We are in Mexico! Things are cool! The flight down went quite smoothly. Guadalajara is hot and dry. We easily found our cab driver and he loaded our things and we were off. Candace was talking up a storm with him. But now I am getting ahead of myself because we have pictures. There is pictorial continuity here, people! Alright.

Oh, by the way, Candace wishes me to say that regardless of whose name appears at the bottom of the post, this is Josh. We will both post here. I will suggest to her that we differentiate our posts by putting her text in bright bright fuchsia. hardy har har...

(hey, stranger things have happened. Oh and we changed the title of our blog to match the title of our trip. Being the quirky bunch we are, we've always given our major trips a name like The Best of the West, or the Cool Beans trip. For this trip Josh and I had several names suggested to us, but while we were driving around Houston, cranking the radio, we heard that musical... uniqueness which is the Beatles, and in a moment we knew the name of our trip - Good Day Sunshine. :D )


This is Candace packing. My experience was much the same.


This is Candace's dashing tie-dye headband. given by my mommie :*


IAH Airport.
Talking to mum.


Soaring high above the clouds.





Landing in Guadalajara.
I took this picture because I was so struck by the terrain change once we crossed into Mexico. As we swooped over the mountains surrounding the city, most of the trees (bushes?) seemed to be barren, saving sap I suspect for the rains that will seemingly come next month and make everything green. But for now, this was the land that greeted us.


OK, textual and pictorial continuity have been realigned. This is the cab driver. He was nice about explaining things as we drove, using slow Spanish.

The Guadalajara cathedral. We met some other students from ITTO after checking in and went with them to this plaza to eat. The cathedral holds masses a few times every day.

And it looks even more amazing at night! This is five minute walk from our hostel. :D

So that's all the pictures we have for now. The hostel staff are nice and we have wireless, which is probably the biggest (nicest!) surprise to me.

And I concur with my esteemed colleague. I just have to say that we both agree that we were very blessed by the whole trip over and the accommodation situation here (photo tour forthcoming...)! We have a great room with plenty of storage , a big kitchen to cook in, free washer and drier, and just a great feeling about the staff, safety, and all!

Many thanks to everyone who was praying for us as we traveled - those prayers were answered!!!

So today we already stopped by the ITTO school, and they were very nice, walked around a bit, then came back for our siesta time. :) We'll probably do some more shopping later on and enjoy our free days before the program starts.

Hasta luego!
(until later... for you non Spanish people! :D)