High Altitude Training

Today for track practice the distance running team went to a place called Chipinque. It's a conservation park on one of the mountains close to TEC. In fact you can see it from my residence. After driving close to the top of the mountain we got out and ran two circuits of a 9km trail over some pretty rough terrain... and yes it was hilly, it was on the side of a mountain. It was my favourite run yet. There were some fantastic parts where we were running right at the edge of the mountain and the trail was only wide enough to run in single file. Apparently we run here almost every week!

The distance running squad

P.S. I think I've fixed the commenting so that everyone can leave comments now. Try it out! I'd love to hear from people.

Quick Update

I haven't had much to comment on lately as things are slowly settling in. This weekend should be fun though as tomorrow morning I'm going running with my friend Kike at a place called Chipinque. I'm also hoping to explore dowtown Monterrey a bit too at a place called the barrio antiguo.
My Spanish is definitely improving, well at least I'm able to understand a lot more. Speaking ability is still coming slowly. The professors are starting to ask me questions in class now... did I mention my class sizes are like 9 - 25 students? It's fantastic, but it's definitely hard to respond, especially in my class modelación dinámica because although the course is in Spanish, the textbook is in English, so I have to remember the answer in English and then translate to Spanish quick... but usually not so quick.
I love this campus! There's always something going on in the center. One day there was a string quartet playing classical music, and another day a group of break dancers. There always seems to be some sort of club advertising what they do too.
I think some of the exchange students are getting hit pretty hard with culture shock now. So far I've been lucky enough not to be too lonely or wanting of familiarity or anything, but I think one of the main reasons is being on the track team. At our orientation sessions they said that everyone goes through culture shock at one point or another. I guess we'll see. For now I'm loving it here and wish the days weren't going by so fast!

"And this is how I choose to live,
as if I'm jumping off a cliff...
knowing that you'll save me."
- Relient K

Equipo de Atletismo - parte 2

Brrrrr. It was cold today. I think it went all the way down to 10C or 12C. I even had to wear my windbreaker... ;) I spent most of the day at the track watching my teammates compete. Despite full cloud cover I still somehow got a sunburn. Afterwards we went to a buffet restaurant where I just about put the restaurant out of business I think. Buffets must grimace when they see a forty person athletic team come to their doors.
Here's a pic of most of our team. These guys keep me sane! It seems as soon as I'm feeling down or homesick, there's a group of them driving by honking at me, or calling me to come sit with them in the cafeteria. It wouldn't be the same without you guys!

Bet you can't tell which one is me! lol...

Vamos Borregos!

Super-Super-Size Me

I realize that this trend of decreasing serving sizes is really good in general, but seriously, they need to come up with a portion size that will fill a guy up! I have to eat five or six meals a day to keep body and soul together. That's a pretty expensive thing to do when you're living off of cafeteria food! Aaahh hungry!

Running in Circles

My dreams for making the Mexican national team were dashed today. ;) Well, not really, considering I knew I couldn't compete because of that minor issue of not having citizenship. My teammates did really well though! Two advanced to the next tryout phase.
So I think I'm going to move to Mexico and study at Tec. Apparently they have sick running scholarships here... like 90%. Anyone who doesn't like that I'll be gone should move here too! (Come on, do you really like -30C? I haven't even worn a windbreaker here yet... and it's January!)

Here's a picture of the stadium that we practice in every morning. Can't wait to have a meet here! I found out that the first meet I can compete in is on February 11-12 at the other university in Monterrey. We're also going to be travelling to the US a few times.

Tacos

Well, I just wrote a decent post about our international student manual and then it was lost due to a poor connection... so I went and ate some tacos.

Yay for tacos.

Social customs!

Well, the cultural information sessions we took during orientation week are starting to be very useful! Now, normally if I got kissed on the cheek by four different girls in the same day I'd look for a sign on my back, but I think I'm just making friends... Cool!

Some pics

Not much new yet, but thought I'd put up a few pics of the campus. The homework's starting to come now and the language barrier is definitely tough. Last night I wrote a summary of the preface of our textbook on electric machines. The vocab is crazy because I have to learn many new engineering terms in English and Spanish. Things are still amazing though. I'm starting to get a sort of routine down which includes a daily breakfast of egg & refried bean burritos, complete with jalapeño peppers. I'm telling you it's the best breakfast ever!
Today I was super lucky because one of my classmates saw me printing off some homework and told me that I had not done a bunch of drawings that I was supposed to. I hadn't heard a thing about the drawings... anyways now she's going to make sure I know what all of the homework is at the end of class, so that helps! I also had to take a quiz today that I didn't know about. Good thing it was pretty much just a review of fluid mechanics from last semester...
As you can see, the campus is beautiful and the weather is still amazing here. There are even deer, peacocks, and ducks wandering around campus!

Equipo de Atletismo!

For the last couple days I've been going to the tryouts for the track and field team at TEC. Looks like I'll be on the team! I'm so excited about this because now I will have the chance to travel and see Mexico! Of course, I'll also be able to continue competitive training for distance running. Practices are 7-10 every morning, but actually that's been working out great. I had all of my classes scheduled to be after 10, so I have no conflicts. The best part about it is that it's cool during that time of the day... I ran 8 km in the middle of the day today and just about died!
It's hilarious when I'm trying to understand what the coaches are trying to get me to do. Basically a lot of actions are involved. My Spanish is coming along quickly though! I've made some new Mexican friends through the team too for which I'm especially glad... most of my first friends were international students since we were the only ones here for the first week. I'm not sure when the first competition is, or what distance I'll be running, but I'll keep you updated!
Hasta luego!

First days of classes

Well, classes have started and so far so good. I haven't been kicked out of any classes yet for inability to speak well enough and in fact I've been able to understand more or less what's going on. The one exception is my laboratory transformadores y motores electricas. Sure the title is easy enough to read but it's definitely the most difficult since all of the instructions are given verbally and I don't even know the names of the equipment in English. The craziest thing is that we're dealing with a lot of voltage and amperage and I don't really want to connect the wrong things... I told my groupmates to tell me if I'm going to kill myself, so that should help. I was cracking up pretty good though when we were reading about the stuff that had exploded in the lab and this one guy that got electrocuted... ok moving on.
So this school rocks! My class sizes are all under 30 and in fact in my systems modelling class there are only 9 students! I paid for all of my textbooks today for a total of about $150. Also, there are only eight students in the laboratory at one time, so the instructor can actually help you out... and hopefully stop me from getting shocked. Another cool thing is the project course. I work directly under a professor on a real-world project. The project I've been assigned to is in the field of aeronautics for the company Icktar. Can't wait!

Last day of orientation!

Today was the last day of orientation and since the rest of the week had been going so smoothly, something was certain to occur. Sure enough at 8:30 AM someone says over the PA system in the dorms "All students are requested to go to La Choza immediately." La Choza is sort of like the common room of all the dorms where everybody hangs out. The schedule said that the first information session was at 9:00 so I figured they must have breakfast for us or something. I met up with my friends along the way (most of whom were in really rough shape from una discoteca the night before). As we get close to La Choza one of the RAs says to us "Run, run!" and points to a bus. So we run. As we get on the bus we realize that everyone else there is Mexican, but then it leaves. They start driving out of town and no jokes we start down this road that is so small the branches are scraping the bus. They let us off about twenty minutes out of town and we start following the crowd.
Turns out the place is some sort of park that TEC owns and that we had accidentally joined the first year students for their residence orientation. At first we play some games meant to get to know people. I never realized how tough these games are! They definitely never taught me in Spanish class how to say "act like a cow" or "put your ear on his ankle"! After the games we went around to different stations and learned different things about residence. It concluded with a huge lunch.
We arrived back at TEC just in time to attend the last bit of the seven hours of sessions we were supposed to attend today. Luckily some of our friends went to the sessions so we can get the information from them.
The real test comes Monday when classes start... I just hope the teacher doesn't ask me a question and then kick me out when she realizes how little I can speak!

Que tengas un buen día,

Estoy en México!

Finally I'm here! All of the forms/meetings/tests etcetera were so worth it. It was 24 degrees today and I'm already thoroughly sunburnt. Things have been going great even though the majority of the activities so far have been filling out more forms and attending information sessions.
There's nothing better to show you how little of a language you know than immersing yourself in it. So far so good though. They let me enroll in Spanish courses and I don't think I've accidentally offended anyone too bad yet. Most of the people on campus are international students. The Mexican students are coming this weekend and then classes start Monday (Jan 9).
Monterrey is really beautiful and is totally surrounded by mountains. The campus is really strict though! Girls and guys dorms are separate, girls have a curfew of ten PM, you can't even wear cutoff t-shirts at the gym, and the campus is surrounded by a fence with guards at each gate!


More stories to come soon!