Returned yesterday from a tour on the Mexican south-southwest coast. Went through Zipolite-Mazunte-Puerto Escondido-Acapulco-Zihuatanejo in a bit under 2 weeks. Mazunte was the best, Acapulco the worst. No surprise there.

During the 9 hour busride the environment changed from the continuous 30 degree beach to plus 15 or so here in DF. And it's great! I can wear a sweater! And I'm not sweating all the time!

Tomorrow I'm out of Mexico... off to South America. Sad to leave the good ol MX behind, but on the other hand it'll be nice to find entirely new places.

Last weekend we took a quick trip to the second (or third?) largest city in Mexico: Guadalajara. Very nice. Much easier for the passing tourist than D.F. as the city centre area is walkable and easily navigable (although my impeccable sense of direction led us astray once). Missed the Orozco murals which pains me. Perhaps I'll return one day.

Also we took a day tour to Tequila - an area famous for guess what.. it was wild (hostel provided the tour, so only youngsters), fun and educative! We visited three distilleries, the village of Tequila, fields of Blue Agave and got to experience and learn the process first hand. Of course we also tasted a Lot of different tequila - all 100% agave of course. Even the silver variety beats pretty much anything I've found in Finland.. not to mention the añejo or even extra añejo, of which I have one bottle awaiting my upcoming guests.

That was a week ago and I'm still feeling the consequences. This week has been spent mostly indoors. Working on stuff for uni. All the deadlines are now approaching fast.. fortunately I'm almost done with all the work now. Should perhaps focus on more important things like WELP..

... I still don't envy people staying back in Finland :). During late nights and early mornings it can get down to 10c or even below, but most days are still sunny. This also makes me appreciate the sun more.. that's why I'm writing this on the roof of our house!

Need to get back to the politics study on Maras..

Just a quick note on what I've been up to since the past weeks.

• Bought a plane ticket to San Francisco to visit Mikko in Santa Clara. This will unfortunately mean I'll miss Day of the Dead (a BIG minus), but at least I'll have a reason to return to México one day

• Climbed a mountain. Personal best is now 4660m. Incredible headache, sunburns and other pains followed, but it was worth it. See pics below.

• Visited Oaxaca again. This time with the photography class. Saw some of the same places again, but also a few new ones, like the tree of Tule, which was quite amazing.

El puente means bridge and the longer holiday we got after Independence day (15.9). A group of us set out to discover Oaxaca (indigenous name, pronounced something like OA-ha-ca, kinda like México is ME-hi-co). Oaxaca is a state to the south of Mexico, with a capital city of the same name. It's said to be one of the most beautiful cities in here, and not without reason. Filled with colonial beautiful buildings and lacking in ugly skyscrapers, it's one of the UNESCO world heritage sites.

We also visited Monte Albán one of the first large urban settlements in the Americas (dating back to 500BC according to WP, our guide talked about 1500BC..). The place is very impressive. Much more than its contemporary Teotihuacan (although it's darn impressive too). I recommend hiring a guide. Ours charged us only 300 pesos for two hours of interesting tales and history while walking around the site (we ended up paying quite a nice tip).

I took a panorama from Monte Albán. See it here

Puerto Escondido ("the hidden port") was our last destination. We took a minibus through a very, very, very curvy mountain road (The Alps are nothing compared to this) and landed in around 6 hours to the coast. Puerto Escondido is a relative small and quiet port with loads of white-sand beaches and possibilities to surf, go see turtles, etc.

After a few days of surfing and relaxing on the playas I returned to D.F. with an overnight bus (~750pesos/first class).

Did my first Openframeworks sketch to show something during a 20min speech in Spanish that I gave about Medialab and TaiK in general. Took me around one day to make it and it was fun. Performance is much better than with processing (have done a similar thing w/ it too) and coding in C++ isn't such a big pain.

I've also started working more and more on WELP - the Wellbeing Profile service that is based on the Koulun hyvinvointiprofiili -concept we built years ago. We're currently looking for funding, but the current lack of it won't stop the development process..

Regarding México, I've taken salsa clases (just came back from one), continued other studies (art, history, politics and literature of Mexico ,and fotography). Today I'm off to a rock concert and next week is the 'puente' (=bridge=free days from school) due to the Méxican día de la independencia. We're going to Oaxaca. Can't wait!

School started two weeks ago. Took way too many courses about Mexican history, political situation, art, etc.. and one photography course from Diseño Gráfico. With all the web-stuff and artsy-mlab-stuff I'm really keeping myself busy. I guess I'll just flunk a few of the courses since I really don't need the credits.

Yesterday I was walking around my hood Colinas del Sur and noticed how here grey can be counted as a color! It really stands out among the violet, pink and green houses! Itä-Pasila would be a truly unique barrio here.

Next week: salsa lessons + hiking up a mountain

I'm starting to feel old. Not physically, but mentally. Maybe it's the fact that I'm probably among the oldes alumnos in the school. Anyway wednesday was my birthday and I got cake! Actually two. The first was bought by my nice spanish teacher, who also made the class sing mañanitas for me ("happy birthday"-type singsongs). The problem was that we couldn't finish it during class and I had to carry it around the uni. Fortunately the people at the international office accepted it as a donation. The second cake came from my mexican family mom here. Also very tasty.

Yesterday, after a visit to Teotihuacan, we went to Condesa to celebrate. Was fun, but ate too many tacos.

After around three weeks here, I feel confident to say that all the food I've had in Finland under the adjective "Mexican" is a lie. I knew it wasn't correct, but had no idea it would be this far off..

First I want to introduce the most important food for me so far: tacos. Especially Tacos al pastor, which could somehow be described as a delicious kebab (real - Turkish, not Finnish) meets Mexican spices and other ingredients, such as Tortillas. Normally you savour them with a selection of different salsas, lime, etc.

Then a few quick fixes:

• the tortillas we have in Finland (and presumably the rest of the Western World) are arab tortillas Locals here are not as big, but there are arab versions available if you want (this also explains why they are common in the east).
• fajitas are a joke.. original meaning here is the pieces of meat that don't get used. Not a food here.
• burritos are not Mexican. Invented in the U.S. (perhaps by Mexican immigrates).
• quesadillas do exist. They are tortillas filled with cheese and other ingredients.
• nachos also exits, but I haven't yet encountered nacho plates that they serve in "Mexican" restaurants outside MX.

Of course México is a huge country (compare to central Europe) and I haven't been outside D.F. yet. I might have more complaining to do once I've visited other places as well :)

Took a turibus to see the city, got a few museums on my todo-list, ate in an expensive restaurant (was 12e with a drink), learned more spanish, started coding with clutter to do a project of sorts, etc.

just bought a movie ticket for a movie I don't know in english and can't remember the spanish name anymore :). It'll be spoken in english with spanish subtitles, so it won't be that stressful. Was $49 - expensive for locals, 1/3 the price in Finland (which is also expensive for locals).

Also bough a cafe mocha-frappe-ice-with-cream-on-the-top-"coffee". Was $48...

the movie was "persecución inminente" (crossing over) and i'd give it an eight out of ten (i.e quite good). the theaters here don't have marked seats so you can just pick one. in my five'o'clock show there were about five people, so there's plenty of room..

last night was my first tacos al pastor -experience. served as a nice, more light replacement for "kännipitsa" after a night out with the frida compañeros. now suffering the aftereffects of a small hangover combined with the ~2400m altitude.

Need to write these down somewhere... random notes and experiences from the past days:

• saw a neongreen headed punk dude with a face painted in white riging a unicycle in zona rosa ("downtown") pie a random gigolo bloke. everyone thought it was hilarious except the gigolo (who did not catch the punk). if in downtown D.F. and you see a guy riding a unicycle and carrying a pie, procede with caution..

• finnish phones do not work here directamente. i guess there are no cooperation plans with the networks. even after you buy a ''telcel'' chip (i.e. SIM, prepaid) you'll need to "register" your phone. for that you need your new number and identification (copy of passport was enough in my case). only one place does this, and that is in Paseo de la Reforma #222.

Arrived to México yesterday. Instead of the requested family accommodation I got placed into a hostel. Not a major drawback.. location is ok and the room is nice. First drawback was that my phone does not seem to work here.. I guess that's the perfect "excuse" to buy that Android phone that I've been thinking about.

First classes of Spanish are behind me. Nice stuff. I'm placed in the beginner B group, but I'm sure I'll be promoted in a few days :)

And the price level! This is one of the cheapest places I've been to. Prices so far: beer $12, bus $2-4, pastries from bakery ~$15, bottle of juice from store $6 (prices in pesos, not dollars. 1€ ~= $19).

México greeted me with a nice hail shower (el granizo). I'm sure the taxi car has some permanent marks of it.