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An Amazing Mexican Experience


My Mexico homestay experience was something I cannot describe in words. “Amazing” does not say enough about how wonderful it was, “Eye-opening” does not describe how privileged I felt, and “Thank You” is not the words to say how grateful I feel for my wonderful host family. First, let me describe to you my situation on my trip. I was with a Host family that consisted of a mother, father, 12 year old son and a 15 year old daughter. The daughter, Mariana, was so fun and really supportive with helping me feel comfortable and understand the language. The son, Diego, was hilarious and loved to ask me a million questions about my life back in the US. The parents were really nice and loved to ask me questions about my family and they always made sure I felt safe and took great care of me if my stomach hurt. 



During my trip, my host family took me to a lot of different cities to see so many different things. This was not something I was expecting at all. I thought they would just go on with their lives and I would be apart of that, but that definitely was not the case. I could tell from the minute I met them in person that they were just as excited to have me in their family as I was to be in their family. It seemed like they had planned for my stay there for a long time. The whole trip we were always going somewhere to see something, and it was cool because everything that we did seemed to be very unique to that area we were in. Because of this uniqueness, I was able to easily spot the similarities between places but enjoy the special part of each location. For instance, I noticed that every town has its name in big block letters somewhere very close to the center. 


On my trip, my host family was shocked to learn that I love spicy food. Which I thought was hilarious and I don’t think they really believed me at first until we went to some restaurants with, what they thought had, spicy cuisine. I tried everything my host family put in front of me and about 98% of what I had was something I would definitely want again. Most of the food that I didn’t really care too much for was the Mexican candies. My host brother made sure I tried every Mexican candy he could find and he thought it was hilarious when I didn’t live something. One thing I discovered was that my host family (along with their extended family) loved to have me try different food and many different ways too. Let's just stay that I ate a lot on my trip and I think because I ate so much is why my stomach didn’t feel so good but I don’t think there was a particular food that upset my stomach. I got to try food that I never thought existed or that I would ever get to try in my life and that was definitely worth the stomach ache.

 
I absolutely loved the tour of Mexico City at the end too. I learned so much about Mexico in general and it was so cool to stand in the places where history was made. I also liked talking to the other students on this trip about their really cool experiences with their host families.

Like I said in the beginning, there are no words to describe how wonderful this experience was and I would never hesitate to recommend this to someone else who is interested. I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything.

-Victoria Weber

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