Arrival: March 31-April 1

First, a brief description of the pictures, this is the inside of the house outside of my room.

The pink building is where I will be attending class.

The other two are just street in the neighborhood, my street is tucked away a bit but these are the main ones.

Departure:

Any trip I embark on will not start out smoothly, this is a fact.  Since I am taking most of my belongings with me to Mexico I was traveling with over 150 lbs of luggage dispersed over 4 pieces of luggage.   Upon arrival we (Mandy and I) weight the bags, found only one to be over the limit and did the luggage shuffle until all bags were within the limits, not too bad.  We get to the check-in desk after 5 minutes of waiting in line, only to find out that through some miscommunication between Delta and Aeromexico my ticket was only "reserved" not booked.  So then began the frenzy of phone calls being made, laptops being pulled out, airport wireless being purchased etc.  Once every possible number/code ever associated with my file was found we went back to the line only to find it was no longer 5 minutes, to say the least.  Somehow the lady we we're talking to shuffled us to the front and one of the numbers satisfied the computer and we we're on our way.

After saying good-bye to Mandy the rest of the trip constituted lugging around oversized carry-ons, bad Panda Express and debating whether I was getting sick or dehydrated.  

As far as the flights I can break them down like this:

Delta:  Smooth flight.

Aeromexico:  Extremely turbulent flight, free food, a movie better service.

I don't like turbulence, but I do like free food so it's a toss up in my book.

My original plan was to plan out every spanish conversation I might have between the plane and the house, however, this gave way to sleeping and watching a movie.

Once I arrived I was anticipating big problems at customs with my one-way flight and extended time abroad.  As it turned out they either didn't notice or didn't care but I had no problems.  I was able to go book a cab and explain where I was going relatively easily, the only problem was the cab driver didn't know the street, just the area so we spend the next 10 minutes driving around asking for directions while I was trying to make jokes in bad spanish.  I think he appreciated my efforts.  After a phone call to the host family we got there in a couple minutes and I was at my home for the next couple months.

Introductions went well and the house turned out to be great.  I am living here with 5 other students and the husband and wife.  I have my own room and I have 3 meals a day cooked for me while I am here, not a bad deal.

Day 2:

I woke to birds chirping and sunlight as the house is open in the middle, not a bad way to start the day!  I went with my host mom to register for class and she showed me a bit of the city on the way over.  I registered for classes and took care of all the administrative stuff except for a picture for my ID.  I was told to go to the store, get a picture taken in a photo booth and then return.  My first mission in D.F.  (Distrito Federal).  Obviously I started walking the wrong way, I noticed this fairly soon but I just kept walking for a bit to see the city.  Once I made my way to the store with the photo booth I did everything the booth required and waited for about 10 minutes for the pictures to print, probably not digital.  Once they came out I discovered my first problem down here, my head was cut off about midway down because I was much taller than most who use the booth (come to think of it my bed is a touch too short as well).  So I slouched, took another picture, waited got them and turned them in to the office. 

 Mission Accomplished.

In conclusion, I have just realized how long this is, so if you have gotten this far, I apologize, I will make these entries much shorter in the future.  Please leave some feedback, positive, negative whatever.  I'm going to try and keep up these blogs so with your help I'll try to make them as painless as possible.