Abuelita, Menudo, and a Fogatada :)

It´s been two more weeks and much has happened! :)

I just got back from salsa class. They have them here every Mon, Wed, and Fridays at 7 :) I´m meeting so many new people, many good dancers, and God willing I will be a beast at salsa by the end of the semester!

As for RA stuff, we´ve had plenty of programs. It´s been pretty chilly here these past two weeks. One of the days I was talking with some of the other prefectos and said we should have a bonfire with marshmallows, hot chocolate, and old mexican stories. LOL. They laughed and then they said ok, when do you want to do it?...LOL (There is no hesitation here....no joke, two days later they had formal poster ads made and put up all over the building!). So on our halls individually we had a night of baking cookies and making Abuelita chocolaté caliente....yum! And then the following Sunday night we had a the fogatada (bonfire) together outside with marshmallows and hotdogs. Both programs were a great time to get to know my girls (especially the hot chocalate and cookie night!). All of my girls are from México, most are attending Tec, and a few actually attend the Prepa (highschool) that is funded by Tec. My roommate Georgina, actually, is only 16 and go to Prepa Tec. They´re only a handful though on my hall, most are university students.

Another huge program we had was the torneo de fútbol last weekend...a really great time to get to know my girls. Almost all the halls competed. Our hall made the semifinals, but just barely missed out on the finals due to a tie game and fault of the goalie (yours truely) during the 5 free shots. Nevertheless, we had a great time and it is something we could never forget!

In addition to programs, I´ve completed my first night of back'up weekend duty (guardia auxiliar) and all went really well. The only thing I had to do was pasa listas at 10pm through all the girls res halls. It took about 2 hours, but I met a lot of the girls and it wasn´t too bad. Guys don´t have to pasa lista here...it´s a paternal thing I guess.

Outside of being a prefecto (which you really are 24-7 here...even the cafeteria people know who you are!), I attended a meeting with the director of all the 28 campuses of Tec (who I didn´t realize who it was until after the meeting), traveled throughout El Centro dowtown Monterrey to find class books (which I still haven´t been able to find yet), attended a free pilates class (in Spanish) at the gym, had a homemade meal with a real mexicana familia from my church off campus, and ate menudo sopa for the first time (which I didn´t know until after I ate it that menudo is actually cow´s intestines!!!...apparently a delicacy here in Monterrey on Sundays). I´m not gonna lie, it wasn´t too bad. However, I think once is suffient. :)

Right now, it´s 10:20pm and I´m still waiting in the library for my Relaciones Internacionales group who were supposed to meet here at 9:30...mexican time is a slightly different from the US. ;) By next Tuesday, we have to have completed 10 of our 40 pages (in Español) about our thesis for the semester. We still haven´t picked a hypothesis yet. All we know is it has something to do with internacional migración. Fortunately we have a holliday this coming weekend (because Feb5 is La Día de Constitución) so we´ll have some time to work on it then. As for now, though, I should probably go try to find my group... :)

¡Nos vemos!

Manzana Soda

(Sorry it´s been so long since I´ve written. I´ve been waiting for pictures to
accompany my words, but they still havent come. Soo...
Tonight it is January 16, 2007 and I would like to dedicate this entry to Jay,
Gopal, Jordie, and the Smiths for one reason: manzana soda. I am in the land
flowing with manzana soda!)

This has been an eventful past week. Last Monday night, we kicked off the
semester with our Bienvenidas program for Res. 3. Every hall is required to
have one within the first 2 weeks to welcome back, or simply welcome, the
residents. Since 3 out of the 4 girls in Res. 3 are new, we decided to hold
all of ours together. The celebration was at 7:30pm and at 7:15 we were
still at Cosco buying the cake and pizza for the party. Fortunately, time is
not a big issue here. :)

The Bienvendias consited of food and refreshments (including the ever loved
manzana/apple soda), welcoming by Reynold (the head of Res Life here), personal
introductions of us (the prefectos), and a word of encouragement from the hall
tutor (each hall has an assigned professor to motivate and assit the residents
where needed academically). It was a great opportunity for us to meet our
residents and for our residents to meet eachother. Unlike VT, these opening
meetings are not mandatory (I suppose because they have the mandatory day at
Racho Tec instead).

On Tuesday, we (all 12 of us female prefectos) had our first weekly staff
meeting with Magaly (Director of Fem. Res.). I caught about 80% of what was
going on since it was all in Spanish and the things I didn´t understand I asked
Magaly and/or one of the other girls afterwards. (They´ve been so welcoming to
me here I can´t even express it well enough!) Also at this meeting, each of us
had to turn in a list of all 5 of our planed proyectos (programs) for the
semster. Between the 5 we had to cover the values of Tec: educational,
social, spiritual, physical, and something else I can´t remember but I will
have to ask. :) These reminded me of the PYLONS model of programing at VT
and I shared with some of the prefectas the Imaginarium website database :)
They loved it!

Wednesday, we began our bookselling duty. Here at Tec they don´t have the
option to sell back their books to anyone. So Res Life has started a tradtion
of setting up a stand in La Choza (one of the main resident hang out centers)
where residents can bring their books for a certain price, we sell them for
them to the other residents, and we (Res Life) gets a cut of the profit. It´s
kind of a wise way of recylying, sort of :)

By Thursday, I had completed my first night of guardía titular (primary duty).
Every night there are 4 prefectos on duty: 2 guardía titualar and 2 guardía
auxilar (backup). If you have guardía titualar you can´t leave Res area
after 5:30pm-8am, unless it´s for class (and then you have to mark with the
valitas/security guards where you are). Auxilar can leave campus, but needs to
be within reach if needed. They don´t have many rounds because at 10pm every
night, every prefecto (except those in res. 3) has to complete pasa listas
(curfew checks to see if the girls are in their rooms). Nevertheless, at 10pm
the titular and auxilar go on rounds to check the recyling bins in some of the
buildings and do rounds in res. 3. Also, on weekends, they must pasa listas to
account for all the female residents. I haven´t done a weekend yet, but i
admire those who have :)

In between all of this, I have enjoyed my first week of classes. There is much
to be said about my Intercultural Comm class (we´ll leave that for another
entry) and my Spanish class too (of which is all international students from
US, China, Japan, Germany, Poland, and Kenya). Surpassing them all is my Sem.
of International Relations in español where I am the only extrañerjo. I´m not
going to lie....i felt very akward the first class and a half, because I was
the only one not from Mexico and above all places, from the US. This is a
senior seminar, so naturally they all knew eachother from classes before and I
very much felt like the new kid. By the grace of God, the second class was a
great opportunity to make friends as we all braced ourselves for the assignment
of the semester: a 40 page analysis (in Spanish) about an IR case of our
choice. They were scared because it was 40 pages. Thankfully b/c of great
professors (shout out to Dr. S, Edd, Brandi, Dr. Clement and others!) I was not
afraid of the length. My fear, however, was the Spanish (we get marks off for
every misortographic). This is going to be a great lesson in planning and
proof-reading, no doubt. Luckily, one of the many books we have to read I´ve
already read in my last IR class :).

Along with being a prefecto and a student, I am also an immigrant for this
semster, so I have to go through the Visa process :( WHooo hooo! So far,
though it hasn´t been too bad. I took my picture Thursday and because of this
I made 2 new local friends that work at the photo office off campus :).
(They´re really nice guys and have offered their office as a home off campus
should i ever need it :)) I have 17 (?) days left on my tourist visa and so
the next step is to hire the law firm on campus to take me through the long
process.

The weekend came quickly and was a lot of fun! Friday, a bunch of the prefectos
were invited to an old prefecto´s house for a dance party. He was a prefecto
last semester and helped host the RA Rendevoux. But he decided to take the
semester off since he was taking tough classes this semester and will come back
next semester. Once a prefecto, always a prefecto....he´s still really good
friends with all of them.

Then, Saturday morning was a chillax and beatuifully warm day. The valistas
(security guards of the resident halls) made a challenge to an informal game
of fútbol with us, the prefectos, at a field near campus :) I´ve never seen
grown men play so hard! And they won!!! O well... there´s always next week
;)

After the game I headed out to Soriana, the Mexican competition of Walmart, for
a few things with Ale and Francisco, my local brother for the semester (a old
intercambio of VT, native to Monterrey, and novio to my loved friend from back
home, Amanda :)). He took us to a good local taco tienda, where we ate gringas
and drank horchata (rice milk?). Y despues we went and saw Hamlet (in Spanish)
at the packed theater on campus. It was a great work of art, but nevertheless
still a sad tradgedy story.

Sunday, a good friend, Erin, and I attended one of the local churches that ended
up lasting 5 hours...3 for the service and 2 for parking. :) She dosen´t speak
much Spanish, so I sat next to her and translated during the service. I was
surprised at how much they praised God! And I was surprised at how much i
could understand! WHat a gift!

Afterwards we visited her host family house off campus and I got to see the real
Monterrey---some really ¨rich¨, others really ¨poor¨. A great wealth disparity
exists here.

But manzana soda is available to all. And, fortunately, the students here who are the future leaders of Mexico realize that.

First day, First Weekend

{Written on Monday, 6 of January}

Today is the first day of classes. I just finished my first class of the day,intercultural communication in English which has about 16 people in it. The teacher is 33 and wants us to call her Rosalinda (not Mrs. or Professor so and so). Eventhough it's in english most of the students are Mexicans. In just a bit I'm headed off to mi clase de Espanol Avanzada 1. :) The first weekend was great! We finished registration yesterday, Sunday, night. Saturday was a long and yet great day! Here at Tec all the 1st year students are required to attend an off-campus orientation for the day at Rancho Tec, hosted by Residence Life.

We, the prefectos, after introductions of all themain staff for residence life, put on 2 really funny skits for the residents. I played the voice for Lorenita, a character precocupied with her boyfriend choking on a hot dog while she tries to get help from the super-hero prefecto. At Rancho Tec (a beautiful ranch off campus that includes a lot of space, trees,pools, huts, butterflies, and mountains) we broke the residents off into teams of 10 per 2 prefectos. Omar and I led team 6 :) And with our teams we rotated to 7 different stations. Each station had a game and some piece of information integral to Residence Life: Laundry (which goes by the kilo here,not the load), Housekeeping (which is everyday), Maintence (you dial 1005 if you need help), Fire Saftey (they teach you how to use a fire extinguisher and you do), Internet and Tecnology (some sites are blocked in the residents halls but not on the campus, like YouTube), Student Programs (which is only led by 1 person with a few student helpers, but they put on a lot), etc. Because it is my first year, too, even though I was leading I found myself learning alongwith the other residents.

On the bus ride back to campus, they thought it was awesome that I, a person from the US, wanted to study in Mexico. One of the guys even said, "Why did you want to study in Mexico? No other Americans do because they think we're all little guys with big sombreros playing our guitars in the desert next to a cactus. So why did you come here?" I laughed loudly and then explained to him why.

Then, Saturday night we all went out-----the whole campus (I'm not even kidding!). Mexican culture values relationships, dancing, fiestas, etc. So residence life had 3 huge buses to shuttle for free all the residents to CocoLoco's (one of the many local clubs downtown Monterrey aka Barrio Antiguo) and provided free entry passes for the prefectos. Needless to say, the place was packed! Even in front of the door to get in, there was a crowd of over 100 people waiting to get in. I guess we prefectos are really special here, cuz Melissa, the girl in charge of student programs told us to follow her, she was going to get us in. So we followed her through the crowd holding hands,sholders, whatever we could see, and she went around the back way and got us all in. We danced our hearts out to the pop tunes of reggeton, salsa, etc. until 5 en la manana!!! I didn´t even know that hour existed, but for everyone here they say that´s still early!

The prefectos are very much like family here. They eat together, party together, and hang out together a lot. So instantaneously, I felt like I had become part of a family.Nevertheless, they have friends outside the prefecto circle too, which makes the family even funner to be with cuz they love everyone. :)

I prefer Sunshine

Today I have completely moved in to my new home for the semester, Residencias 3, as pictured here. I´m living on the 2nd floor and I have 16 suites with 4 girls per suite. The hall is beautiful both inside and out, but the the fact that the 16 suites are spilt in half by a courtyard and a lounge may make a difference. I´ve only met one resident so far, Pile, and she´s very pleasing :) I´ve also met our incredible housekeeper, Josearia, who comes in and cleans our room everyday! WOW! And all with a smile too--increíble!

Yesterday was great, but the day before that was horrible. It was rainy, cold, and my Spanish skills kept failing me when I most needed them. We had our Prefecto orientation (only 28 total!) and they started off by introducing the newbies (6 of us in all, myself and another guy from UT are the only intercambios though). I felt very welcomed by everybody! I was surprised, but very glad that they remembered me from the RA Rendevoux in October.

That was the good part about that evening of Orientation, the bad part was my lack of good Espanol skills, but more so my pride. The entire Orientation which lasted about 5 hours was completely in Spanish, of course. I caught around 70% mas o menos of what they said. I felt horrible that I hadn´t studied more right before I came. A couple of times I asked some of my neighboring prefectos what the speaker was saying if i didn´t understand, but after a couple times I felt like I was bothering them (even though in reality I wasn´t, I just didn´t want to ask).

Everyone here speaks in English and at anytime I can ask them to switch, but it´s my pride and I that want to keep it all in Spanish so I can learn more. Even at the beginning of the orientation, Reynold welcomed me warmly and said that probably a lot of what they were going to say would go over my head, but not to worry cuz they would all help me out. Nevertheless, we began to schedual events and projects and and skits and I started signing up for things because they were the only things I knew the words for LOL. Fortunately, they were things I wanted to do too. That night, after grabing some good comida with the other prefectos at one of the many tastey local taco tiendas, I moved from Res. 1 to Res. 3 and I felt so bad about my Spanish skills that I just started laughing because I had no idea how I was going to get through the semester! I asked God for lots of help and then I headed to bed.

I didn´t bring a computer, a phone, or a radio player so my room is devoid of technology. All I have for now is a Discman that I turn up really loud and pretend it´s a radio player. Nevertheless, I have enjoyed it. The next morning (yesterday) I woke up and I was reminded by the Nicole Nordaman song His mercies are new every morning. And boy are they!

Yesterday was so great! The sun came out and shone 70 degrees warmly all day. I had a small break from speaking Spanish for the International Student orientation sessions that were in English. I was able to see the two other people that are here from VT studying abroad, Brittany and Jeff. I met a really nice girl from Minesota, Jill, one from Canada, Kristie, a guy from Chappel Thrill, Trae, and TONS of French people! :) I think there are more French international students here than any one else. And they´re all really nice.

I was able to get my class schedual fixed. By the grace of God, there was one opening left for Intercultural Comm in English, and I´m also registered for a 6 credit Spanish Grammar class, a Relacionces Internacionales class en Español, and a Cine mexícano class en Español.

In addition to organizing my classes, I was able to organize my hall cochos (doortags). Gaby, Tatiana, Paula, Paula´s amiga, Pinto, and I all took the bus to downtown Monterrey (only 5 minutes away and reminds me very much like downtown DC full of people and tiendas) and went to a Papeleria to by the supplies. Instead of having an Imaginarium like VT, they have a 360 peso refund limit (like 36 USD) for each Prefecto to go buy the materials for their cochos. We arrive, Mexican time 6pm, back to La Choza where we were all set up for registering residents. My duty was Bienvenidas! I got to welcome everyone and lead them to the registraion line of contracts and keys.

Since there weren´t many people coming we prefectos had an awesome time hanging out together, getting to know eachother, and laughing A LOT :) My Spanish wasn´t and isn´t perfect, but I could already feel a difference that I was understanding more of what they were saying. Thank God for subconcious processing! That made me happy :)

We practiced our skits we´re going to present to the residents on Saturday at Rancho Tec. They are sooo funny! That should be a whole nother entry!

By 10pm registration and skit practicing was over, but we all stayed behind and hung out together. This was my favorite time, I really got to know Malena, a new but very mature prefecta who´s also in Res. 3. Malena has been a joy to get to know. And, even better, she told me that whenever I don´t understand what she says she would love to teach me or translate for me. Many of the others, in fact, have told me the same. They have assured me that it doesn´t bother them at all; especially Malena, she loves it! ¡Que padre! :)

Anywho, we decided to spend the night together in La Choza making our cochos together. Unlike VT and other universities, the boy prefectos do not have to make cohcos, but the girls do. I asked them why not and they said girls are more decorative and boys don´t care. Makes sense, but is very funny :) Nevertheless, a lot of the guys offered and helped us out a ton. Props to the Male prefectos!!

After a long night last night (til 4am for some), we have our beautiful cochos hanging up inside the female Residencias and we are ready to meet some more of our ladies :)

¡He llegado!

I have finally arrived to Tec de Monterrey :)

(This picture is compliments of the Tec website.)

Yesterday was a cloudy day---physically and metaphorically. When the plane was coming in for landing at Monterrey, the whole sky looked like a blanket of clouds. I don´t know how the pilot landed safely, but thankfully he did. Coming off the plane at 4pm I had no idea where I was going to be staying that night since orientation did not begin until today. Fortunately, I met a really nice girl, Amanda, from Wisconsn at the airport and asked her where she was staying. By the grace of God, she invited me to stay with her. She happened to have a room reserved with 2 beds anyhow :)

So we took a cab and spent last night at the Holiday Inn a couple blocks down from Tec. On our way up to the room we met another international student, Alex, from Australia. We all decided to go have dinner together. That was an adventure!

Although the hotel was surrounded by classic American eats such as Applebees, Subway, and Chille´s, we decided instead to indulge ourselves in the local flavors. We went to the hotel counter and asked them what place was their favorite around here. The guy answered Palomitas and pointed us in the direction. So we went down the street, crossed the bridge over the 8 lane road, and yet found no Palomitas.

We then approached a gas attendendant standing outside and asked him where Palomitas was and he said he never heard of the place. In return, we asked him where he recommends for good local Monterrey food. He suggested Rancho Viejo, a resturaunt across the street where we just came from. So we took the local man´s advice and headed to Rancho Viejo.

However, upon arrival to Rancho Viejo, we walked in damp from the rain and the place was empty except for the nicely dressed waiters. I asked them for a table for 3 please, and they responded that they were sorry, but they were not open. LOL. I asked them why not and they said they close after 5. We apologized and returned to our loved 8 lane street.

Finally, Alex said that Chille´s was looking really good and, in fact, he had never been there before! LOL. Apparently, Australlia (or at least the Sydney area) does not have a Chilles. So we chose Chille´s and Amanda and I laughed as we watched our new Australian friend enjoy his cultural experience :)

It was a great night. But by 9 we were all spent. It was a long day of traveling.

This morning Amanda and I caught the cab to Tec. The driver was really amiable and he even told me that he had lived in western Virginia! Apparently all 4 of his kids were born there. At the arrival to Residencias 3 we were greeted warmly by Marcello and his staff. They helped us get organized. Props to the study abroad office at Tec (and Tech)!! You deserve it for all your hard work for us!

In 2 hours I get to meet the rest of my awesome staff! So far I´ve met back up with Nacho and some others and I´ve met a few of the ladies too, Monica and Allie. All of them have made me feel like I´m home :)

For tonight, I´m staying in Residencias 1. I still don´t know where I´m living permanantley yet. But that´s the adventure of it all! :)

It´s still cloudy here, but things are beginning to clear up :)