Friday, payday!

Today I got paid! I was so happy to see my account today. hehe I bought my MARTA card this afternoon, which is a discounted card for using the subway and buses as much as I want in a month sold to students at GSU. I also called Mexico and had to deal with TELMEX, which is the only phone company in Mexico, clearly a monopoly. I so hope the government lets in foreing phone companies. I have heard about the terrible service and have gone through a few experiences myself. These people, or at least the one I've seen, think they're doing a favor to Mexicans, which they're not!

Anyway, today I had to call them and ask how much I owe them. Before coming here I wanted to cancel the service because I'll be absent from Mexico for almost a year and a half. They told me I couldn't because I first needed to cancel my internet service, return the modem etc, and I did. A week had to pass after that cancelation before I could cancel the actual phone service but by then I was already here. It just sucks how they do things. So, I am telling my cousin to cancel the service for me but I needed to get in touch with them to know how much I owe them. I was surprised to find fast customer service online through their tech support chat. Next step will be to call my cousin tomorrow and send her the money to cancel the service for me.

I also need to go to the bank and do other things I need to take care of but didn't cause I got up too late. :s But I did have time to go watch a movie with some classmates and then we went to get dinner. I had this pot roast subway which absolutely tasted like "barbacoa," the Mexican type. We walked to the place and on our way to the movie theater we went by a bunch of gay bars. As you might know we actually live in the Atlantan "Zona Rosa." A guy from a bar was like "hey, boy ;)" when I went past there. My friends were making fun of me. hehe It is actually the second time a guy hits on me in public. haha The other time happened in Tampico when a drunk guy pulls his head out of a taxi cab and yells "papasitoooo." I was like oooooooook.

We walked back to our place and had a lot of fun. Tomorrow there are lots of things going on. One, a professor invited us to his house for a Halloween party. Two, the same professor (he's really cool) got free tickets for the Rialto, which is having a Mexican Día de Muertos celebration, and three, my co-workers from MCL invited me to Loca Luna, which is a night club. Tomorrow they're celebrating halloween and it's latin night so they're playing bachata, merengue, salsa, cumbia, among others. The Pride Festival is also taking place tomorrow really close to here. I've never been to one and Tere, a friend and classmate from Mexico City wants us to go and check it out. The problem is, where should I go? The first three events happen almost at the same time and I still haven't made up my mind. So many choices, so little time. We'll see what happens tomorrow!

A cidade mais legal do mundo, o sea, La ciudad más chida del mundo

Curitiba, ciudad brasileña al sur del país en el estado de Paraná. Hoy estaba en clase de metodología y estaba hablando con un compañero brasileño acerca de esta ciudad. La primera vez que escuché hablar de ella fue donde trabajo en México. Había tres estudiantes brasileños precisamente de esta ciudad e hicieron una exposición de la misma.

Qué les puedo contar? Esta ciudad se ha ganado varios premios por ser una ciudad ecológicamente sostenible. Como el sistema de transporte subterraneo era demasiado caro lo que hicieron fue crear un sistema de autobuses súper eficiente. En tal sistema hay paradas especiales donde la gente sube y pagan dejando su ticket antes de entrar al autobús. Pueden hacer las conexiones que deseen sin pagar nuevamente. Más o menos es como el metrobús en el DF, si alguien ha tenido la oportunidad de subir. Es realmente como una mezcla entre metro y autobús. El autobús en sí cuenta con tres vagones conectados por un "acordeón" así que ya se imaginarán, es bastante largo y cabe mucha gente. Esto ha logrado que Curitiba sea una de las ciudades con mejor control de tránsito en el mundo ya que el 75% de la gente usa el transporte de autobús.

Además, ya que Curitiba es una de las mejores planeadas ciudades del mundo, cuenta con un excelente servicio de salud y un sistema de recliclaje bastante desarrollado, así evitando que haya basura por las calles. Es una ciudad bonita, limpia, y con muchísimo parques y zonas verdes. De hecho, sobrepasa las recomendaciones de áreas verdes que da la ONU.

En cuestión de clima, si es algo fresca, ya que se encuentra a una altitud bastante elevada. En tiempo de calor la temperatura sube a los 70 F y en tiempo de frío puede hacer muchísimo frío, incluso bajar a los 30 F. Para que se den una idea, el punto de congelación en el sistema Farenheit es de 32 grados, lo que sería 0 en grados celsio.

En fin, me encantaría incluso vivir en una ciudad de este tipo y claro, me encantaría visitarla algun día. Actualmente he estado conociendo gente de varios países y tengo uno que otro conocido brasileño que muy probablemente ya nos haya ofrecido su casa. jejeje Es una de las cosas buenas de Estados Unidos, conoces gente de infinidad de lugares.

Me despido con unas fotos de Curitiba. Espero que les gusten!

What an effed up day!

Today was one of my worst days in Atlanta. Of course nothing compared to that day last August when I missed my connection flight in Dallas, Texas. I was going from North Carolina to Tampico and had to stay in Dallas for the night. Then in Tampico, the very next day I crash (I swear it was that Taxi's fault), and that weekend a venomous worm stings me and my hand gets all swollen up and it burnt a whole lot. I even got a fever and couldn't even feel my whole arm. I would have never guessed those little, fuzzy-looking guava worms did all that!

Anyway, back to my bad day here. I woke up late. Lately, I've been having that problem. Dang. I was doing my exercises for the class I took today, when I started looking over today's agenda to see if I had missed anything. Turns out I had to micro-teach but I didn't know who my partner was. The paper only had my name on it and I didn't ask anybody to tell me what they had written on theirs. Anyway, I did the activity by myself so that I had something to present that day. I didn't mind that I didn't know who my partner was.

I got to school at around 4pm just in time to make copies for the activity. My Powerpoint presentation was done and I felt proud of it. Since I didn't finish my lab at home I was finishing standing up on the subway. I finished it all right but my time was counted. I made the copies once I was in my office. When I was done with that I ran to class all the way accross the university. I found a classmate and started bitching about my problems. lol He said the only thing he could do for me was to check on his calendar for the class. So he did and told me I wasn't even on it. Go figure.

Anyway, it was almost time to go into the classroom when the every so popular saying, "shit happens," sprang to mind; I forgot the notebook I was holding when I got off the subway to go to my office to do the copies! My homework was in there. Evidently annoyed by that situation, another, more-cheeful-than-me classmate offers herself to let our teacher know my situation and that I'd be a little late as a consequence. So there I go walking all the way back to my office, I get my notebook and head back to class. It took me about 20 minutes to come back to class.

Once in class, after the break was over, I asked one of the classmates responsible for the presentation today if I was on the list with them. He said not at all. I had prepared that micro-teaching session for nothing. While in class I felt a little lost, too, and it couldn't have been any other way; I didn't read one of the long articles for today's class. Deep down, I know this is all my fault because I've been slacking off lately. :S The last part of the class was an activity that showed relaxation techniques for the classroom and that helped me a lot for my own sake today!

Evevery Wednesday, five minutes before class is over, I leave to go to another building (passing the building where my office is) to teach a Spanish 1002 class, and today was no exception. If anything went well today, it has to be my Spanish class. Everything went smoothly and we had a variety of activities that everybody seemed to like. We saw a short clip of "Bety la Fea," the original Colombian soap opera.

Once I came back home, I asked for the key for the landry room at our building. Would you believe that our washing machine/drier broke down again and no one has been to our appartment to fix it! That sucks but hopefully we'll get a new one. Our rent isn't exactly low, I mean, we better get a new one, if not one that doesn't mess up that often.

So that was today in a nutshell. Let's see how tomorrow goes!

Extrañando a Tampico

El siguiente blog va dedicado a mis amigos y a mi familia de Tampico y del DF. Generalmente me catalogan de insensible jaja pero la verdad a veces si extraño mi vida en Tampico. Eso en cesaresco quiere decir que los extraño! Ustedes saben quiénes son y ni me pongo a hacer una lista porque si se me olvida alguien luego no me la acabo.

En fin, para los que no saben donde está Tampico, les puedo decir que está en la costa del Golfo de México en el estado de Tamaulipas y, pues, no les diré mucho pero les pondré estas fotos que dicen más que mil palabras.









Extraño a mis amigos, a mi familia (mi familia de NC está cerca de mí) y a las tortas de la barda. jaja Las tortas de la barda son un tipo de torta (como un sándwich) que tiene su origen en el puerto de Tampico. Están riquisimas; una torta de la barda y un litro de agua de jovito y es el paraíso. Hmm!

Nos vemos luego y espero que les gusten las fotos!

Blogging again-In Atlanta

Ok. I'm beginning to blog again, after about two months of inactivity. Last time I blogged I was in Tampico, teaching English at a high school and at a university. I was actually teaching for the language center under the Law School at the college I graduated from.

My blogs will be in either Spanish or English. I'm thinking of writing one in English and then one in Spanish and continue like that. I enjoy writing in both languages but because not all my readers know both languages I want them to enjoy at least every other blog.

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Spanish: Mis blogs serán ya sea en español o en inglés. Estoy pensando en escribir uno en inglés y otro en español y seguir así. Me gusta escribir en ambos idiomas pero porque no todos mis lectores saben ambos idiomas quiero que disfruten por lo menos uno que otro blog.
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So a little more than two months have passed and I am now at Georgia State University doing my Master's Degree in Applied Linguistics and ESL/EFL. I am actually here thanks to a scholarship, otherwise I don't know how I'd be able to pay for tuition, and as you may know, tuition is expensive, even more so for International Students. Anyway, let's just say that getting the scholarsip was a lot of time, work, and money (I went to Mexico City several times to take a couple of very expensive exams, and a few other things like getting my plane ticket to Atlanta), but it was all worth it. Now I have to keep up with classes and such.



Let me sum up the first two months for you all. We begin with Orientation Week. You would think that this meant going to a session where we were told about generalities about school, etc. Well, Orientation was actually several days and we received TONS of information from many different departments and individuals from Georgia State. I had never been so busy in my life, plus add the fact that it is my first time in Atlanta so I did get lost a few times during the first month!

The feeling was kind of odd. After a day was over, I felt like it had gone by in three hours, but then when I looked back at everything I had done, at the end of the day, it felt like a week. I certainly felt tired after walking to so many places and meeting so many people. This happened for 5 continuous days. At the end of that first Orientation Week it felt like a month had already gone by.

Next, let me tell you about classes. I have three classes per week but the total work for each class is as if I had class every day of the week. That's good for a comparison. If you are reading me from the Mexican perspective (which some of you are), let's just say that you'd go on strike if you had to do these many things for a class at UAT (college I went to in Tampico: Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas). As if it weren't enough (time wise), I have to teach a Spanish 2 class because it is part of my assistantship. I'm not complaining, I love teaching Spanish, but it does get busy! Oh yes, I forgot to mention my classes: General Linguistics, Sound System of English, and Approaches to Second Language Acquisition.

Up to last week, I really enjoyed classes until we had Midterms. If you don't know what a Midterm is, it is defined like this: torture. We had to write 14 essays total (two take-home Midterms). The third Midterm was actually pretty acceptable. It was in class and it was easy. Love linguistics class! During Midterm week I also had to grade Spanish exams and writings, fun huh?

Anyway, I really like my classes and would not change anything for the world.

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That was enough school.

Adventure-wise. I'm really loving Atlanta. They have a subway system which in my opinion isn't bad. Mexico's City's subway has 14 lines, Atlanta's subway system only two hehehe But then again, Tampico has NO subway system at all! (the picture below shows the station I use to get to school: Midtown Station)

I had already lived in the USA before, in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina to be exact, but Atlanta is so much different. F-V is small, peaceful and slow-paced; Atlanta is huge, noisy, lots of cars (with bad drivers, reminds me of Tampico; Mexico City is much worse) and fast-paced.

Hot weather in Atlanta is enjoyable, considering we get hotter in Tampico. Sure, Atlanta has no beach (Tampico does) but at least we don't live in the middle of the country where they have it worse. I have people to be very friendly in Atlanta. When I've gotten lost around the city people are always very helpful, it even reminds me of Mexico. I find a lot of similarities between the people here and the people in Mexico, to some extent. Parties and music are not allowed here after a certain hour at night, or even during the day.

My classmates have all been really cool and I have met many people from other countries. I have some friends from Turkey, Korea, Germany, different places around the USA and Mexico of course. Southern hospitality is actually a reality, in my opinion. I have been to so many places too but unfortunately, I just began blogging again. But worry not, I'll write more from now on!


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