Haven't been able to write much, so I'll just write a quick summary:

COMICS
I read Wizard's Ten Greatest Spider-Man Stories Ever. It has the famous Juggernaut vs. Spiderman (two issues) which is superb, it has the Cobra and Hyde (two issues) which was fun, it has the death of Jean DeWolf (which is amazing, truly wonderful), it has Venom strikes back, which is strong but nowhere near the Juggernaut or Dewolf stories and it has "The Boy who Collects Spider-Man" which is one of my favorite issues. The book was a very good read. Spider-Man rules.

I also read Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages which was very funny. A great read, Calvin and Hobbes is a wonderful comic strip.

MATH OLYMPIAD
I invented a cool problem and worked on the problems suggested for the state math olympiad, it was fun.

DANCING
I danced on Thursday (another great Thursday) and I found out that I have improved considerably in the dancing lessons I give, by noticing better what mistake the girl is making (I was already good at spotting errors in guys, but I couldn't spot errors in girls, I could feel them but not spot them). The dancing was sensational and it went on for a while after 11pm. Some new people have started coming that are very happy when they dance making it fun.

TEACHING
I gave two math lectures this week to the Math 6 class at Dartmouth. I taught them some probability. Part of the teaching seminar is to give two lectures in real classes (acting as a substitute teacher to the real teacher). In the first lecture, Tom (professor) was there to evaluate me and he gave me very good feedback letting me know what things I did very well and what things I should not do. I think I learned a lot and I think my lecture was actually very strong. My lecture on Thursday was I think much better and I was very happy with it. Of course, I also happen to love probability, which made it easy to teach it.

TRAVEL
I went with Yuliia to Boston for a quickstop before going to the IMAX theater in Hooksett. The trip involved walking around Cambridge for a bit. We also went to Hooksett and watched an awesome movie.

MOVIES
I watched The Dark Knight in the IMAX theater. The movie is awesome. The performance by Heath Ledger is incredible, the Joker is so crazy. What a villain!, what a performance! The movie was great, although I wasn't so fond of the Batman costume at the beginning (but I liked the new costume he got). The movie makes everything feel so real. Great story, great directing, great performances and it was awesome to see it on the IMAX (even though we had to sit in the front row). This movie is a must-see.

DND
Played DND with Geoff, Avram, Ralf and Naomi. We continued the story from before, so it started with a difficult battle (level 6) and it was really fun. We had a very tough battle again (without a day to rest, which made it very dangerous) and that was fun too. It's interesting how fast time elapses while DNDing.

FILM SOCIETY
I am an official member of the Film society directorate, which means I get to go to all Dartmouth movies for free. Awesome.

CHARITY
I finally put all the donated books in boxes and sent them to Better World Books. I didn't have that many books to donate, but I guess 4 boxes is a non-trivial amount. I was happy to learn how to pack books and ship them and to do something that hopefully will be of some help for the poor in South America.

I did a lot of things in the morning. Going to class, getting tea for the Math department, organizing a book drive to raise money for charity in Latin America, get a form that I need to get my advancement to candidacy. It was fun being productive.

My uncle arrived at Hanover at 3:45pm. I gave them the tour of the Math department and they met my office mate Amir and his girlfriend Rachel and we ended up talking for over an hour, which was very fun with my uncle making funny remark after funny remark. After that we went to my uncle's hotel to register and stuff, then we came back to Dartmouth and saw the Orozco murals. We spent a good while there analyzing the murals. I really like the paintings, I think I should go there more often, it is quite a masterpiece.

For dinner we went to a Thai place. We spent there a long time talking (between slow service and wanting to talk at the end of the meal). With my uncle and aunt, I usually talk about politics, so that's what we talked about.

My uncle and my aunt got to see my house and then we said good bye.

It was a nice day.

The 27th Annual Prouty Century Bike Ride & Challenge Walk will be held July 12, 2008! I plan on riding 100 miles in it and I need to raise $150 dollars.
If you want to donate you can go here and donate money.
If it helps motivate donations, July 12 is my birthday so that gives an extra reason to donate.

If you want to improve your vocabulary and in the process help by getting money to charity check out Free Rice a website where they ask you vocabulary questions and for each correct answer, 20 grains of rice are donated to poor areas.

I woke up super early (7:25 am) and headed to Northeastern University for the conference. I had a nice peanut butter breakfast at the university and then attended a couple of lectures, one on Better World Books and one on homelessness. Better World Books sells used books and uses that money to donate to programs in Africa, SouthEast Asia and Latin America, so I suggest using that retailer instead of Amazon whenever the prices are comparable. I think I might get my book for the next number theory course there ($64 instead of $56, so an $8 difference). The talk about homelessness was very interesting as it was lead by people that were at one time homeless. Very interesting talk.

At lunch, I met Gabriel and Susy and talked about different things (El Salvador, Cuba, elections, climate change, math), I might have talked too much as I was excited and talked more than I usually do.

I went to a workshop on what to do to raise awareness on world hunger and after that I had a 4 hour break, so I went to Park Street and saw a movie. I saw Spiderwick Chronicles. I have been in a graphic novel mood this past ten days, so a movie with such fantasy elements was very fun to watch right now. I thought the movie was very good and I enjoyed it a lot, it is full of magic, wonder and I think it is well done.

At night, there was a film screening at the conference, they showed the documentary The Education of Shelby Knox. This movie was shown at Sundance in 2005, so I was expecting something good and it was great. The movie was eye opening, funny and encouraging. Shelby is a political activist and the movie follows her for three years (she was fifteen at the start) and she was trying to get public schools in Lubbock to give sex ed. It was specially interesting as she had pledged to her church to wait until she would marry, but she believed that students had a right to be educated about sex. What's also interesting is how conservative the town is, how hateful of homosexuals it is and many other things. It was saddening to hear stories of gays being scared of going into the street with fear of being beaten down by other guys. Some nice things to see was how Shelby's parents were very supportive besides being hardcore Republicans. They supported her and their love for her made them be open to understanding the issue of sex ed and then even the issue of rights for homosexuals (which they were very reluctant at first). Caring about an issue can change the people very close to you, so that gives hope that we can convince more and more people. There was also a Q&A session with Shelby and it was very good to hear what has happened to the people in the movie and what she has done as an activist recently (after she graduated from UT Austin last year).

At night, I met with Iuli and Chris and went to eat Middle Eastern food at a place called Algiers. I wanted Lamn Kebab, but they were out of lamb, so I ate chicken Kebab (with couscous) instead. IT was very good and Chris shared some of his hummus. I had a great time with Iuli and Chris, although I fear I over talked again (as I did in the lunch). I just have been quite excited and have been talking more than my share for the day.

Another great day, who says a rainy day is not a good day?

Yesterday, I took Nicia to the Parque Extremo. The city opened a park where people can rock climb, roller skate, do ramps on bicycles and other stuff. It is free and it felt like a nice thing to do on a Sunday, specially since Nicia keeps saying she would love to go, yet for some reason, never goes. Since I gave away my rollerskates years ago to children in need, I don't have any skates so I just walked around a nice trail in a park nearby. The weather was wonderful, I love the weather in the spring. It will get very hot here, very soon. Fortunately, I won't be here for the really hot part, since I go to Hanover tomorrow.

After the park, we went to eat arabian food. It was an interesting, tasty buffet. We had a good time. The food started with hummus, pita bread. It continued with some sausage thing, some finger looking thing that was delicious and some tasty vegetable stuff. The dessert was delicious, called "Dedo de Novia".

In the evening, I came home and watched a movie with Lencho and Cesar. We watched Double Indemnity. The famous noir movie, proved to be very good. It is a fun movie to watch and the story is interesting. I have difficulty buying a successful person, would decide to do an ill-conceived crime knowing how good his chief is at solving crimes. But I guess people do irrational things for money and sex.

This morning, I've been settling a lot of stuff online. The main thing was donating money. The elementary school teaching I did last term paid me, but I was willing to do it for free, so I had plans to donate all that money to charity. After doing some research on where to donate, I decided I wanted to donate to Oxfam. Instead of giving the full amount, I will donate a monthly amount, since I think it is better for the organization. I wanted to donate to something that would more people and help the poor. Feeding people, cleaning water, educating people is something I think is very important for our generation to do. I feel that donating to things like cancer research wasn't that important for me considering it mostly helps the rich (maybe I'm wrong) and that there is enough people donating money to that. If someone thinks donating to Oxfam is a bad idea, please tell me why.