Yeah!!! I finished the course on tourism I took!!! Yeah, I am so happy I am done with it. 
It took four months of going to school from Thursday through Sunday, from 9:00 A.M. till 6:00 P.M. It was a lot of hard work, lots of homework, and lots of tension presenting all of our projects. We had so much homework that it was sheer agony every time we were given our assignments. I read so much ( in Spanish) that I thought I would turn into a walking encyclopedia on the subject of tourism. But to my frustration, I don’t remember lots of the stuff I read about. I guess, because I crammed it in and did not take the time for my brain to digest it.
I became a computer expert in making power points presentations. The first presentation I worked on was one where we did a lot of research and took many pictures and made several trips to the country, where the city where I live, was first established. After collecting all the data and photos, I worked on it two entire days, sitting at the computer and arranging the information and pictures we had taken, not getting up except to grab something to eat and, of course, to go to the bathroom.
Our group had decided to meet on Thursday to go over the presentation and practice who would say what. I had been working on it since Wednesday morning and on Thursday, about two hours before our scheduled meeting, I lost my file. I do not know what I did, but I lost all my work.
I was frantic!!! I called computer experts who I thought could help me and I asked them if there was any way of recuperating what I had lost. I did everything I was told, but I could not recuperate it. I cried. Then, I got a hold of myself and re-did the whole thing. I do not know what pushed me to work the way I did, but I did everything over again. I think the fact that I had almost memorized how I had done the first one that I was able to insert pictures and info quickly. I arrived to my friend’s house an hour and a half later, but with everything finished. Our presentation was a success…
Well, to make things worse, my computer decided to die on me. I spent a month battling with it and with the computer guys who fixed it. They took it three times and would bring it back and it still did not work. Not only did they keep failing at figuring out what it needed, they lost all my info which I had collected or worked on for the last five years. My pictures, gone too. The worst part is that I told them that I had not backed up the information and they told me not to worry, they would handle it. Needless to say how I felt when I realized they had lost all my information… 
The last day of class we were taken to several places that tourists might be interested in going. One of them is the Enchanted Sahuaro Forest where you can find cacti that are over 500 years old, (at the end of my post I will insert a picture of one of those cacti). We also went to visit other sites and we ended going to this little town where we ate lunch and we bought some fresh cheese which I tasted and was delicious! I bought a kilogram of it and next day I ate quesadillas, which turned out to be finger-licking-good. About an hour after I had eaten the quesadillas I broke out in a rash. Oh, what a rash I got!!!!! I was sick for three days!!! I guess the cheese had been made with goat’s milk or pigs milk or whatever, some substance that was almost lethal for me…
As you can see, this course brought a lot of ‘enriching experiences’ for me, but I came out of them alive and a little bit more knowledgeable, thank you very much… 
Here’s the picture I promised. This forest is awesome! I should mention that this forest was beautiful but, unfortunately people stole many cacti to plant them in their front yards or elsewhere. It now only has 30% of the cacti it had several years ago. The forest has many new plants but we will definitely not be here to see them full grown. So sad…
