Life As A Make-Believe Foreign Correspondent

As part of an International Reporting course at Penn State, I recently had one of the most amazing experiences of my life. The point of the class was to give students a taste of life as a foreign correspondent. Before arriving in Mexico, we had to choose a topic to report on in-depth. After researching Mexico City, I found that an interesting trend has been happening in Mexico City and Latin America over the years; historically, Catholicism has been virtually the only religion, but Evangelical Protestantism is steadily becoming more popular. This was the topic I chose for my in-depth story. We were also assigned to find a feature story to cover off he ground while we were in Mexico, and I ended up covering Mattel's 50th Anniversary Celebration for Barbie in Mexico City, which featured outfits designed for Barbie by famous Mexican designers.

Here are my experiences as a reporter in the city that truly instilled in me an even deeper passion for journalism and storytelling.

Day 1: Saturday

After a night of traveling in a van from State College to Newark Airport with no sleep and an almost 6-hour flight, my 16 classmates and I finally arrived to Mexico City, better known as D.F. – El Distrito Federal. As soon as we arrived, my exhaustion and weariness wore off as I was in awe of everything I saw. Driving through the city, it looked like nothing I had seen before – an urban city with overgrown palm trees and little purple flowers I would later learn are called Jacaranda flowers. The closer we got to the hotel, the more I felt like a little kid on their way to Disney World.

The Maria Cristina Hotel is a Spanish, colonial style hotel that somehow manifested a feeling of being at home. We began our evening with a reception with another group of communications students that were staying at the hotel from the University of North Carolina.

The Maria Cristina Hotel, where we stayed while in Mexico City

That night, we all went out to a club called Touché in the city. I was expecting Mexican nightlife to be a lot different from American nightlife, so I was surprised when we arrived to the club and they were playing a lot of American music – everything from Kanye West to Christina Aguilera. To my dismay, that changed after about an hour when they started playing Techno music for the rest of the night. Regardless, we had a great time dancing coupled with a few drinks called "Palomas," and finished our night by stopping at a taco stand by our hotel and eating one of the most delicious tacos I’ve ever had.