5 months update

Hello everyone and welcome back on my blog,

Be prepared, this one is going to be a long one. So many things happened in my fifth months and I can't wait to tell you about them. I don't think any months will stand a chance against this one to be honest.

Feelings

The feeling that dominated my 5th month was definetly happiness. I can't remember when I felt this content over such a long span of time in the past or if I ever have. Bad news didn't affect me too much because I was happy inside.
I was also very thankful for lots of things especially for my host family. I love them so much already and I don't want to think that my time with them is limited. I had a great Christmas time with them and just spending time with them doing nothing extraordinary already makes me happy.
I can also tell you that I've really fallen in love in Mexico by now and that only thinking about leaving at some point makes me feel ill all over. I would love to stay another year and if it wasn't for the great university place waiting for me in Germany, I would totally do it.
I can't exactly tell you what I love so much about Mexico, it's just a general feeling that I belong here. In the beginning I couldn't really grasp this country but now nearly half a year into my stay here, I think I understand lots of things about the culture (but of course not everything!) and really feel at home here even if there are certainly facts that bother me.

 

4 months update

Hello everyone and welcome back on my blog,

You might not believe it, but I'm still alive. Five months in Mexico are over and I'm finally publishing the post about my 4th month, ups! But well, better late than never. Which seems to be the motto of this blog because there are some more promised post that still aren't written. I hope I can improve this fact in 2018...
This post is going to be short, but you can look forward to the 5th months update which is going to be long and with lots of nice pictures.

3 months update

Hello everyone and welcome back on my blog,

Sorry my absence. The last post was published four weeks ago but after that I haven't felt like writing anything on here for a while and then I was really occupied but more about that in the section about my feelings and my experiences. I haven't forgotten that I wanted to write about my time in the Isthmus and I promise this post will be published soon as well as one about the "Día de los muertos" (Day of the Death) even though I'm going to talk a little about this topic in this post.

Feelings

Well I'm really good at the moment. It wasn't like this all month because after my trip to the Isthmus I didn't feel too good for some days. The days there we exhausting and also needed some time to think about everything I had seen there. That's the reason why there wasn't a post immediately after being back.
The next week was really exciting because I only had to work two days and there were events every day as the "Día de los muertos" was in this week. Furthermore another volunteer from Mexico City visited Oaxaca and we spent a lot of time together and I had a great time.
Now something that also changed a lot for the better: I moved. I just wasn't happy living alone and I couldn't imagine doing it any longer. Therefore I asked for a host family and we've found one really fast. We've one afternoon to see if get along and I liked them from the start. I'm so happy since I'm living with them. Not being alone in the evening and on the weekends is really good for my wellbeing. I learned in the past months that I'm really a family person and even though I need privacy and time alone, living alone makes me quite sad.
The last two weeks have been mostly great, just my laptop nearly giving up was a negative thing because I need it for work as well as for some things in my free time.

My new amazing view. The downside: walking up there every day

2 months update

Hello everyone and welcome back on my blog,

After I already had a quite bad experience in the morning today that fortunately turned out not so bad in the end and received a massage, I'm now relaxed and motivated for this post.

Feelings

This month was less of an up and down than my first one here in Mexico. Even though not a lot changed to be honest, I feel happier and more content. I haven't accepted my situation and I'm in the process of changing some things that I assume would improve my experience here but I'll tell you more about that when I know for sure how my life here is going to turn out.
The hardest thing this past weeks was dealing with the aftermaths of the earthquakes. While the first and even the second one (that happened shortly after my 1 month update) didn't affect me too much, one Saturday I woke up to another earthquake which wasn't even that very strong, but this experiences was really horrible for me. After that I was often shaking when lying in bed trying o relax or sleep and I sometimes imagined hearing the earthquake alarm or the earth shaking when there wasn't anything happening at all. Every strange noise startled me and for some time I really wasn't too good at home.
By now I'm a lot better, mostly due to starting doing yoga daily. I do it alone at home with YouTube videos but this half an hour really helped me.
I haven't missed neither Germany nor Brazil too much this month because I finally accepted that I'm spending 12 months in Mexico and that I myself decided what it will be like. Not everything has yet turned out they way I would like it but it can still happened. We will see what the next weeks bring (hopefully some major changes).

1 month update

Hello everyone and welcome back on my blog,

So one month has already passed and I can't say if I think time passed quickly or not. What I can say is that I'm a little happy that one month is already over and that I hope it was the most difficult one already.
I watched some Au-Pair YouTube videos recently and they always had categories in their monthly updates and I thought that's a good idea for this post as well, so it's more structured.

My departure from Germany & my arrival in Mexico

Hello everyone,

I'm already in Oaxaca for more than three weeks and lots of things happened. I want to talk about most of them in my 1 month update, but just before I begin talking about the actual topic of this post: I'm good. I was shocked by the earthquake but I'm ok, maybe a little shocked, and my city isn't too much affected by it. The same can't be said about my work, but I'll tell you more about that in the next post. My sympathy goes out to all the people who lost someone in this terrible natural disaster and as well to everyone who lost his or her livelihood.
However sad this thing is, I'm going to talk about different things now.

Why did I decide to leave Germany again?

Hello everyone and welcome on my blog,

My name is Sandra, I am 19 years old and was born and raised in a small town in the Black Forest in Germany. I was an exchange student in Brazil for ten months back in 2013/14 (you can read all about that here).
At the moment I'm doing a voluntary service at a human rights organization in Oaxaca de Juárez, the capital of the Mexican state Oaxaca in the south-west of the country.
My departure was on the 17th of August 2017 and I'm going to stay here for exactly one year.

9.679,70 km away from home