Bienvenidos!

Hola! Como estas? (Hello! How are you?) I'm here in Mexico and I'm loving it! Some things are so different, but others are quite similar. It's been such a great experience so far! Everything that I have to tell you could take forever! I'll do my best for now. :) 

I got into Guadalajara just fine. I muddled my way through customs and immigration and was able to find Ted (the founder of Project Amigo) very quickly. We had about an hour or so to wait for a couple others, so we walked around the airport a bit (I learned about a whole bunch of types of cactus) and then he went to get his shoes shined or something and I bought some juice and water. After we got the two others all loaded we started our three hour trip to Cofradia. Wow, do Mexicans drive crazy! You take your life in your hands every time you get out on the street. It's quite the experience. :) We stopped at this awesome Mexican restaurant! The food was so good! I tried a fresh cheese gordita (kind of like a   quesadilla) and a napoles taco (napoles is a mixture with cactus in it). It was all good. Especially the fresh Mexican horchata! It was awesome! One thing already checked off my list! (I've only been here for two days and we've already had it so many times! I love it! As well as the other cool drinks we get to try. We've had fresh strawberry horchata, jamaica (which is made from hibiscus flowers), some kind of melon drink, fresh orange juice, though it's not as sweet as the in the states.)

Saturday night was the final night of the celebration for the Virgin of Guadalupe so in the jardin (basically the village center, the square) they had a bunch of vendors, traditional dancers, fried hotdogs called salchipopos (literally hot dog octopus because they're cut like an octopus). 

 Here is a picture of the dancers in the square. It was so cool! 

 Double decker bouncy house! So jealous! We didn't get to go on the bouncy house or the swinging ship, but we did play some fusbol. :) 

 The bat I found in the bathroom of the rotary club. :) I decided I should just probably not look up anymore. ha ha, I keep finding more. 

 I'm in love with the cheese here! The twins think that it is manchego, we'll have to find out. Also in the center of the plate is the napoles (cactus) mixture. :)

 The volcanos that are close-ish to where we are in Cofradia. The one that you can see well is called the fire (fuego) volcano and the one further back to the left is called snow volcano. The fuego one is still active and actually had a small eruption a couple weeks ago. Some of the other volunteers said they saw a tiny bit of lava at night a couple days ago. Who knows. :) 

 Traditional Mexican dancing! It was up the jardin (or the central square) which is literally three blocks away. So cool! You can hear the music all over town! They also had some great singers. :)

 Molly and Allie! (The twins :) at the first vision clinic. And Alexis in the back!

A group of the becarios (Project Amigo scholars) mixed with a couple others. :) From left to right on the top, Nina (she's awesome, I practice my spanish and she practices her english), Molly, me, Adrianna, Dulce, Dani, Pedro (Portuguese exchange student). Front row; Cecy, Joyce and Allie. :)

 Me and Allie. :)

 Aren't those the weirdest sunglasses you've ever seen? The frames flipped down! Weird! I've seen a lot of glasses the last couple of days, but those are by far the craziest. ha ha.

 The first real Mexican spider I've seen. ha ha. It was probably about 3 inches across. As soon as your blow on it it moves so fast!! They're so flat they almost don't look like they're there! (P.S. I saw my first real scorpion today, it was so tiny though! I got a picture, I'll have to put it up later.)

 Dulce, me and Allie. 

Molly, me and Allison. :) (Taylor Swift much??!?)

 Dulce, me and Allie showing off our awesome lentes (glasses). :) Stylish right?

 Mariana and Pedro in her little car. :) I'll tell you more about that later. . . maybe. . . ha ha. 

At the dinner at the Lion's Club Tuesday night. From left to right, Pedro, Allie, me, Hugo (Hiram) and Marina. They're all so much fun! Pedro is an exchange student from Brazil. His english and spanish are really pretty good. We have fun cobbling together sentences, talking about popular culture, desserts, everything. ha ha. We also learned the portuguese word for pineapple! We say it when we take a picture! It's abacaxi (uh-bah-cuh-SHI)! It's now the standing joke. :)

I have more pictures and I'll try to write again soon. :)