I talked with my friend Jay (he was my roommate freshman year in college) by phone today. I tried to meet with him while I was in San Antonio but he was very busy studying for medical school stuff. It was nice to talk to him and get updated on his life. Jay is the perfect person to hang out as you will laugh a lot and just enjoy the time.

I also saw the match between Netherlands and Russia where Russia did the surprising feat of beating Netherlands. Out of the 3 quarterfinal matches, the second place team has beaten the first place team in the 3 matches, hopefully Spain will be able to stop Italy tomorrow and not make it four for four.

Yulja invited me to go to the Solstice Festival that was being held in Norwich. I mentioned it to Ralf because he likes that sort of thing so both of us went and I met with Yulja in Norwich. At the festival I saw a mime perform, a storyteller tell a story, people singing, people dancing, people juggling. It was very fun. I also ate some African food (swahili curry chicken and some special rice). The part that was the most fun at the festival was Contra dancing. It was very fun to just jump around and do a big group activity as the dancing is a team effort between lots of people and not just a pair of people.

The other thing I did today was read Seven Brothers by Garth Ennis based on an idea by John Woo and drawn by Jeevan Kang. Garth Ennis is loved by many readers (specially because of his "Preacher" comic) and I like John Woo, so that's the reason I bought the comic. I wasn't expecting it to be as great as it was. It is a very enjoyable read and a very interesting story. It even managed to have a nice message of unity in it. Ennis writes with a lot of curse words, which usually throws me off, but not in this case, it fitted perfectly with the story. I must also praise the artwork, Kang does a fantastic job with it, I loved the artwork in this book. It might be my second favorite piece of art in a comic book (behind Alex Ross' "Kingdom Come"). I am happy I decided to buy this comic, it was worth the read, it seems like "Virgin Comics" makes quality comics, so I am confident the other comics I ordered from them will be good.

Wednesday night I played Rockband with Flayz and Maribel, it was very fun. We also chatted for a while about books, movies, tv shows and comics. It was fun. I keep trying to convince them to watch Buffy, I do it now as a joke, I hope they don't think I am proselitizing. I ended up sleeping after 4am.

On Thurday, Mary made chiles rellenos for me. Oh, what deliciousness! I love chiles rellenos and Mary cooks them perfectly. It was the best meal I've had in a long time.

In the evening I went to El Paso and visited Emmanuel. I picked up Lencho on the way. We played FIFA and we watched the fourth quarter of the Celtics-Lakers game. It was amazing how the Celtics came back from 24 points down to win the game. It was awesome. We later played around in Emmanuel's house by throwing crazy football passes where we had to jump towards the bed and catch it in midair. It was very fun, just making crazy catches. Lencho broke his shirt in one of his dives and I hit myself really hard against the wall after I couldn't stop the momentum from a jump.

After hanging out in Emmanuel's house we went to pick up Blanca and Nalleli to go dancing. My mom, sister and Juan Carlos were already there. I wasted no time before dancing and went to the dance floor right away. It was very fun. It is great to dance with my mom and my sister and it turned out that Blanca was also very good at following my lead. I taught Emmanuel a couple of turns to get him started. The place was full of people that danced very well, so it was fun to see them dance and see if I could copy some moves (I would need to practice quite a bit to be able to copy those moves). Besides salsa/merengue the place also played some hip hop, some dance music and other caribean music (cha cha cha, bachata). It was very fun to just joke around on the dance floor. Going out with Emmanuel is always a lesson in how I can be even less shy. I was very shy before college and one of the things that let me become less shy was dancing (another important one was studying in the US where I could make myself to be a new person that didn't have to be shy), another thing was having the influence of Emmanuel who has always been very extroverted. Going out with Emmanuel is always very fun because you can see the joy and him and it is contagious. It was also very fun to see Blanca and Nalleli as I hadn't seen them in a long time and I would hang out with them (and Lencho, Emmanuel, Paulo, Angelica) everyday in college.

After dancing we went to IHOP and then I gave everyone rides (as a non-drinker I get to be designated driver). I ended up going to sleep at 5:30am.

So, another Thursday goes in the books as a tremendous* day.


*After watching basketball and noting how often they say the word tremendous and how I never use it, I decided to use it more often in my vocabulary if for no other reason that it sounds funny.

Went to my uncle's house to congratulate him on his birthday and to watch the EuroCup match Spain versus Russia. My uncle is form Spain and my grandparents are from Spain so naturally my mom feels Spaniard and I got a little of that, so I always root for the Spanish team in futbol (I would probably root for Mexico if they play each other). The game was pretty good and Spain won 4-1. The first half was close, but it looked like Russia didn't come out to play in the second half, maybe the late minute second goal from Spain at the end of the first half was too much of a psychological blow to the Russian team, or maybe Spain came out with a much better team in the second half. In any case, Russia almost made the game 3-2 when a player missed an easy shot (in minute 89). It would have been much better for Russia to lose 3-2 instead of 4-1.

I went to eat to "Sinbad" with my uncle, my mom, Anthea, Lencho and Emmanuel. I love eating there, I like their lamb curry a lot. I hadn't seen Emmanuel in a long time (or talked to him) so I was very happy to see him. After eating I went to his house to hang out a bit. We played "FIFA 2008" on the XBox 360. He beat me twice, but I managed to beat him once. The game was quite fun, the controls are a little different from what I am used to in a FIFA game (usually on defense, the strike button is the one I would use to strip away a ball, but in this game it is the pass button for that and some other button is to change players which it would usually be the pass button before).

My mom gave a salsa lesson and while my house had salsa/merengue music, I danced a song with my sister and then one with my mom. She tried to teach me a new salsa move, but I didn't get it right away, I need to practice it.

At night, I went to see David and Perrito to discuss some Olympiad stuff. We went to IHOP as we usually do. I really wanted some pancakes, so eating there hit the spot (although I probably should have ordered more pancakes and less eggs). We discussed some Olympiad stuff, but mainly just joked around. As usual I had a great time with them. We are very confident of the performance we'll have this year in the Olympiad. We think we're going to win (Chihuahua hasn't won since 1997). Manuel got a silver medal in the Centroamerican math Olympiad (held in Honduras last week) and looks very strong for next year. Memo is going to Spain for the International Math Olympiad next month and is the second best in the team, so he should be the best in the country next year (as the number one graduates from High school this year and doesn't compete next year).

A friend I met in salsa in Hanover, Victoria, studied at Trinity and arrived in town on Thursday night, so she invited me to join her friends to go out on first Friday (San Antonio has an event every first Friday of the month) and then go salsa afterwards. She picked me up at 7:15pm and then we went to the Bluestar restaurant where first Friday happens. There was some cool live music and there I met Ivette, her boyfriend Kurt, Armand and AJ (weird Nigerian name that I don't remember, so I just say AJ(. The people were very interesting. Kurt is a PhD student in microbiology. Armand and AJ are med students working in the same huilding as Kurt this summer and Ivette is the lab manager. It was interesting to talk to Armand because he's been to many places, worked for 5 years in the NSA as part of the military (intelligence officer) and knew a lot about Africa and other places. Victoria works for the documentary "The Devil Came on Horseback" a documentary about the situation in Darfur, so she has been to Chad and is involved in many non-profit activities. Really fun to meet people that care so much about making a positive change on the world.

After Bluestar, we walked around Alamo street, feeling the energy of first Friday. In a part of the street there were bubbles everywhere, a couple of people in a balcony had a machine that made bubbles and they liked seeing the reaction of people to it. Turns out AJ recognized someone in the balcony (note: AJ and Armand study in D.C, so they haven't been in San Antonio long), turns out AJ was a grad student with Kurt and this other guy Michael (guy throwing the bubbles) so we went inside his very nice house and stayed there talking for a while. Michael left science to join his wife's entrepreneur job of designing websites for companies and now has a very nice house in a very nice part of San Antonio and the house is very nicely decorated. It was very fun.

Then we headed to Azuca where we would dance. There was a long line to dance, but no line to the restaurant and most of us were hungry. So we ate there. The kitchen had closed most of the things to do, so we all had salad. My salad was delicious (pineapple, cheese, bacon, lettuce, chicken). After eating we didn't have to go through the line to go dancing. I tried to teach Armand and AJ how to dance salsa, but the first thing they played was merengue, so I wanted to dance it and I danced with a woman called Sandra that I noticed wanted to dance but nobody was taking her to the dance floor. She was pretty good at merengue, unfortunately there was no space to move much (the place was crowded). Then there was salsa and Sandra couldn't follow well because she's used to cumbia so she would try doing the cumbia steps instead of the salsa ones. While dancing with her, Armand and AJ left. After that I danced with a girl called Clarice and it was her first time there, so she also didn't know how to dance, but by the end, she had the basic step. I guess I was a bit surprised that she got the step in one song (although, my friend Yulja in Hanover got the step in like two seconds, so I guess getting the step in one song is not that impressive). Afterwards I danced with Victoria several songs. Ivette and Kurt left, so Victoria and I were thinking about how longer we would stay. We decided on one more song. However, after that "last" song they played merengue and I figured Victoria would enjoy a merengue song (or more precisely, I would enjoy a merengue song to dance to). It was very fun.

I got back to Trinity and then I hung out with Paul,George, Ross, Megan for a bit and then with the REU students. I stayed up till 5:30am just chatting it up with the students. It was very fun. Talking to new people is one of the nicest things to do, one can learn a lot about the world that way. This night was very fun in many aspects, learning new stuff, dancing, having fun, laughing and meeting interesting people.

I had a very nice day. I had lunch with Xia, she cooked dumplings, I don't recall eating dumplings before, they were very good, I really liked them. Then she gave me a ride to school.
I was planning on studying, but it was hard to get motivation to study since I feel ready already. There was a trivia competition at school for grad students as part of the "Grad Student Appreciation Week" and I joined in a team with Annalies and John. 7 teams competed and it went as follows: There were three 10 question rounds and the top four would advance. We tied in third place (The subjects were "Dartmouth", "In the year 2000", "Drinking"). The next rounds are head to head and it goes as follows: a subject is announced, each team picks a player and then 6 questions are asked (alternating, and if one misses the other team can "steal"). It goes on for two more subjects and no person can go back twice. The first subject was reality TV and the other team got 3 and we got 1. The next subject was youtube, which turned out to be very hard. I got 1 and the other team got 0. I don't remember what the third subject was, but John got 1 and the other team got 0, so we tied at 3. The tiebreaker works as follows: A subject is announded, a person for each team goes forward and then they start naming things of that subject. The first subject was Mariah Carey #1 hits. For some reason I went ahead. My opponent named a wrong song (wasn't a #1 hit) and then I forgot the names of all the Mariah Carey songs and missed, so we tied again. The next subject was "Ocean's Eleven actors". I went ahead and this time I was super ready. I won (I named George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Elliot Gould and still had Andy Garcia in the bank). In the final we started going 3-3 (the subject was 2008 US election), then I went ahead in international news and I lost 3-2 (I didn't know the guy that died today invented LSD), then the last topic was "finish the lyric of 80s 90s pop songs" and Annalies lost 3-1 so we lost 9-6 and came up as runner up.

After the trivia competition, I started solving homology questions, then I asked Amir to quiz me, which I think helped me a lot as he forced me to mention the little nitty gritty details. I feel super ready for the algebraic topology side of the test, there's no way I will fail that part of the past (unless the professor asks really weird questions, but they must be very weird and unorthodox for me to fail).
Giulio invited me to join him to dinner with Andrea. The plan was to have dinner and then go watch "Cassandra's Dream" the latest Woody Allen movie. We went grocery shopping first and he was quizzing me on topology stuff on the way. He asked weird, unorthodox questions, so it got me a little more prepared.
In Andrea's house (by the way, Andrea is a guy, it turns out that it is a male name in Italian, even though it is a female name in other languages) Giulio and Andrea were cooking and I was studying topology. I studied there for 75 minutes, brushing up on lots of stuff. I need to practice differential. I think I am ready, but there's a lot of stuff where I might stumble and I need to perfect that.

Natalia arrived for dinner and we started. We started with some risotto which I thought was delicious. Then we ate a salad that Giulio prepared that I liked a lot. I liked the combination of boiled egg inside a salad. After the salad, we had Tiramisu that Andrea prepared. At first I was quite outside the conversations, but then I got into them and it was very fun. Andrea has visited some cool places in Mexico and he speaks Spanish quite well. Natalia had some cool stories about her first times in the US. It was a very nice evening, the conversation was so fun that we ended up staying instead of going to the movie.

After Natalia left, Giulio, Andrea and I played some PlayStation 3. One game was very fun to watch, the game is called Burnout in Paradise, the idea is that you drive around a town very fast and use ramps to make crazy jumps. The fun part is trying to get into weird types of crashes and as fast as possible. It was quite fun. We later later played a bit of "Call of Duty" but I got a very bad headache from that.

Now I am home feeling very good and very ready for my test. It was a very fun day.

Went to Six Flags yesterday. The crew was Jared, Erin, Geoff, Naomi, Sergi, Giulio and me. On the way to Six Flags we stopped at Amherst to pick up Lizzie. Amherst was full of activity because they had some rally thing.
Six Flags was very fun, the Superman game is the same as the Titan in Dallas and the Goliath in Los Angeles which is my favorite roller coaster I have ever ridden, hence I am very happy that this Six Flags has that roller coaster. The roller coaster goes very fast (77 mph), has the biggest drop (it was the highest five years ago I don't know if this still holds true) and it is just plain fun. You don't feel dizzy or anything after riding it, the only thing you feel is joy. It is almost impossible to go through this roller coaster without laughing. What a ride. We rode it twice to end the day.
Something very cool of riding the Superman at 7pm is that we got to see the sunset, while the full Moon was visible on my left next to the river (the rollercoaster is right next to a wide river). When we rode it at night, the Full Moon was beautiful and it reflected in a truly memorable way in the river. I was very happy to be able to glimpse such beauty.
One funny thing that happened was that when we were about to ride the Superman, a couple of people were let in and nobody else got in one of the rides except this crew and a lot of people were taking pictures. We found out it was Lil Mama. The riders tried to go again without line and some people were mad and the police came and led them out. It was okay for them to ride without line as they performed at Six Flags. In any case it was funny hearing the mad woman behind me, while seeing many people happy to see this celebrity (I had no idea who she was).
Another memorable thing was that in the water ride, I was the one that got most wet because I was the receiver of both waterfalls in the ride.

The line to leave the parking lot was super mega long, probably something that would take at least an hour. Giulio then went against the flow and tried to go the opposite direction, we also heard some Six Flags guy scream "there's an exit in the back" so we knew it was a good idea. There was a part where to cross something, Giulio went through grass (this was very funny to experience) and we got to the back exit where no one was there. Instead of doing an hour in line, we just went against the flow and found an exit with no line in the back. It was awesome.

On the way home we were stopped by a cop because Giulio was going a little too fast, but the cop just gave us a warning. I guess he thought we looked like nice people. I wonder if I have been lucky with cops or if New England cops are nicer than Southern cops.

I got home at midnight feeling super tired and went almost straight to bed not even having energy to ride this post last night.

The Spring is finally here and the days are very beautiful. Happy times.

On Friday my friend Sid told me "Come to Boston now" "Why?" "There's nothing to do in Hanover, there's lots to do in Boston" "Okay", so I grabbed the next bus to Boston. I had extra clothes in my office (just in case I pay racquetball), so it all worked out. There was a snowstorm that day, so the bus took an hour longer to get to Boston than it usually takes.

I arrived at Boston and met my friend Sid. We went to a Vietnamese restaurant near Harvard Square. I had the Pad Thai (noodles with egg, chicken and other stuff), which I thought was very tasty. I am not sure, but I think it was the first time I have been in Boston while it was snowing.

On Saturday I got woken up by a call by my friend Karima telling me she couldn't meet on Saturday, but she could on Sunday, so we agreed to meet for breakfast, it's nice to be woken up by a friend I haven't seen in a while. Sid and I went went for breakfast to a famous place in Union Square. The place had breakfast with a Brazilian touch. There was a line to get in, but it went fast as we were only two. I ate oatmeal pancakes, eggs (sunny side up), home fries (delicious) and sausage. Really tasty breakfast.

After breakfast, we went to an erotic comics exhibition on Union Square. It was only one room showing some comics. Some of them were very weird, some of them were plain pornographic and some of them had interesting stories. It was interesting to check it out.

After the comics, we went to Park Street and saw the movie Jumper, we were in the mood to watch something that wasn't supposed to be great. I like watching "bad" movies once in a while. The movie was entertaining and I liked it very much. The movie wasn't special but it was a good way to spend my time. After the movie, we walked a bit around Park Street and then headed to Coolidge theater to watch the Oscar nominated shorts. Unfortunately it was sold out. The movie Diving Bell was also sold out, so we were left with watching Juno or not watching anything, given that we had both watched Juno and that watching movies in Boston is not cheap, we decided to not watch anything.

In front of the Coolidge theater there's a Mexican restaurant called Qdoba, which I've heard some friends express their love for it, so I went in and bought one taco to taste it. The taco wasn't good, but the salsa was good. After the taco, we headed to a crepe place. I had a nutella crepe and it was very good.

At night, we watched the Coen brothers movie The Man Who Wasn't There. The movie was great. I liked it a lot. I like how one little action can have such a big impact on so many people. Very interesting.

On Sunday morning, I met with Karima at Harvard's square and we went to have breakfast to a place on Kendall. It was nice to talk to Karima, I hadn't seen her in about a year. It looks like she will graduate in December, which is amazing considering she's my age and I am at least three years away from graduating. The day was beautiful, with a clear sky and nice weather, so it made it even more enjoyable.

I took the bus back home, TAed for five hours (three hours of Differential Equations, then two hours of Vector Calculus, covering for Dan).

After TAing, I watched the Oscars with people from the film society. There were delicious brownies, tasty chili and other food there. It was fun watching the Oscars with them, seeing the emotion of the people rooting for Marion, witnessing the hate for Diablo Cody and Juno (apparently, people that study screenwriting think that Juno is poorly written), sharing the joy of "Once" winning best song. I was very happy when Jon Stewart gave the girl from "Once" an opportunity to talk (after the music had stopped her from talking). Watching the performance of the song made me want to watch the movie again.

The night ended with me biking back home, which I hadn't done in a week. I was very happy to do so. Then I talked with my roommate Xia about movies, life in Austin (She studied there), China and other things.

I had a very good weekend and my spirits are very high right now.

Friday was a long day in a good way. Woke up at 8am to attend for the first tim in three weeks Functional Analysis class. I then did my grocery shopping and came back to my office two hours later to do some quick studying for my russian quiz. I did poorly on the quiz, but better than I expected. I have a lot of catching up to do.

At 4:30pm I took a bus to White River Junction (5 miles away) to take a bus at Montreal. The bus was slated for 5:30pm, but I left until 7pm. The snowstorm + traffic + President's Day Monday = Delay. I don't mind waiting, but in a case life this where the bus station has all this chaos surrounding it, it is a bit frustrating. I finally get in the bus and all the seats have backpacks because the bus comes from Boston and they got out to clean the bus or something. I go to the back and get stuck and can't sit anywhere. I am scared that I will be dropped out of the bus, but when the driver checks my ticket I tell him all the seats have backpacks and he tells me there are seats on the front. There was one seat.

From there to Burlington I talked to the girl next to me. It was a very fun conversation that went all over the place. She knows a lot about movies too, although I found that out by the time we got to Burlington. The bus ride was made much better by having someone fun to talk to.

From Burlington to Montreal I watched some Arrested Development episodes on my portable DVD. I had to return the DVD today and forgot, so I'll have to pay $1 tomorrow.

I arrived at Montreal at midnight. I call Sid to get the number of the place I am going to. I call Devin, he gives me directions and I walk there. It was a great walk since he lives right next to the streets that have a lot of bars and movie theaters, so the walk was very lively. Something which I don't get in Hanover, walking for 20 blocks and seeing restaurants, bars, people walking, dressed up girls, lights instead of trees. It was a very refreshing walk.
I got to Devin's place close to 1am and met him and his roommate Damon. Mikou, Sid's friend arrived about 30 minutes later. Sid's bus had been delayed and he would arrive at 4:30am.
Conversation with Devin, Damon and Mikou was very fun. Evan (roommate #3) and her friend Rebecca arrived later and it was very friendly and nice.
Sid arrived and jokes were flying all over the place.
I finally went to sleep at 5:30am.

Next day we left the apartment at about 2pm and ate a portuguese place. I liked how the cook served extra french fries for me after he saw that the assistant could have put some more fries. I am very grateful. It was a lot of food and the dessert was beyond delicious. It felt like paradise. There's nothing like dessert, I just love it. After that we went to a coffee shop had some coffee and played chess. We were there close to two hours.
We went back to the apartment and chatted some more while we were waiting for Devin's friend Jane. We talked politics, joked around and at about 10pm left to see the nightlife. We ended up going to "La Basquise" to have poutine. Apparently "La Basquise" has the best poutine in the world (not hard to do considering poutine is a Quebec dish). Poutine is delicious, is the greasy heaven of food. French fries surrounded by cheese and gravy plus toppings. I had poutine "Elvis" which adds sauteed mushrooms, pieces of beef and piment. Delicious.
We couldn't have a meal without dessert, so we went dessert hunting and there was a place in St. Laurent where the wife of the owner makes a delicious cheesecake (have I used the word delicious enough in this post?).

Walking in the snow was refreshing.

Went to bed a bit after 3am, woke up at 10:30am and took the 11:45am bus. Mikou drove me and Sid to the bus station. It was interesting seeing someone drive while it was snowing.

I am very glad of the friendly and great people I met this weekend and of seeing my good friend Sid again. It was a really fun weekend just full of interesting conversations and making new friends. Devin is a really great guy who seems like a very nice person. Mikou is also very funny and great to hang around with. I also had some interesting conversations with Jane who was very interested in learning more about Chiapas. Spending time with Sid = having a great time.

On the bus I read a couple of chapters in a book about Fermat numbers. Pretty cool stuff.

I am back in Hanover and re-energized for classes.