Thursday, July 19, 2007

acapulco one more time

okay well i have conceded the battle with the computers at school and mallorys computer doesnt work anymore so i have to sneak and use the computer at the house when tito and mapy are gone (our parents). they havent told us not to use it but i take it they dont like it. anyway tomorrow our whole group is going to acapulco for our last weekend here. muy triste. me and my buddy michael are riding a first class busfor 130 pesos in the morning. thats like 10 bucks. it will be awesome. tonight we are going to a lucha libre. thats the corny mexican wrestling matches with the masks. it will be a lot of fun and entertaining if nothing else. i really love cuernavaca and dont want to leave. the weather is amazingly good and i love going down to the zocolo everyday. tito, jose miguel y su primo are coming with us tonight( thats our dad, the son and his cousin). then its mambo cafe night after that. school is good and i look forward to our talks everyday with felipe hidalgo from 11-1. not much else from here, just a lot of shenanigans and beautiful weather. i am going to shower before the wrestling. chao

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

i know why mexico is a third world country... because their computers dont work

( i wrote this on tuesday but i cant publish blogs at the school and mallorys computer doesnt work anymore)alright well sorry I cant really update this more often, but mallorys computer has met its demise at the hands of mexican electricity so we no longer have a computer in my house. we are now stuck using the overly crowded and very slow computer lab at school. anyway friday we thursday night me and my buddy michael went over to my english buddy mikeĀ“s house and had dinner and hung out with a bunch of local guys in their 20s. very political discussion but it was a lot of fun and in the end we all got drunk and sang kumbaya. so that was a good time. friday i didnt have class so i spent the day recovering in my room and reading a book called Wildfire by Nelson DeMille. I highly recommend it. Anyway saturday me michael and mallory caught a bus the city of Puebla, mexicos 4th largest city and close to huge volcanos (PoPo es mas o menos 17,000 ft). it was a nice ride and very beautiful. we spent most of the saturday just wandering around old cathedrals and small markets. we ended up staying at a hotel on the zocalo, or the mexican equivalent of a town square. it was a really nice place and really cheap. we had dinner at a nice little spot down the street followed up by a couple hours with a nice Cohiba, which are about the most expensive thing in mexico at around 10 bucks. later that night after we had been out doin a wee bit a boozin i made the biggest mistake of the trip. at the time, i felt it was neccesary to eat a hotdog that one of the street vendors was selling, and i had little knowledge to point me otherwise. so about an hour after i ate the hotdog i threw up and then went to sleep, not knowing if i was throwing up from the hotdog or from the one beer i had drank. 2 days and 2 doses of antibiotics later i am once again able to function and montezuma is no longer pounding me in the gut. anyway when we bought return tickets to cuernavaca i realized that i had been duped into paying for a more expensive bus (15 bucks for the nicest one in mexico) but when we got on it was definately worth. huge leather reclining seats and a meal served while we watched a movie in english. pretty awesome i see why people like flying first class. anyway thats all for now, we are going to see die hard 4 tonight. should be good

Thursday, July 12, 2007

hokay so heres the earth

well after my rampage yesterday of writing for an hour on here and then my posts getting deleted i have decided to try it again. there is a schedule here for the bars where all the students from the uni go during the week. monday la estacion, tuesday los arcos, freedom on wednesday nights and mambo cafe on thursdays. so there is a brief review of what ive done this week. tuesday after school we all went out the suites pinta and when swimming for 50 cents and then headed out to the centro. i ended up meeting a chap from london and his girlfriend that lives here and i hung out with them all night tuesday and then yesterday i went with them to this place called matono to watch the mexico vs argentina soccer game. argentina whooped them 3-0. tonight we are going to try and go to a lucha libre (a mexican wrestling match) and i think on saturday a few of us are going to ride over to Puebla for the night.

school is going good, my negocios en espanol teacher felipe hidalgo is about the most enlightened cat on the planet and i actually look forward to being in his class everyday. we have a pretty awesome world perspective on everything, there is a chick from switzerland, a chick from the bahamas, a chick from lebannon and then me and this dude from texas. its turned out to be more of business ethics in latin america class too and it has really been interesting to learn about all the scandals and stuff right here. the downside is thats two hours long in spanish so i cant zone out at all unless i want to be completely lost (which felipe then calls me out on). thats all from here, we are going to mambo cafe

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

i hate this motherfing computer

negocios en espanol = philosophical discussion on business eithics in latin america and the consequences of the failure of the rest of the world

Monday, July 09, 2007

sun and sombreros

ah well sorry it has been awhile the internet access in mexico is far from reliable (can you believe it?). anyway i dont remember what day i left off, maybe around weds or thurs. wednesday night we had a lot of shenanigans and stayed out to all hours of the next day. contrary to what i thought wednesday night, i did still feel like complete poop thursday morning. so after a few hours of class i returned to my bed to sleep off the rest of thursday and prepare for my trip to Acapulco on friday. obviously the young mexican teachers here want to teach class on friday afternoon about as much as we want to go, so i got to leave school around 11 on friday. oh yea i bought a cellphone here the other day so if you need to call me the number is 044 777 197 1375. anyway our bus didnt leave til 330 on friday so i went and played around down town for a few hours. i finally came upon the mercado negra (black market), and i wandered through 100s of stands selling bootleg dvds, and such. very interesting. after all that business me and my buddy andrew got on a bus for Acapulco. he had researched some hotels online, so when we got there after 4 hours on a bus, we headed to a place called Villa Vera. It was the spot of choice for all the Hollywood crowd during the 50s and 60s. The place was spectacular and being that we are in Mexico it really wasnt that expensive. So clubbed it up all night friday night and then layed on the beach and around the pool saturday. The whole bay was beautiful and the nightlife was muy bueno. yesterday i came back here and went immediately to sleep after we spent the whole morning floating around the giant pool. not much else, i have alot of work to do today so i am going to start on that. hope everyone is well.

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

once upon a time in mexico

ah well as i have had not a whole lot of interest going on the last few days i didnt feel it was neccesary to publish an entry entitled "how long a slept today". anyway ill go through the quick play by play. monday we had orientation at the school during the morning. the campus is absolutely beautiful. its made up of about 15 buildings all 3 stories tall and built with the typical mexican style. there are gardens and pools that seem like they surround all of the buildings and little tiny sidewalks and patios that intertwine the gardens and pools. anyway it looks more like a tropical resort than a school. monday afternoon i had my first class, the only one i acutually need negocios en espanol (business spanish). when i walked in there it was a complete culture shock and i thought the class was going to be absurdly difficult, but by class today i had no problem understanding everything even though i am still getting back in the habit of speaking. anyway monday i finished my first book and then we went to the mall and i bought a few more. of course the first 8 0clock class that i take in college is in mexico so the past two nights i have gone to bed pretty early. yesterday we went to the palacio de cortes, which is a palace built by the spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes. i had high hopes for it but it turned out to be a fairly boring museum. we then went through the market of artesians outside and that was pretty sweet. from there we headed across a few streets where there is a bar that has 2 for1 beers and shows baseball games all afternoon. today was another day at school, but in between classes there was a giant fiesta and there were people dressed up like the statue of liberty and uncle sam and they gave us hot dogs and free cokes. not much else today except our meal when we got back from school was called tacos al pastor and they were awesome. some sort of meat, with cilantro, onions and pineapple in soft tacos. muy delicioso. i am about to go with my buddy andrew to buy a bus ticket to acapulco on friday and tonight everybody from auburn is going out to eat and then to a movie and bars. that is all.

Sunday, July 01, 2007

mail me a book

well after two days i am almost done with the first of two books that i brought. i forgot my ipod on our bus ride today so i read almost all of it. no bueno. anyway we went to Taxco today, it is a very famous town but if you want to know why then Google it because i got Brenda something from there today and if i write it down then she will know. anyway i spent the day wandering around this sleepy moutain village and finally settled in a rooftop cafe above the town square and read my book with some cervezas by my side. we came back and watched part of the mexico vs ecuador soccer game and then came back to our house for dinner. i realize how much spanish i dont know every night because after dinner we talk with our parents for 20 or 30 minutes. i understand almost everything but getting a response is like pulling teeth. anyway we had a nice day but i start school at 8am (the first 8 oclock class i have in college just happens to be in mexico) so i am going to try and sleep pretty soon. i got some good pictures today but i have no way of hooking up my camera to mallorys computer so no pictures this time around. just imagine a tiny little mining village that has probably looked the exact same for 100 years situated in the middle of the mountains. very nice