Settled in

Good afternoon everyone!

It's time for my first real blog for this trip, this time in English. It's been a busy month, with a lot of activities. I've finally settled in a bit, so I thought it would be a good moment to write the first blog.

I arrived in Puerto Vallarta the 31st of december, just in time to celebrate the new year with my family. The family I stayed with at the beach is familia Vega, my 3rd host family from my time in León. It was a few days of just relaxing, reading a book and drinking tequila. With new years we had a nice party at the beach, partying until the small hours. My host brothers weren't there, one had to attend to his business in León, and the other was traveling around in Europe. My two host sisters did come along to the beach, and some other friends of the family came along as well.
The stay at the beach was rather short, since the 3rd of january we already went back to León. There I could take care of some stuff, like getting set up in Monterrey with an Airbnb, getting some transportation, getting a new tattoo, and most important, visiting my 2nd family. León isn't that far from Monterrey, but it's still a 10 hour drive, or a 1 hour flight. So when I'm in the city, I do want to visit my families there. The 6th is the day of the three kings (the biblical thing), which they celebrate here in México by eating a traditional bread, which has a small baby jesus inside. So we had a nice lunch with family, but halfway through I had to leave, because my flight to Monterrey was that evening.
When I got to Monterrey, it was already a bit later in the evening, so I just went for some tacos and then to bed, since it had been a long day. The next day the activities at the Tec (my university) started for the foreigners. Classes wouldn't be for another week, but this week was just introduction to Monterrey, the campus, and the other foreigners. First we got a tour of the campus, and then some mandatory meetings about how they go about their business. Then we went off to the house of some other exchange students for some drinks. There are a lot of exchange students here. I don't know the exact amout, but I'm sure its over 100. However, groups formed very quickly, and even though we didn't have many activities the coming days, we got together every day to hang out and to party. It's quite a mixed group. There are peruvians, spanish, swedish, germans, french, swiss and italians. The first week there were some more activites, such as a dinner with a big group of foreigners, and them introducing us to mexican culture. Usually we speak english between the foreigners, since most of the europeans don't speak spanish yet. But within the group I usually hang out with it's usually a mix of both, since there are a lot of spanish speakers.
In the weekend we went to climb one of the mountains, since Monterrey is located between all the mountains, and these months it's not yet too hot to do exercise outside. It wasn't the most interesting hike, with a paved walkway everywhere, but the view was magnificent! I really like living in the mountains here, and I expect I'll be exploring much more of that the coming months.
The week after the classes started, and all the mexicans arrived as well. I only have 4 classes (6 is a normal workload), so I have quite a bit of free time as well. All my classes are in spanish, so I only have one class with another foreigner. The classes are also structured quite a bit different than I'm used to back home. The classes are much smaller, only around 20 people, and they give much more guidance. We actually had to introduce ourselves in all the classes as well. I'm taking 3 programming and 1 industrial design class, so it's quite different from the mechanical engineering back home, and that keeps it quite interesting. There is quite a bit of knowledge I'm missing because I haven't taken any programming classes before, but I have plenty of time to catch up. The classes don't have a very high pace either, so in comparison to the university in Eindhoven it's not very difficult. My spanish is easily sufficient to follow the classes, but there is still a bit of more technical spanish I can learn this way, especially with the reports and homework we have to do.
Besides the classes starting on the week of the 14th, I also finally moved to a new house. Uptil then I was staying at an Airbnb, which was quite pricey, and I just wanted a place of my own. Most of the foreign students already had a place to stay, so I didn't end up staying with them. Some of my friends from my exchange have since moved to Monterrey to study here, and luckily one of them had a free room in his house I could move into. It's a lot cheaper, and of course a lot of fun to live with a friend. Also very usefull if I'd need to borrow a car or something.
With that all set up, I finally felt like I was setteling in a bit more, and with the other foreigners we also regularly undertook trips to explore the city, and I quickly learned the campus and its surrounding area.
Then last week things continued as usual, with programming we're doing some programming (C++, Python, Racket, Linux kernel, and more) and with my design class we originally had to design a ukelele. However, we could also design something else if we'd want, but we also have to manufacture it, and therefore it needs to be sufficiently complicated to build. Due to my plans to travel latin america after this semester, I wanted to make something I could carry around and use on my travels. In the end I settled on a travel chess set, so I can play some chess while traveling about. It's really interesting, some parts are similar to mechanical engineering, but the focus is much more on design and production, without any need to prove that your design will be able to withstand the required forces. Of course a chess set is a very different animal than a bridge or a jet engine. The pace is slowly picking up, and hopefully I'll be able to learn quite a bit here.
Then this last weekend we had a weekend with the mountaineering club. While there are plenty of activities through the university, they require you to attend all of them, and are less flexible. The mountaineering club is just a lot of likeminded people that like hiking, climbing and other mountaineering activities. Saturday we went on a hike, from one valley near Monterrey to another. It was a very nice path, but we were right in the clouds, so the view wasn't great. However, once we went into the other valley the weather cleared up, and we had a view of some spectacular canyons. We stayed the night at the bottom of one of the canyons, camping there with quite a group.
The mountaineering club does mostly one day hikes, but they do that every weekend, so when I don't have other plans, I'll probably go hiking and climbing, and exploring the beautifull countryside.
Next weekend is puente (bridge), which means the monday there's no classes. For me that doesn't change a thing, since I don't have class on monday anyway, but it's a good excuse for a nice trip somewhere in México. So we're going to México city, with 18 people. I don't know how much I will be traveling through México, since I've already seen most of the touristy areas, but touring around with different people is a lot of fun as well. And after this semester I might travel with some of them for one or two months. And I'll also travel back to León every now and then for my family.
But I think I'll leave it here for now, hopefully I'll have plenty of stories about all my adventures here soon.