We ended up having three weeks of canceled class because of the swine flu epidemic, and halfway through the first week I think I started going a little crazy and decided that the best way to deal with this whole swine flu thing was to travel! According the next day I hoped on the first flight out of Guadalajara to Veracruz, the state of Carnival, small people and witch doctors. I arrived on Monday and headed straight from the airport to the bus station to catch a bus to Lake Catemaco, which is apparently a little village next to a big [View Full Entry]

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Dearest Friends and Family, This is just a quick message to let anyone worrying back at home know that I'm fine, safe in Guadalajara (away from mexico city and other infected areas) and am sitting tight. Its been a pretty surreal week to be honest and its kind of left my head spinning at how fast its taken off. On friday I had no idea what was happening and by Monday you could see facemasks and things in Guadalajara. I was planning on traveling this week and next week but have put that off til things calm down. For now I'm [View Full Entry]

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Happy Easter everyone!! I hope it all went as well for you as it did for mum, dad and I. It literally went by in seconds. unfortunately I only had two weeks to play with for easter, so Mum and Dad arranged for a week i Mexico (Guadalajara and Mexico City) and a week back in childhood at Disney World in Florida. Mum and Dad arrived at about 8pm on Palm Sunday, surprising not as jetlagged as I thought they might be. They were on the go enough for us to have dinner with Katherine and her mother while they were [View Full Entry]

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So the Mardi Gras just happened in Australia and I'm happy to say that Mexico does pull out all the confetti for its own carnival too. The main spots for carnival over here are Veracruz (too far away for me to get to), or Mazatlan which is on the west coast of the country about 8/9hours north of guadalajara. IT WAS AWESOME! We could only stay for three days but in those three days they closed off some streets and had all sorts of stalls set up (lots filled with beer) and people wandering around selling almost anything and everything, people [View Full Entry]

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Hello guys, I've done a couple of trips since I've been back at uni, first to Tequila, the little town that produces the great drink, and the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary. Tequila is this cute little old town with nothing much in it but Agave (cactus) fields and tequila processing plants. We whiled away an afternoon having lunch, wandering about the town and taking a tour through Jose Cuervo where you can see the process and taste the product. :) The Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary... well... there's not much for me to say but WOW. Up the top of a mountain and surrounded [View Full Entry]

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Dear family and friends. Apologies for the long absence without word, but now I'm back in Guadalajara and have free access to the internet for more than one hour at a stretch I'm going to attempt to update you all on what has happened over the past 6 weeks traveling! Shelle and I after Christmas headed through the centre of Mexico to a city called Guanajuato. I have been there before (i think you can still see my photos on a past blog), and was happy to show shelle around the cute little streets where cars can't go, cobbled stones, houses [View Full Entry]

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Sorry, only a short one this time, but lots of photos for you!! So shelle has finally arrived and we spent a few days looking at all my local hangouts before heading to Mismaloya for a Christmas beach holiday. Upon arriving at Mismaloya, we indulged ourselves in cocktails and sunshine, snorkling and just plain relaxing. Here's the evidence. :) Love soph and Shelle. p.s. We are now heading on to Guanajuato and then Mexico city and will hopefully give you another update in the next week or so. xx [View Full Entry]

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Wow. I mean seriously, wow. This week just gone I was amazed at how different a place like Oaxaca is in comparison to the rest of Mexico. The place was a whole new side of Mexico, you could almost have been in another country, the language style was different, the people were different, the whole vibe and I loved every minute! To begin at the beginning... Wednesday afternoon at around 2pm we hoped on the bus to head to Mexico City which took in the end about 7hours, the rough plan being we'd get an overnight bus in Mexico City and [View Full Entry]

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Hey guys my bad for not writing on the blog for a while, its been, well, not crazy, but I'm definitely settling into life Mexican style. So I haven't had any traveling adventures so to speak, rather, I've been getting to know Guadalajara and the people here. Exciting things that have occurred include, going to my first ever soccer match, attending a concert of spanish/french singer Manu Chao who can best be described as the Bob Marley of the Latin world, drinking and having BBQs with my housemates, and exploring different areas of the city like Tlaquepaque (Tla-ke-pak-e) and Zapopan (its [View Full Entry]

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I've just gotten back from a week wandering down the Pacific coastline of Mexico and it was amazing! No, I didn't blow off uni to travel, I'm not that kind of girl. September 16th is Independence Day for mexico and as such we got Monday and Tuesday off uni so all in all Katherine and I were looking at six days of no uni and that is an opportunity too good to pass up. So Wednesday afternoon after our last class we packed ourselves up into one backpack and toddled off to the bus station to visit the wonderful worlds of [View Full Entry]

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