pole and some tinny, vaguely ethnic music, before entering into the main hall of the hotel, where all traces of “Mayan” culture disappeared. We were well and truly in the heart of America, staying in a resort that claimed to be environmentally aware, despite the fact that each hotel is knocked down and rebuilt every ten years, just to keep things fresh and exciting. Don’t get me wrong – this was a beautiful week spent in great company! But the holiday was made all that more memorable by the ridiculousness of it all, from being outright insulted for coming on holiday without a male authority figure, and the “authentic” Mexican beach parties (which ENDED before 11pm – very authentic), to the holiday gestapo watching our every move to see what the scandalous Hughes duo would do next. If you are wondering how I am constantly getting into trouble, you need look no further than my mother.

After a week at the beach, we arrived back in Guadalajara and spent the night in a lovely hotel with a beautiful view of the city. We reluctantly sipped on our last gin & tonic together, and watched the sunset paint the sky pink and grey, before going to sleep to prepare for a very early morning.

Off she went on her not-so-merry way back to England, and I got on the bus back to Colima feeling like the luckiest girl in the world, after spending almost two months living the kind of life most people only ever dream about living.

And that takes us to late January! To be continued …