The conference is being hosted at Iberoamericana University. This is a prestigious private universities in the country. The campus is quite beautiful and the architecture of the buildings is really amazing. It is built on many different levels, the walks, the gardens, the buildings, the library, everything is a maze of walkways and stairs and terraces. It reminded me a lot of an MC Escher painting.
Beautiful green spaces. The person who prunes the shrubs has a full time job!
Even the bathrooms were really nice looking - yes, that is marble on the walls, floor and sink.
This was our conference space. There were two interpreters who translated all of our presentations into Spanish for the students who attended (they sat in the glassed in space in the back). Only a few students actually listened to the translation. Most of them were very fluent in English and asked great questions during the discussion time.
The classrooms are quite nice as well.
During our coffee break we were served a special kind of bread Pan de Muertos (bread of the dead). It is a sweet bread. The raised markings on the top represent bones.
We ate well for lunch. They had a special conference lunch space that looked onto a garden. We were served bread, salad, soup, a chicken dish and dessert all by multiple servers with silver serving dishes. Wine was also offered. Sodexo could never measure up.
This is a Day of the Dead display where offerings of food and other items are made in memory of loved ones who are gone. This was in the main plaza on campus. The white shape on top is a skull made out of recycled water bottles (and it lights up at night). This view is from the back. The orange flowers are marigolds and are traditionally used to form the shape of a cross.
At the end of the day I stayed to have coffee with a friend of mine who works at the University. He had me catch a cab back to the hotel, but the driver accidentally took me to the wrong hotel. As we pulled away from that hotel I was worried that I wouldn't make it to my actual hotel, but a few turns around some crazy streets and I was on the right door step. One thing I realized from this trip is that there are very few stoplights along the streets, there are lots of loop exchanges between streets, but few stoplights. (On the trip from the airport I noticed that red lights are only recommendations -apparently -as my driver went right through two of them).
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