Leavin on a jet plane....

So tomorrow is the big day.  I'm "officially" a UW alum now even though I still have this one class to take this summer.  Here is a run down of what the big plans are for the first few days:

I will leave the metropolis of FAWI (Fort Atkinson, WI for those of you not in the know) at 8 tomorrow morning and will be travelling to Chicago for my flight out of O'hare at 2:10pm.  I will arrive in Mexico City at 6:15pm and will then fly to Cancun where I will land around 11:20pm tomorrow night.  It will be quite the long day of travelling but I have a few days of nothing.  I will be staying with Freddy for a couple of days and will not have Internet access.  I plan to spend most of Tuesday sleeping and watching movies while he works.

Thursday morning I will have to get up and return to the Cancun airport.  I have a 1:45pm flight to Mexico City where I will meet up with the three other girls from the UW who will also be on the trip (Kathleen, Michi, and Jessie).  We're all on the same flight to Oaxaca together and should be arriving there around 7pm.  The host families will be waiting at the airport to pick us up and we will go straight home with them that night.

Friday morning we have to be at ICO (Instituto Cultural de Oaxaca, the language school that I will be attending) at 9 AM for our orientation.  We'll be taking a couple of tours of the city and just generally getting to know where things are.  Luckily they moved this up to Friday so that we can know where some things are in the city on Saturday...which is a free day!  I'm hoping to be able to explore the city and buy a cell phone that day.  Sunday we are taking a trip to some ruins called Monte Alban and a little village called San Bartolo Coyotepec (it's a place that makes traditional black Oaxacan pottery).  I will officially start classes at 9 am on Monday with cooking class.

Many of you have no idea where Oaxaca is, and my "hand map" of it is pretty non-descript...so here is a map I found on Google.

The big yellow dot is where Oaxaca City is (where I'll be living).  The upper blue portion shows where many of the places I'll be visiting are in comparison to Oaxaca.  You can see where I'll be on Sunday (Monte Alban) on there as well.

Last thing... I am extremely excited to meet my family.  My senora's name is Aurora...she is an older lady who's grandchildren will be mis hermanos (brothers and sisters).  I will have two sisters (Karla who is 19 and Diana who is 12) and a brother (Sebastian who is 8).

I will post again as soon as I can (probably Friday or Monday) and let y'all know how things are going!