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In Mexico City, no one uses turn signals. You change lanes by speeding up and pushing your way into the lane you want to be in. I don't see (or participate in) any accidents, but I note the well-worn bumpers on the vehicles around me.

There are so many layers of color and texture. Concrete, wood, glass, stucco, mesh, scrolled wrought iron, corrugated tin. All is overlaid with bright words painted on every flat surface. Many are advertisements or the name of the business, and many are graffiti, from hurried and ugly tags to large, colorful, elaborate names and murals that must have been approved by the business owners.

The architecture is of right angles, flat roofs and pie-shaped wedges. Roof heights vary, tall, then short, but the buildings are jammed together, there is no space at all between. Bright purple-red sprays of bougainvillea fountain over the tops of walls, skinny side streets are shaded by palm trees that sprout from buckled sidewalks.

Crowded green and white buses with the obligatory dented fenders roll by, coughing out clouds of black smoke. There are more Volkswagen Bugs than I have ever seen in one city -- green and white taxi Bugs, rusty Bugs, carefully restored Bugs. All the old type, none of the newfangled modern Bugs here. There are handbills and stickers plastered everywhere. The area we drive through has three lanes in each direction with a plaza in the middle for walking, sitting and street vendors. They sell food, sneakers and lots of Catholic paraphernalia -- shining icons, rosaries, candles.

No one wears shorts in the 80-degree weather. Some women teeter along in very high spike heels or platforms, although most are in sandals or sneakers. Policia in blue, wearing flak jackets, carry automatic rifles. No one looks twice at them. We go to the Basilica of Guadalupe, the central Catholic Church, home of Mexico's patron saint.

Some people approach the church on their knees, slowly making their way across the broad stone plaza that leads to the building.

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I'm on a trip with a group from Virginia Tech. The Horticulture department has an exchange program with colleges in Mexico and Canada and when my boss asked me to go along with a professor and group of students, I jumped at the chance. Mexico City is our first encounter with the fact that everyone seems to know about Virginia Tech. Our taxi driver, Cesar, whistles and shakes his head when he hears where we are from. The man working at the ticket desk in the airport is already helpful, but when he realizes we are from Tech, he hurls himself into helping us with a remarkable intensity.

We leave Mexico City for Mexicali, where our hosts are waiting for us.

They are two professors from Universidad Autonoma de Baja California -- the Autonomous University of Baja California. Over the next several days, we visit an amazing array of agricultural and horticultural sites that they and our faculty leader have arranged for us to tour.

The people working at our hotel's desk are cautiously curious about the shootings and so sympathetic. "We know about Virginia Tech! It is one of the best colleges in the United States!"

We travel to the fields and rural area outside Mexicali. It's a desert area, flat with brown dunes. Some palm trees break up the skyline, irrigation ditches surround fields of cotton and alfalfa. Many of the houses seem kind of grim, small and tattered with dirt yards and every single one surrounded by a barbed wire or chain link fence, sometimes beautifully done brick, sometimes wire tacked to small twisted tree trunks. It only rains about five times a year out here, and irrigation is a big deal. In the distance, a hacienda surrounded by green is a verdant oasis of palms. It sprouts from the rocky desert like the ziggurat of clouds I saw last night from the airplane, a phantom castle in the distance.

We visit Los Ninos, a group that has helped some women start a business to raise bees for honey and to rent to farmers for pollination. We roast in the sun by a field of tomatillas and look at the irrigation and beehives. Workers in Mexicali get paid about an equivalent of one U.S. dollar an hour and a gallon of milk costs about $4. So the bees and honey are crucial to the women.

Part of our group visits one of the largest, most modern slaughterhouses in Mexicali and watches the process from the cow walking in, to the beef being packaged. I am too much of a coward to go, but am not surprised by what our leader tells me later. They had to suit up in full body coveralls, with a face guard, and hard hat to go in the factory. Part way through the tour, the guide realized where the group was from. Over the din, with carcasses and cow parts flying all around, he yelled "We are so sorry for your losses. If there is anything our company can do for you, just say so." Just as at home, everyone wants to reach out, everyone wants to help.

Pris Sears grew up in Florida, lives in Blacksburg and works among Virginia Tech's computers.