And so I´m at the end, after a couple of days in Mexico city again and meeting Anne and her family, which was great, I am flying back this evening (Monday), Mexican time and should arrive in the UK Tuesday evening for flat-hunting and work-shoe shopping before I start near Chester on 18th September. I wanted to write a suitably sloppy blog to say thanks for reading and telling you all about all the things I´d learnt about myself and Latin America and the world during the past year. Such things could include my new-found patience (which may or may not transfer back to the UK), my improved Spanish, or insights such as the body doesn't digest the pulpy bits in orange juice, beer is often cheaper than water, never wear white and you don't need ... read more

Playa del Carmen Stop one on the coast was the resort town of Playa del Carmen, it used to be a small fishing town but the Cancún effect has now reached it and it really is a tourist town now, but unlike some other ´foriegner´-packed places I´ve been, I actually really liked Playa. Along with the hundreds of American tourists comes a level of clenliness and service which I have actually rather missed, we got a free upgrade in our hostel to a private room which was absolutely spotless and the portion sizes in the restaurants trippled. Unfortunately you do also pay for all this, with the average prices here at least double what you pay in the rest of Mexico (although still significantly cheaper than the UK of course!). We walked along the lovely beach, ... read more

From the sooty city to the sticky coast. Mary and I opted for the cheater-option and flew (on the Mexican version of easyjet called Click) to Puerto Escondido for Mary´s first Pacific Ocean visit. Honestly, there´s not alot to report from here really. We went out to a bar with some people from our youth hostel, which is sandy, hot and noisy; spent the mornings on the beach going a nice northern-European shade of pink; walked the pretty coastal path to the next beach along; took a boat which made me feel incredibly sick to see some sea turtles (which Mary can probably give you a better report of as I was staring persistantly at the horizon - no photos of this as they are on our non-stealable disposable camera); sat in an Italian cafe ... read more

Tapalpa When I looked up from reading my book I was amazed by 2 things, the first was that I was still raeding on an undersuspentioned, slightly pungent, speeding, old Mexican bus on a winding mountain road and somehow had defied the law of physics that states that I should have been spewing my guts up (or at least feeling like I wanted to). The second was that we were still climbing - the road wound up and up forever. Actually, visiting Tapalpa is worth it just for the views as you leave the highway and climb up into the mountains. As we passed villages whose names no-one can spell and I defintaly can't pronounce, the valley of the dried-out lake bed spread out below us, while at every stop at every tiny roadside hut we ... read more

This time last year (I can't believe it was a year ago!), as we drove out of Cambridge with a car full of accumulated rubbish, I really thought my time at univeristy was over; and yet this week I find myself back there, only this time I´m teaching. The really scarey thing is that I´m not teaching anything to do with science - with an engineering degree I´m teaching English! Admittedly it is as a second language, but I never thought I would be teaching univeristy professors anything! The classes have been very different again to the two different schools I was in previously. Firstly, the classes are voluntary which means that all the 'students´(aged 18 to 60) actually do want to learn - this makes a big difference to productivity in classes, and we have ... read more