Now the Fun Begins

I think I need to start blogging a little about life in Guadalajara, before I forget some of what has happened. Will finish off the stories from California as I go.

To day was my first day of Lectures at the University of Guadalajara!! Last week I sat through two introduction sessions, all in spanish, and I have to admit it was all a little confusing. What am I doing here??? To cut a long story short, I armed myself with pen and paper and walked around all the departments looking for subjects that I thought I might like. There is a list of all the subjects on the web, but no information on times or content. I finally came up with a list of subjects that would fit in with my spanish classes.

My alarm went off at 6.15am!! I hadn't slept at all well! It is very dark here until around 8.00 am. I bundled all my stuff together, snuck downstairs for a quick breaky, unlocked the three locks on the front door, then locked them all again once outside (very hard to do when it is dark). Out the gate and down to the main street to catch the bus! It was a little spooky, but I was relieved to see that there were a couple of other people waiting for the 33A camione (bus in Mexico). These buses are an adventure in themselves. I will save that story for another blog. It is about 15-20 minute drive to the street that the Uni Campus is in. Once I am off the bus I have a 10-15 minute walk up to the Campus along a street that is ok by day, but wouldn't like to do it at night. However, by this time the sun was up, and there were a lot more people out and about.

The dread is starting to set in, how am I going to manage to concentrate and understand two lectures (both 3 hours long) in spanish!!! I found the first lecture room and was relieved to find that there were a lot of International Students in the class, some with worse spanish than me!!! Relief, the lecturer is very vivacious, and today's session is only for an hour and a half. Just an introduction!! Whew!!

The second lecture turned out even better. I had already met the lecturer, at a birthday party on Friday night. He was very nice and offered to send english copies as well as spanish copies of our reading materials to the three international students in the class. Bonus!!!

I headed home a little early, feeling pleased that I had survived the first day of lectures. Hopefully I didn't miss anything too important!! Ingnorance is bliss as they say.