Cancion del dia
Cancion de la proxima semana
Hi again all,
Again a whole bunch of things has happened in two weeks and it'll be hard to add it only in one post, I'll try my best.. This time consisted of our first partials in the school, for which I didn't want to stress too much. I also did again pretty much sports and hanged out with my buddies so everything's going really good here! On the negative side, I caught a fever and my jaw seems to be a bit dislocated at the moment..
I think I haven't told already about the climate here in Guadalajara so I'll add some text about that. Besides that, a very funny topic is the different Spanish accents among foreign people. A ranking of the worst accents included in the second part of this blog update, don't miss that! I want also to say a few (swear) words on two really annoying things here: Topes and Mosqitoes.
Week 35 - 30.8.-5.9.
Well I got finally to Amy's place and we had a good time there. On Wednesday (my day off from school) I woke up late, did some tricking and we started to plan our trip to the south of Mexico. We were planning to travel to Oaxaca and Puerto Escondido - the best surfing place in Mexico - for 8 days during the Mexican Independence day.
16.9,2010
Some little history lesson here in between.
Mexico celebrates its 200th independence day on Thursday the 16.9, which at the same time is the date for political revolution. Before 1810 Mexico was governed by the Spaniards, who (a group lead by Hernand Cortez) arrived here in 1523 and overcame the local tribes (e.g. the Aztecs). The time between 1523-1810 was called the colonial time and the history books tell that it ended, when the ingenious (original Mexican indians) people, lead by priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, rioted against the white Spaniard power and managed to free Mexico. Spain itself was conquered by the French at that time, which had a big effect on the way to independence. Actually the war was more of a civil war, where ingenious people fighted with the Spaniards (and some mix of these two) against other ingenious people and Spaniards. The war continued for 11 years, until one general proclaimed himself as the emperor. However, this government didn't last for long and the first president of Mexico was elected in 1824.
The thing that I find the most interesting in Mexican history is the fact that only a handfull of Spaniards (more came later on) were able to conquer whole Mexico. It's a long story that included alliances, betrayals, cunning tactics and other cool stuff, u can read more about those times in here.
After the colonial period there was a war with United States (1836-1853) that resulted in Mexico losing almost half of its territory that is known as Texas today. After that period there was a political shitload of hassle, which finally ended in 1910 known as the political revolution. Since then there have been two main political parties, the Institutional Revolution Party (PRI) - known as the liberals - and National Action Party (PAN) - known as the conservatives. The PRI governed the land from 1929 to year 2000 and now the PAN is governing the land. In the last election the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) almost won the election, but Felipe Calderon from PAN managed to win by a close margin.
Anyway, the independence day is coming and whole Mexico has prepared itself with country flags, hats and other tillbehör that you can see in a lot of houses and cars. The week is considered to be really dangerous too, because of the big drug war going on as I write. Partying in really popular places isn't recommended and we are most probably going to stay in more quiet places also.
Back to the week 35. On Thursday I had the Spanish exam, to which my preparation didn't go as planned (basic concept: facebooking until 21 and prepping until 02). I didn't feel that it went too well, and I thought that if I get under 80 out of 100 (83 is needed if you want one extra weeks of those bloody faltas). Well anyhow I got a 94 out of 100 which was 1) positive surprise but 2) teh unmotivationator. I still feel that im not learning fast enough so gotta keep wokring.
On Friday I went first to capoeira for 2 hours and tricking/ trampoline jumping for another 3 so that made a good workout. It was really fun, but I think it was partly the reason that resulted me catching a fever. Saturday went pretty much sleeping and "doing some school work" beside a pool. In the evening I had a really good Mexican soup called Pozole that was kind of a normal meat soup with all kinds of vegetables and spices that you could add for yourself. The food place was really cool and I want to go there again, but it has the same problem as so many other places here in Mexico: The restaurants are usually really small and don't go by name. They are open only some time of the day and other times when they are closed it's impossible to recognize them. Sunday went pretty much the same way as Saturday but just a bit more lazier. I just did some home stuff and decided to play some poker online. I was super-tired in the end, which resulted in too big a loss and I decided not to play too much poker online during my stay here in Mexico.
I'd rather not talk too much about my pokerplaying, because I feel that many people have so many misconceptions about it. I feel, however, necessary to add a small piece of text about it, even though I may regret it afterwards. During my two last years of studies in Finland I played some time pretty actively besides school in my free time, mainly because I needed money and didn't want to do normal work. At the end I did pretty good, but the pots that could have almost been someone's monthly salary made my hobby pretty stressful and with my network at the time drying up simultanously, giving up playing that active or at least moving to lower stakes wasn't too hard a decision.
I really have almost only good memories from poker and I still really enjoy playing it (for fun obviously) with my friends. The secret of my positive memories is that I nearly always could turn my brain off from poker when needed, which was really important. Besides that, I didn't think the winnings and losses as it was real money until the very end, so I think that was a good place to stop. I don't know if I will be still playing too much after my coming back to Finland, but the game (especially my game, nl hodlem) is getting every day harder to beat and I would really have to make an effort for it. I wouldn't lay my odds to it, but you never know, right?
I was actually planning to play actively during the summer and get some extra money for the trip, but because I got really excited from tricking and found some really cool tricking friends (thanks a lot guys!) to hang out with, I decided not to stress about having to look at computer screen when the sun shines outside. This option ended up to be far better and I think I had the best half-summer in Finland ever and after that I left to have more fun here in the new world!
Anyway, back to my week. One thing jumped to my mind about this week: Mayan Multiplication. These guys developed a much smarter system to multiply numbers than us and it can be done pretty easily up to hundreds of thousands and even above. In the system the numbers represent graphically with diamond shape lines, you can check it out here. At least I was impressed!
I could tell so much about the pre-colonial cultures of Mexico, but don't have time to do it and I don't think that it will interest you guys anyway.. Google Teotihuacan, Olmecs, Mayans, Aztecs if your interested.
This was my blog update for this time! I didn't attach any fotos this time, I hope you didnt fall asleep on your keyboard (describes pretty good my current situation pretty accurately). Anyway, I'll try to post the second part of this blog update before we leave to Cancun on Tuesday!
See ya!
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