Perspective via Public Transit
SA: Ibero-American University of Mexico, Mexico
Mia, one of the Semester Abroad Correspondents, shares her experience abroad during the Spring 2025 semester. Follow along with the group of correspondents on our blog and look out for their images on the @pennabroad Instagram feed.
Unlike at Penn, while studying abroad I and many of my friends who have scattered around the world to Paris, Berlin, Dublin even DC, all take public transit to commute to our temporary universities. Growing up in Philadelphia, a morning commute on the public bus and metro is a comfortable return to my daily routine in high school. While in Philadelphia the sights were familiar, during this time abroad even the most mundane moments feel packed with so much meaning and new knowledge. Exploring a city through its public transit shows you a different and almost intimate perspective.
Ibero-Americana University is in the southwest of Mexico City and depending on the time of day (I did not understand traffic before coming here!) takes me between 20 minutes to over an hour to get to and from. I live right along a bus route so it’s a simple walk and then I’m on my way. In this bus, I get an insight into the daily routines of so many of Mexico City citizens and ripples of larger dynamics and customs. One night on my way home, the bus was bursting at the seams filled with more people than I could imagined possible and so the driver opened the backdoor of the bus to let more people get on where there was space. I’d seen bus drivers in Philly do similar things, but never would I have expected those who hopped on in the back to start all taking out their metro cards. Everyone on the bus knew what to do forming a human chain passing five cards up to the front, tapping them once, and then passing them back to their owner. Every single person made sure they paid the fare, even when there was no way of knowing if they had not.
When I am not headed to Ibero, I have tried to explore different parts of the city through the metro, metro-bus, and even the newly opened gondola over Chapultepec Park. Taking the Metro around the city, I tend to go in a “pink” car or the cars of the metro that are designated specifically for women and children. I have never experienced public transit where I was only surrounded by other women and children. Outside of the main buses and metros, all around the city are “combis” small private collective buses services that you can wave down and pay between 5 and 8 pesos to go along their route. These buses have no specific stops, instead you simply request a stop along the route.
These small moments of recognizing how my assumptions are simply that assumptions will be what stick with me more than anything else. The mundane moments, the daily routine and observations are the most special to me. They are what make studying abroad different from simply traveling. I have spent most of my time abroad staying in CDMX with a few trips to other parts of the country partially because of the size of CDMX and Mexico, but also because I have loved really embracing being in one place and giving myself the space to pick up on simple perspectives such as those from public transit.
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