Hopefully, many people will noticed that we didn’t post anything over the past few weeks. It’s because none of us was actually on a computer. Yes, for the people that know me (Thomas) this might be a surprise, but I can live without a computer - at least for two weeks.

In this time our vacation took us to a couple of small village. One is actually located just two hours away from Obregon and is  called ‘la Esquina’. This city is an about 20 houses large and is home mostly to an ethnic group called the ‘mayo’.

While driving down from Obregon Sonora to that village, I saw the first time that people are actually willing to make their car dirty to save 30$ pesos. They did that by getting off the highway and driving on a mud-road, where you have to pay 10$ pesos when you enter and leave it. But this way you’re able to bypass the highway fee of 50$ pesos. When we drove the road down the first time it had rained before, so that there was mud and water everywhere - quite exciting.  To be honest, the most interesting fact was that even big trucks drive this part of the road down.

About an hour later, we to the last real road and then entered to a similar mud-road, that I’ve talked about above, only this time it was free. And there was luckily not too much mud. But because of the condition of the road you just couldn’t drive fast. I guess my Mitsubishi Colt from Germany would have long died, given up and totally broke.

There finally, the village was at sight. Village? - Not really. I would call it more mud and a couple of houses.  Actually while we were in the city it has rained - just a bit. But it was enough to soften the mud and let me step into it so that my entire shoes were covered in, a tasty looking, soil.

Since, there aren’t any hotels in the village; we’ve stayed with a family member of Estefania, which does her social service there as a doctor. It was most likely the only house in the village with an air condition.

And it was good to have it, since the weather wasn’t really gentile to us - for me it was hell outside. Walking was a pain and sitting too. Every little bit of shade felt like a cold winter - refreshing. Sadly there wasn’t a lot of it.

The weirdest thing that ever happened to me in my entire time in Mexico probably happened there. Because all the ‘little children’ - all children of the village. Seemed never ever to seen a person that actually has a different eye color then brown. And therefore, as soon as we left the house, they were almost all the time around us - giggling or showing their stuff to us (me) asking, if in Germany we listen to that music too, if we dance like that …  They also invited us to play with them at their ‘playground’, which is actually a crop field. But just after one game of ‘catch’ I was tired of the sun, full of sweat and looking for a bed. Really amazing was to see that they were all walking without shoes and still were able to run as fast as us over stones, plants, earth and more stones. I guess: you can get used to everything.

I got many new impressions about Mexico. By that I mean actually seeing the poorer side of it - the reason it’s considered a third world country.  While taking a shower in the night, children fingers kept on knocking on the window, pushing it slightly aside. After we were done showering we actually went outside to see what happened and there it was: chairs standing in front of the window - so that those tiny kids were able to look inside. Now, we don’t know what they’ve seen - and why they wanted to see it. But fact is we felt uncomfortable.

The uncomfortable-meter changed to the worst. When a couple of minutes later, there was a knocking on the door. We opened  the door; there was a woman -looking all worried- telling us that her daughter was stung by a scorpion in the hand and she slowly was losing the ability to move her left side, and that’s why she wanted to see the doctor. The problem was that the doctor wasn’t in the house at the time so that the poor girl hat to wait about 30 minutes in the waiting room - slowly losing her senses. Luckily the doctor came back before it was too late and gave her some antidote, so that the little girl was fit again - without having anymore pain.

Enough I thought, I don’t want to be surrounded by scorpions. Let’s go! But did going away down to Nayarit really help? NO!

We’ll, or rather me, will write about that later, as soon as I get my mobile internet on my cell phone to work.

Greetings your Thomas.

Written and posted on my HTC wizard!

Let’s begin. To be honest I don’t have a lot of information about my new university yet. Reason for that is once my language barrier and secondly that they seem to have holidays already. As soon as I arrive I’ll write something more for example the number of their students, what they offer, how the transportation system is and much more.
Anyway, for now we have to life with the little information we got. The full name of the university is: Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Cajeme. It’s located a bit outside of Ciudad Obregon Sonora, but I heard that there is a Wal-Mart close to it. So that’s definitely going to be a plus, this way I’ll be able to buy me always new notebooks, socks, shirts, shoes, cloth or food when I lose mine on the bus. To get a little idea of what it looks like I attached a photo of Google maps. The university doesn’t look too big - but still very pretty true? They offer a variety of subjects: ranging from tourism to software development.

How did I find the university?

That was easier than I thought. Since I didn’t study already at a university I also couldn’t relay on partner universities. Meaning it was all up to me, I tackled that problem all alone. Ok, to my excuse: I know a few people in Obregon Sonora and they were at least able to give me some names of the universities. Yes, Ciudad Obregon has more than just one University - there should be about four. All of whom claim to accept international students, at least if you trust this website: http://gotosonora.com/education-sonora.htm.

Like I said earlier I have friends in Obregon which told me that ITSON would be a great university. So I had a couple of weeks contact with ITSON either by phone or email. But after weeks of talking it soon got clear that they most likely couldn’t offer me anything because there just weren’t enough interested students.  After that I had a bit of contact with private school, they were quick in answering and they got a lot of experience with international students, the biggest downside was the price of over 5000$ usd. per semester.

That’s why I kept on searching and then - by a lucky - convenience I saw that there was another university listed on the Webpage: ITESCA. My last hope and it worked. They immediately were able to talk to me in English and didn’t keep me in a long waiting line unlike others. Just a few hours after my first call  and an email later I got the administrator for the students on the phone. He told me in a few words that he would be also interested on having - another - international student. And that they could offer me most likely something like a big buddy program.

Maybe you guys still know it from Junior High or Elementary school. Basically it’s a person that stands by your side and helps you with administrative, language barriers, homework and any other kind of help - just like a big brother should be, huh.

He then transferred me to a mate of him. She told and cleared some of the details with me. Since ITESCA, she said, is a public school the fees are much lower even for foreign students, approximately 500$ usd.  per Semester, plus about 100$ for a Spanish course). She also send me a few pdfs with the information of my courses - the only problem was that they were in Spanish. Luckily the computer-stuff words are similar in German, English and Spanish. So, that I understood most of it even without a proper translation. That’s the stand I have for now.

Well, just one more thing, there seems to be a club for ‘free software’, basically a bunch of Linux geeks, at this school. http://www.linuxgli.org/. I’ve talked to one of them, he seemed pretty nice. He also told me that they sometimes make LAN parties in school. So, for all you addicted computer-players that’s the right club for you.

I found an English speaking person at every university I’ve called except here: http://www.ulsa-noroeste.edu.mx/, because of the looks of it they weren’t capable to transfer me to the right person. And a phone number I got from them of a website was wrong, so that I kept on calling a private household with a pretty confused Mexican mother on the phone.  I actually called the poor woman twice, because I thought at first I dialed the wrong number.  That was basically the talk I had with her: “Hello, do you speak english? Habla  espaniol?  - “No habla  ingles, habla espaniol?” - “*disappointed me* Noo, perdon” ( two minutes later the same thing all over).

If anyone should ever get interested and want some information about this university, and I shouldn’t have posted it already on the website, let me know I’ll do my best to collect them for you. This only includes information about this subject and not your newest math homeworks!  It’s just about 22 days till I will stand in front of the university and beg for more information and a guided tour through their holy walls.

So long Thomas