study-abroad

Yep, I'm sick again.  I don't know why, but I suspect some relatives of mine may accuse me of not eating enough fruit (I do have some bananas every once in a while, but other than that, it's just some lime juice here and there).  At the advice of my sister I just went and got some orange juice, which besides probably having some good stuff in it feels good for my throat too.  I also picked up some of the pastries (alright, I'll be honest, they're cookies, but one looks like a croissant) they have at the little grocery store.

For my class tonight I'm supposed to track down financial data about the Mexican economy from 1990 to 2005, but that is proving difficult to find.  Also, we have to find out the meanings of all 13 "Incoterms," which are pretty interesting.  It's funny all the new stuff that I'm learning in these business classes.

This morning at 11:30 my roommate and I met some classmates from our Wednesday night class to go an take a tour of Bancomext (the national bank of Mexico).  Our professor had told us that we should do this to try and learn about what influences they have on importing and exporting operations in Mexico.  So we all took a couple taxis there, and wound up outside a gigantic mall.  It wasn't very busy though, and there didn't seem to be a lot of stores in it.  I wonder if I just keep going to malls at the wrong time of day, or what, but I've been to 3 multi-level malls that were nearly empty.

We found the bank inside, and all signed in at the front desk.  Then we got to the back area, and there were already a bunch of people from out class standing around.  I'm not sure what all went on then, but some of the native Spanish speakers talked to the guy behind the desk there, and got some pamphlets for all of us.  However, there was evidently no tour (or maybe there is if you call ahead of time, no one really seemed to find out for sure).  We left, and a couple of us walked across to eat at Popeye's.  I had some fish that was a lot like at Long John Silver's.

This evening I had Chinese food for supper which wasn't real good, and watched some TV with the other residents here.

A couple of days ago I poured myself the last of the box of Trix (the kind with yogurt), which I really like.  Then I poured in the milk, and took a big bite.  For some reason my Trix tasted kind of sour.  I tried another bite, and figured maybe the milk was sour.  I took a couple more bites to confirm my fears, and then was pretty mad because the milk was less than a week old.  Then I saw that the expiration date had been the day before, and didn't think anything abnormal of it getting bad.  I wondered for a moment whether it would hurt me to eat the sour milk, and then started eating some more, but after a few bites stopped because it didn't taste very good (and it's kind of gross to think about).  I was pretty mad about wasting the last of my Trix though.

Of course, the next day I wanted some cereal for breakfast to go with my banana, so I went to the store a block away and got another 1/2 gallon.  That was all well and good until last night when I went to have some more cereal (about 3 days after I had bought the milk).  It was bad again, but at least this time I had been smart enough to examine it before I started eating it.  My snack ended up being cereal without milk.

Today I got some more milk, and the idea popped into my head that maybe the fridge in the kitchen wasn't actually cooling.  I looked, and sure enough, the top 1/4 of the fridge was a big block of ice.  Needless to say, it's probably not staying cold enough in there.  And I bet it's going to make quite the puddle of water on the floor if I let it thaw out.

I'm gonna fly through what I've been up to the last few days here...

On Thursday after math class I went to eat at Lucia's house (she's in my class).  Her maid cooked some vegetable noodle soup which was alright, and some little tacos with Kentucky Fried Chicken inside.  She has a pretty nice apartment with two of her older brothers.

Friday I slept in until the afternoon, and then went to a party that was put on by the Latin club with a bunch of other people from my floor.

Today I went to a bubble party, which was a lot of fun.  They had a 30ft wide area between two buildings that was blocked off, and filled the whole thing with bubbles about 6 feet high.  Good thing I wore my swimming suit, because I was pretty soaked afterwards.  They were grilling hamburgers too (I had two).

I watched a movie last night (Miradas Ajenas) with some friends from class.  It was quite a strain on my brain though, as they spoke French and had Spanish subtitles.

Today I had to get up early to go to the Immigration Office.  Early for me is 8:00am.  The reason I needed to go there is to convert my tourist visa, which I got on the airplane, to a student visa.  This is actually a pretty long process.  I needed to get together about 10 different documents and copies of this and that.  Here's what I can remember off the top of my head:

• Copies of every page of my passport, even those that didn't have anything written
• on them.
• Copies of my credit card and back statement.
• Copies of my tourist visa.
• An official letter of residence from the Residence Hall Office.
• An official letter of enrollment from the International Office.
• Two forms, which had to be printed both sides on legal-sized paper.  Luckily, the local Internet cafes are pretty good about helping students do that.

So, that is what I've spent some of my free time for the last 3 weeks doing. I guess it really isn't all that bad, but just seemed like a lot of unnecessary paperwork.  Now I have to call the office in a couple weeks to check on my application's status.  Then I need to get my fingerprints taken, and then finally pick up the visa.

Most people had the option of getting their student visa before they left the USA (or their respective country), and a few did with the thought that they would have to do less once they arrived here.  It turns out that they needed to do pretty much the exact same thing though.  They weren't too happy about that.

What I think is kind of funny about the whole thing is that by the time I'm done with it all, I'll be half-way done with my stay here.

I think I have a case of the stupids today.  First, I got up an hour early for class and didn't even notice.  Then, I tried going to class, but the room was full of kids and the wrong teacher was already halfways done with his class period.  I still hadn't figured out that classes don't start at 9:00 but rather 10:00, and wandered down the hallway (which isn't actually a hallway, just a very long open "porch" on each floor), until I found a girl sitting on the floor.  She confirmed that the time was indeed 9:00am, as my watch was showing (and that it was Tuesday).  Finally, I inquired if today was a holiday or something, causing my schedule to be different.  Finally, she saw me for what I was--a stupid American--and pointed out on my schedule that my class actually started at 10:00.  So I said, "Gracias" and walked away in shame.

And then there's this afternoon, in which I'm trying to visit the International Programs Office to check if I've gotten my mail today.  As expected, when I arrived at 2:15pm the security guard inside the door told me office was closed until 2:30pm, and didn't seem to want to let me even go up to the their floor and wait.  No problem, I figured, I'll just go use that computer lab right there, and write a blog post about something (I didn't know what, but figured I'd think of something).  I asked the guard if there were computers available for me to use, and he agreed, pointing towards the computers through an internal glass wall.  Then he made some wild gestures about going around this and that to get there (I ignored these, as the door handle was plainly right there).  I walked over to this door, turned the handle, and tugged, but it was locked.  Then I saw something that looked like a very small card scanner on the door frame, not unlike what NDSU has for some of its computer labs.  It didn't look quite right though, so I walked to both ends of the glass wall that the door was set in, but found no other door.  I returned to the door, whipped out my shiny new plastic ID card, and searched for a magnetic strip.  I didn't see one, but reasoned that there was no real reason to make the magnetic strip visible to the naked eye; it could be white like the rest of the card.  I swiped the card one way, another way, reversed it, and tried two more times, to no avail.  (Keep in mind that this is a glass wall, and there are people who are using the computers watching me the whole time.)  By now, the guard was laughing so hard he had fallen off his chair (not really, in all honesty I don't think he was even laughing), and again gestured to me that I had to go outside the building to get into the computer lab.  I confirmed this by glancing through the glass wall and saw the doors on the other side.  Around I went (it's really
hot here today), and here I am.

Every time I go to eat at Tacos Felix, they put limes on the table.  I guess they're to put on anything you want, and today I decided to try squeezing one on my taco.  It's actually a pretty good combination.  I'm not saying you should try it on a Taco John's taco, because the ones down here only have meat on them, and I don't know if a taco would be very good with lettuce, cheese, sour cream, and lime juice.  But meat and lime juice is good.  Try it.

I went to Walmart today, and bought a bunch of food, and had an inkling in the back of my mind that maybe I could cheaply get enough stuff together to make an omelette.  So I was walking around, got some more bread, more peanut butter, more jelly, and walked by some frying pans that were on sale for only $4.  That suckered me in, and I headed back over to the food section to buy some cheese and eggs.  I also got 2 real plates and some real silverware (and some more ramen, and some little noodles that are kind of like ramen).  And I got a comforter/blanket for my bed too.

When I got back, I went right to the kitchen and started cooking.  I had to use a pliers from my toolkit to turn on the stove, because all the knobs are either missing or broken.  Then, I put some butter in the pan, like all good cooks do, and to spare you the details of how to cook an omelette (because I don't really know how), here is the result:

Not pretty is it?  But it still tasted good.

Everyone here has a laptop it seems.  And, unlike students at NDSU, they actually sit outside and use them, all the time (climate makes a difference, I suppose).  When I walk between classes at 11:30 on Tuesday and Thursday, I probably pass about 100 different computers.  In 5 minutes.  I've even seen 2 other Tablet PCs (never did at NDSU), including one guy using one in my math class.  And it seems that they really planned for people to be able to use their laptops everywhere.  The whole campus, even outside, is covered in a wireless signal, and there are poles with power and network cable jacks near the picnic tables that are all over campus.  They're actually quite similar in appearance to the block heater plug-in poles we have in North Dakota.

On the other hand, the Internet connection here is real great.  It slows down a lot in the evenings (when everyone is using it) to almost dial-up speeds. But at other times of day it is pretty zippy.