Hello Friends, here we go again. Another summer, another adventure. Only this time I don’t find the spot next to me empty. For this adventure that will be the following 6 weeks in Mexico City, I have the lovely pleasure of my mom joining me. But first, let me rewind a minute.

On the 27th of June ( 2 days after the last day of school– thank you snow days) my mom and I left the beautiful state of Washington for the bustling streets of Mexico City. After an interesting experience trying to find a taxi from the airport, my mom and I crashed for the night at a nice hostel, Casa de los Amigos.

The next morning we woke up (relatively) early, ate breakfast and struck out on our first adventure. From Casa de los Amigos we had to travel the metro approximately an hour to our destination, CEPE, center for studying Spanish at the University of Mexico.

Our adventure started off strong. We successfully navigated the 5 blocks between the hostel and the metro stop, payed a nice woman to use her metro card, and hopped on a bus seconds after arriving. Now all we had to do was wait for the next hour or so we thought. We both started out the window (my mom a bit more enthusiastically than myself), and I occasionally checked my google maps to make sure we were on the right bus (travel hack: download an offline version of google maps and turn on your location to track your travels when you don’t have service).

I always hate the first couple of experiences traveling inside a country.  Every country has it’s own ways, expectations, and customs for traveling. Do you barter for your ride? Should they have the meter running? Do you flag the taxi/bus down with a high wave or a lo, downward facing wave? Is it safe? Where do you go to catch a bus? And the questions  go on and on.

That is a very long way to explain why I was frequently checking google maps while riding the bus. During my anxious checking I suddenly realized that we had some how begun to go in the wrong direction– back towards the direction we came. Unfortunately, by this time we had almost arrived back to our start point. Fortunately, it was quite easy to figure out our error and catch the correct bus.

Mom and I finally arrived at CEPE and 4 hours later came out tested, broke, and scheduled for our upcoming 6 weeks of Spanish study. Mom was ecstatic over her level 2 placement and I ended where I thought I would, in level 5 with a likelihood of moving up to level 6 after the first week. Unsurprisingly, my grammar is my weakest link and speaking is my strength.

The weekend was dedicated to frantically trying to find housing and doing some gentle exploring of the city. Tomorrow we start our first week of classes!

Hasta luego!