weeeeeeeee

Well, since my short absence has upset my blog so much that it felt the need to leave a comment on my last post, I guess I better get back to it! Although you're tired of hearing it: it's been an insane couple of weeks. 

I finished my last couple of papers/projects and, despite an expensive printing crisis that led to shedding tears in public right before my major presentation, everything else went just fine. My grades were good, and I graduated! It was kind of an absurd graduation considering it was nearly 3 hours long and I was 10th out of 800+ (majority were undergrads that came out of nowhere - I thought St. Edward's was small??). 

Obligatory diploma picture

I realized a difference between undergrads and grads too...at our graduation from Rhodes, we were 1) SO EXCITED about being done and 2) emotional about the end of school and leaving our friends. But this time, it was all sweet relief. I'd guess 75% of us all have full-time jobs, families, and fully developed lives that will continue on just the same way they have been going for the last 2-4 years of dedication to the graduate programs, except NOW we all get to actually fully envelop ourselves in those lives. It's an awesome, awesome thing!

So in the past week, we also put the house on the market, which meant that after graduation I got to come home and do a deep-clean for 5 hours! Yay! But now that the house is being shown, at least that part is complete. 

The next day, we got treated to the cutest shower ever by our Austin friends! I don't think any of us have yet accepted that that was our first real adult party. WE. ARE. STILL. KIDS. But anyway, it was a lovely afternoon, we felt so blessed by our friends, and we overstayed our welcome at 403 B, which proves that the party was successful :)

Small snapshot that doesn't do the scene justice!

Basically everyone I talk to these days asks what kind of wedding stuff we're taking care of, now that we're in the final countdown. Here's how every day shapes up:

10:00 a.m. I wake up and start emailing vendors, friends, etc. about wedding stuff.

12:00 p.m. We start running errands.

8:00 p.m. Stores close. 

9:00 p.m. Forage for food.

10:30 p.m. Return home, pour a fat glass of wine, and go back to emailing vendors, friends, etc. while watching TV.

2:00 a.m. Sleep.

In terms of what we're actually doing on the errands / in those emails, I don't know how accurately it compares to other people's weddings because our venue is just an open space that doesn't really do anything for us. So we're bringing in all lighting, rentals, vendors, etc. Which means that Brian and I have been to Hobby Lobby and Michael's 3 times this week. (I've offered to reattach his testacles when this is all done). 

On that note, it's 2:00 a.m. Please consult my schedule until further notice. 

living at the coffee shop

My first official week of unemployment has been nothing at all like you would expect! In all fairness, I did schedule my final day for last Friday specifically because I wanted to have this week free for finishing up school, but holy crapshnozzle did I not expect to be this busy! I have worked all day, every day, and several nights until well after 1 a.m. Oh except for Wedding Wednesday, when I had a disastrous 3-hour hair/makeup trial and then spent the next 2 hours ripping our "suit guy" a  new one when I found out that our groomsmen received purple-striped suits with bright-purple-backed vests...i.e. not the ones we ordered. I guess we should've known when one of the groomsmen told Brian that he thought the suits were "pimp." Next time, we'll pay more attention to diction...

Thank Jehovah my major capstone class ends tomorrow, but right now that gives me next-to-no-comfort! I've dedicated the whole week to editing and revising our class' business plan (fortunately, there were some other people on board helping with this) and am burning copies of it for our client as we speak. I still can't rest until 1) It's successfully printed and bound, 2) Our final group meeting is over, and 3) We deliver our final presentation tomorrow. Gross. I still have a paper, presentation, and final exam due for my other class on Tuesday, but I'm allowing myself tomorrow afternoon for a much-needed break! Then back to crunching on Sun-Tues, then........drumroll......FINITO!

Dias Cinco y Seis

Thursday was productive in the morning because we (students) staged a small coup and organized ourselves outside of our professor's earshot. Then, we took a break from that whole hour of hard work and went on a midday cruise around the lake, cervezas on deck. Even though it was awesome to get some sun, personal dynamics were starting to flair and the passive aggressiveness between girls was palpable - arriba! We saw a black Christ in a church, had an enormous lunch that cost a whopping $5, and then I managed to slip in a quick siesta before dinner. Our client, Alejandro, had us all to his house, which was such an interesting place and had a fantastic view of the sun setting behind the mountains. His sweet mother Alma practiced her English by giving us a demonstration on how to make several kinds of salsa, and I got to taste the best green mole I've ever had in my life (the only green mole, to clarify, but still...).

Alejandro's adorable kitchen

Friday BIRTHDAY DAY started nice and late (10 a.m.!) with a few wrap-up meetings and then a quick trip to the artist's market, where I bought a handmade, handpainted chip & dip...a true sign that I am officially 27 years old. 

In the afternoon, we got to hear from some of the local nonprofits that will be our client's first clients, which was rather uplifting. It's nice to know that hopefully the work we do will ultimately help these people and their organizations. They are so grateful for anything...it reminded me how much I really do want to work in nonprofit consulting, if that's where my intended purpose is. It made for an intrinsically soothing birthday afternoon. We had a farewell dinner, during which I ate and drank for the first time without managing stomach cramps at the same time--success! After practicing some salsa dancing with our 60-year-old waiter, we headed back to the hotel for a "debriefing" that the Dean called, which turned into a birthday serenade from a 12-piece Mexican band that our hotel owners had hired!!! What a fantastic birthday surprise! Ringing in the big 2-7 with a local band while sipping tequila was definitely the way to go.

As many as I could capture in one shot!

A few of us ended up at a local discoteque/bar, which was fun until the owner of the bar tried to force us to go to his house and even tried to make our taxi leave us. Why do all good things in Mexico end with someone trying to rape you? Excuse me while I add that to the list of things I will never tell my mother. 

All in all, I guess the trip was a success. As a few of us got to know each other better in the week, the little excursions were a lot more fun, but we all were pretty sick of the food (hello, I just reversed 6 weeks of working out) and the claws in the group were starting to come out, so it ended just in time. We did feel like we could've done more work down there, but I won't even get into how frustrating THAT concept is. However, my roommate situation worked out well, and I recovered from the turista, and I got to work on my Spanish, and I had a few truly unforgettable experiences, so I guess that's what it's all about, right?

Dia Cuatro

Wednesday shaped up to be a wonderful day. First of all, I was feeling in great shape and had fully rebounded. Second of all, it was ADVENTURE DAY! Which meant no work whatsoever, and isn't that why we came down here? To screw around? 

A little known fact about Valle de Bravo (where we are) is that it is the spot where monarch butterflies spend the winter from November to March before beginning their migration back up through the U.S. and Canada. The next year, a different generation of butterflies return to this same spot in the mountains, even though they aren't guided by any older butterflies who already know the way. One of life's little mysteries. 

For our ADVENTURE DAY our whole group went up the mountain by taxi and then transferred to horses, which led us about 45 minutes further up the steep hill. Each of us had a Mexican guide (who spoke no English) walking with us to make sure our horse was tame, but I looked back and Fermin had left me ("mi corazon!") so Palomo the white stallion and I were on our own. As we moved higher up the mountain, the air got colder (we are already well over a mile high) and we started to see a few monarchs here and there. Nothing to write home about though. Finally they told us to stop talking, and we walked through a clearing and saw this:

The video is a little bumpy and sort of crappy in general but just focus on orange...wherever there's orange, there's one (or 50) monarchs.

For those of you that know about my thing with animals in multiples, I was a little worried at first that I would get grossed out by thousands of butterflies. However, I'm not sure how well the video conveys it, but this was by far one of the most amazing things I've seen in years. I actually even teared up (big surprise right?)...it was like we'd been transported to magical forest. I'd wager to say it was worth the entire effort that it took to get down here, to this city, to that mountain, to that clearing. Incredible!!!

Dia Tres

I fear this may be a rather dull post but in the spirit of tradition, I thought I might as well keep up the day-by-day play-by-play!

I'm feeling much better today, or was, rather, until dinnertime when my body began to rebel again. No big deal, just time to call it quits for the day. We spent the morning working in small groups on our business plan, thus we got a taste of the frustration that will ensue for the rest of the semester. I had a lovely afternoon shopping and enjoying adult beverages on the veranda. I'm getting to know a few of the girls better, although personalities are beginning to shine so it'll be interesting to see how the dynamics unfold this week. We took a stop by the farmacia looking for some of the prescriptions that you don't get in los estados unidos, but no such luck. Apparently we need to go somewhere much shadier and much further from the Catholic church.

Dia Dos

Hola, soy una turista con turista!

My blog from yesterday about all that crazy food is pretty funny now that I spent all night vomiting and dijarring! (It's okay, let's just get it all out there.) Circa 3:45 a.m., Montezuma began taking out his revenge on my stomach and continued doing so for the next 4 hours...which at one point, required me to shove one of my roommates away from the toilet so I could vom. Classy, I know. 

I'm not really sure what caused it...there are oh-so-many possibilities. Perhaps because every spice and ingredient here is totally foreign to my body and I ingested every last one of them yesterday? Or it could be the tap water (which I brushed my teeth with....because they said it was okay), or the ice cubes I had in my water glass. Oh or the grasshoppers. Or the rest of the foul food we had at dinner. The options are endless! I got up briefly at 11 and tried to join the group but was only there 5 minutes before I had to run out (out of fear of projectiling on our client); then I was so dizzy I had to crash at the bottom of the stairs where my professor found me all pathetic-like. Oh, the joys.

Montezuma, my new BFF

Our dean also got sick with the same thing at about the same time, so we were comparing notes on what we ate but came up with nothing solid. Another girl here has an extreme allergy to nuts and accidentally bit into something made with almonds, so she was also in bed all day (I'm talking, an allergy so bad that on the plane they had to request that no one even open a bag of nuts). So the three of us were down for the count, and it was an unfortunate day to feel terrible because we had a free afternoon and everyone went and explored the town and went paragliding too! Pssssh.

Everyone in our class has been super caring: a few went and got me food, others got medicine, and so on. I did feel pretty sorry for myself at the end of the day because I just wanted Brian to come bring me something (poor meeeeeeee) but now I'm just ready to crash and wake up and feel great. I finally ate a granola bar just now and my stomach doesn't feel like a mariachi band is practicing inside it, so I'm going to take a hot shower and get in bed for the night. Oh, and the hotel owner so kindly recommended a movie for me called Lust, Caution that I can watch in bed. Awkward. But it will make the time pass and manana will be a new dia. Some of the girls talked a masseuse into coming to the hotel tomorrow afternoon, which I am super excited about, because my back is killing me and in general my whole body is tense. So here's to a better day tomorrow!

P.S. Guess who will not be hearing about today's misadventure? Mi madre.

Dia Uno

I imagine trying to fill everyone in on my little trippy-poo to Mexico might be a little daunting so THANK YOU BLOGOSPHERE for making my life easier!

Day 1 in Valle de Bravo: success!

Notables from the day: 

• Cab to the airport was 30 minutes late. I showed a really nice side of myself to Yellow Cab Incorporated.
  
• Rest of the travels were smooth and I scored a window seat with no one next to me - excelente! I started Audrey Neffenegger's second book (after Time Traveler's Wife) and it's a page turner. Yep, I just said that. 
  
• After getting pulled over by the police in our van (yes), we got to our hotel and were greeted with fresh guacamole and margaritas! ARRIBA! I don't know what it is about Mexican guac but they know how to do it right....and in industrial-sized bowls, at that. 
  
• The town is situated at the bottom of a mountain, which made for a nauseous ride for most of the girls, but the trees are tall and beautiful - very Colorado-esque - and we're excited about our horseback ride up the mountain later this week. 
  
• I may have bitched to some of you about how I was assigned to a bedroom of 3 girls that was made for 2. I've been a little pissy and apprehensive about this, but when we arrived hey there were 3! One of our professors had lectured us about not being boisterous, obnoxious, etc., but I still ran out onto our balcony and yelled TRES CAMAS!!!! because I couldn't help myself. Hi, I'm American and locals hate me.
  
• We had a rather disgusting-o dinner that started with cucumbers/carrots marinated in jalapeno juice, which burned right through my esophagus, and then we moved onto appetizers of fried grasshoppers, ant eggs, and worms. Straight up, on the plate, with a chip and a side of guac. Our client (who's a native here) just scooped a bunch of all three up into a tortilla and gobbled it down. And I gagged. I did, for the record, try the grasshopper, but it ruined the rest of dinner....because it felt like we were on Fear Factor. 
  
• One of our professors brought a guitar, and I discovered a set of bongo drums, and Hotel California ensued. 
  
• I knew no one knew about my birthday being on Friday, which was fine (albeit a little sad to "enjoy" your self-absorbed day all by yourself!), but today one of the girls mentioned that her birthday is tomorrow, so now the cat's out of the bag about all the birthdays. Which better mean some tequila shots are in our future. 
  

All in all, a good beginning. Our meetings start tomorrow, and I can tell it's going to be a really long week but hopefully I'll get a few blogs out of it...

 

the fat lady sang

Peer evaluations: the gift that keeps on giving. 

So we had our last marketing class. My group managed to meet for 4 hours and not kill each other, and we turned in a fairly respectable product. By the grace of God, we somehow scored a 95. I'm fairly certain this means the teacher didn't actually read any of the final papers though, since 2 other groups got 95s as well. This makes me feel really good about the caliber of teaching I'm receiving. But anyway.

We also had to turn in some peer evaluations, ranking each other on a scale that we set ourselves at the beginning of the semester. The evaluations were somehow tallied, weighted, flipped, curved, smacked upside the head and BOOM out came some grades. Unlike you might assume, I actually didn't crucify my group members (on this particular evaluation). Nor did I get totally bitch slapped on my own. Thus confirming that miracles, in fact, do happen. 

However, then the e-mails started rolling in. One woman wrote, "Thank you for your peer evaluations. I hope if there is someone who you don't feel is doing 100% of their share of the work on the next group project you're on, you'll be adult enough to speak to them in person, instead of hiding behind the annonymity of the peer evaluation at the end of the semester." Um okay, well I hope the next group project you work on, you actually work on it. That is my hope for you. Oh, and I'm telling Tommy that you ate dirt on the playground today. So there. 

Then the Little House on the Prairie dude in the group responded that he agreed and he was contacting the teacher for more information and an explanation. 10-4 detective, good luck cracking the case of the Confidential Peer Evals. Bet you'll get real far with that. 

The really unfortunate thing is that I tried to be less vindictive in my evaluation than I actually am in real life. So I gave these douches the equivalent of an 88 and a 93 on this particular element (much lower on another, but fortunately that one's not on the discussion board yet), and now they are absolutely going to believe I was single-handedly responsible for them getting a C in the class. No good deed goes unpunished!

playing nice with others

I've noticed that I don't play very nicely with my marketing management group at school. This saddens me, because I generally feel like a fairly likeable person, but I think there's a 100% chance that the group members have all built dart boards in effigy of me ever since I sent hate mail telling them to pull their shit together. It's gotten awkward. 

Each week, we all write sections of a marketing plan that have to be edited together to make one formal APA-formatted paper, which we submit every week. Feel free to let the word formal echo in your head a few times. I really try to put a lock on my holier-than- thou editor's attitude because my group consists of very nice middle-aged accountants who use words like "supper." I'm sure they have many talents. Unfortunately, reading and writing don't seem to be two of them.

Things that make it difficult for me to not send them expulsion letters:

-One member edited the paper this week and left this sentence in. "Traffic counts – Determine the customer use of the store, If traffic counts are below estimations, is it consist during open hours or is it cyclical from weekday to weekend." When I pointed out that it wasn't a complete sentence, his response was "Grammer check did not note it." Mkay.

-Our teacher is an APA nazi, and when I said that our headings in the paper needed to be adjusted to match the correct style, he said he disagreed because he turned in a paper to another teacher once and that particular teacher didn't comment on his formatting. 

-Another member didn't write her section of the paper last week because she "just didn't know what to say."

-The same woman also volunteered to edit and turn in last week's paper. Yesterday we realized she had not even copied/pasted all three sections together and no edits had been made after we spent 2 hours in the library discussing changes. Oh, and the text was centered.

-When I devastated my group with the information that, no, Wikipedia was not a legitimate resource, they agreed that we should "just turn in the paper and see what the teacher throws back at us."

I'm considering suggesting that the professor administer a test on sentence construction as a weed-out. 

nice change of pace

I've taken over the front row table because no one sat next to me, but I don't care anymore because it's made room for my assault of accoutrements^*: a disappointing overvalued latte from the school cafe, half-empty bottle of tap water, calculator, finance book, 2 notebooks, pen, pencil, highlighter, list of formulas on one side, roomful of accents on the other. Nobody wants to be my partner — I am the only blonde, the youngest student, and stereotypes abound! The fluorescent lights are bright enough to photosynthesize a rainforest and by the end of the three-hour class, my eyeballs feel like they just got a Brazilian wax. When I leave, I am exhausted, confused, stressed, isolated, and...happy.

Up until now, I've been fighting my disheartenment (real word?) since transferring, because St. Edward's so far has been little more than a hemorrhage on my bank account. Sort of like I thought I was riding the Titan but then looked around and realized I was actually on the teacup ride and just barfed cotton candy onto myself. Five out of my six teachers so far have just let their students sliiiiide right through and it's taken almost no effort to do well. I know saying that is like the verbal equivalent of a fanny pack, but grad school should be all about the disonnance theory — the harder you work, the more valuable the reward, right? That being said, I'm now into my fourth semester here, I seem to have finally waded through the entry level classes, and I'm happy to see that I'm finally getting my ass kicked. 

And now...back to the books (seriously).

*Please note this is my favorite word, ever ever.