We’ve just finished our first week abroad in Mexico City, México!  After a half day of travel from State College, we arrived in Mexico City in the early afternoon, Sunday.  We freshened up a bit and were taken to our first Mexican dinner at La Casa de Toño by one of our CDMX hosts.  The following day we explored the historic city center, and saw beautiful landmarks such as the Palacio de Bellas Artes and the Chinatown neighborhood (both pictured below).  On Tuesday morning we were invited to tour the Psycholinguistic laboratory of the Faculty of Psychology, and became more acquainted with our hosts and their protocols.  Everyone has been incredibly friendly and welcoming!  After the lab orientation, we were taken to a nearby food stand which had the most delicious tacos el pastor.  On Wednesday we experienced our second national holiday of the week, which again had the city mostly closed.  In the evening we experienced an earthquake, which left us slightly shaken, but passed quickly.  The next day was spent running small errands in preparations to begin our studies.  Friday we attended our host lab’s weekly meeting, and were presented with an article on the effects of language switching on bilingual children’s word learning abilities.  It was just like being in a Bilingualism and Language Development lab meeting back at Penn State!  Unfortunately, I came down with food poisoning later that day, so I was out of commission for about the next 24 hours.  It turned out alright, though, because as soon as I was beginning to feel better, I started receiving responses of interest for the study flyers posted by our UNAM hosts.  All in all it was a great week filled with new experiences, and Mexico City is quickly winning me over!

Eslayamos! (our made up exclamation)