Veracruz bound?

I realized today that I've been in Mexico for almost half of my ¨alloted¨ three months and yet I had still seen very little. Okay, to be honest, I have seen quite a lot but, for example, I still hadn't seen prehispanic ruins or even a beach. Which is frankly tragedic. So I did a little research, found the northernmost examples of each in Mexico, and decided to go there. Just like that, because I can. [AMAZING, that.] All signs point to Veracruz state but that, like much of Mexico, is a bit far from Monterrey. So the plan is as simple as it is ridiculous: I leave by bus at 11pm Wednesday night (immediately after class) and return the same way immediately before my next class, Monday at 10am. To explain the other half of the above image (namely the French part), my companion for all of this will be Erwin, a francesa whose English is fortunately as good as his sense of adventure. Wish us luck!

Classes, or a lack thereof

I know that no one wants to here about my coursework, but there´s something you should know: I have less and less of it all of the time. One of the three courses I started the last week of April is already over, meaning that I only have classes 10-6 on Mondays and 6-9 on Wednesday. Hello five day weekends! Well, four, but buses at odd hours will make them five when necessary, trust me. :)
May the hijinx ensue - news at eleven!

PS Oh, and about that class that I just finished... 100%.

Stranger in a Stranger Land pt. II: Campus (wild)life

Monterrey’s outlying territories may a haven for the ecotourist, but most of the rest is decidedly urban sprawl. There city government is finally beginning to set aside some green spaces but this is the desert, so those spaces are not only few and far between but well protected. Do not walk signs are more common than the grass itself. The ITESM campus is an exception, though. Over the years it has designed itself to be a place apart from Monterrey, and generally speaking it has succeeded. Among the things you’ll wandering around on campus, in order of strangeness:

i) Ducks
ii) Geese
iii) Peacocks.
iv) Deer.

No, really. Deer. I was sitting in the library yesterday and I totally saw a deer walking around out the window. One assumes this is common place because I was the only one in the library excitedly asking his neighbors if they saw it, too. Judging by the responses I got, one also assumes that this line of questions is a bit unusual. Still – deer!

Sometimes I really do feel like a stranger in a strange land.

So I’m settled in here, more or less, but there are still certain things that surprise me. Take, for example, wine:



At the beginning of the semester I did a brief study for one of my classes on beverage consumption in Mexico. Unsurprisingly, water comes in a distant third behind beer and soda (which is consumed, on average, more than any of the other six categories combined). But do you know what doesn’t even chart? You guessed it – wine.* Which is a shame, really, because, well, I like wine. Do you know what I also like? Buying bottles of wine as small thank you gifts, like I did for my roommates in honor of our first month together. They were, I think, touched, except they (we) don’t own a corkscrew. Nor do our neighbors, or anyone else in the building. They don’t even sell them at the grocery store.

I can’t tell if this is funny or tragic, but on the bright side, the apartment has a lovely new decorative piece!

* The actual statistic, I kid you not, is 300ml per capita per year and is no doubt mostly from Catholic Mass. [I conferred with Britton and he agrees.]

New Kicks on Kerry and Indecision '08

How strange it is to be looking at all of this from the outside in. Here I am in Mexico - in the ITESM library preparing some group work on Brazilian imports to be exact - but Le Tigre's "New Kicks" just came on my playlist and instantly I was transported back. Not just to the United States but also to 2004, to the Bush-Kerry debacle and the feeling is indescribable. As you can hear, the song is not exactly a slice of Americana* and I wouldn't necessarily call this nostalgia - I may miss the States but I certainly don't miss the year - but the feeling I got was unshakable. Its sad and strange mix of hope and despair because today, for the first time in weeks, I feel that American politics are more than just an abstraction. Did you know that the rest of the world - my Latin American colleagues and the European ones alike - are just as eagerly waiting for a resolution not just to the Presidential Election in general but even the Democratic Primaries as I am? Perhaps more so. I was walking with a French extranjero friend of mine the other day near Cerro de la Silla and discovered he knew more about the current state of the race than I did. The reason is clear: I'm burnt out. "New Kicks" really got my pulse going, though, and I think now I know why: I was excited about the prospect of change. After this interminable race for the nomination I'm more overwhelmed than optimistic and no speech on either side can change that. Say what you want about Kerry, but at least with a tidy nomination it was possible to get excited about him (even if he couldn't). Maybe, from the outside looking in, I can re-sensitize, re-energize myself. At any rate I hope so, because if I can't there are plenty of people at EGADE willing to do it for me.

* I have Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Sixteen Tons" for that.

Cerro de la Silla

As anyone who knows me can easily attest, when I travel I look for two things: bodies of water and big, tall things to climb. I’m kind of simple like that, but it’s the kind of simplicity that has kept exceptionally happy on the road. In Monterrey, though, a good half of the equation – namely the water – is missing. This desert city does have its share of mountains, however, and as part of my wanderings I decided yesterday to try and climb the most famous of these: Cerro de la Silla. I learned my lesson from my aforementioned Chipinque misadventure – actually, now that I think about it, it actually rains a lot here – and checked the weather report carefully before setting out. I even brought a map, of sorts, and a couple of friends.
Unfortunately, even if my Spanish is improving, my ability to use the metric system remains questionable. Actually, that’s not a hundred percent true. I use it with accuracy and ease – I don’t really have a choice do I? – but I also use it to lie to myself. So yes, I knew when I checked the weather report that 40 Centigrade is the same as 104 Fahrenheit. But it seems so much lower in Celsius, right?! Completely bearable and everything. [By the way, the same thing works in reverse with distances: the ten kilometers to the top and back seemed impossibly further than the six or so miles it actually was.]

So, to make a short story long (as per usual), it did not rain. Much the contrary, actually, and although we started with six people at 7:30am the heat stopped half of them dead in their tracks before we even made it halfway to the aptly named Antenna Peak. I persevered with two francesa - Julie and Ervyn, who, I kid you not, sang La Marseillaise intermittently the entire way up [adorable!] – and together we finally made it to the 1820 m (5970 ft) summit and back after about seven hours. The view was stunning, and the few pictures I have of trek don’t do it justice. As you face south atop the mountain, to your right is civilization in the form of Monterrey’s urban sprawl.

To the left, though, are the Sierra Madres in their full glory. The mountain’s four peak usually hide this backdrop so well that I had no idea this ecosystem even existed. Beautiful, serene, and replete with bids of all kinds this was a side of Monterrey I had never seen before and it was breathtaking.

I’m beginning to think I could just about live here.





As always, more pictures at: http://www.picasaweb.google.com/littlefrankel

Go deep!

So I’m back from what has to be the most amazing weekend I’ve had in Mexico yet. Actually, no, I think it’s pretty much in the top ten of all time. No summation or recap is possible, but here are a few of the reasons why:

+ Rental cars mean freedom and spontaneity (and Mexican gas is cheap)
+ Mexican house music is amazing, as are the bars.
+ So is the combination Spanish/English/French we spoke all weekend.*
+ Guanajuanto is beautiful.
+ Despite all of the Americans, so is San Miguel de Allende.
+ For a history major, though, Querétaro beats them both [barely].**

A couple of picture are below, but for a more complete picture (of the pictures) go to the source: http://www.picasaweb.google.com/littlefrankel

* My companions for this trip were two Frenchmen [Alan and Remi] and a Mexican [Humberto] and, well, sometimes you can’t say what you want with just one language!
** Where else in the Western Hemisphere can you see the location of an Imperial assassination?! [Emperor Maximilian I (and only)]

Coursework, Cinco de Mayo?!

I can’t decide if my classes here are more difficult than at home. I’m leaning towards easier but, frankly, its hard to say. Here's why: because next Monday is Cinco de Mayo – and even though I’m told Cinco de Mayo is a relatively minor holiday here, more akin to Memorial Day than Independence Day* - we have a four-day weekend. Only we don’t exactly, because instead of canceling classes (normally I have one class a day), they’ve moved them all up. Which means two, four-hour classes a day and that’s the kind of thing that skews survey data, right? So the jury is still out on that.

On the bright side, though, I think I’ll be heading to central Mexico with some friends for the holiday weekend. For the moment only Guanajuanto is on the itinerary but hopefully I can sell them on a little more exploring. :)
On the subject of exploration, here is Dora the Explorer, a la Saltillo:

Rainy Days on Saturdays [Math & Physics Club-style]

Just a quick note for today, and its actually about yesterday. After I made that post yesterday the rain started to slow and, well, the clouds waltzed with the mountains. I sat on my balcony for a few hours watching it resolve and you can see a few of the pictures I took below.
I love it here.

Today was a day for the mountains.

As you may know, I haven’t left Monterrey since arriving in town a couple of weeks ago. Which is kind of a shame, but between finding an apartment, starting classes, and getting settled in, I just haven’t had the time. To be honest I’m not quite sure I have it now, but fortunately it doesn’t matter. Today was a day for the mountains and I didn’t even have to leave the city! I only needed to go to southwestern Monterrey* to visit the Chipinque Ecological Park. I know it sounds pretty mundane, but trust me, it’s part of the Sierra Madres and a great deal more impressive than it sounds. Also more secluded. My limited experience with Monterrey has taught be that crowds are its most consistent feature. Crowds of people, cars, buildings… and mountains. [If it’s beginning to sound like I’m fascinated with this whole “mountain” concept it’s because I am. I mean, I come from Florida, a state that – for all its beauty – is wholly devoid of the concept and here I am in a city named for them.] So yes, crowds everywhere and everywhen – except for today. The reason for this will no doubt be clear once you look at the pictures below, but how was I supposed to know it was going to rain?! More often than not even the weather report is pointless. Honest! I’m fully convinced that there isn’t a television station in town with a meteorologist on staff – they just are necessary. Every day is just “hot” or “sunny” or both. In the morning there are clouds but by the afternoon the wind gets rid of them. It’s nice in a rhythmic sort of what, and very consistent. Or so I though. So, yeah, to make a short story long, my decision to head out was bit spontaneous and yeah, it rained for the first since I arrived - but it was still great. There were so few people that more often then not I could pretend I was the only one there, the only one who had ever been there, in some amazing but forgotten piece of real estate. I was still pretty high up when the rain started but even if it killed the view it allowed me to meet a nice regio by the name of Alejandro who was patient enough with my Spanish.** [Here’s hoping this means I have a hiking companion now, because for all their friendliness none of the extranjeros seem to want to climb a mountain anytime soon.] So, despite the rain I can’t help but find this city to be so immensely redeeming that it hurts.

* Quite close to my apartment, as the crow flies, but impossibly far the way the roads are set up.
** Oh, and yes, despite my statements to the contrary my Spanish still needs a great
deal of patience.



Nothing inspires hiking confidence like the heavy cloud cover and the Virgin Mary!