Mexico

1.What is the climate like where you live?

The city of Xalapa is situated at 1400 meters over sea level. The weather is humid and varied, with a maximum temperature of 30.2 ° C and a minimum of 4-10 in the morning. All the humidity that comes inland from the Gulf of Mexico gets stuck in this zone, so it is often to see a white haze that gives its distinctive mountain environment. Because of this, there is wide and extended variety of plants and trees, where we can distinguish coffee as one of the main agicultural products in the region.
2.What type of houses do people traditionally have in your place? Why do you think houses are like that?

Like a hundred years ago there used to be a lot of constructions with the same style with very high ceilings covered with clay tiles. And very big patios where people used to put the coffee seeds to dry. Nowadays, lots of constructions have been demolished to open the way to modern architecture.
3.What clothes do people wear? (winter- summer clothes; traditional clothes for men-women)

We don’t have extreme weather or religious standards so any type of clothes is valid. In summer you can see people wearing shorts and T-shirts and caps. In winter you need nothing special, but a warm jacket, and sometimes gloves and hats.
Most of the time you see people wearing jeans, T-shirts, and if your job requies it, a suit and a tie.

Each region has it’s own traditional clothes. In Veracruz the traditional clothes are called “Traje de Jarocho” (Jarocho’s suit) as people from Veracruz are called “Jarochos”.

4. What food do they eat? Why? Write a recipe of a traditional dish.

Our food has a rich variety. Most of people include tortillas and beans in their diet. Tortilla is made out of corn dough. You make very thin circles (20 cm diameter) whith the dough and you bake them in special ovens.
As we are so close to the sea coast, you can often see a lot of places offering sea food. Some traditional dishes of the region are “Mole” and “Acamayas”. “Tacos” are very common and can be found in almost all the country.
There are a lot of places which offer international food too, like Italian, Japanese, Chinese, etc.

“Mole” is like a sauce you put over a piece of chicken usually. It is a combination of about 50 different ingredients from which we could mention different types of chilis, chocolate, almonds and peanuts. “Acamayas” are river shrimps served by kilogram prepared in different ways (garlic, chilli, etc.). The base of “Tacos” is the tortilla, and you can put anything on top of it (meat, cheese, etc.).
5.What activities do people do outdoors in your country?

Eco-tourism is very popular in our region as we have a lot of mountains, rivers and beaches. Veracruz has one of the biggest coral reefs in the world.You can do sports like rappeling, rafting, kayaking, hiking, mountain biking, water skiing, snorkeling, scuba diving, etc. And they can be practiced all year long.
6.The climate can make a lot of problems. Do you have disasters in your country? What do people have to do if there is this kind of disaster?

We are affected by the hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico, which is from November to March. We get very strong winds (150 kilometers per hour) commonly called “Norths”. They cause disasters in cities bringing down signs, electrical wires, etc., but the biggest impact is seen in the crops. Strong rain cause floods in the rivers affecting a lot of people that live nearby.
Communities in danger zones are organized and prepared to evacuate in this cases, but still remains the fact that sometimes they loose all their belongings.