Tour of Guadalajara

Hola todos!

Yesterday was unbelievably busy. I had class at nine, but they were shortened periods. Only 50 minutes each instead of two hours. They haven't been too bad so far. My composition teacher is a little intense, but I think I'm going to like the material. We've been reading travel journals from around the world (and of course Mexico). We are supposed to write one of our own every weekend.

My communications class is a blast. Right now we are focusing on multicultural communication. The last three weeks we will be doing small group communication. The teacher is a blast and the content has been fun too. It's really interesting because all of the other students in the class are from Mexico or California and I've been the guinea pig for her experiments about what it feels

like to be part of an out group.

Did I mention the campus was beautiful? The building on the left is were all of my classes are. And the pathway on the right is how I get to them. It's absolutely amazing. The entire campus is covered with those twisty trees. Jealous? I love it.

At 11:30 the entire group gathered and we went on a tour of Guadalajara. We traveled through the city on buses, but we were able to get out and walk around a few of the more impressive

places.

Our first stop is the cathedral, which is in the heart of downtown Guadalajara. It is one of the oldest buildings in the city. I actually read about it in one of the travel journals back when it was the only building in the area.

Our second stop was at another church. Apparently it's extremely famous and houses the bodies of the first Mexican Cardinals. The inside was unbelievable. It is probably the most elaborately decorated building I have ever seen.

Next, we went to the Government Palace to see the politics of Mexico in action. Apparently, it's an excellent place to protest. In the second photo, you can see some trucks parked in front of the building. They are there because the government owes them a ridiculous amount of money. It's right across the street from the opera house, which for the record only costs $17.50 American for a performance.

The last place we stopped was a small town just outside of Guadalajara called Tlaquepaque. It's a little touristy, but it was really nice. It's pretty much what I have pictured when I imagined a Mexican city with a lot of small stores and amazing food.

We got home pretty late last night, with pretty much just enough time to eat dinner and do homework before bed.

Today we had class as usual, but I did get to go to the huge market downtown to buy a guitar for my Spanish guitar class. The market was huge. I could probably wander around it for an entire day and not see everything. We pretty much went straight to the instrument store and back though.

I ended up with a beautiful light wood acoustic guitar with nylon strings. I'm really excited about it. It sounds amazing, and it only cost about $30 American. How sweet is that?

Sorry if my descriptions are a little brief. I still have some homework to finish before dinner.

I hope everyone is doing well.

Love,

Katlynn