Country Plaza Guadalajara

Not a terribly productive day ... drive to campus (too many cars! too much hyper traffic! no parking!), then back to the hotel, then a walk around the Gaslamp Quarter, then back to campus (too many cars! too much hyper traffic! no parking!), then back to hotel. <br><br>... but I did learn that there is a "Little Italy" in San Diego. I ...

At work all day, then late afternoon flight. No problems with flight at all ... arrived, got rental car, then drove the few miles to the W Hotel. Very swank. The "living room" bar was happening ... but we just went to our rooms, then met for dinner at Rice, the embedded restaurant, which serves Cuban/Asian fusion. Food was fine, not fab.<br><br>Room is fun ... there's a chalkboard (that received a bit of J. Alfred Prufrock from me) and a window seat. And the linens are wonderful.<br><br><br>

... coffee as we sit in front of our computers. I love my friend Heathie, never a dull moment with her. We have good chats about life and beyond.<br><br>Takes me some time to figure out my next move. My ride to Mammoth is put on hold so I'm not sure what I'm doing. My truck and all my stuff is in Mammoth and I need to get back. I call/text everyone ...

... impossible to sleep thatnight, every time I started drifting off I would wake up with an upset belly and have to vomit in the bin. The Mexican heat didn&#8217;t help. In the end I found it easiest to sit on the tile floor, with my back slumped against the side of the bed and my legs sprawled out soaking in the coolness of the tiles. I felt like a Mexican who had been shot in a drug war and was half sitting, half lying, on the ground, dying. <br><br>Tuesday, 10 August ...

... Africa with it's honest-to-god markets and laundry sinks- I feel like I'm able to treat myself better than I do back home. (If I only had my old charcoal stove!) I love playing homemaker and find feeding myself is somehow more "real" than office work or taking a trip to McDonalds. Granted, it takes considerably more time this way, but time is something I have... (another difference between my US life and my nomad life). And, granted, most ...

... We will meet the rest of the students on January 2, 2008 Touch down in Guadalajara was gorgeous, pasing over a huge canyon and the mountains while the sun set. We arrived around 5:15 PM and got our first taste of what the country was going to be like with a language barrier. The announcements were completely in Spanish and very fast. Lili and Kevin speak a little Spanish, and I speak whatever I learned from Taco Bell commercials. Good grief. This was going to be hard. After ...

... course in Mexico costed me around $2,300 whereas the same one in NZ is around $4000, so with a month's accommodation and flights costed a bit over that, but a much better experience, more rewarding and good Spanish practice!! Useful advice for Guadalajara: 1) Avoid San Juan de Dios market when you are alone. In twos is fine, but people alone often get violently mugged there. Advice is from my host brother at the time, not a travel guide*

... and multitude of cheese and other fat lovers' ingrediences did not win our votes so we headed to an Italian restaurant and ordered "Bambino"-pizzas, smalles available. To this day it remains unclear how a small pizza took us 2 days to consume and even then we gave one thirds away to other travellers!! After 2 days of healthy ghetto feeling and roaring of monster trucks it was time for some solitude...

... parents' home town about an hour and fifteen minutes from Guadalajara. I had been there once before, about seven years ago. I must confess that back then I didn't think much of the town, but this time I came away with a greater appreaction for it's small town charm and pace of life (must be my old age). : ) The first thing we did was drive by the piece of land Susie's mom still owns. Sometime during the beginning of this trip we began talking about how great it would be to ...