On Sunday Carl, Anne (his wife) and I hiked Mt. Cardigan. Carl told me that he liked hiking so I invited him to go hike the beautiful Cardigan. Yuliia was supposed to join, but she didn't feel well. The hike was fun. It was very windy at the top, so Carl decided to sit down at a nice view while Anne and I did the last part to get to the top. I had a really nice time.

On Monday I did some errands getting ready for my trip to Georgia. Tuesday we got up early to get to Boston. I was shocked to see the trees and the grass being white so soon (October 13) on the ride to Boston. There was a lot of traffic so we barely got to the airport in time. The flight was uneventful. When we got to Atlanta we left our baggage in storage while we went downtown to tour a bit. We walked around Peachtree street and around the Centennial Olympic Park (amazing!) and then we went to eat dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse. I loved it. There were all kinds of delicious meats brought to our table. Yuliia ate a lot and enjoyed it too. After the dinner we walked some more and then headed back to the airport where we would meet up with Paul, Mits and Lola. After some confusion with the rental car, we got a nice big car, Grand Marquis, and then drove to Carrollton, the home of the University of West Georgia.

Wednesday was the first day of the conference and there were lots of really cool talks. I enjoyed a talk about 5-regular partitions (partitions without multiples of 5), I was very excited about seeing Hendrik Lenstra giving a talk and I enjoyed the talk by Paul about perfect numbers. He gave a great talk.
At night we went to have dinner to a Hawaian restuarant to celebrate Mel and Carl's birthdays (the conference was in honor of their 65th birthday). I ordered the Mahi-Mahi and it was delicious. I had a great time talking with all of our crew (which in this dinner included also Dominic, Carl and Jean Marc).

On Thursday I had a great time listening to Kevin Ford talk about some really cool results in primality theory among other talks I enjoyed that morning. At lunch break, we went to a Southern sandwich cafe which had very tasty food. Everybody was very nice. After the lunch break I got to see other cool talks, among them Florian's proof that there are no multiply perfect Fibonacci numbers and Mits' talk about finding the fourth digit on the density of abundant numbers (.2476...).
At night, Yuliia and I went to have dinner at a Japanese Steakhouse. It was our anniversary, but we will probably celebrate with a nicer dinner sometime this week in New Hampshire. I am very happy to get to the first anniversary in my marriage. The year has been wonderful.

After dinner, I worked on rewriting my talk. I wanted to make my introduction better and add a slide on giving more steps on the proof. I finished editing my talk at 4am, which was very good.

On Friday, I was very focused on thinking about my talk so it was very hard to follow the talks before my talk. It was unfortunate, because Ron Graham was giving a very cool talk about juggling sequences. I wish I could have been there 100% in the talk to get more out of it. Then I gave my talk, listing my results on Burgess. I finished 5 minutes early, so I could've added stuff, but I think overall the talk went okay. I did a better job at the Number Theory seminar at Dartmouth, but it was better than my talk at Maine/Quebec.

In the afternoon, I was very happy to see András Sárkozy give a talk. Sárkozy is the mathematician with the most Erdos joint papers. He gave a cool talk about the Erdos-Fuchs theorem. Another talk I enjoyed was Dominic's. In fact, I took some mental notes to be sure to incorporate some of his techniques, as I think he is a very good speaker.

At night, we drove to Alabama so we could say we have been in Alabama. Then after standing there for 10 minutes we drove back to stop at a Waffle House. The food was fantastic and very cheap. I enjoyed very tasty hashbrowns. After dinner, we hung out talking. It was a really good time.

Another thing I did a lot while in Georgia was jump in the bed. I jumped from the TV desk, I freefell from the couch, I used the elasticity of the bed to flip, I did all sorts of jumps. It was so much fun. Yuliia took hundreds of pictures and I had hours of fun.

Saturday was another really cool day. There were some cool talks in the morning. Lola gave the last talk of the conference and when she finished, we started our journey. After picking up Yuliia from the hotel, we drove to Atlanta to eat a Rias diner, which had some very tasty vegetarian options (Lola is vegan). After eating, we drove to Stone Mountain. Stone Mountain has a relief of three confederate heroes. Our plan was to see that and then drive back to Atlanta to the Coca Cola museum. When we arrived at the park, we saw some signs and started walking. We figured maybe there was a hike needed to see the monument. Once we were getting close to the top I was skeptical that we would see any monument as I recalled Carl telling me he hiked the mountain with Erdos and that from the top of the mountain you can't see the monument (as it is sculpted on the side of the mountain). The top had really spectacular views of Atlanta but no view of the monument. The views of Atlanta made it worth it even with the cold wind slapping our faces. The hike was a mile, so it took us over an hour to go up and down which ruined our plans for the Coca Cola museum. At the top of the mountain we had figured how we would get to the monument. Once we got there, I was very unimpressed. It was cool, but not super cool.

From there, we were a little nervous about making it to the airport in time, but we did make it in time (barely). The flight back was uneventful. Now I am at home relaxing with Yuliia and Richy (our new dog). Life is good.

Slept an hour on Friday morning to make it to the 5am bus to Logan airport. Yuliia forgot her passport and we were nervous but the passport was mailed and everything is fine now (she needs it for our flight to Mexico City next week). We flew to El Paso and got home.

Once home, I had a meeting with the Olympiad Committee to write the exam. I was just trying out the problems invented, not being a good problem inventor myself. However at the end we had 6 problems one of which I didn't like and we needed 6 problems, so I tried to invent one (also, the last 5 Chihuahua Math Olympiad exams have had a problem by me, so I want to continue the tradition). I came up with one I loved and it made it into the exam. The problem is the following:
Given the numbers 1 to 12 written around a circle the following operation takes place: Each number looks at his adjacent neighbors and if both of them are smaller than him, he kills them. In how many ways can the numbers be arranged in such a way that after one operation only four remain alive.

We finished writing the exam earlier than usual, we even got to sleep a full four hours. The next day, we went to my dad's office to print the exam, then to a pharmacy to get copies. The exam wasn't perfectly written so in the hour where students can ask questions we got many similar questions. I had a lot of answering to do in the question hour.

In the middle of the exam, four of us went to eat gorditas. They were delicious. On our way back, David hit his car. A woman driving in front of us, turn right seemingly to park but it turned out it was a move to make a U-turn which she decided to do regardless of us driving right behind her. So we hit her door. It was a bit funny, things seemed to be okay, the woman will pay for the damages (defense and light).

After the exam, I ate home (chicken with apples), took a one hour nap and then greeted the Committee to grade. We started at around 6pm and ended at 4:45am. Obviously there were many distractions such as the Kim Clijsters-Serena Williams match, many procrastinating conversations, food, etc. My problem turned out to be the hardest, no one got more than 3 points (7 is the score for a correct solution). I think my problem should have been submitted to the Mexican Math Olympiad instead with a few tweaks. I love the problem.

After deciding the winners of the exam (this was a very successful exam, having a good spread on the scores and having enough people scoring highly), because of trash talk four of us decided to compete trying out a math problem and see who would solve it the fastest. We started at 5:15am and finished at 6:30am when I finished my solution and decided to check the others. Hector solved it correctly 10 minutes before me, David had it wrong and Perrito also had it wrong, so Hector won and I had second place. I was very happy because I loved my solution, I thought it was very creative and that the problem was quite hard. Hector's solution was also pretty cool, I liked seeing two different solutions. I was so happy to not give up because of being too late or being too tired. The problem was to find all pairs of integers a,b such that 3^a + 7^b is a perfect square.

I woke up early today to watch NFL games and tennis and hang around with my family. Life is good.

Thursday was traveling day. I woke up at 6:50am to go to the bus station. I didn't make it, the bus leaves at 7:20 and I got there at 7:22. I bought the ticket to try to catch it at New London where it would stop in 30 minutes. I was nervous while driving that I wouldn't make it, but I did make it. I was very happy. The flight from Boston went smoothly. I was at the Houston airport for many hours and then I boarded the plane on route to Mexico. Everything went well. In Mexico City I took the metro (after asking for directions from some helpful women in a booth) to get to the bus stop and then took the bus to Morelia. I got there at about 4am (22 hours later after factoring in the time zone difference). The taxi didn't even know where the hotel was and when I got there it said "Open" but no one would open the door after I rang and knocked for a long time. I called Yuliia and asked her to call the hotel (I didn't have the number), that didn't work either. I then went and knocked on a side glass. This worked, the person told me where to go (which he had left open for me already). I got in the big house (which would house all 12 of us) and picked a bed. It took me a long time to find the lights for the bedroom (they were at the other end of the room in a hidden niche). As soon as I put my head in the pillow, a mosquito started flying around. I turn the light on and kill it. I put my head in the pillow and a mosquito started flying around. After repeating the previous operation several times, I got to the point that when I put my head down at 6:30am, there was no more mosquitoes flying around my head. Time to sleep.

At 8am I got woken up by one of the professors (Toño). He informed me that the plan was to meet in the university at 9am. I showered quickly, which wasn't easy given that there was no warm water (good thing the Vermont swimming tour prepared me). I was in very good shape because I slept for over 5 hours in the bus from Mexico City to Morelia, and the cold water also helped waking me up.

We walked towards the university trying to find a place to have breakfast and the few eating places seemed to be closed, so some people bought snacks from a gas station while David, Efrén and I went to a small town trying to find something to eat. We found a place that sold fruit and we ate fruit.

After breakfast it was time to look at the problems. I worked with David and Florian in the Number Theory problems. Efrén worked on algebra. David and I also tried the algebra ones and I also did one of the combinatorics problems that looked fun. Pablo, Joshua and Carlos worked on the Combinatorics problems (all three of them won Gold medals in IberoAmerican Math Olympiad, Joshua and Carlos have Silver medals in the IMO and Pablo is the sole Gold medalist for Mexico in the IMO). Guevara, Chino and Leonardo worked on Geometry (Chino is a gold medal in the Ibero, Guevara was not only a gold medal but had a perfect exam in the Ibero 2006). Toño and Patricio worked on several problems (Patricio was the first Silver medalist for Mexico in the IMO and he also got a Gold in the Ibero). I was surrounded by Mexican Olympiad stars, however I was able to solve most of the problems I tried solving. It was very fun trying out problems all day.

On Saturday we presented the different solutions and decided on the short list (and the order of difficulty). It was a cool experience. I love seeing solutions to Olympiad problems, most of them are very pretty. At night we went to Sirloin Stockade to have dinner, it is a nice Buffet place. It was interesting seeing the waiters with their mouths covered (people are being very careful in Mexico due to the swine flu). I ate lots of good stuff there, it was a nice meal.
After the meal, we hung out in the hotel talking all night. It was very fun speaking with other Mexican mathematicians (or engineers). Lots of interesting topics came out and it is just refreshing to speak Spanish and be around nice people.

Since we finished everything on Saturday, Sunday became lazy day and most people went back to their homes. David, Chino and me were the only ones that stayed an extra night because our flights were bought for Monday. At night we went out into downtown. I had forgotten how beautiful Morelia is. It felt like I was in a very old town, felt European. Really beautiful. I ate some ice cream, some Mexican candy and then had sopes for supper.

I left the hotel at 2am, took a taxi to the bus station. The conversation with the taxi driver was very interesting. It turns out that he worked 19 years in the Morelia airport and was fired when the airports were privatized. The sindicate told the employees that no one would be fired and need only sign some papers to acknowledge that they were under new bosses now. It turns out that what the employees signed was their resignation. The national sindicate deceived the employees all around the country (this was back in 2000). A terrible story.

I got into the bus at 2:20am, the bus arrived in Mexico City at 5:50 (30 minutes early). I took the metro to the airport and got there at 7am, but then changing terminals and stuff made me get to my gate at 7:40am and there was a long line. If I had taken the 2:30 bus or if the 2:20 bus had arrived at 6:20 as I thought it would, I wouldn't make it to my 9am flight. I got lucky.

After a couple of flights and a bus ride I was back home to see Yuliia at 10pm. I was very happy. We celebrated by watching the latest episode of Project Runway.

A great trip to Morelia. I love to travel and I love the Math Olympiad

On Monday I had to wake up early to go to court. I arrived at court and I quickly read and filled up some paperwork to be able to write in my guilty plea. While being in court, I noticed everyone would say they were not guilty (even though it is clear not everyone could be not guilty), hence I started second guessing my plea. When I stood in front of the judge I was nervous and after I plead guilty, he asked "did you read bla bla?" "Yes" "Did you understand it?", these questions plus the fact that everyone was saying Not Guilty made me reply that I did not understand and wished to read it again. After a couple of more people going before me (while I was re-reading the form), I went back, plead guilty (again) and got a $100 fine. No reason to be that nervous.

I traveled to Mexico on Thursday, something I will write later about. Between Monday and Thursday not much happened. I gave a class on Markov chains, I watched many episodes of Babylon 5, read some comics and did some math. Yuliia and I had some nice dinners and we watched Julie and Julia which was very good. I also went to a cool swing class.

The first days of the week were taken over by the class. I had to write the exam, give the exam and then grade the exam. When writing I thought it would be super easy, while grading I thought it was terrible, but then when I finished grading I realized it wasn't so bad. The median was 81, which is pretty good and the mean is 78 which is not bad. However, I got 8 students dropping the class which definitely hurt my ego of being able to teach to everyone.

On Thursday after a day of relaxing at the apartment, Yuliia and I left to go to New York City to visit my mom and sister (they were there for vacations). We left New Hampshire at 11pm and arrived at my mom's hotel in midtown NYC at 4am. I slept for three hours before I had to get up to move the car. I thought I would have to pay $30 a day, but then I realized that I could take it out in the night and save the night fees. Turned out that I parked it in a place where Saturdays were free, so I ended up spending only $19 for the 3 days I was in NY. I was very pleased with this.

The first day we went to the New York Botanical Gardens. We were a little worried because the subway stopped quite far from it (express doesn't stop everywhere) and the region wasn't very nice. After thirty minutes of walking we gave up and took a cab, which only charged $6, not bad for four people. My mom and sister didn't like the botanical gardens, but I liked them, I specially liked walking in the middle of the natural forest. Yuliia had a good time too, although she was also underwhelmed.

At night, my mom and sister went to the Broadway play "Wicked". Yuliia and I didn't go because we didn't get tickets. We went instead to eat at Red Lobster, which is right next to Parson's the school of design (Project Runway season 2 has many jokes about Red Lobster and Yuliia wanted to check it out). In fact Runway was also the reason we went to the Botanical Gardens.

The next day started with us going to the Met. We had a great time. I love the Egyptian displays and the modern art section. We ended up not seeing the European art collection as we ran out of time (five hours wasn't enough). In the Met we ate at their new lunch place, which was overpriced but had really tasty food. Yuliia and I shared a chicken dish. I really liked the painter Chuck Close. I also enjoyed seeing armors from medieval times to imagine the Song of Ice and Fire characters in these armor. Time ran really fast in this wonderful museum.

After the museum we biked in Central Park for a couple of hours. Yuliia and I would have mini races to see who would get to the next street light first. I won most of them, but she won several. It was very fun.

At night we walked around, saw the Plaza, the Rockefeller Center and then got to the hotel. From there we walked to a salsa club called Copacabana that a sales clerk recommended to my mom. After walking for a bit we got to the address and there was nothing there. After asking a taxi driver we found out the place closed at least a year ago. It was pretty funny. At least we tried.

Sunday was a very relaxed day. Yuliia and I went to Jersey City to have lunch with Elliott (formerly known as Forrest), his girlfriend and our friend Johnny. The lunch was pretty tasty, I had chilies quiles while Yuliia had a salmon eggs benedict.
After Jersey we went back to NYC and hung out with my mom and sister. We went to Soho to eat pizza at the first pizzeria of the country "Lombardi's Pizza". The pizza was very tasty. After the pizza we discovered a place that sells different kinds of rice pudding (I had never seen anything like it before). We bought Hazelnut and Mango, I loved the mango flavored one. We then drove back to the hotel to drop my mom and sister off before it was time to drive back to New Hampshire. This drive became memorable when we all started dancing and singing to Michael Jackson.

I had a really good time in New York with my family. Life is good.

Last year, Greg, Giulio and me did a tour around New Hampshire and Vermont finding cool places to jump into water. Hence it was time to do one this year, but this time all Vermont. Sid came up from Boston to join the party. It was Natasha, Asa, Kristen, Greg, Chrisil, Sid, Yuliia and me. We started at Quechee. When Greg arrived he immediately went to the bridge to jump (over 45 feet). That set the tone. Last year, I skipped this jump, but now I had to do it. The water was flowing strong and I've never jumped from so high, but I had to do it. I stood on the edge for about five minutes, my heart racing, having trouble calming down. Every time I would calm down and be ready to jump, I would see the bottom of the jump and step back. Finally, I jumped. I had trouble getting out of the water as the water was rushing and the jump itself wasn't that fun because I was so scared and nervous, but I feel great that I did it (and that next time I'll get to enjoy the freefall). I got some bruises too because of having trouble getting out with the fast moving water.
After Natasha, Sid, Asa and Greg jumped, it was time to move on. We went to a nearby town to swing on a rope towards the river. This was really fun. There were several hilarious moments including seeing Sid swing as it looked as if he smashed into the ground (but being water instead of ground). Chrisil was funny too, because he also seemed to just swing directly to the water. Apparently I was funny too as everyone was laughing. It wasn't till I saw the video that I understood why, as my legs were doing all sorts of crazy things while I was in the air.
After the rope it was time to go to Gaysville (yes, this is the actual name of the town). There we jumped a couple of times from a cool rock. The water was quite cold.

The main highlight of the trip came when we stopped in the middle of the road to consider jumping from a bridge that we have never seen anyone jump before ("we" really means Greg as my only experience is last year and the rest had zero experience). Last year, we considered it but didn't do it. This year after so many rains, it was just too good an opportunity to pass up. We considered it for at least 15 minutes and I even said out loud I wouldn't do it several times including "even if you jump Greg, I won't jump". But Greg jumped and as soon as Greg's feet left the bridge, I knew I would jump. My main fear was positioning my body for the jump, as I had to be careful putting my body on the other side of the rail. Greg is very tall, so it is not as hard for him given that if he sits on the rail, his feet touch the ground. But for me, it wasn't like that. Once I was in position, I was good to go and the jump was awesome. The freefall was exhilarating, the water had the perfect temperature and everything went smoothly. Awesome experience. Kristen jumped and then Sid. Sid got a little hurt from the jump as he leaned his body forwards.

After Gaysville, we had lunch in Woodstock. After the delicious wings, Asa and Natasha left the group to go back to New Hampshire. We then headed onto Warren. Warren is quite pretty. Greg and I jumped into a little basin and the water was extremely cold. My reaction to the cold is very funny on video. The cool thing about Yuliia taking video of me shivering is that by luck we caught on film a fish trying to jump a waterfall swimming upstream. In Warren, Greg and I considered riding down a mini waterfall. I did it last year, but this year the water was too high for me to do it again. After that we had a long jump competition which the judges ruled Greg as a winner. But after seeing the tape, I have my doubts.

After Warren we did a mini stop in Montpelier, followed by another swimming stop in Bolton. This place was also amazing. There wasn't any spectacular jump to do, but there was a little waterfall where you could sit down and feel the power of the water. I loved it, specially at its cold temperature. My reaction to this waterfall inspired everyone in the group to try it and to make Yuliia finally go in the water. She had a lot of fun with the waterfall.

It was time now to go to the last stop, a special place in Lake Champlain, the beautiful lake in Burlington. We headed out to a secluded place and swam a bit in the lake. Usually this place is very placid, but this time it was raging, there were lots of waves and given that we were next to big rocks, it was scary to go out into the water and swim, but we found a place where there was more than a meter between rocks and we figured it was enough to go out. Chrisil, Greg and I were the first to go out and then we managed to convince the rest. There was a nice rock about 20 yards from the shore. The rock was a nice place to climb up to jump out of. It was hard to climb the rock as the face that had the "steps" to go up was being hit by waves. Greg managed to climb up and then give us a hand. The second time I tried to do it on my own and I got a lot of scratches from my body trying to stay on a rock while waves tried to push me out of the rock. At first it was fun, but after minutes of struggle it became very annoying. Once I got up in the rock, I took several deep breaths and then enjoyed my last jump of the day.

To end the night, we went to an Irish pub in Montpelier that has half priced burgers on Sunday evenings. The burgers were delicious and cheap (with respect to the deliciousness). A great end to a great day.

The class has been going well, I have been having fun with the material. I always like a problem or two of the homework and take them into other directions, it almost always leads to part of my lectures (although I don't know how much my students like this).

This week I played racquetball twice and I played pretty well. The best game was a game I lost 15-6 against Chrisil. I played with everything but Chrisil had a response. His main weapon was his serve, he won at least ten points where I missed the return. It was the second time he has beat me, but he totally earned it.

A funny anecdote this week was failing to remember a proof for my x-hour class. It was a cool proof for the following problem: Assume there are two urns. Each has one coin. We bring a coin and put it with probability 1/2 in one of the urns. Then we bring the next coin and it has a probability of 2/3 of going to the urn that already has two coins and one third to the other urn. We keep going this procedure (if there are p coins in Urn 1 and q coins in Urn 2, the next coin goes to Urn 1 with probability p/(p+q) and Urn 2 with prob. q/(p+q)). How small would you expect the urn with less coins to be? I'll mention the proof in another post, it is beautiful so I don't want to ruin it with a spoiler.

I also several chapters of a book called Monty Hall Problem by Jason Rosenhouse (he got his PhD from Dartmouth). The book is really cool. I discovered that I didn't fully comprehend the problem (even though I've taught it countless times). I had failed to realize that the problem asks for what to do, once a door has been shown, not just with the knowledge of Monty knowing where the goat is, but with the knowledge of which particular door he chooses. In the normal Monty Hall problem, this distinction makes no matter, but if the doors had different probabilities, it would become important. Example, if door 1 has prob. 1/2, door 2 has prob. 1/4 and door 3 has prob. 1/4 and you start with 1/4. You know that if you don't look at what Monty does, your probability of winning with switching is 3/4. However, you gain extra information with the door Monty shows. If it is door 2, your odds go up to 4/5 (instead of 3/4) and if it is door 3, your odds go down. I thought that was awesome.
The book also has a couple of very interesting chapters on work done in other fields. A chapter on psychology, showcasing a bunch of cool experiments showing how bad we are at this problem (this is where I discovered that even I was wrong) and a chapter on some philosophy. The philosophy chapter was cool because it introduced a cool variation of the problem (one that has two players instead of one), but the philosophy itself didn't seem that interested or that moved by this problem. Cool book, highly recommended.

I volunteered to get a fMRI scan for some research thing. I was interested in experiencing one of those and in getting the $20. The scan consisted of eight scans, two normal ones and six where they showed some images and asked me to focus on what I was seeing. I don't know how useful I was because I fell asleep in two of the "focusing" scans and I was distracted thinking about a math problem in the other one. I wonder with all these distractions that can happen in the hour scan how accurate the experiments can be. It was an interesting experience, I am glad I did it.

With respect to math, I have been having fun solving probability problems. One problem I loved was one that I saw in a TED talk. What is the expected number of coin tosses you would expect to get the sequence HTH? What about the sequence HTT? Should these numbers be the same? No. The first one is 10 and the second one is 8. However if we throw to see which one appears first, the game is fair, both are equally likely to appear first. I thought that was awesome. To illustrate how it can happen that you have the expected value pointing in one direction but the fairness of the game pointing in another, I thought of the following example: Assume you have two unusual dice. Die A has four sides with the number 4, while two sides are blank. Die B has all sides being a 3. Note that the expected value of A is 16/6 = 2.67 while the expected value of B is 3, however A wins 2/3 of the time.

Another math problem I had fun solving (this is the one I solved while inside the fMRI) was the following. Find the expected number of tosses of a dice to get all six numbers.

I am enjoying this probability class very much. Tomorrow I'll give a lecture going through some fun probability gems, it should be fun. I wonder how many students will show up.

Sunday I played a lot of poker, making it very far in a tournament but coming out almost empty handed (won just 75 cents).

The weekly classes were fun getting to the main event of the class, the Central Limit Theorem. What a beautiful theorem. I really enjoy the class very much.

Research is becoming more exciting, some cool things need to be proven.

One of the main events this week was getting pulled over by a cop. On Tuesday, I went to renew things for the car and to renew my driver's license. However the DMV was closed for renovations and I didn't want to drive 40 minutes to Claremont for it. Of course, I had to be stopped by a cop on the next day and while she stopped me for something bogus (claiming I crossed a red light when it was yellow), she had the right for asking for my driver's license which was expired. Hence on Thursday I had to go to Claremont to get a driver's license and next week I'll have to go to Concord to show the state court that now I have a driver's license.

Thursday Night Salsa was fun. Lots of dancing. Tuesday night swing was also fun, I think Yuliia and I dance it well.

I have also been into programming lately, working hours on some projects. I mainly got back into programming things because of the probability class, but now I have my hand on trying to program some number theory things. I love it, it is very fun.

With respect to movies, I watched Funny People yesterday, which was pretty good. It is very long for a comedy, clocking in at 2 hours and 20 minutes, but I guess that is not so unusual with Judd Apatow (Knocked up also reached the 2 hour threshold). I liked the movie. While the main jokes are about farts or penises, the story itself is interesting. I wasn't expecting that. Yuliia didn't like it.

With respect to reading, I read a Spider-man issue and just a few pages of a Neal Stephenson book. I also read some math papers. But what consumed most of my reading time was a manga called Liar Game. It is a manga that is driven by fun puzzle like games. It is really good, the story is kind of addicting. I read 80 issues of the manga during the week. Good stuff, I had never read manga before (although I tried a bit with a manga that Geoff lent me a few months ago). Good stuff.

Life is good.

On Saturday, I didn't end up going to my uncle`s house because there was such a long line. Instead, Maribel, Yuliia and I went to watch my mom dance. Many groups performed little numbers in the university theater. It was cool for Yuliia to watch the traditional Mexican dances. Besides the folk dances, a group danced belly dance and my mom's group danced`tango.
After that we went home and played many board games. Cuban domino, Nerds, Marrana. Marrana was super funny as we did a "Ratonera" for punishment to the losers. A Ratonera is where a person passes between the legs of everybody and gets spanked (everybody forms in a line to deal the punishment). It was hilarious, Yuliia couldn't stop laughing even though she was the one that lost. We played all night till 4am. Really fun.

On Sunday we woke up late, watched a bit of TV, ate pancakes and then went to my father's house to celebrate Father's Day. He cooked some steaks at the grill. There was tasty potato, Rajas (cheese with jalapeño), nopales and other things. Very tasty, I had a good time. I also learned how to do some card tricks.
At night there was Nerds again and this time I was last place.

Today will be a long day full of activities because it is my last day in Juàrez. Should be fun.