Catching up on the fourth week

NOTICE: THIS BLOG CONTAINS THE MOST RIDICULOUS HAPPENING IN MEXICO CITY YET, PLEASE READ (a bit long but worth the read)!

This week has been quite interesting, with much less class than I had expected. Our professor was feeling ill from the weekend, so we only had 2 ½ hours of class on Monday. Tuesday, we had a site visit to Bimbo, Mexico’s leading bread producer. Bimbo pretty much has a monopoly on the bread market, making everything from what they call “pan dulce” (sweet bread, more like Little Debbie-type products) to loaf bread. Upon arrival, we watched a movie about the start of the company and had a guide who was a very talented artist on the whiteboard where he illustrated more of the company’s history. We then proceeded to put on booties, hair nets, and headsets that broadcasted the guide’s voice as we took our tour. It was really neat to get to see the mechanics of mixing, shaping, baking, and packing the bread. I would have liked to spent some more time there, it smelled wonderful! I did notice, though, that most of the employees were overweight. Does this mean that their company benefits are detrimental to their health? Quien sabe… most of the products we saw were little sweets like doughnuts and twinkies. It was a great tour, I really enjoy getting to see plants and factories. It always perplexes me as to how much time and the number of engineers it must have taken to develop all of that technology originally. Also, I think another aspect of R & D that would be very interesting would be that of creating new foods, because the results of this type of R & D are produced by taste buds, which can’t really be measured or rated universally.

Tuesday night, Keegan and I made banana bread for our family. I was a bit confused about the difference in baking powder and baking soda at first. I was pretty sure they were different things, but when we went to the grocery store to see if they had the two, we could only find one. Maybe that’s because they don’t put baking soda in the cooking section, obviously I’m not schooled in this area of the world yet… Ana, Linda, and our mom Dolores observed as we put the ingredients together, where we had to use an actual spoon for measurement as no measuring teaspoons could be found. Also, I thought it was comedic that we had to convert temperatures from my mom’s recipe to our host mom’s oven, hope that had the right kind of flour and sugar (as I was not aware that there is a slue of different kinds of flour).

Unfortunately, I had 10 hour bout with nausea Wednesday that made me miss part of our review for the test on Thursday. After a couple naps, I felt much better. At lunch on Wednesday, Keegan and I were informed that our family was having a get-together at an uncle’s house at 7 pm later that night. We reviewed for our test for a few hours following lunch at the school, then went back to the house to meet up with the family to go to the fiesta. Little did we know that there would be 22 relatives, a mariachi band, and English-speaking family from Las Vegas - more dancing lessons, lots of new people, and some great music. Keegan and I left early and still got back to the house at 2 am, without any studying! We woke up at 6 the next morning to get a little studying in before the test, no real worries because I’m not here for the grades, I’m here for the experience. One of our classmates coined this phrase for the trip: “More study than abroad…” (in reference to the large workload that kept us from getting the chance to take a few more excursions on the weeknights) Granted, this classmate has already graduated from Georgia Tech and just wanted to come to Mexico for a month before starting his full time job.

Thursday turned out to be a surprisingly similar situation: another test to study for, and yet another family gathering, except at OUR house this time. After some food and festivities, we decided to go do some dancing at a local salsa place with some of the cousins. Fortunately and unfortunately for us, we went to Mambobar, where they were having Cuban night. After testing out a Mojito, we watched what seemed to be a bunch of professional salsa dancers on the dance floor, they were incredible (apparently you just have to have grown up in this culture to feel the music like that)! There was no way that either myself or Keegan could feasibly contemplate trying to dance out there; we were way out of our league. One of the friends that we brought with us said that seeing that dancing made him want to be a Mexican, which I agreed with. As the night went on the music changed a bit, and an older woman came up and asked me to dance. Let’s just say that she was a good decade and a half older than I, but all the better to learn from I suppose! I proceeded to get my two friends to dance with her two friends, and everyone had a smile. It was fun and extended the night quite a bit. We left after the lady asked me “Puedes regalarme un beso?” which means “can you give me a kiss?” She wasn’t happy with my polite cheek kiss so she went and sat down with her friends, which opened the door to get a few hours of sleep before the last test in Mexico.

Three hours of sleep later, Keegan and I got up to study for the test. One of the interesting things about taking 6 credit hours of class in four weeks is the fact that our professor says the test is fairly easy and should take a little less than 3 hours…3 hours!! Those kind of tests are supposed to be reserved for finals, right? I haven’t talked much about my grades, but to be honest, the difference between an A and a B is not worth the free time I would lose in the quest for a 4.0, especially while abroad…not to mention the lack of sleep I have due to an awesome family life! Following the test, we had a site visit to Grupo Modelo, the beer brewery that makes Corona here in Mexico. It was really interesting to see the different processes the beer goes through to be produced. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to see the bottles being filled and capped – the bottles move so fast on the assembly line, yet another fascinating engineering creation! They also made a point to show us their ideology about organization and efficiency. We spent 15 minutes in the tool shop where they showed us the system of tool labeling, placement, and ordering that they got from the Japanese. Talk about everything in its place, I can’t imagine the time it took to label and cut out individual places for every tool in the place. I can understand, at the same time, though, how much of a convenience it must be to know exactly where every tool is. I’m not much of a beer supporter, so I didn’t buy anything at the gift shop where everything was surprisingly cheap, but I did get a free goody back with a hat and a shirt.

Ok, this is where it gets ridiculous…wait for the Cantina. Friday night, our group decided to go to a Pulcaria, which is based on the drink named Pulque – an alcohol that comes from a certain type of cactus. Not being extremely interested, Keegan and I went back to the house to wait for Enrique to get home so we could decide where to spend one of our last nights in Mexico City. We went to Zona Rosa, where there are clubs a dime a dozen, and Keegan and Enrique picked one to try out. The music at this club wasn’t my favorite, but I did ask one of the few cute girls there to dance for a few songs. Around 3 am, Enrique told me that we were going to leave to go to one a party that his friend knew of, and also for me to invite the girl and her friends. So I did, and we all went to this Cantina where someone in our group knew the owner. We were there for probably 20 minutes before the people we invited decided to leave. After they left, I noticed a neat mural on the wall and took a picture above the table where some of Enrique’s friends were sitting. I walked back to where I had been standing, and this guy came up to me and said “Que pedo guey, que pedo guey, mi esposa?” I was confused at first because this phrase “que pedo guey” is like “what’s up man” between friends, but means something totally different and quite vulgar when said to a stranger. I thought he was trying to be friendly, but I had no idea why he mentioned his spouse. He then proceeded to HEAD BUTT me, at which point I was completely flabbergasted at what had just occurred. Fortunately, it didn’t really hurt and he didn’t do anything else before I had a chance to walk away from him to our group where I told them we had a problem. I sat down, quite shocked, and people from this guy’s group were holding him back from further pursuit. I had absolutely no idea what would have provoked him to be mad at me, especially enough to freaking head butt someone. Turns out the guy was drunk and thought that I took a picture of his wife when I took the picture of the mural, and was obviously not very happy. After finding out his motive, I was so surprised that I was literally trying not to laugh too visibly at what had just happened -- first of all to be head butted and second to be completely surprised and not see it coming. The owner got us all free beer for condolence over the ridiculous occurrence and asked what more he could do for us. What a story!

Three more hours of sleep later, we had to get up Saturday morning for our community service project at La Casa Hogar. Our job for the morning and afternoon was to paint the walls of this home for orphaned teenagers. Turned out that a group of students from France were there as well, so we had quite the international afternoon speaking with Mexicans and French people over lunch. The house was a mess, with very few sanitation practices and evidence of the drug laden kids that they house. At first, we painted the ceiling of the second and third floor hallways, which seemed like an unimportant task for so many helpful hands. But later, we painted the walls of the two main corridors where they eat, which ended up looking much better after we finished.

Week 3

As the third week comes to a close, I’m realizing that I need more immersion time to begin mastering the language. Understand that I have made great strides in understanding and formulating thoughts, but I want more of it. Fortunately, I have five more weeks of the program ahead of me.

I’ve been thinking a bit about the way of life here in Mexico, specifically the meals that they eat. I realized yesterday that I’ve only been eating two real meals a day: a breakfast of cereal and yogurt in the morning and a lunch/dinner around 3:30 pm that consists of soup, bread, some vegetables, and some type of meat. For desert, we normally have some time of fruit, quite the change from the American way of thinking. Also, at every meal we have juice that is freshly blended fruit. Last week, mi mama cut up a watermelon, and put the juicy red fruit of the gods into the blender and served us the frothy result. It is amazing how ridiculously sweet the fruit is here. After having said all of this, it is hard for me to understand why there are so many pudgy Mexicans running around when they eat smaller portions and healthier meals than most of the people I know. There are two things that I think contribute to this pudginess are: the lack of exercise and the amount of grease in the food. There are a few small gyms around the school, but there aren’t many people running or playing in the parks, I suppose family time is more important. Because we’ve only been eating two meals, I find myself looking for snack food before bed around 11pm, only to find that they don’t have any in the house. I suppose that’s a good thing, but I’m not looking to lose any weight!

This week has been a blur of school work, with two tests and multiple presentations and a couple site visits. Yesterday, we visited an advertising agency called J. Walter Thompson that apparently was the first company in the world to have offices on six continents. They are one of the largest advertising companies in the world, and it was obvious because of the luxurious interior design of the building. All of the people who worked they were trendy and eclectic, with funky hair styles and forms of clothes and a very informal work environment. It was very interesting to see not only the way they go about making an advertisement, but also the differences in the ads in the varying countries. For example, ads on TV in Argentina do not have a time limit because they are cheap; therefore their commercials are long and emotional and usually tell a story. But in Brazil and Mexico, like the US, commercials are very expensive and have a time limit and therefore need to send a different type of message. The process of creating an ad is quite interesting. The first couple steps include complete enclosure in a room without outside contacts to nail down the basics of the ad. Then, the team splits up to open up their mind via some sort of recreation, whether it is a movie, ping pong, etc. Then he told us that the idea for the ad normally just hits him during this recreation time - I’d like to acquire this talent. So this explains why their workplace includes a drum set, ping pong table, TV, and other entertainment items. I think it was a great experience for me as a developing engineer and hopeful future-entrepreneur to see what goes into an ad in the case that I have products that I’m trying to promote in the future.

Friday night, Keegan, Enrique, and I met up with some of Enrique’s cousins to go out. When we walked out of the house, the cousins pulled up to take us to the place, it is nice to have connections! Anyways, the small bar that we went to was a bit boring at first, not many people dancing. Fortunately as the night went on, we honed in on some chicas across the room to end up meeting quite a few of them. There was a big group of college age Mexicans who were attending an acting school in nearby Condesa, all celebrating one guy’s birthday. So I got to meet a couple of studying actresses, one who schooled me a bit more in the art of dance. She was cute, but I liked her more for her willingness to help me with some more moves. After we left the bar, we went back to one of the cousins houses for more camaraderie, following which I only got 45 minutes of sleep before getting up to leave for our weekend excursion with the group. While we were at this bar, the rest of our group was at a place not too far from us getting crazy. Our professor’s daughter came to visit for the weekend, and so our 58 year old professora had an equally crazy time. I think she felt it much longer than everyone else; we don’t have class today (Monday) until 11 because she’s still recovering from that (Friday) and her sickness.

This weekend we went to Patzcuaro, a quaint touristy town north of Mexico City about 5 hours away. It was a small town with a couple old churches, town squares, and lots and lots of little restaurants. The view from our hotel was great, with a lake and mountains in view. On Saturday night, we walked 45 minutes to the only club in town which was literally across town. I was feeling my lack of sleep by this time, and didn’t enjoy it near as much as the night before. The funny thing was that when we got there, there was no one on the dance floor. After the influx of 20 American kids warming things up, we got the place going after about 30 minutes. I assume that it was still too early to dance when we got there and we actually didn’t start the place up, but it appeared that way.

In this last week of class, we will be studying marketing and sustainable development in Mexico, which I think is pretty interesting. Keegan and I are also planning to make banana bread for our family (or plantain bread), something I’ve never done but I feel like it’s appropriate since my mom used to make it for new neighbors in the neighborhood.

I think I'm getting over a slight sickness that began during our return from Acapulco. We're hoping to get some shopping time in this week. Other than that, I'm enjoying myself but looking forward to a possible camping trip up to the Smokies during the time I have at home. I almost forgot, I wanted to tell you guys about a little bit of the Spanish culture that is seeping into our group. All of the guys who have the ability are growing mustaches for the remainder of the trip, and all of us are going to participate in a Viva Mexico day where we all slick our hair with a ridiculous amount of gel, like all Mexicans do. I look forward to sharing those pictures...

Acapulco Weekend

Right after we got to the hotel in Acapulco, we had to change into dry clothes because it was flooding outside! About halfway through our bus ride here, it started to rain, getting harder and harder the closer we got. At the bus station, we were blessed with one of Ana and Enrique’s family contacts, who picked us up and took us to the front door of the hotel. We passed two guys who had stopped their car and were scooping water out of the floorboard. It wasn’t impassible, but it sure was a surprise; the weather channel said 30-40% chance of rain for the weekend. After we set our stuff down in the hotel room around 10:45 pm, we set out in the rain to find some food, but unfortunately everything but a convenience store was closed. Like everyone should do at least once, we bought chips, hotdogs, and cokes and ate dinner in the convenience store. It was also humorous when we were crossing the street to get to the convenience store: it was a divided highway and we made it to the median where we had to wait to get the rest of the way across. The water was puddling in the street and the cars were splashing us from both sides, I was having a blast in the rain!

Saturday, we slept in a bit and went to the beach. Still constant rain all day, but the ocean was surprisingly warm so it didn’t affect us too much. Later in the afternoon, one of Ana’s “primas” came to hang out. Here’s the story about Ana and Enrique’s contacts in a Acapulco: Ana’s cousins live next door to her in Mexico City, and those cousins’ cousins live in Acapulco, but the three families have been close for a very long time. Thus, Ana and Enrique refer to the girls who hung out with us in Acapulco, Mariana and Esperanza, as their cousins. Mariana spent most of Saturday with us, she was fun to be around. She took us to a couple different places where her friends worked for the night, she’s also quite a dancer! I got a little more salsa practice Saturday night at a club that had a deck extending out over the beach to you could rest your legs and hear the ocean at the same time. A pleasant evening aside from the constant rain, which made the 20 minute walk back to the hotel quite soggy.

Sunday was about the same as Saturday as far as the rain went, but it lightened up for a couple hours in the afternoon for us to get a chance to see the real Acapulco. Mariana’s sister joined us for the evening, which meant we had a car to get around for a couple hours. We went to La Quebrada, the famous site for Acapulco’s world re-owned cliff divers. We weren’t lucky enough to be there during one of the daily scheduled jumps, but I was quite surprised to get to see the cliff where they jump from. I’m sure it really is amazing, but I wouldn’t think that something so simple could be so popular of a tourist attraction. I knew the story and place from watching TV: professional cliff jumpers scale the rock wall, say a quick prayer in a shrine with the Virgen de Guadalupe, then take the plunge into the sea. The trick to all of this is to be able to time the jump while the waves are rolling into the crevice, or else the water will be about five feet shallower and would not have a good ending. I don’t know exactly how high the cliff was, but last summer at Lake Joccasse, I jumped off the rock wall that was comparable in height to this cliff. I certainly didn’t dive, or do flips in the process or anything crazy like that, but it was neat to be able to think about the similarities. This hour long trip to the cliffs was the experience I was looking for, it was beautiful there. I hope to find some areas in California where there are seaside cliffs like these, because I love to sit and soak up this kind of atmosphere.

Today, Monday, we woke up early and got 30 minutes of beach time before cleaning up and heading to bus station for our 9:00 am ride back to D.F. I was telling Keegan that one of the interesting things about Acapulco is that, because it is also a vacation destination for Mexicans as well, the street vendors pester other Mexicans too, which I thought was humorous given the usual Caucasian tourist appeal. It’s going to be a long day because I have a lot of studying to do for our second history test tomorrow. I’m finding that I like the business-oriented class much more than the history-based class. Dr. Galloway says that understanding the history of Mexico is a must because of the implications of many phrases and forms of communication, which I’m sure is true. One of the speakers from last week that I spoke of, John Ackerman, used nearly every single word on our business class vocab list, almost as if he was prompted to do so. I guess this is hard evidence of the pertinence of our classes in relation to Mexico today. As I sit here on the bus and gaze at the mountains, I find that I’m craving a camping trip to the mountains, which I’m hoping to fit in between my return from Mexico City and my departure for Madrid. There seems to be an inner struggle between the entrepreneur/businessman and the free, jamband loving spirit inside me, I guess it makes me who I am though! I also find myself thinking about the new mountain bike that I’m going to wait to buy until after my European travels, there’s so much to be excited about!

Settling in

Two nights ago, we had a speaker from Monex, one of the largest finance companies in Mexico that has at least one office in each state of Mexico and one office in Houston. It took all of the concentration I had to be able to understand what he was talking about, given I don’t know much about finances and his Spanish was quite fast. They do have a few interesting differences here, though, in the financial world, with many more kinds of banks than we have in the US.

Yesterday, we went to the Reforma, which is one of the largest newspapers in the country. This newspaper company is interesting because, throughout their history, they refused government funding so they would not be associated with any particular party and therefore remain impartial. We toured all of the building, getting to see the different areas of writers, editors, sections, etc., as well as the revision and production processes. Having been in student publications with the yearbook in both high school and college, I was very interested in everything that was going on. Everyone who worked there was very well dressed; it was a very formal environment. We briefly toured the printing building which has two different lines of production, one for one of the smaller publications and one for the regular daily Reforma. The machines that produced the daily Reforma were of the latest German technology that could print all of the needed copies in 15 minutes. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures, but the inside of this building was magnificent. Apparently, some of the movie “Man on Fire” was filmed there, which is quite coincidental because we went to a park later in the afternoon which also was in the same movie.

Today, we had a speaker named John Ackerman, who was originally from New Haven who made me think about a few things. I’ve been thinking about what I want the future of my Spanish to be, and I’ve been wrestling with it a bit. After hearing his history, I certainly think it is possible to reach a fluent level, but over a period of many years. I can’t decide (not that I have to) whether or not I would like to use Spanish in a professional setting or whether I would prefer to live on a beach in Costa Rica and just use it casually. I have noticed recently that the longer we are here, the speed at which the Mexicans speak seems to be gradually slowing, I think because my ability to separate words and phrases is improving. I also am now able to understand things without translating them, which proves helpful when listening but makes it harder to reproduce thoughts in English afterwards. I am really going to try to improve my ability to speak faster because I know what I want to say and how to say it, but getting it out in a natural manner is challenging. I am also finding that my ability to think of English words is temporarily deteriorating because of my involvement in the Spanish world. I truly believe that learning a language is one of the most difficult mental challenges one can take on, because even a brilliant book-smart person can’t just pick it up. At the same time, though, there are millions of people who know/speak more than one language, so it doesn’t seem like it would be that difficult. I’m finding that many times here at the house, Keegan and I have different interpretations of many of the little details of our conversations with the family. I find myself saying “…at least that’s the way I understood it…” a lot to him. Thus far, I’ve been a little more accurate…

Tonight, we got our tickets for the bus ride and the reservations for the hotel in Acapulco. After some lengthy discussions between Enrique and Ana, we all decided to go together leaving Friday afternoon from Mexico City, staying in Acapulco Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, and returning on Monday morning. We don’t have class on Monday because the other groups will be in Monterrey and Veracruz, but we do have a review at 5 on Monday evening for our second test in the history class on Tuesday. We managed to get a deal from the tour company through social security for a free third night, so the trip will cost me under $100 for travel and accommodations for the weekend.

We saw the movie The DaVinci Code tonight, and on the way back I was telling Keegan that I think we have different kinds of Mexicans in the US than we’ve come in contact with here. I don’t mean to be derogatory, but it seems that the Mexicans that I see in the US are much less sophisticated than those in D.F. I understand that this may be because I live in the ritzy part of town here, but I think it has something to do with the fact that Mexico City is a bit different than the rest of Mexico. I feel like the kids on the trip that haven’t been to Latin America before don’t really know what the rest of Mexico is like, because it surely isn’t the city-life that we’re living now. Yesterday in class we discussed many of the interesting problems that Mexico has, such as an untaxed informal economy and debts created by the peso crisis where businessmen ended up owing 10 times more than their original loans. As I learn more about these very difficult problems both Mexico and the US (like social security drying up), I’m realizing how badly needed smart, reliable politicians are, and, at the same time, how much I would not want to be involved in politics…