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!