LUCHAAAAAA LIBRE!!!!

The first week of classes went well. I’m taking four classes and still hunting an internship. I’ll keep you posted. I’m only taking one class in English and my professor for Org Behavior is Pakistani with a very thick accent. I can hardly understand him and English is my first language. I feel terrible for the Mexican students trying to practice their English. One of my other professors for IBUS is Polish but is Mexican citizen because she has had residence here for 17 years. Tec is a superior institution and the coursework is very rigorous. Each week in most of my classes I have to take a departmental test: 5 minutes five questions, which is on material in the books; so there is not really any room to slack off. The upside is that that I have a 3-day weekend because I don’t have class on Friday’s.

Since it was just the first week and my internship hasn’t started, I figured I had another week of going out so it started Tuesday night where I headed with my Brazilian friends to “La Cabana” a chic Latin lounge with a live trio playing acoustic cover songs. The place in the neighborhood called San Pedro. This is the richest neighborhood in Monterrey, if not all of Mexico. All the industrial giants have their homes here: the Zambranos of Cemex and Garza Sadas who own the Cuauhtémoc brewery and Vitro glass. However, Monterrey has changed its role from being purely industrial to a hub of commerce that funnels foreign investments from the US and Canada thanks to NAFTA. Now many investment banks, law firms, consulting agencies, and other financial services firms have offices or are building their headquarters here. Its funny from a city development standard because what you would imagine to be “downtown” with skyscrapers and offices in the center of the city is actually on the outskirts. The rest of the week consisted of finalizing immigration by day and going to classes and going out at night. Thursday was Alebrije, Friday was San Pedro Antigua and Saturday was…interesting. Earlier that day we all planned to go to a corrido de toros, but it turns out that after 45 minutes of driving around and finding 2 deserted bullrings, we found out that the actual one was closer to Saltillo and a solid hour away from the city. We got our a*ses handed to us by the cabdriver because I figure he knew more than one plaza de toros existed. We were down but not out so we headed to the MARCO contemporary art musem for a while and walked around downtown. Of course some clowns putting on a show pulled me into the bullring and made sport of me for a good 20 minutes. Later that night I went with my roomie Sergio from Tabasco and got thugged out to head to “The Loft,” a hip hop club. After dropping it like it was hot, we called it a night and headed back to campus. But the prime event of the weekend was of course the LUUUCHA LIBRE! In my opinion, everybody should visit Mecca once regardless of your religion and also see a Mexican wrestling match. It’s a spectacle like no other. There’s always the good guys and the bad guys in cheesy outfits and historic rivalries. The luchadores are like heroes to the kids here. Before the match started, like 100 kids ran into the ring and started wailing and womping on eachother. It was quite a site. I can’t really describe the matches so just enjoy the pics and if you want I’ll send you a video of the pandemonium. Stay tuned next week!
-Gerado