On Top Of The World

9 de junio
We finally had our first interview for our project today! We spent the afternoon at the office of the Secretariat del Turismo, speaking with one of the directors (Licensiado Bayon). It was so great to have the opportunity to visit this federal government organization and learn a little bit about how they  view health tourism and some of their plans to promote it.
We then spent the evening celebrating Morgan's birthday at the top of the Torre Latinoamerica--the fifth largest building in the country. The view was absolutely stellar--

10 de junio

Today we finally had our second interview with the CEO and Founder of abcHEALTH, a group that organizes medical tourism trips and packages for patients and their families. She was extremely impressive and interesting to talk to and offered a lot of new information we hadn't encountered or thought about before. 

After the interview, our group had our last professional visit to Bimbo, the bread company (which actually also owns Wonderbread). Visiting the factory was actually a lot more interesting than I expected. The entire factory is so large with so much machinery. It's unbelievable how fast everything is produced and the volume of it. We saw donuts, loaves of bread, hotdog and hamburger buns, and more from the dough stage to being packaged. After the tour, we were given a sample to try--these sugary biscuit/cracker things which were still warm and absolutely delicious since we were starving. And of course you can never have enough processed packaged bread products, so Bimbo gave us a lovely parting gift of various Bimbo products. 

Almost everyone was passed out on the bus ride back, until we got into a little accident. A taxi brushed up against our bus, so we pulled over to the side to settle things. Apparently, the taxi driver did not agree that it was his fault and so, much to our surprise, some punches were thrown and our bus driver was on the ground. Thankfully, he was okay, but because the situation became physically violent, the taxi driver was now a suspect/potential criminal and they would have to wait for the real police to arrive at the scene. We ended up walking home after this very unexpected afternoon. 

11 de junio 

Today we had our very last test in Mexico! To celebrate this, we had a cooking lesson where we prepared: two types of salsas, a nopal salad (cactus), a flor de calabaza soup, enchiladas, ceviche tostadas, and a guava and cream and honey desert. The ceviche tostadas were absolutely amazing and possibly one of the greatest meals I've eaten here. 

To motivate us to work on our project, we stopped by Starbucks to partake in Frappy Hour. Later, after coming home to get our laptops, it started pouring (in typical Mexico fashion). Since we were already late, Kanchi and I thought it would lighten up and decided we would just go for it. Instead of this, the rain actually got worse. By the time we got to our meeting place, we were completely dripping with water. My rain jacket was soaked through and I could wring the water out of it. But I guess our program wouldn't have been complete without getting caught in a stereotypical Mexico storm.

12 de junio

Last day of classes in La Universidad de la Comunicacion! Each of the six groups took and hour to present their project (which was rough). Afterwards, everyone headed back for some much needed naps before our Cena de Despedida. 

Though the service at the dinner and the meal itself (a green pepper stuffed with Kanchi's "favorite" things--cheese, spinach, and mushrooms) were not the greatest, we definitely realized and appreciated how awesome our host family is. Isabel and her sister Leticia have been absolutely fantastic to us. They are extremely sweet and friendly and very patient with all my Spanish grammar mistakes. The entire dinner, our table was talking and laughing. By the end of the night, we had at least four or five of our friends gathered around out table laughing and joking with our host family as well (we even adopted a few of them). This is our awesome family:

Besides the great company, the best part was this dessert: