EXCHANGE REPORT
ITESM Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Estado de México
Spring 2015
Akseli Olin 288796
Milla Parviainen 362557
Sasu Silvennoinen 363284
1. Preparing for the exchange
a. Getting to the country
Direct flights for Mexico City are difficult to find from Helsinki. Flights usually go through
Amsterdam or London and a one-way ticket will cost you €500-900, return flights €700-1100
depending on your dates and airline choice. Some airlines offer flights that can be changed
inside a certain time frame - ask your airline for this possibility. It usually doesn’t cost that
much more and gives you much more flexibility. Another option is to find a flight to Mexico
from Madrid or Amsterdam, as there are often cheap flights to Mexico City from these cities
(as low as €350), and try to find a low-cost airline to take you to one of these cities. This way
you might be able to save a little bit, but not a lot.
If you are planning on traveling to USA before your exchange, you might be able to find
cheap flights to New York, Chicago or other East Coast destinations from Helsinki. From
these big cities flights to Mexico City are around €150.
As mentioned before, Mexico doesn’t require you to have a visa. When you enter the
country, you will be given a pass, which you must hold on to for the whole duration of your
stay. This pass lets you stay in the country for 180 days. Make sure you bring a certificate of
your exchange studies with you to the plane for the border officers at the airport. If you lose
your pass during your stay, you will be charged around €30 for a new one.
b. Housing
Apartments near the campus are plenty. Most of them are big houses for many people. For
example, the house where we all lived, ‘Casa de los Once’, had eleven students living in it.
We had a maid come over 3 times a week and the house had many bathrooms and nice
common areas. Almost all of the houses for exchange students function the same way. Our
house hosted a few parties but didn’t live up to the party house expectation. House parties
were common in other houses, though, and there wasn’t a single week when someone didn’t
host a big bash somewhere.
We would recommend one of the other houses since we had some problems with our
landlord. Nothing too big but still notably irritating delays and such. The common areas were
also poorly designed which made it hard to hang out with more than 5 people at a time.
There are some extremely nice apartments right next to the campus where some exchange
students stayed. Ours was not bad either. Just make sure you contact the landlords in
advance so you have more choice. Feel free to ask us for more recommendations about
housing options.
c. Health
We all had our own health insurances which we got before leaving for the trip. Hospitals in
Mexico city were good and provided good care. In the smaller cities the hospitals are not so
well equipped, but still will administer good first aid. There were also some doctors at the
TEC, but they didn't do much more than refer you to another place to get care. The biggest
health problem is usually stomach aches and diarrhea, which you can expect getting during
the first week of your travel just because of the different bacteria. Spicy food can also mess
up your stomach, so bring some lactic acid bacteria pills with you to stabilize your gut!
Before the trip make sure you get all the vaccinations you need. You can check
http://www.yths.fi/matkailuneuvonta for all travel related disease and vaccine information. In
Mexico there are really no mandatory vaccinations one needs, but we took some just in
case, for example hepatitis, yellow fever (prominent in South America) and cholera.
Altogether Mexico is a relatively ‘healthy’ country with biggest health issue being obesity.
Make sure you pack condoms and protect yourself from mosquitos when traveling in the
Caribbean and Southern Mexico’s rainforests and you’ll be just fine!
2. Exchange studies
a. Courses
Courses were quite easy for the main part. Some were a bit laborious but not that hard. The
level of education is not parallel to Finland. The amount of English courses was quite limited,
but you could find enough interesting sounding courses that fit into your schedule. Basicly
you could choose your courses of all courses that TEC CEM had to offer. We all had Friday
off and some of us even had another extra day off, leaving them with only three days of
classes each week. In TEC CEM all courses are undergraduate as they study only until
becoming a bachelor.
What is noteworthy is that the students are not allowed to be absent from the classes. This
means that, if you use all your absences, during the whole semester you can miss three
weeks of classes in total, meaning six or three classes depending if your class is once or
twice a week. If the maximum level is surpassed, you will fail the course immediately. At first
everybody was really careful not to miss too many classes, but in the end you could see that
you actually could miss more classes. Also, many teachers did not necessarily give you
absence even though you were not there in the class. The exchange students could also
negotiate on their absences.
In the middle of the semester was organized a ‘Semana I’, a three-day event of innovation
workshops which was supposed to affect your grades by 7 percents. However, as all the
workshops were in Spanish, many teachers did not take Semana I into account in their
grading, so we ended up with two extra days of vacations.
H2028 Cultura de México, UG, 5 ECTS, Spanish
Interesting course about Mexican culture and business culture. We did not have any exams,
only 6 easy tasks in total during the whole semester. The course was in Spanish but the
teacher was really easy to understand and he had an interesting way of teaching. A musttake for an exchange student because of it’s light workload.
AD2003 Negotiation Techniques, UG, 5 ECTS, English
The course consisted of only exchange students. The things taught in the course were
mainly common sense about negotiation and other business behavior, but the teacher Joe
Smith was really energetic and passionate talker. The course did not have a lot of tasks,
maybe one in every two weeks, and the exams were quite easy.
CC2011 Group Dynamics, UG, 5 ECTS, English
Another course for mainly exchange students. Some classes were really easy and we did
not do a lot but for some you had to hand in papers. We did not have exams, so the
evaluation was based on tasks of which we had the biggest one on the exam week three
times. Another must take if you’re looking for an easy workload (which you should).
CO1007 Comunicación, signos y significación, UG, 5 ECTS, English
Course about different communication theories and ways of analysing the communication.
Sometimes the subjects taught in the course were really theoretical which made it hard to
focus in the classes. The tasks were usually really interesting, we might analyse some event,
TV-show or text. Josue Gordon Guerrero was a young teacher who knew how to get the
young people’s attention, which was nice.
HI2017 Español lengua extranjera II A, UG, 5 ECTS, Spanish
Español intermedio uno. We studied different past tenses, the imperfect and the perfect,
subjuntivo etc. We could also listen to some songs, read texts out loud and talk about some
easy tasks with the whole class which consisted of 8 people. The teacher Emma Ramirez
was a caring person and she would talk with us about anything but she was not so good of a
teacher. Milla had studied four courses of Spanish in Aalto BIZ and this course was definitely
a too easy for her.
NI3010 Administración estratégica internacional, UG, 5 ECTS, English
Case course for students that were about to graduate. It was said to be one of the hardest
and most laborious business courses but with the Finnish standards it was quite ok, even
though this one was harder than other ones. The course consisted of 6 Harvard cases made
in the groups of six people, both exchange students and Mexicans. The cases were
supposedly evaluated by real professionals, even though it seemed like the two teachers
evaluated the cases themselves. Also the criteria for the evaluation was really vague and
you could get good points just by coming up with “innovative” ideas.
Matematicas Financieras, UG, 5 ECTS, Spanish
Financial mathematics course that focused on consumer loans and the basics of finance.
Very oddly structured course that was difficult to understand - not only because it was in
Spanish, but also because the professor seemed to be jumping from subject to another.
Exams in the end were quite easy and we were given “simulation exams” beforehand, which
were in fact the same test with different numbers and values in the exercises. We do not
recommend taking this course if your Spanish is not at a high level. The subject itself was
easy but some of the exercises and the Mexican way of handling business was unorthodox
and took very long to figure out for a beginner in Spanish language.
3. Free time and other information
a. Getting to known to people
During the first days of school, it is impossible not to meet new people. In TEC CEM there is
an organization called Amikoo which is parallel to KY SUB at KY or international tutors at
Aalto BIZ. Amikoo brought both exchange and local students together by planning events
and little trips to destinations nearby. Most of the events were held during the first weeks but
also later on the semester there were some not so formal events, like barbecue.
During spring semester there are usually 50 people, and in fall from 100 people and more.
Exchange students consisted of people from around 10 nationalities, like Australians,
Swedish, Dutchmen, but more than 50 percent of the people were French or from Frenchspeaking countries. This was a bit frustrating sometimes, as many times you were part of a
conversation in French. Nonetheless, in TEC CEM it was easy to meet local people also and
we all got some good Mexican friends, which is not a sure thing in every exchange
destination. Naturally it helped us to improve our Spanish and every one of us had relatively
good level in Spanish after our semester.
b. Travel tips
There were a lot of opportunities for traveling of different kinds. We opted for some
organized trips in the beginning and later on for ones that we planned our selves. There are
a few organisations that have trips like Mexchange, ConnexionMX and Integrate. The
organized trips tend to be a bit more expensive, but then you get everything planned and
booked and don’t really need to worry about much your self. Those trips also tend to be
stuffed full of activities so if you want something more relaxed maybe it’s not the best option.
It does help in the beginning to get to know people and how stuff works in Mexico before you
make plans to go on trips on your own. Then when you get the hang of it and know where
you want to visit we suggest you to make your own plans and take a smaller group where
you want to go that way you can save some money and get the experience you want. Also
for the longer transitions we would recommend taking an airplane since Mexico is a huge
country and sitting in a bus for 16 hours straight can be a bit tedious. The airplane tickets are
not that much more expensive than the longer bus fares.
We mostly traveled inside Mexico, as the country is huge with totally different kind of
destinations. During our stay we visited Acapulco, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Puerto Escondido,
Chiapas, Yucatan, Cancun, Baja California, Puebla and Puerto Vallarta for instance. Tickets
to other countries are quite cheap also, to Los Angeles you can get tickets with 300 dollars
and during one week in Cuba we spend on average 900 euros. You will learn fast which
places are worth visiting.
c. Sports and freetime
At TEC it is possible to choose free of charge from plenty of different sports and other
extracurricular activities. You have to register for courses during the first weeks, and the
lessons can be from one hour to 10 hours a week. in Akseli was part of an American football
team, Sasu took swimming and gym, and Milla had tennis lesson two times a week and a
zumba class. Other activities that exchange students chose were for example salsa,
climbing, cooking, piano, singing, bodypump etc. The school does not necessarily have
equipment for every sports, like tennis rackets, but Amikoos are happy to help you out and
lend you what you need. Taking some activities was a great way of getting known to
Mexicans and improving your Spanish!
c. Mexican culture
Mexican culture is something one could write a book about: there’s no way to describe it in
just a few pages. In different parts of the country there are very different customs and
traditions in music, dance, art, food and in social life. Learning the Mexican way of life and
getting to know people was by far the most important thing both culturally and in the
exchange in general.
A big part of the Mexican culture is “ahorita” which means that they tend to be late from most
things. Apart from that the mexicans are very open and warm hearted people. You can make
friends quite easily. Also the mexican culture is mainly very relaxed and the people don’t
stress about the small stuff. Mexicans also like to dance and sing a lot.
The drinking culture in Mexico is very much alike to ours in Finland - when people want to
party and get drunk, they really drink! Tequila and beer are very common and oftentimes
mixed together. Wine is drunk rarely, and even in restaurants it’s more common to order a
cocktail or a beer with your meal than a glass of wine. It’s also somewhat expensive but
everything else is cheap.
4. Final comments
Mexico is definitely underrated as an exchange country - it offers the same perks as any
other warm Asian or Australian school, but has more choice in way of living, studying and
traveling. The people are one of the nicest you’ll ever meet, the parties are just as good as
the house parties of the American colleges and the food has more different tastes than all
European schools combined. It is really easy to meet locals, learn Spanish and as the school
is not so demanding, enjoy your stay. Not to mention the cost of living, which is one of the
lowest - you rarely have to consider carefully what food to order in a restaurant or which
bottle to buy in a supermarket.
The country has the most beautiful natural and manmade attractions and traveling around it
is easy and affordable. It is unnecessary to even leave Mexico as during your semester as
the country offers so much to see for every kind of need. Even the security problem is
exaggerated, as we did not face any major problems during our stay. If you keep your mind
clear and obey the advice of the local people, you will stay safe. We still heard some news
from some parts of Mexico so keep your eyes open and plan carefully where you travel.