Sunday, January 24, 2010
Pretty Picture 2- Grutas de Garcia Panorama
As an addendum to the previous updates, here's a panorama taken from the descent from the Grutas de Garcia entrance. Click for larger.
Sproing!
RIGHT, so when we left off I had just seen 'Hombre de la Mancha' and had successfully gone to sleep. To celebrate I woke up at 6:00 to go hiking! Unfortunately we were told the night before that there would be some snow involved. This turned out to be a pretty harsh understatement. Here's a Tec building from the parking lot pre-departure:
After driving for the better part of 3 hours in a lifted jeep with a ride I would grudgingly call uncomfortable, we arrived in Ohio! Yay Ohio!
So yeah, it snows in Mexico sometimes (apparently it's quite unusual as I'm sure you'd imagine). Of course I had not brought my boots as, you know, it was MEXICO and all, so that kinda put a damper on the day. We had to spend the entire hike staring at the tracks of the people in front of us, and everytime the group stopped the ice in between my toes began to freeze, which was also not good. Luckily the view was awesome, as usual.
It took us almost the entire day to complete the hike, and it's wasn't until 10pm that night that I returned to my host family's house to discover my awesome asymmetrical sunburn. It's kinda hard to tell you're burning if you're frozen at the same time, I guess, as I honestly didn't notice the sun at all that day.
Anyway, that concluded a very full weekend that concluded with a few hours of sleep less than I would've liked. The next school week was filled with VISA work, school stuff, laboratories, and trying to track down the fencing team (still working on that, we'll see). This weekend I only had one activity planned, a trip to the Cola de Caballo waterfall. It was quite pretty:
Now, waterfalls are nice and all but they don't quite justify an hour of bus ride. So, what else was there to do? Well, there was a suspicious white truss assembly precariously positioned over a natural cliff so... well...
Yep, it's billed as Mexico's tallest bungee jump (70m). It was pretty cool, although bouncing around by your ankles is really awkward after a bit. Here's me swinging around:
The trip also included a little jaunt around Santiago, which was a very pretty little town near the waterfall. Here's the church, which looked fantastic.
Anyway, after enjoying a frozen melon water thing I got back on the bus and we headed back to Tec for some siestas before the Saturday evening ahead. That's everything I've got so far, I'm going on a big trip next weekend so I'll be back in two weeks!
After driving for the better part of 3 hours in a lifted jeep with a ride I would grudgingly call uncomfortable, we arrived in Ohio! Yay Ohio!
So yeah, it snows in Mexico sometimes (apparently it's quite unusual as I'm sure you'd imagine). Of course I had not brought my boots as, you know, it was MEXICO and all, so that kinda put a damper on the day. We had to spend the entire hike staring at the tracks of the people in front of us, and everytime the group stopped the ice in between my toes began to freeze, which was also not good. Luckily the view was awesome, as usual.
It took us almost the entire day to complete the hike, and it's wasn't until 10pm that night that I returned to my host family's house to discover my awesome asymmetrical sunburn. It's kinda hard to tell you're burning if you're frozen at the same time, I guess, as I honestly didn't notice the sun at all that day.
Anyway, that concluded a very full weekend that concluded with a few hours of sleep less than I would've liked. The next school week was filled with VISA work, school stuff, laboratories, and trying to track down the fencing team (still working on that, we'll see). This weekend I only had one activity planned, a trip to the Cola de Caballo waterfall. It was quite pretty:
Now, waterfalls are nice and all but they don't quite justify an hour of bus ride. So, what else was there to do? Well, there was a suspicious white truss assembly precariously positioned over a natural cliff so... well...
Yep, it's billed as Mexico's tallest bungee jump (70m). It was pretty cool, although bouncing around by your ankles is really awkward after a bit. Here's me swinging around:
The trip also included a little jaunt around Santiago, which was a very pretty little town near the waterfall. Here's the church, which looked fantastic.
Anyway, after enjoying a frozen melon water thing I got back on the bus and we headed back to Tec for some siestas before the Saturday evening ahead. That's everything I've got so far, I'm going on a big trip next weekend so I'll be back in two weeks!
What's new Pussycat WHOAWHOAWHOA!
So, what'd I do the last two weeks? I ran between offices, went to class (and had one disappear without a trace), went to a party, went to a cave (Grutas de Garcia), froze my toes while being sunburnt, went to class again, paid some lawyers, jumped off a thing, and saw a waterfall. Yep, that's it.
But yeah, classes are going fine so far. I was initially worried that the whole being taught in Spanish thing would take a few weeks to get used to, but really the only thing that eludes me are abbreviations and a few differences in ways to approach problems. Any issues I had with the language barrier were wiped away the first day of Mechanics of Materials as my professor started writing our first free-body diagram. Even if I don't understand every single vocab word, engineering is a language I can understand. Luckily I have the same professor for both of my engineering classes, and he's been very kind with helping me adjust to the new system. He's even loaned me a pair of Spanish-language textbooks after recommending I try to immerse myself more. I've also started work on my research project which involves using augmented reality (cool!) for aircraft maintainance applications (boo!). Luckily although the final application is really quite mundane, I can see the technology being essential in the mass market for pretty much every field in a few years (ok maybe like 10 years but still). I'm also taking a Mexican culture class which, so far, hasn't been terribly noteworthy. Anyway, here's a thing I walk by every morning:
So, what else's going on? Last Friday there was a fairly large party organized for international students at a three story club who's gimmick was guest involvement in art projects. To wit, this is the second floor:
Anyway, the party went pretty well, although the music selection wasn't quite as nice as we'd hoped. Here's a LASER ROOM:
Last Saturday morning I took a day trip to some caves fairly close to Monterrey (Grutas de Garcia). They were ok, and reminded me largely of the developed parts of Mammoth caves but with less respect in general. The coolest part was probably the cable-car that you can take to the entrance. God bless the Swiss:
Anyway, here's a characteristic cave shot, it was pretty cool but definitely not life-changing.
Finally, here's everything wrong with the place summarized in one image. This is apparently a camel, but I just found the whole 'look this rock sorta looks like something' shtick was kinda distracting and cheap.
The coolest part of the trip for me was the breathtaking scenery. Nuevo Leon is blessed with some really nice dramatic mountains and matching perfect blue skies.
We chose to walk back down from the caves, which proved to be a good decision.
Later that night I saw a Tec production of 'Man of la Mancha' in Spanish which was really quite good, I have always quite enjoyed the story.
Part 2'll be coming later tonight!
But yeah, classes are going fine so far. I was initially worried that the whole being taught in Spanish thing would take a few weeks to get used to, but really the only thing that eludes me are abbreviations and a few differences in ways to approach problems. Any issues I had with the language barrier were wiped away the first day of Mechanics of Materials as my professor started writing our first free-body diagram. Even if I don't understand every single vocab word, engineering is a language I can understand. Luckily I have the same professor for both of my engineering classes, and he's been very kind with helping me adjust to the new system. He's even loaned me a pair of Spanish-language textbooks after recommending I try to immerse myself more. I've also started work on my research project which involves using augmented reality (cool!) for aircraft maintainance applications (boo!). Luckily although the final application is really quite mundane, I can see the technology being essential in the mass market for pretty much every field in a few years (ok maybe like 10 years but still). I'm also taking a Mexican culture class which, so far, hasn't been terribly noteworthy. Anyway, here's a thing I walk by every morning:
So, what else's going on? Last Friday there was a fairly large party organized for international students at a three story club who's gimmick was guest involvement in art projects. To wit, this is the second floor:
Anyway, the party went pretty well, although the music selection wasn't quite as nice as we'd hoped. Here's a LASER ROOM:
Last Saturday morning I took a day trip to some caves fairly close to Monterrey (Grutas de Garcia). They were ok, and reminded me largely of the developed parts of Mammoth caves but with less respect in general. The coolest part was probably the cable-car that you can take to the entrance. God bless the Swiss:
Anyway, here's a characteristic cave shot, it was pretty cool but definitely not life-changing.
Finally, here's everything wrong with the place summarized in one image. This is apparently a camel, but I just found the whole 'look this rock sorta looks like something' shtick was kinda distracting and cheap.
The coolest part of the trip for me was the breathtaking scenery. Nuevo Leon is blessed with some really nice dramatic mountains and matching perfect blue skies.
We chose to walk back down from the caves, which proved to be a good decision.
Later that night I saw a Tec production of 'Man of la Mancha' in Spanish which was really quite good, I have always quite enjoyed the story.
Part 2'll be coming later tonight!
Monday, January 11, 2010
Pretty Pictures Part 1
This is the first photo update, covering bits of the campus.
Someone thought that, to enrich our academic experience, a bunch of animals should be wandering around on campus. Here's some deer eating a fake Christmas tree:
There are two things that are ridiculous about this photo:
So yeah, the campus is kinda pretty sometimes:
Oh look, some hills.
This pic is quite representative of Monterrey. Some beautiful scenery, some modern buildings, some standard Mexico buildings, and a 7-11.
Someone thought that, to enrich our academic experience, a bunch of animals should be wandering around on campus. Here's some deer eating a fake Christmas tree:
There are two things that are ridiculous about this photo:
So yeah, the campus is kinda pretty sometimes:
Oh look, some hills.
This pic is quite representative of Monterrey. Some beautiful scenery, some modern buildings, some standard Mexico buildings, and a 7-11.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Arrival Day and Orientation Week
My arrival went alright, as I sat in the airport with a bunch of other international students for an hour and waited for a bus. On the ride in we saw every major department store from the US in a row, which was actually a bit disheartening. Luckily we soon arrived at Tec, which at first glance appeared to have been built in the 40s and not painted since then. Luckily there are only a few buildings like that, the campus is really quite nice and modernish (I'll be putting some photos up pretty soon). I also met my host family, who are all very nice and accommodating and I will probably write more about them later should we do something interested together.
The only really scary part of arrival day was the two hours between my introductory tour and the international students dinner. I didn't know anyone and didn't have anything to do but think about how little I had to do. Thus I knew that I'd have to meet some people to survive, and luckily that was easy enough once the dinner started. There were about 600 of us from various countries, most of which knowing no one and having nothing to do. So, we all met each other and promptly made with the talking and partying and general college-ing. This whole thing was made a bit more confusing by the lack of working cell phones on the early days of the week. Buying a phone in Mexico is easy, getting it to work is hard. I bought mine at a corner convenience store for about $40.00 U.S., but upon attempted use it would play 'Build me up, Buttercup' and do nothing else. This, although somehow much more entertaining than it had any right to be, was not exactly what I had in mind but, luckily, several members of my host family are relatively fluent in Spanish and nicely dealt with the demons deep inside the Telcel customer support and Musaq system and were able to get it working for me. In any case, the social scene seems to be working out well so far, although none of the Mexican students have yet returned from break so there's that bridge left to cross.
Orientation week was a really long series of meetings telling us not to do drugs or be mean etc. Favorite bits included the really awkward introductory skits featuring high-ranking Tec officials. 'Oh, we are but simple Tec students who are having a great time at this internationally-acclaimed research institute and look, here's the campus president! Let's ask him about the mission of Tec de Monterrey! *APPLAUSE*' Needless to say the entire skit was conducted in native-speed Spanish so roughly 3/4 of the audience didn't understand a word that was said. Also, at the end of the skits they showed us about 20 minutes of 'Man of La Mancha' which was pretty interesting albeit kinda out of place. During orientation week I also had the good fortune of somewhat accidentally attending a session for new mechanical engineers. The director of the program was there and, even better, had heard of both the GEARE program and my arrival. She seemed to think that I'll be able to survive my technical courses taught in Spanish, let's hope she's right.
Finally, we had Sunday to ourselves and as such I went with a few friends to the Macroplaza across town. It was cool to see a bit more of Monterrey than the 2 square miles I had covered around Tec. The Macroplaza has, among other things: A 100' bright orange monolith, a really pretty church, many tacos, a pet store with a pony in the front window, several mini-mall things, and a movie theater. We saw a movie who's English title is Law Abiding Citizen. This was apparantly not interesting enough for Mexicans, as the dubbed title was 'El Vengador' which translates to 'The Avenger.' I forgot to bring my camera on this trip, so I'll be sure to get some pretty pictures next time.
ANYWAY, TO CLASS I GO!
The only really scary part of arrival day was the two hours between my introductory tour and the international students dinner. I didn't know anyone and didn't have anything to do but think about how little I had to do. Thus I knew that I'd have to meet some people to survive, and luckily that was easy enough once the dinner started. There were about 600 of us from various countries, most of which knowing no one and having nothing to do. So, we all met each other and promptly made with the talking and partying and general college-ing. This whole thing was made a bit more confusing by the lack of working cell phones on the early days of the week. Buying a phone in Mexico is easy, getting it to work is hard. I bought mine at a corner convenience store for about $40.00 U.S., but upon attempted use it would play 'Build me up, Buttercup' and do nothing else. This, although somehow much more entertaining than it had any right to be, was not exactly what I had in mind but, luckily, several members of my host family are relatively fluent in Spanish and nicely dealt with the demons deep inside the Telcel customer support and Musaq system and were able to get it working for me. In any case, the social scene seems to be working out well so far, although none of the Mexican students have yet returned from break so there's that bridge left to cross.
Orientation week was a really long series of meetings telling us not to do drugs or be mean etc. Favorite bits included the really awkward introductory skits featuring high-ranking Tec officials. 'Oh, we are but simple Tec students who are having a great time at this internationally-acclaimed research institute and look, here's the campus president! Let's ask him about the mission of Tec de Monterrey! *APPLAUSE*' Needless to say the entire skit was conducted in native-speed Spanish so roughly 3/4 of the audience didn't understand a word that was said. Also, at the end of the skits they showed us about 20 minutes of 'Man of La Mancha' which was pretty interesting albeit kinda out of place. During orientation week I also had the good fortune of somewhat accidentally attending a session for new mechanical engineers. The director of the program was there and, even better, had heard of both the GEARE program and my arrival. She seemed to think that I'll be able to survive my technical courses taught in Spanish, let's hope she's right.
Finally, we had Sunday to ourselves and as such I went with a few friends to the Macroplaza across town. It was cool to see a bit more of Monterrey than the 2 square miles I had covered around Tec. The Macroplaza has, among other things: A 100' bright orange monolith, a really pretty church, many tacos, a pet store with a pony in the front window, several mini-mall things, and a movie theater. We saw a movie who's English title is Law Abiding Citizen. This was apparantly not interesting enough for Mexicans, as the dubbed title was 'El Vengador' which translates to 'The Avenger.' I forgot to bring my camera on this trip, so I'll be sure to get some pretty pictures next time.
ANYWAY, TO CLASS I GO!
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Why?
I knew, heading into college, that I wanted to go abroad to somewhere. Mostly because the Midwest is incredibly boring but also because I'd never lived anywhere else. Travel's all well and good but it's hard to really understand other cultures if you've never tried it out for yourself. I wanted a head start in working globally, which is something Dianne Atkinson beat into my head over the course of INTRODUCTION TO GLOBAL ENGINEERING. I never settled on a where, it seemed secondary to the act itself. I'd never been to anywhere south our border, and I wanted to be able to use my fairly competent level of Spanish (go fighting Green Bears!). I heard about the GEARE program early, and it sounded pretty interesting. Two internships with a study abroad included? It sounded too good to be true and, as it turns out, it was. My domestic internship never materialized and I was left at Purdue for a backup research position (albeit a largely positive and possibly career-changing one, but I digress). Anyway, the program had partnerships in Germany, India, China, and Mexico. Tecnologico de Monterrey has a fairly positive reputation as being academically sound, making the Mexico program a natural choice for me. I applied and was accepted a really long time ago and only recently experienced the joys of registering for classes at a foreign institution through a website apparently designed by ill-trained squirrels. Luckily my classes are all in place, although as far as I can tell I'll be taking two technical courses in Spanish, which I'm frankly a touch afraid of. As I fly over the southern U.S. States, I'm preparing for several hundred little unknowns which will hopefully all work out. Am I in the right classes? Will I be able to survive on my own? Will I find people to hang out with? Will there really be representatives from the university to pick people up? Did I really need a VISA? I suppose I'll find out soon enough. Right now I've got airline cookies to enjoy.
Followup: Dunno, probably, yes, yes but with a two hour wait, and no!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)