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!