Today was our last day at Tec de Monterrey. We prepared small thank-you cards and gifts for the various people who had graciously helped us and allowed us to work with them, but it was to our pleasant surprise when we received an adorable thank-you ourselves. Our daycare kids and their caretaker, Ale, sang us a Spanish thank-you song and presented us with Pueblan sweets and a cake made of the Mexican equivalent of Twinkies (which the kids were, thankfully, quite happy to help us eat).

The activity we planned for them today was a plasticine boat-building contest. Originally we planned to add weight to the boats in order to sink them, but that wasn’t necessary, as all but the ten-year-old’s boat sank immediately anyways, making it easy to declare a winner. Despite the lack of boat flotation, the kids had a blast building their boats and playing with them in the small tub of water.

I will miss those kids, from their easily prompted laughter to their endless energy. It is incredible how, in such a different place, the kids seem in many ways the same as those I know and love back home. Childhood, I feel, is such a natural and beautiful state of being that knows no cultural boundaries.

After many hugs and cheek-kisses (a common goodbye in Mexico), we left the Tec de Monterrey campus for good and made our way to Cholula to see it in a different light. For though the world knows Cholula for its pyramid, the locals know Cholula for its nightlife. When we arrived, we first walked up the side of the pyramid to watch the sunset, or, more accurately, to watch other people watch the sunset, as it turned out to be a spectacular people-watching location. Then we went back down to the bright and colourful city, which seemed to just be waking up.

Although the nachos at RokPub were the worst I’ve ever had (I’m almost certain they were made with Cheez Whiz), the salsa club we went to afterward was absolutely incredible. Wow, can Mexicans ever salsa dance! Kristina and I were a little bit nervous to join the crowd of dancers whose limbs seemed to move effortlessly in smooth patterns to the live music. Nevertheless, we simply dove in and tried our best, and had an absolute blast. I have never seen a place like that in Vancouver, where the people actually dance rather than just kind of jump up and down. It was incredible.