Holiday Inn Select Guadalajara

... light in time to identify my assailant as a fair sized cockroach! However by the time I grabbed a shoe to batter it with, the ****er had disappeared beneath my wardrobe.

I have since become somewhat paranoid. Where will it crawl next time I sleep? Not my face? Or will I awake to find a scorpion in my bed or a tarantula spinning its web around me? Tonight I'll be applying plenty of insect repellent before bed and sleeping with a loaded gun beneath the pillow...

... Having only been here a couple of weeks I was worried that few people would come, but this fear soon proved unfounded. By around 11pm the place was full of international students, Mexicans that we had met, and various members of Alba's friends and family. We had stocked up on plenty of rum, beer and tequila, which proved just about adequate for the proceedings.

As my 21st it was always going to be an unforgettable night ...

... of Tequila and Mariachis it is still a distinctly Mexican city.

On the first weekend I took a walk with Isobel and a few of the Americans down the railway tracks near our house. After about half a mile we reached a shanty town next to the line, where we spoke with a few of the local inhabitants. One was a former gang member from East Los Angeles, who had been deported from America and was living estranged from his family there. His story was just one of many similar ...

... takes a lot of internal motivation and pep-talks, whether asking girls to dance at a club or going to a new part of the city on the somewhat hectic and irregular bus network. I think these milestones are what I´ll remember the most about this trip, more than beautiful beaches or ancient cathedrals. Ultimately, I´m here to learn about myself just as much as to learn Spanish, and the past two weeks have been a crash course in both! Cheers, and love,
-D

... is still there for me, but some of the nervous excitement is gone.
My time's about up, so I'll give you a quick round-up of the week's events before I sign off (imagine a colon here)

Walking and running all around town, watching some amazing dancers at a salsa club, learning (with mixed success) how to ask girls to dance in spanish, chatting up cab drivers and hopping on my first bus, getting lost (figuratively)in an enormous market ...

... abusive crowd I had ever seen. The crowd was divided into two, the Pobre (poor) up the top with the cheap tickets, and the rich, and the rich who had slightly more expensive tickets would sit on the bottom. No one there was necessarily poor or rich, it just depends where you want to watch from, the top with the view or the bottom close up. Gorgina, the girl who I was with always went up the top. She had the same shirt many of those up the top had which read “1000 ...

... coach to date! Flip down LCD video screens (not individual ones alas) and full length fold out leg rests; we're in transport heaven. The majority of the journey passes over us through sleep, though I find myself watching a Danish film with Spanish subtitles and strangely able to understand practically the entire story. We arrive at Guadalajara station zonked-out from the long journeys and ready to put our bags and heads down for a while. We take ...

My last night in Guadalajara I had dinner at El Gordo(The Fat One) which is very popular with locals. I had a lovely vegetable consomme, enchiladas and dessert was a choice of flan or flan! People in Spain will get the joke here-but a much bigger and more solid flan. Whilst eating, some Mariachis arrived full of party spirit and all us diners enjoyed our food even more! Hope you like the movie!

... his retirement plan is to hostel around Mexico FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE. Hardcore, and more than a little strange. At first I was a bit wary of him, especially as during our first conversation he showed me a looong video of him going to a museum (gah!), also at the time I´d just woken up in next-day tequilla HELL and was too weak to put up any kind of fight, just sat there going "oh really, wow, look at the intricate detailing on the furniture, oh great you did a big ...