Guanajuato: Vibrant City of Culture, Art, Music

Guanajuato is a beautiful city full of colour, vibrancy, and a friendly mix of locals and other international students. It's a great city to wander and find live music, fantastic street food or a little bar/coffee shop to relax in. As long as you make an effort with trying to speak, the citizens of Guanajuato are friendly and receptive and it was overall an extremely pleasant place to live. Fabiola and Samantha were our local program administrators with CLA and it's hard to put into words how incredible they were. From picking us up at the airport to showing us around the city to organizing weekly cultural excursions, we quickly became friends who I still keep in contact with today. My experience was definitely improved with Fabiola & Samantha's guidance and I couldn't have asked for a better study abroad program with them. I stayed with a family who again I cannot fault. I was apprehensive at first because I was joining a very large family coming from a small household, but they immediately treated me like I were one of their own. But when living with a family, it's important to get yourself involved with mealtimes and general family time. They are one of your best resources when learning Spanish and they'll be interested in your life and background too! When choosing a study abroad program, the academic program was important. I wanted to learn more about the language and place I was living but didn't want to spend my whole time inside of a classroom. I found that the academic program at the University of Guanajuato was a perfect match of what I wanted, and all the professors I had were extremely friendly and dedicated to helping us learn. Financially, it's important to budget your money and resist the urge to spend it all in the first few weeks. There are so many restaurants, bars, coffee shops, museums and other attractions that if you're awful at self-control like myself, it's easy to overspend at the beginning of study abroad. Other than that, like any tourist city it has its expensive and cheaper areas. It just takes a little while to figure it out.