University Iberoamericana

Name: Kate Hansen
Host University: University Iberamericana, Mexico City
Degree: Graduate Diploma

Greetings from Mexico City!

I have to say I´ve been having a great time here, I´m really glad that I made the decision to do this Graduate Diploma, which allows me to study in Mexico and become fluent in Spanish all with the support of Centrelink! Its a really great opportunity and Im making the most of it. Mexico city has a lot to offer.

I´m really loving my classes at La Ibero. I have spanish every morning from 9 til 11. I also take a conversation class twice a week, which is really good, and i´m doing two classes in english that they offer as part of the spanish language program, one is called US & Mexico Relations, and the other is called Women of note in Mexico. Both are really interesting. The lady who teaches the women subject is really interesting! She speaks like a Jewish New Yorker but actually grew up here in Mexico City and knew Frida Kahlo! So she has a lot of great stories about the artists and writers at that time. It seems we will be going on a lot of excursions to different parts of the city too, which will be fun.

Im approaching my fourth month in Mexico (crazy) and I feel so different to when I arrived. For one, my spanish is soooooooo much better! Im amazed at how much I can understand now compared to when I first arrived, and my speaking is a lot better too. This means that next semester I can take classes given in spanish, which is exciting and challenging at the same time. We now have about 3 weeks left of classes, before the break between semesters.

Once you get past the smog and the traffic, you will find a lot of wonderful things that the city has to offer. It was disconcerting for me to realise, after living in my apartment for over a month, that there was a mountain really close to my house. I hadn´t seen it yet because the pollution had been so thick up to that point that it had been hidden from view! These are things that I had never really had to live with before coming to Mexico, and it has been an interesting experience getting used to these things, and observing how the chilangos (Mexico City natives) live with these things on a daily basis. As they say, Life goes on, and it certainly does in this city.

For one, I think it is the city with the most museums in the world. There is a european-style castle that you can visit that was built when mexico had an austrian emperor, prehispanic ruins, colonial towns, murals, photography, markets, and lots of traditions and celebrations that are uniquely mexican. There are a lot of great places not too far from mexico city that you can visit either for a day, or a weekend. I´ve included a couple of photos of a trip to oaxaca, which is another state of mexico.

My best friend Nik is coming over in a couple of weeks, and we´re going to do some travelling around Mexico, and maybe Guatemala if the political situation calms down a bit. It seems that they recently had elections and these were followed by some instability, so we´ll have to see.