After a solid morning of uploading photos, making phonecalls on skype ("can u hear me?!") and booking hostels I hopped on the 10p tube to the university to meet up with the UNAM Pumas ultimate frisbee team.
I got off the tube at the instructed station to find myself in the middle. Of a very busy market. Skipping past hawkers and ducking under very low electricity wires I did a good job of looking like I knew where I was going and also looking as menacing as possible, my tactic for keeping out of trouble.
I guessed the directi0n right and after half a km I entered the university. Now if you think ucd's traffic is bad you should try negociate your way through Unam. It's circled by a 6 lane dual carriageway with seemingly no place to cross. I dodged past the vintage beetles and got halfway where I asked a guy in a hi-viz jacket "donde est (insert swimming motion here)?". "ah, la piscana".... Turns out you can get away with sticking in French nouns most of the time. After another half hour wander I found the piscina, behind which was the ulti team.
Training was great craic, we suffered a little from the altitude (2250m) and the pollution (bad). I'm sure it wasn't down to lack of fitness. After 3 hours of fun ultimate in the rain (just like home) I was glad to hear that we were off for some "flavoured water". It turns out that flavoured water is actually flavored water and not beer which was upsetting at first but that emotion was soon usurped by the refreshing mandarin water and by laughing at the crazy guy who danced around us proclaiming that we should always "be happy".
Happy we were. We moved on to dans apartment with some cervezas and tequila and had a great night talking about ultimate, rude words and the world. These guys and girls were just so nice to us. It was a great reminder of how unique the ultimate community is.
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