Our real host brother, Manuel, came to visit this weekend. He is a flight attendent in Mexico City and gets about 5 days off each month. So for the weekend, he and his boyfriend Sergio came to stay with us. It was fun to get to know our long lost brother. He introduced me to sushi for the first time. (Ironic that my first sushi experience was in Mexico...) He insisted that I use chopsticks, but offered me a fork after I completely dropped a piece of sushi in the soy sauce and mutilated it while trying to get it back [View Full Entry]

---

---

The trip is winding down and I'm torn between fantasizing about cranberry juice and loved ones back home and focusing on living in the moment while I'm here. It seems to have gone by fast, yet when I think back to things that happened at the beginning of the trip, it seems so long ago. With that said, let the adventures continue. This past weekend was a day trip to Guanajuato. The city is in another state in Mexico. Our bus ride was only about 3 hours long, which seemed like nothing compared to Acapulco! We arrived and checked out an [View Full Entry]

---

---

Thats right, the plans to Acapulco pulled through and I got to have a mini vacation at the beach within my stay here! I don´t have many interesting historical or cultural facts about this spot, but I do have some good stories! We left for Acapulco at midnight on Thursday. It was kind of like the night before Christmas, we had to go to sleep and when we woke up we were there! Our hotel was amazing! The package that the group had was all inclusive: including food and drinks. We were right on the beach, literally stepped out the back [View Full Entry]

---

---

This entry started out as an entry about a ¨typical day¨for me during the week. I started writing it thinking the typical day would eventually materialize after about another week. Funnny that I even thought that. So intead I´ll tell you about a common denominator of every day, which is food. Everyday my roomate Meghan and I eat lunch at our host mother´s restaurant. We eat lunch after classes, which is usually around 3:00. The restaurant kinda of reminds me of a Mexican Franny´s (those of you SEK people know what I mean). Her food is always very good and she [View Full Entry]

---

---

And the weekend continues... Sunday we toured downtown Mexico City. As I mentioned earlier, the entire city was built on a lake. Fast fact: this is because the indigenous people were searching for a place to centralize their empire. They were looking for a sign from their god of an eagle sitting on a cactus with a snake in it´s mouth. They found the sign in the middle of a lake and starting building from there. This is why the symbol in the center of a Mexican flag is the eagle on a cactus with a snake in it´s mouth. Since [View Full Entry]

---

---

OK heres part one of an entry on our weekend trip to Mexico City. On Saturday, we drove straight to the ruins of an indigenous town. It was absolutely intriguing! We had a tour guide named Oscar who knew tons of facts about the place and spoke some Spanish, some English during the tour. Here is the down low on the ruins: the were actually first created by an ancient culture, older than the Aztecs, and then later discovered and inhabited by the Aztecs. So, all of the names and theories come from the Aztec beliefs, but could have been different [View Full Entry]

---

---

After our trip to the pyramids, we stopped by a town just out side of Mexico City called Xochimilco. We weren´t sure why exactly we were stopping, but it turned out to be my favorite part of the trip! This town, like all of Mexico City, is constructed over a lake. Tree trunks are floated on the water, then layered with dirt, then tree trunks, then dirt, etc. Then, trees are planted on top of the last dirt layer so that their roots will solidify the structure. The ¨roads¨are merely parts of the lake that aren´t covered up. This makes for [View Full Entry]

---

---

This last weekend is our student group´s last weekend that doesn´t have a trip planned in it. We took a lot of time soaking in things of Queretaro that we don´t usually have time to do during the week. Friday night, about seven of ¨the girls¨went out to dinner in the Centro (this is the same place where my fountain picture was taken). There are many restaurants that have seating outdoors and the scenery is amazing! Many people are out just to be out. There are musicians and people selling things in the streets. We all had some pretty traditional Mexican [View Full Entry]

---

---

On Wednesday the K-State International Students traveled to the northern part of the state of Queretaro to visit a small pueblo called Bernal. The town´s main attraction is their ¨Peña¨literally meaning ´big rock.´ We had two guides from the school who lead us to the top. It was quite a hike and I was impressed at how fast the guides could go. Quite a few of the students made it to the top as well. I still haven´t discovered which mountain range these mountains are in (Uncle Travis??), but the view was beautiful! There are more flowers and plant life than [View Full Entry]

---

---

Later that same weekend... Meghan and I woke up a bit late and headed to the Centro in a taxi. We were supposed to meet some friends to watch Mexico in the first game of the World Cup, but we couldn´t find them. So, we did the next best thing, walked about and then had a cold cappachino (or, as some of my family members say, cappachin-ee). This was the calm before the storm... We knew the game was over when more people were suddenly in the streets, all sporting green soccer shirts and bearing Mexican flags. We headed out into [View Full Entry]

---

---