study-abroad

Alright, this post is just photos.  All at the soccer fields.

Well, I just got back from Celia's house.  It is about 10 minutes by car from campus, and pretty nice (about the size of our house in Bismarck, but with no yard).  She made spaghetti for lunch, and lemon meringue pie for desert (both tasted just like at home).  Then I showed them a bunch of pictures that I had of me and my family on my laptop, and she pulled out her old pictures from 1974-1975.  I didn't recognize my mom in any of them though.

They all spoke English pretty well (except Celia, who's English is about as good as my Spanish), although they consciously tried to speak Spanish as much as possible because they really wanted to help me learn.  So I got the most practice today as any day I have spent here so far.

They (Celia & Guillermo) have three kids: Memo is 22, Jessica is 21, and Anacelia is 19.  Jessica goes to art school, Memo is studying Industrial Engineering at Tec, and Anacelia is also going to Tec.  Here are some pictures (Jessica was not there, but that is her art in the background):

They also have a dog, and 6 horses somewhere outside of town.  Guillermo owns a fleet of 5 refrigerator trucks that import meat from Texas (Laredo, I believe).  They also have a maid that works in their house all day.

For the past three days there has been a little donkey (about 4 feet tall) standing on the street just around the corner from the dorm.  I've walked by several times each day and seen him, so he's putting in a lot of hours standing there in the hot sun.  He's got a crappy two-wheeled cart hooked up to him, and it's full of a bunch of crappy odds and ends, so I feel sorry for him.  Especially since the cart is taller than he is!

Today I went to a meeting about finding volunteer projects to take part in.  The lady there gave us a list of about 50 organizations to check out, so I'll be going through that in the next couple of days.  Then I went to the cafeteria to eat with David, where I had chicken stuffed with ham and cheese, noodles, and watermelon.  After that we went to another organizational meeting, this time about conversations with Spanish-speakers (I don't really know what to call it).  What you do is meet with one or more other people from Mexico that want to learn English better, and practice talking English and Spanish with them, and hopefully make friends while you're at it.

I tried printing some stuff at the computer cluster today, and had some difficulties.  Actually, I first tried yesterday right before class, but couldn't completely figure it out in the little time that I had.  Apparently they have the same system that NDSU has been struggling to implement for the last year, where you go to a computer by the printer to confirm that you want to print what you just queued up from your computer.  But to queue anything up, you have to sign in, which my neighbor in the cluster was kind enough to show me how to do.  So I get that figured out, and then head over to the release station, sign in there also, and hit print, thinking all is good.  Nothing comes out of the printer.  I figure maybe it takes a while, so wait a little longer, but realize that nothing is going to printer after the next person comes up and instantly gets their document.  That's when I left to go to class.

Now we get to today, and I tried the same thing, on a different group of computers (they have a LOT of computers that are nearly always all busy, probably 500 of them).  Same thing--no printing.  So I go ask a lady, babble some rough Spanish to her, making up words like I usually end up doing, and she comes over to look at it.  I show her how the document says it's printing but actually doesn't, and she comes to look at my computer.  She has me sign in to something else, and then we walk over to the release station, sign in again, and it prints.  So then I asked her what was different this time, and it turned out that I hadn't had any printing credits (I think we are supposed to have 100).  I couldn't really understand why I hadn't been given any, but did figure out that it will work next time I try, and that I have 77 free pages left (a pretty random number I thought).  I think I'll go plenty early next time I need something printed.

Today I had a bunch of classes again; I turned in my first homework of the semester (for Linear Algebra).  I talked to Celia (well, mostly her daughter) and am meeting her on campus after class on Thursday so I can head to their house and eat and meet them all.  Today I had quesadillas instead of tacos, but they were pretty much the same exact thing plus cheese.  They did fill me up more, as 3 pretty much topped me off.

I have been enjoying afternoon naps lately, and sleeping an unbelievable amount.  I think I'm averaging 10 hours per day.  I have a sore throat right now, so I'll probably continue that to try and avoid having a cold.

Tomorrow for Importing and Exporting Operations in Mexico I get to give a presentation about Japan with a girl from Tennessee about their business styles, along with traditional customs and economic information.  The rest of our group is doing reports on Italy, UK, India, Mexico, and Cameroon.

After soccer we went to the cafeteria on campus to have snack.  What I got was a gigantic 8" diameter chip.  And it had guacamole spread on it, which had ground chicken I think on top of that (very finely ground), and then some lettuce and some kind of white sauce (probably sour cream).  It was pretty good (not cooked by the way).  Now I'm going to eat some Trix (with yogurt).

I just ate at Taco Felix's, and had 6 tacos.  I'm pretty full now.  Eliot challenged me to see how many I could eat, and I think I can do more, but for now, 6 is the current record.  When I ordered them, the waiter did a double take, and had to confirm that I actually wanted six!

I should be off to play soccer pretty soon.  Hopefully I don't populate the field with ground up tacos.

Soccer turned out to be interesting, and pretty fun.  It was actually pretty much like a hockey rink, and the ground was concrete covered with very thin turf.  The game is called rapid football, and you can play the ball off of the walls.  I think the game lasted about 1 hour, but it seemed to go pretty fast.  Probably because we were losing so much...9 to 2.  Anyways, there was a goalie and 5 others on the field at a time.  I think we had 10 or 11 people, so I didn't get to  lay more than about 10 minutes.  But I was plenty tired by then.  Here's a picture of the soccer field:

Today I ate at the BBQ that was put on by all the residence halls (at least the three that are in this one area).  They cooked thin sheets of meat on a grill and then cut it up into little pieces for tacos.  They also had quesadillas, which were made with the cheese that comes in one big ball and you unwrap it (that's what started my craving for string cheese and Mountain Dew).  The good: it was only $4 and I got stuffed; the bad: I had to stand in line for 45 minutes, which made me that much late for an appointment to work on a class project.

Alright, so I had quesadillas that tasted like string cheese today with some Coke, so I decided I could go for some Mountain Dew and string cheese, since that is an expecially good combination.

Last night we had our dorm welcome meeting.  I didn't understand a whole lot of it, but one thing I found interesting is that residents can smoke in the dorm rooms if their roommate is OK with it.  I don't plan on starting and my roommate doesn't smoke either, so it doesn't matter, but I thought it was pretty weird.  After the meeting we watched a Vin Diesel movie; I think it was called Another Man, but I'm not sure.  They had a projector outside aimed at two sheets on the brick wall, and provided pop and popcorn.

I'm probably going to be on my floor's soccer team, if I can find Julio (the RA) today to let him know I'll be on it.  I'll have to start exercising now I guess. :)