Long time there hasn’t been any activity in this blog. The main reason for that is that Estefania and I had been in Germany for about a month. Anyway, there have been some major changes: I got me an own apartment. It’s in walking range of the baseball stadium. So, I might get a chance to visit a local baseball game now and then.

Basically searching an apartment in Obregon seems to be fairly easy. First of all, there are many places that rent apartments. Secondly, a renting-contract is not that common. Meaning you can move in and out anytime. I guess this has some hidden problems as well.

Let’s look at my case for example. My landlord doesn’t and didn’t want to have contact with me. At first he also refused to give me a receipt. But after some talking he agreed to sign a receipt once I print one out by my self and hand it to him.
I’m not even sure; that if there would be problems with the landlord the paper would help in anyway getting my safety deposit back. However, I’ll try to get him to sign a paper. So, I can sleep better at night and knowing that in problems at least I can prove that I’ve paid already.

Back to the actually topic.

When you look for an apartment or a room you can choose to stay with a family, which will let you stay inside of their house, cook and wash for you. Or you can look for an own place, it all just depends on what you like more. Especially near ITSON (the biggest university in Cd. Obregon) there are many places that rent rooms to students. You can spot those houses easily, because they often have signs in front of the house saying that they help students.

The second day is over and I have to say that I sleep very well in my new bed.

In case anyone would like to have some more information on how to find an apartment just drop me a comment and I would me more than happy to help you.

To answer this question simple and easy. It’s behind those 4 lanes of freeway – or something similar. And yes, I have to cross them every day to take my bus home.

Once, i don’t forget my camera I’ll make more pictures (of ITESCA, and it’s surroundings)

Howevery, that’s it for now!

Seeing the world through the eyes of Estefania and Thomas

On Saturday it was time, me and my ‘cultura yaqui’ class went out on a school trip to explore the wide open fields of the Sonora desert and visit 7 of 8 big Yaqui villages.

The villages of the tribe Yaqui
The first stop on our list was the original Cocorit. It’s nothing like I expected. I went with an expectation in the trip that the villages would have something in common with the town Cocorit, which I met before. However, they are not even close to be similar. The original Cocorit, doesn’t has any ‘real’ roads. Not a too big population. In a few words it’s small… The main part of every village is build by a church an it belonging graveyard, such as the ‘party ground’.
The main Yaqui villages are: Cócorit, Bácum, Vícam, Tórim, Pótam, Rahun, Huírivis, and Béleb.

Their territory has an extension of 485,235 hectares in the municipalities of Guaymas, Bacum, Obregon and Empalme. This territory has three different zones: the mountain range (Bacatete sierra), the coastal area (the towns of Guasimas and Bahia de Lobos) and the valley.

The church
The most important part in any of those villages and also in Cocorit is the church. Remember the Yaquis adapted part of the catholic church into their lifestyle and religion. The most interesting thing is that the churches are always build ‘far’ away from the rest of the town. The reason for this is first of all the graveyards are located in front or next of the church and secondly, when the Yaquis make one of they big parties not the entire town gets annoyed. The parties get advertised in radio, newspaper and are fairly known.

The churches it self are kept simple, this is most likely do to the fact that all of those villages are fairly poor. By simple I mean they have unlike other churches I visited and saw in my life no colorful windows. But rather kept simple and not in some Gothic style for example. Apparently we didn’t have time or were not allowed to enter in any of those churches. Something that I regret…

A few more words to the graveyard: while traveling to all those graveyards one thing had they all in common: colorful flowers, mostly made out paper, so they last longer in the heat. And secondly white colored grave stones. This is something completely different then in Germany there you’ll see mostly marble stones in dark colors.

The religious practices of the Yaquis are a mixture of Indian and Catholic elements. An important part is played in their social structure by various “fraternities”, particularly that of the magicians and soothsayers, who on the one hand are medicine-men able to drive out evil spirits and on the other take part in religious festivals. Most social and religious rites involve dances, the best known of which is the Stag Dance (”danza del venado”). To the Yaqui and the related Mayo tribe the stag is sacred as the incantation of the forces of Good.

Health – meeting a wonder healer
While traveling down the road we encountered a site, that i would have never imagined to find. While traveling to Bicam, we came by a house of a so called: ‘Curandera’. Those ‘doctors, supposed to heal diseases and pain by giving massages or praying for the person in pain.
And in front of the house we’re over 20 cars with people waiting for their appointment – she even has clients out of the USA.

Later on, we got to experience that feeling of being health by massages on our own bodies. If it really works is something that i cant answer it this point. But it’s definitely a very interesting experience and culture.

While I got my massages, I was thinking: I must be the first German lying in this bed. Wrong, as the woman explained. There was a retired German professor living among the Yaquis and learning their way of life. I guess you never can be the first in anything

Probably the best way to describe the medicine is by shouting: ‘homeopathic’.

The people, the Yaqui
Talking about people and their way they life is probably nothing you should do, so we’ll keep it rather short.
The people, the tribe Yaqui are rather conservative when it comes to meet new people, at least that’s the feeling what I got. While my group was talking to them. The reason for that is probably that the older generation of Yaqui’s has seen a lot and went through some hard troubles. Remember the last fight or tiny revolution is not even 100 years back.

The children learn Yaqui just like Spanish in school. Eventhough most of the people we’ve talked to prefer Yaqui, at least as long as their under themselfs.

Kova head
Chonim hair
Yeka nose
Kumsakam eyebrows
Puusim eyes
Hoopem cheeks
Chau chin
Teeni mouth
Wok pusiam toes

Conclusion
Having met most of the Yaqui villages last week and having met the villages of the mayos. I think it wouldn’t be a wrong conclusion to say that those to tribes life pretty equal.
Both of them have roads out of stones, have trees for shade and have tiny stores selling coke. The mayor difference is most just their believe…

more pictures

here!

Glossary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaqui
http://www.pascuayaqui-nsn.gov/history_and_culture/language/index.shtml

It got a bit quite over the last few weeks in this log. There are many reasons for that one is that I switched to Ubuntu, and haven’t found a possibility to sync my cell-phone, on which I write a big part. There’s suppose to be a program, but this is just giving me head-aces, because it’ doesn’t let me fix the USB driver – or something similar. The internet was to slow till now to download a virtual-machine-software, but I guess with that I can use Windows to finally sync again – what a bother!

Did something else happen in my life so far? No, not really, but it is one month since I was at the migration, and therefore really looking forward to hear what they have to say and if my migration was successful.

My Spanish is slowly improving. Yes, till now I have never mentioned: that I have huge problems with learning the language. The big problem is that many, if not everybody wants to talk in English to me. My host-family doesn’t make any excuses either. English, English everywhere I look. D’oh, even the TV keeps on showing shows in English. What a Devilish circle.

I’ve not really encountered anything more. Except maybe, doing homework and enjoying the sun. Yep, we still have super, duper weather here in Ciudad Obregon. However, I managed it never to go to university in shorts. Yay, me!But it’s only fair to mention, that we had a couple of days on which I put on a sweater, at least till I arrived at school.

I would like to close this post with a simple, but important question. Why does Estefania never write anything in this Blog?

Best regards

Thomas

Yay, to me and everyone else who has just finished their first exam. There where still plenty of language problems, but luckily most of the test was about “the table of truth”, haeee. I’m not really sure if you translate it like that, but doesn’t matter.

Well, off i go to the next class, this time spanish. That’s going to become a though one! How was the pluar form of crisis? It’s crisis, because it’s a two syllable noun that ends in a -s preceeded by an unstressed vowel.



My learning Sheet for the human/ male body.

Till then and wish me good luck.

P.S. To the network department in my school, if you block certain websites, you should also block http-proxy pages…

P.S. Fannie good luck with your tests, I know that you haven’t had a lot of time to practice, because of my annoying questions about the spanish grammar.

I Think we all agree that I haven’t posted a lot over the last few weeks. The reason for that is – mostly – the weather and school. University has consumed a lot of my time and the weather makes me tired -really early.

So, yeah some quite funny things have happened in my first weeks of school. Since I’m still very limited to speak and understand Spanish, there were some major obstacles for me.
One day after school I wanted to ride with the bus home. For those that aren’t familiar with the bus system in Obregon, each time you enter into a bus you have to pay 5 pesos ( 3 pesos, if you have a special card) into a machine doesn’t return any change or accept bills.
There I was, not having enough change in the pocket – only 4,50$ pesos, exactly 50 cents missing.

D’oh.

What would you do, if you don’t know how to ask for change and there is a cloth store right next to the bus station? Yes, you enter into the cloth store and search for a piece of cloth, which price ends with a 9. Why nine? So you get at least one peso of change.

That’s exactly what I did. I’ve walked the rows up and down, up and down, till I found a nice looking shirt – that has a super price of 99$ pesos. Jackpot problem solved, but which size do I need. Just guess that’s what I thought, and did. Buying the shirt took 30 minutes, but it got me home and i once again noticed that without spanish you can’t survive in Obregon

The next day I noticed that on the other side of the street was an OXXO store, where I could have bought me a bottle of water for 4 pesos and it would have worked wonders too.
That’s it. Hope I have time to write something more and finish the new Web-design soon, but right now the Spanish adjectives want to have some alone time.

5 a.m. the alarm clock rings. 20 minutes later we’re downstairs eating breakfast. Again 20 minutes later we’re on the way to the bus.  Just a second later and we would have missed it, what a lucky day.

Just a felt century later we arrived in ITESCA. Not a minute too late or too early, because class should began in just two minutes more – so we hurried. But nothing, even half an hour later no teacher arrived. On my question if it was normal I just got an answer telling me: “It’s the first day, things like that happen. Don’t worry.”

Now it’s the second day and the same has happened over again, I’m slowly staring to wonder if that class even exists or if it’s was just ‘invented’ to get us out of bed early. Anyway, today I’ve learned; and used my time to wisely practice a bit my Spanish, hoping that this way my Spanish teacher won’t be to disappointed when I have my first lesson with her on Wednesday, or should I say miércoles.

I guess now it’s time to say something about the positive impressions I got from this school.

The computer room seems up-to-date and it doesn’t seem that there is a lack of computers either. We got a tiny but clean looking cafeteria. And the best of all is that I get everyday one hour of private Spanish lessons – What more do you want!

Best wishes and good night

Thomas

Wuhhaa, you get your stuff together before you go to a different country, thinking nothing can be worse bureaucratic then Germany. But once you arrive to your destination you start to think…

Exactly that’s what happened to me right now. All of a sudden it feels like that Mexico was wearing a pretty mask and is taking it off – slowly – very slowly. Yesterday I’ve got a new letter from my University telling me that I most likely need to register at the “National Register of Foreigners”. Never heard of that before, but they were right, in my visa it says on the first page:
” … El titular debera dar aviso al Registro Nacional de Extranjeros, dentro de los 30 dias posteriors a su internacion al pais…”
The only problem is that I don’t speak Spanish and that nobody in the Embassy has told me, even after I asked, if I need go to some office in Mexico. But how did we always get told in school: “stupidity doesn’t safe from punishment”.
Does Obregon have such an office? No they don’t. If you want to register you either need to travel 4 hours to Hermosillo or two hours down to Guaymas. Smart as we’re, we will travel down to Guaymas spending – most likely – all day there.
Something very important is also that you need to be able to speak Spanish, because they don’t speak English.

At very last I want to share the list of the things that I need to bring to their office:

• Subjects which I’ll be taking
• Proof that I’ve paid my Semester fee – luckily I did that this morning
• Acceptance letter from ITESCA
• Passport
• Passport copy
• 6 picture of right side
• 6 picture of front
• Letter by the school telling me to register at the ‘National Register of Foreigners’. If it’s mandatory why do I need a letter?

• Letter saying that someone pays 500 Euros per month. If I have a student visa then this was already asked and approved by the Mexican embassy / Government.
• Student Visa
• Letter from the place where I life ( Light or water bill)

Off we go to take some pretty, pretty pictures.

Adios and bye
Thomas and Estefania.

Just so that I don’t disappoint anyone this is just a reference for people, especially for people out of the European Union, which apply for a Mexican student visa. The visa is free – no application fees or any other costs besides the price you pay for making 4 pictures. It’s much easier than applying for an American visa – that’s for sure!

My nationality is German and it took about 2 weeks to apply and get it handed out to me. For other countries that might be different, I believe to have heard that for Russians or Chinese it takes longer up to 4 month.

You can acquire the visa at every embassy and consulate. But bear in mind, that you need to do it in the closest one to your home. If you live in ‘Hessen Germany’ Frankfurt am Main will be the place you want to go.

Now to my story and how I got my visa.

I had a bit of telephone contact with the embassy in Frankfurt, which was difficult because their working hours aren’t the friendliest ones (Monday till Friday from 9am – 1pm). While talking with them on the phone they’ve told me that I only can get a visa when I have a written letter from my university that says that I’m a fully accepted student. A letter that says that I’m a guest hearer wouldn’t be enough.

This was an important fact for me. Before the phone call I was still looking for a guest seat, that all changed after the call obviously. ‘How I found my university’ can you read in an earlier post of me.

To the other problems I had already came on top that the official website of the Mexican embassy in Germany was down, so that I wasn’t able to get the proper forms. Luckily I was able to get them faxed to me by a helpful employee for the embassy. The forms weren’t too complicated to fill out it basically just asked for normal and reasonable information:

“Will you visit the northern border of Mexico? Will you visit the southern border of Mexico? Where will land or enter the country? What are you intentions (student, worker, employee)? Have you ever had a visa before? Was your last visa accepted? ” The questions ‘where will you enter the country’ supposes that you bought a ticket before your apply for a visa. Or am I mistaken? I found that a bit weird, but OK.

What wondered me the most is that they didn’t want an address were I’ll be staying. On the paper it said further that I need to have a bank recipe that ensures that I’m having at least 500$ at a monthly basis – I guess they just want to make sure I don’t starve in Mexico or become a bum. All the paper work was filled out pretty quickly just took about 10 minutes. I think the hardest part of it all was just getting the proper papers from the embassy.

There I was, all happy and smiling, in the train to the embassy with all my papers:

• Appliance letter
• Passport
• Bank recipe
• 2 Photos

It took just 30 minutes for me to arrive in Frankfurt and luckily there was a train station next to the embassy. But it’s not like I found it immediately, oh no I searched for approximately 20 minutes till I saw that little sign saying: “Mexican Embassy”.

At least there weren’t too many people in the embassy, just an hectic Russian that was anxious to cut me in line. When it was my time to get to the counter the woman was very friendly and she accepted my papers – except my bank recipe. She told me that she would prefer a letter signed letter from my dad with something similar like that on it:

” With this letter I’m assuring that my son Thomas will be getting 500$ each month from me. Dad”

I just thought: “great I made the entire journey for nothing”. But at least they kept my papers and passport and promised that I just need to send them this letter and they proceed from there. The same day my dad faxed them the letter. So we called them again the next day but then they told me that this wasn’t enough they also wanted a copy from my dad’s passport. Another day was lost. Finally at the third day they seemed to be happy and said they process it now. This was the start of just waiting and hoping that everything will turn out good. There are all those myth that Mexicans are lazy and it usually takes them longer till they get something done, but not this time. After the 10^th working day has passed I’ve called them and asked whether they got my visa done and they said ‘yes, you can come and pick it up.’

Score! About 2 hours later I was at their office and standing in line for picking it up. I got all nervous because the person who wanted to hand me the visa out didn’t find it at first – I guess he mixed up my last name, well that happens to a lot of people. Once he found it he wanted me to put one finger print and a signature in a booklet – or my student visa. Yes, the Mexican visa is an extra booklet with lots and lots of pages where you can put lots and lots of information… Next to the booklet he also handed me my Passport back, they also put a new sticker in it, saying that I’m a having a visa. The employee also told me that I need to carry with those two items (visa and booklet) the entire time while traveling around Mexico.

That was it basically. Hopefully this will help someone someday.

Thomas

Ps.: The student visa allows you to leave the county and entering it again. Oh, and if anyone wants or needs the forms i’ll be happy to send them to you!

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