My First Blog Post

Dear reader,

I’m writing this post as I just came back from Monterrey, a city in the north of Mexico. Though it is not generally considered a tourist destination (when I said that I was going to Monterrey to people in my current ‘home town’ Guadalajara, this statement was met with surprise, some even claimed “no one goes to Monterrey for fun” and my Lonely planet dedicates exactly half a page to this –third largest- city in Mexico), I have seen some amazing and beautiful places. The city is surrounded by mountains and the surroundings are surprisingly green (considering the fact that the heat in summer is almost literally killing, as a frequent visitor of southern Spain, where the temperature does not shy away from surpassing 40 °c, I feel like I have the right to make such bold statements).

As soon as I figure out how to attach photos to posts I might add a few to give you an idea of the beauty of this region, but be careful: when I say a few I actually mean a sh*tload, since choosing is definitely not my strong suit and I have seen many beautiful places which I like to share with y’all.

But beautiful as the region was, the beauty of Mexico is even more present in the people who live there.

Time for a little background story-diversion: I did not go to Monterrey because everyone told me that was the place to be, nor because I was so moved by the Lonely Planet’s 5 sentences dedicated to this place (without pictures, so that obviously did not peak my interest). No, I went because one year ago I met someone from Monterrey in Madrid one evening and we instantly became friends and have stayed in touch ever since. This güey was my first introduction to Mexican spontaneity, humour and hospitality, as he invited me to his home in Mexico and to meet his family the first night we met. Being a Dutch person who has never left Europe, who did not assume she would go to Mexico anytime soon, and who is not used to go to the other side of the world to hang around at the home of a person she had seen one night and his family, I did not expect to take him up on his offer, but here we are a year later…

We have stayed in touch ever since that night, sending messages back and forth and video-calling occasionally and a few months ago I decided that if I ever wanted to live in a country on the other side of the Atlantic, now is the time, so I applied to study in Guadalajara, Mexico for one semester. Naturally, the only Mexican person I knew was one of the first ones to know of my plans (unfortunately, he did not take me seriously the first few months, but hey, at long last, when I sent him a picture of the plane tickets I booked, he actually did believe me). I went to Mexico a month before the semester would start so that I had some time to find a nice box to live in (I actually found a really nice one, but more on that later, maybe), to have some time to get used to life in Mexico, but also to have some time to visit this particular güey before school would start. And so I looked for a flight, made him nervous by sending a picture of this flight before booking it, and went north.

It was in his home that I experienced the true meaning of Mexican hospitality, I was instantly treated as a member of the family, called daughter, and was treated to a boat ride along el Parque Funidora with the whole family.

The rest of the week they made sure I had enough to eat, that I wouldn’t get bored, that I would see as many beautiful places as possible, and most importantly, that I felt happy and at home.

And after a week of feeling a tiny bit of (Dutch) vergüenza for suddenly bursting into the lives of these lovely people I barely knew, they convinced me that this is what Mexican hospitality is like: always being open to receiving ‘strangers’ into their home, sharing everything with them and making them feel as at home as is humanly possible. When I departed they all came to say goodbye, gave me some beautiful parting gifts (even the youngest member of the family, a 6 year old boy, did not want to let me go home empty-handed, so he gifted me a cup of Play-Doh and, because that was apparently not enough, a can of potato crisps) hugged me as if we had known each other for years in the Netherlands (as you may have guessed, the Dutch are kind of cold and distanced in comparison to the everyday-Mexican, for example when it comes to physical contact like hugs) and invited me to the 20 earliest upcoming family-events (I may be exaggerating a bit, most Mexicans I have met do not really plan that far ahead), while at the same time making sure I was always welcome in their home, whether there was a family event or not.

And so I decided to create a blog to share my experiences with you guys, because unfortunately, in my country Mexico is mostly known for drug cartels and violence, while all the beautiful sides of this amazing country are rarely discussed, even though it has so much to offer, especially when it comes to the hospitality and general warmth of its people.