2014.07.18

Day 25

This morning I woke up super early to be able to go to school with my host sister. She gave me a tour of her campus in the morning before her class. She goes to the University of Guadalajara, to the campus in Zapopan called CUCEA. This is for business, administration, and economics. I love the campus. It is super green with lots of open grass areas, lots of nice palm trees, and various other plants. The trees are all trimmed in a circular fashion. It seems like a very nice environment to study. Apparently, this is one of the nicest campuses that the University has, and it is even nicer considering that the University of Guadalajara is a public university. 

From my experiences here, I have learnt that there is a bit of a rivalry between private and public universities. In the public universities, because it costs 40$ a semester, only 30% of the people that start university actually end up finishing it. On the other hand, the tuition at the private universities is comparable to Canadian tuition with it being around 8 000$ a semester. Getting accepted into a private or public university here in nonetheless very competitive and apparently very difficult due to the entrance exams as well. On a small percentage of students who apply will actually end up being accepted. 

I had a typical Mexican breakfast this morning. With my host mother we went to have a new type of taco. Who knew that there were so many! These were called tacos barbacoas. We had them with a type of meat broth with onions, cilantro, and chilli, of course. I tried a new drink with apple, also made by Coca Cola but I have never seen it anywhere else. It was super tasty. One of the best drinks that I have tried in Mexico. We had jericalla for dessert. It was very good as well. After my host mother drove me to my Spanish class. It was a good class. The trip that was planned was cancelled because there were not enough people that wanted to go. :(

After school we went to a traditional restaurant to FINALLY have pozole. I had mine with 'regular' parts of the animal, while my host family had it with pork ears, pork cheeks, pork tongue, and pork mouth. As an appetizer, there was a plate of pork feet. I did not try those. I could not. The meat was in a soup that was a bit spicy and had lots of corn in it, served with lettuce on top. I liked this soup. It is very filling. I would compared it to the Hungarian gulyas leves, kind of like a one dish meal with both meat and vegetables.

We wanted to rent a real old style Mexican movie to watch in the evening but, there were none at the Blockbuster (because those still exist here). Later on Olga and I went to a house party. On our way home, I learnt that Mexican radio stations play the national anthem at midnight.

Have a lovely weekend,
Cs.