Despite a really rough start to my time in Mexico City, I thoroughly enjoyed my time here. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Mexico, really, as I hadn’t really had any friends or family travel here – all I really knew was that I was excited to try authentic Mexican food.
I remember getting up at 4:00am to get to the airport for our very early flight from NZ. I hadn’t met anyone else on the trip previously, so I was a bit curious as to how the people I’d been talking to on our group chat for this trip were in person. Everyone was super nice and everything was going great until Renee and I were informed at LAX that our bags were left in Sydney. To make matters ironic, we are also roommates! Long story short, we spent the first couple days in Mexico having to borrow other people’s belongings as we did not have much in our carry-ons, calling three different airlines every day inquiring about the bags, and being a bit frustrated about the lack of clarity we had about their whereabouts.
However, we finally got them after 4 days, and the trip really picked up after that. I think I couldn’t really fully enjoy my time here until that was out of the way as it was quite stressful, especially with the language barrier and no airline accepting responsibility for the lost bags, so those first couple of days were kind of a blur, really. I guess it was okay, though, as because our classes finished late on the first couple of days, we couldn’t really explore the city too much. Plus, I think I was still quite jet-lagged. We were lucky enough, anyways, to have a couple of guest speakers in some of our lectures, including one from the British Chamber of Commerce. We also got to visit PepsiCo – one of the largest snack companies in Mexico and they showed us around their offices and told us a bit about the company. They also gave us some snacks, which was very generous of them.
In the last couple of days in Mexico, our classes finished a little bit earlier, so I explored more of Mexico City. I was mostly with the other exchange students from Switzerland, Denmark, and Australia during these days, and we explored Downtown Mexico City, Coyoacan, where a few of us visited the house of Frida Kahlo, the neighbourhood of Roma, an amazing art market in San Angel and the Chapultepec Park. I really wish I had more time to explore Mexico City as it is such a vibrant city, filled with so much culture and history – I would love to visit again!
