1 down, 3 to go & traffic

Exams
The way my school here organizes the year, every class gives 4 exams which end up being worth most of the grade.  Last week was the first week of exams.  Overall they went ok, i wont really know till i get them back.  My worst exam by far was in E&M.  I think the whole thing was a tragedy of errors in a way.  I was pretty tired going into it and pretty stressed about it but i was confident in the studying i had done.  The reason it went badly was that on one question i for some reason started to do the problem the wrong way (it still works, but the math is WAY harder) instead of the simple way.  I spent quite a while trying to make the math work without any success and i was getting more and more frustrated.  The question after that one also used the answer i couldn't get.  In the end i just explained exactly how i would get the answer.  My explanations weren't that great though because the test ended a half hour earlier than i expected.  The test had 4 questions, the first one i definitely got right, the 2nd i felt good about but my answer at the end seemed strange so i might have made a math mistake somewhere.  The third i never finished and the 4th i explained.  I'm hoping the teacher gives partial credit so i pass.  Overall i think i just need to get more sleep and relax before the next exam.  The simple answer was something i had done 30 times or so and as soon as the test ended and the stress left i realized what was wrong (given 20 min i could have done it all after that).  Doing badly on that test made me more nervous for my thermodynamics test but it went incredibly well.  I had better timing on that test than any other test in my life.  The professor told us to put our pencils down as i was boxing my last answer :)  So all in all i had two tests that went ok but not incredibly (chem and society) one bad one, and one great one.  I'm glad its over and i think i'm going to do a lot better in the next exam week. 

Today
Today i got up for tennis, then had a group meeting for a presentation, did some homework, ate some food, went to the supermarket and bought a pineapple, some cereal, and some ice cream (as a reward) and now i am at home and about to go to bed and sleep as long as i can.  It has been a really nice relaxing day which is great.

Traffic
It also occurred to me that i should talk about the culture and general observations instead of just saying what i'm doing.  This time i want to mention how traffic works.  The biggest and most obvious difference is that pedestrian right of way does not exist.  It reminds me a lot of New York, pedestrians are expected to be smart enough to stay out of the way of cars.  I often feel like i'm playing frogger when i cross big roads.  It is rarely possible to find a clean gap across 4 lanes of traffic so often you end up standing in the middle of the road in an empty lane waiting for the next one to clear.  I wouldn't say its dangerous but it does keep you very aware of where all the cars are.  Turn signals and stop signs are also totally optional.  It took me a little while to realize but most people don't use turn signals at all, which makes deciding when to cross some streets much more tricky.  I have seen one car pulled over by a cop before but i think that largely traffic regulation is non existent.  Someone told me that there are 4 independent police forces in Monterrey.  They said it was because whenever one gets corrupt they just make a new one but i'm not sure how much of that was a joke.  Seatbelts are also pretty much non-existent.  Taxi's rarely have them for passengers and i have yet to see any local wear one as a driver or passenger.  Not having them doesn't bother me that much because when i ride in taxis we are usually driving pretty slow, there are speed bumps all over the place to regulate speed.  I'm suprised taxis don't get in more accidents with all the weaving through traffic that they do, but even if they did nobody is going fast enough to do any real damage.

Thats it, thanks for reading :)  Feel free to ask me if you have questions

Ben Hamming