Sorry its been forever

I haven't updated this in nearly a month, which is bad, and now there is a ton to catch up on.  I made a little list of all the important and or interesting things in the last little while and i'm going to try to elaborate on them all.

Interesting Prof #1
I have always liked my professor in society and culture.  He is a young guy, looks like he is pretty fresh out of grad school, but really excited about what he teaches and really knows his stuff.  He always seemed a little eccentric because of how much he like art and culture.  He mentioned one day that he makes weekly trips to one art museum to sit in front of different paintings.  I don't think i could ever be that into art but i thought it was cool that he is.  He also organized a trip to a national history museum here in monterrey.  It was really fun to go with him because he knows so much about it all, all the questions i had got instant answers.  On that trip though i found out he is a lot more interesting than i thought.  He and a few students and i were talking when he casually mentioned something about when he was teaching 20 years ago.  Turns out he is not actually a young guy, he is in his mid 50's, which explains the breadth of his knowledge, but i was floored.  I have never been so wrong about placing someones age, and everyone in the class agreed with me.  I really thought he was just joking for a few hours, but later that day we went into a cultural art store and the owner mentioned that our prof had been coming in there for something like 20 years.  I'm still amazed by how young he looks and i have a hunch that he dyes his hair but i'm not sure.  He told us that for 13 years he has been eating one small meal per day.  Some kind of mixture of barely and beans i think, and he says that once you get used to it its all you need for a day.  I know for a fact that i could not live on one meal per day, i think the fact that he can is a testament to how little energy he expends during a day.  His claim that not eating has kept him young made me re-think some of the things my thermodynamics teacher is always talking about (he is going to be interesting prof #2).  It doesen't seem too far fetched to say that each person does not have a limited time to live, they have a limited number of calories to live.  The idea being that the more energy flows through your body the faster it deteriorates.  By lowering his energy consumption and usage my prof thereby extends his life.  I have no reason to believe that is true, it is just interesting to think about and is a random connection between two classes.

Interesting prof #2
Interesting prof #2 is my thermodynamics teacher and he is much more interesting than #1, but in a bad way.  It was extremely obvious from the first day of class that he is very eccentric.  He is a short, slightly overweight, bald, mexican man who wears a fedora.  What makes him so unique is how much he talks and how impassioned his speeches are.  He either exaggerates compulsively or is patently insane.  When we learned about energy required to lift something he launched into an oration about space travel, how we are destroying the planet, and how the only hope for human kind is to colonize other planets (which we can only do if we understand the work required to lift something).  He constantly refers to friction as the greatest evil in the world.  He says that without friction we could live forever and never deteriorate and the world would be a utopia.  He has argued several times that perfection is the absence of degradation, degradation is implicit in change and so perfection can only be achieved by never changing (being at 0 degrees kelvin).  Then he generalizes that to how we can live our lives free of the pursuit of perfection and just be ourselves once we accept that truth.  You have to believe that i am not exaggerating any of this, there is a soapbox present in each and every class period.  He uses flowery language and emotion at all times.  Every number presented in a problem is preceded by an adjective "the impressive amount of 24 psi" "the absolutely incredible temperature of 35 C" ect.  Those are all the things that make him unique but don't make him a bad teacher.  Recently though i have started liking him less and less in class.  I have two major gripes with his teaching style.  #1 he won't answer hypothetical questions.  #2 he hates being corrected.  Both of my gripes came up in class today which is probably why he is on my mind right now.  Today in class the prof was working through a problem when someone asked him a hypothetical question.  When i say hypothetical i mean something like "if the volume wasn't constant could we still use that equation?".  They are questions that get asked all the time in classes i have had before.  His answer always goes along the lines of "how am i supposed to know, its not in this problem so don't worry about it".  Today though he said to the student "just like i have no right to ask you about things i haven't explained you don't have the right to ask me about things i haven't explained yet".  Then he proceeded to prove his point by quizzing the student on a few things we haven't learned yet to show how unfair it was.  #2 :In the past people have pointed out when the prof makes a mistake on the board and it has always seemed to me that it makes him a little mad.  It was never that obvious but i decided never to be the one to point out errors and i'm soooooo glad i did.  Today when finishing a problem on the board he forgot to copy one variable from one line to another, it was a simple mistake anyone could make.  When the problem was done one student asked if the variable should still be there (and indeed it should be) and the prof immediately looked away and asked if there were any other questions.  Then he said that if the student was so eager to correct algebra he could just go up to the board and do the next problem himself.  He wasn't joking and the student got sent up to the board to work out the next one, his friend next to him started smiling which earned him a trip up to the board as well (at least they got to work together).  When they were up there the prof told them "i assure you I won't interrupt you".  At the end of the class he kept us 10 minutes after to lecture on the importance of respecting his work.  He talked about how if we had a problem with his work we could take it up with the department head or the dean of the faculty.  He talked about how hard he has worked his whole life and how he didn't do it to come up to the front and tell lies.  He claimed that undermining his authority ruins the academic system because if we can't have confidence in him, where are we supposed to get truth from ect.  Anyway, in short, he is kind of crazy and eccentric.  Until recently i didn't mind his class but he seems to be getting more and more crazy and its getting harder to learn.

Hike to Cerro de la Silla 
Cerro de la Silla (translated saddle mountain) is a mountain that is right on the edge of monterrey.  There are houses that are built on the slope running up to where it gets steep so it is a very easy mountain get to.  It is called saddle mountain because there are two peaks and the ridge in between makes the whole think look a little like a saddle.  Since day 1 climbing it has been on the to do list, and now that it is cooler i finally did it.  I thought it was going to be a 3 or 4 hour trip so i just brought some snacks along but the whole thing turned into 7.5 hours.  Most of the time was because we had some slow people in the group and we spent a while at the top.  The view was absolutely incredible and the hike was great exercise.   When we got back i was pretty badly sunburned and really hungry but it was one of the most fun things i have done in the city so far.  I have heard that there is a trail that leads to the top of the other peaks as well and i'm looking for someone who knows the way and is willing to take me.  My favorite part of the hike was seeing what was on the other side of the mountain.  I didn't realize that we would be able to see both sides and the view of the other mountains ended up being a lot more amazing than the view of the city.



Exam week 2
I had my second exam week and it went pretty well.  I did really well on my society and chemistry exams and got mid 70's on thermo and EM.  Chemistry is turning into an incredibly easy class because a lot of what we are doing right now is just applying equations and doing basic math.  It is a first semester class and a lot of students are still struggling with algebra and unit conversions ect. so i have a huge advantage.  My EM test was largely the reverse of my previous EM test.  Last time i did bad on the calculation questions but aced the concept quesitons to get a 74%.  This time i did really well on the calculations but missed one concept question.  In hindsight i don't know how i missed it, and now i know to give those questions a lot of time.  Missing that one question cost me 16% on the test.  My grades transfer back as pass fail though so i'm fine with how i'm doing, and once homework and quiz grades are factored in i think i'm averaging an 80%.  I still don't totally understand what happened on my thermo test.  The teacher grades in a seemingly arbitrary manner.  Just like my first test, i got it back and there were x's through each of my 3 answers and 70% written at the top.  When he went through the test i realized that i had done two questions perfectly and the 3rd was wrong.  After class i showed it to him and asked him about it.  He just said, your right, i was wrong, i'll take that into consideration.  I still have my 70% though.  I was a little miffed because with 2/3 right i had 66% right there and i thought my 3rd problem was close enough to warrant more than 4 out of 33%.  I've heard that the teacher grades extremely arbitrarily but almost everyone passes his class so again i'm not that worried.  There is some kind of final project in that class that is entirely extra credit and can bump our grades up 15% so there is a big cushion.

Tennis
Tennis is going great, i love it.  Now that the weather has cooled down i don't sweat during practice as much anymore and the sun is never in our eyes that early.  I'm getting to be better friends with all the people on the team and i think i'm getting better at tennis too :)  I have also made several friends outside the team who play tennis.  One german i play with pretty regularly and this weekend i will be playing with two new people.  One person from church and one person i met on the hike up cerro de la silla.  I have no idea how good they are but it will be fun whatever the case.  Last week the team went on a trip to a tournament.  Practices were still held but just with the assistant coach and only 4 or 5 players.  In the first practice they all decided not to have practice that friday or the next monday or tuesday.  I never like it when the main team goes on the road because we often cancel practice and if we do play the assistant coach usually turns up late.  Today was the first day where everyone was back and playing.  I arrived early today and the second person to arrive was the coach so we started chatting.  What was really interesting was that later in the practice one player and the assistant coach asked me (at different times) what i had been talking about with the head coach and if he had asked me if we practiced.  I said that he hadn't and they told me that if he asks i should say yes.  Turns out that we are supposed to practice each day that the team is gone but i guess the assistant coach cancels them behind the head coaches back.  I am hoping the coach just doesn't ask me and if he does i'm just going to tell him that i couldn't go.  The whole thing really surprised me and made me see the assistant coach in a different light.

Coupons
At the start of the semester the school was handing out coupon books for free and i grabbed one.  I flipped through it and it was full of things i was never going to use.  I didn't really look at it again until last week.  Someone told me about these great coupons to the movie theater and i found out i have a whole page of them (12 in total).  Instead of being some kind of group price, or free appetizer they cut the cost of a movie in half (down to about 2$ us).  They are valid at the nicest chain of theaters in town too.  I was pretty happy to find those and went to see repo men last weekend with some friends.  Tomorrow i am going again to see some movie but i'm not sure what it is.  I have been making an effort to develop the mexican side of my social circle and its been working pretty well.  I still hang out with international students sometimes but as i get to know more locals it becomes easier to find a group of them to hang out with.

One month to go!
I cannot believe how fast the time has gone.  It does not seem like that long ago i was arriving on the first day and realizing how much i hate heat.  Now the weather is great, i have a handle on all my classes and a good routine nailed down.  Finals finish at the end of November and i am almost exactly one month from the end of classes.   Now when i think about anything left i want to do i have to fit it into a shrinking timeline.  Last week i got my host mom how to teach me to make salsa because its something simple i should be able to make at home.  Unfortunately some of my favorite things from here i will not be able to re-create at home.  The taco stands here are incredible and i have never seen anything like them in the us.  I also have never seen the kinds of meat the use in the tacos in the us so i wouldn't even know where to begin.  As i write this i keep thinking of more things i should mention.  This week there is something called expo tech going on where students from different places in mexico make food from their home provinces and sell it and it is a HUGE event.  When i first heard about it i thought it was a neat novelty but now that i've seen it and had the food i love it :)

Thats all i have time for, i have to go to bed now.  One month is WAY to long to leave this thing, i don't have a chance of putting in everything i did.  I will try to keep it updated more frequently and i hope this gives you some idea of what i'm doing here.  Thanks for reading!

Ben Hamming