Hendrix Community Blogs

As part of my Periodismo Mundial (Global Journalism) class, I am required to wake up before dawn, turn on the radio and transcribe the top story from the first broadcast of the day.  I e-mail that transcript to the big news monitor boss, who puts it up online with all the other top stories from the other news stations. And apparently people read our little news digest.

Supposedly, when I apply for a job in the field of journalism, my prospective boss will value the fact that I know how to be a news monitor.  Someone will value the fact that I record the 5:45 a.m. broadcast of La Red de Radio Red (AM 1540), listen to it piece by piece, guess the spelling of all the words I don’t know, and then look up those maybe-words in a dictionary to figure out whether they are actually words or if I’ve just misunderstood the announcer.  

Here's today's top story. (Summary: politicians are working to combat the rampant kidnapping occuring across the country.)

Hoy por la tarde a las 5 en el Salón Tesorería del Palacio Nacional se va a llevar a cabo la vigésimo tercera (23ª) sesión del Consejo Nacional de Seguridad Pública, pero nadie piensa que ésta va a ser una sesión normal. El Consejo Nacional de Seguridad Pública, presidido por el ingeniero Genaro García Luna, Secretario de Seguridad Pública del gobierno federal, va a preparar y presentar para su firma un acuerdo nacional para la lucha en contra de la inseguridad.
 
Se están planteando un serie de medidas para combatir el secuestro y otros crímenes. Entre estas medidas está planteando la posibilidad de construir reclusorios federales específicamente para secuestradores, también se está planteando la posibilidad de ofrecer recompensas a ellos que ofrecen información sobre los delincuentes. Se habla también de crear una cérula de identidad personal independiente o que se reemplace a la actual tarjeta credencial de elector que utilizamos los mexicanos para identificarnos. El acuerdo nacional de seguridad habría de ser firmado hoy.

Someone will eventually appreciate the half-hour (or more …) that it takes me to transcribe a minute-long news story for the greater benefit of the World Wide Web. Someday.

That person certainly won’t be my roommate, who has to deal with the fact that – even though it’s 6:30 a.m. and I don’t have class ‘til 10 – I can’t fall back to sleep once I’ve engaged in such hard work. Or my friends, who laugh at me for going to bed at 9:30 on a Wednesday, hours before they even leave to go clubbing.  So to all the newspaper and magazine editors in the world – make our suffering worthwhile!  Appreciate our sacrifices!  Hire me when I graduate!

The much-anticipated Stoplight Party took place Friday night.  You may recall from an earlier post that wearing green means you’re single, red means taken and yellow means “looking for fun.”  Just like a stoplight.  Very straightforward, and bordering on the edge of creepiness.

The party was a mixer for the international students, and the question on everyone’s lips was, “So where are you from?”  Replying over and over again with “Los Estados Unidos” is a mouthful, and it also brings along a lot of political baggage.  For example, the guapo young Mexican man who accompanied me to the party has said several times that he wishes I weren’t from the U.S.  “Pick any other country in the world,” he told me later. “But I could never” (or was it “would never”?) “live in America with you.” 

Another friend, Dutch Rick, came to Monterrey through the Magellan program. He would have preferred to study in the U.S., he said, but the program’s American affiliate schools were in the South and Midwest – regions where, as a gay man, he didn’t believe he would be safe and/or accepted.

The shameful thing is, I don’t blame either of them for their beliefs about America. Plenty of Americans, myself included, bemoan our country’s loss of international prestige, a phenomenon often interconnected with or attributed to the supposed backwardness of the folks in the “fly-over country”, e.g. my family, neighbors, teachers and classmates.  We the flown-over support gun rights and loathe birth control; we don’t believe in evolution or global climate change; and we elected Bush 2 because we thought he’d be a nice guy to knock back a beer with.

We’re the kind of folks who end sentences in prepositions, if you know what I mean. (Which you do, as long as you didn’t go to a public school here.) We’re the ones who most hate Mexicans and gays.  Or aren’t we?

I like to think I’m a pretty typical Midwesterner; I was born and raised in Missouri’s suburbs just like the other suburban Missourians. I like to think the country’s heartland is full of people as addicted to the New York Times as I am – other folks desperate to get rid of Bush, other Human Rights Campaign donors, other ACLU members. And there are!  But maybe not many.

One of my new friends here, a guy from Washington state, told me yesterday that I’m the first liberal person he’s ever met from the Midwest.  Arkansas gets an even worse reputation.  This spring, my New Yorker sister-in-law “jokingly” told me not to marry anyone from Arkansas, because “if you stay there, your brother and I are not going to visit you.”

It’s hard to come from or live in a part of the country that others look down on, and it’s even harder to come from a country that has fallen so far in world opinion. (Liberty and justice for all?  Ha!)  Perhaps if I had stayed in the States for all four years of my education, I wouldn’t know what the rest of the world thought about us.  But I think the best thing I’ve done to enhance my American Studies major – and my International Relations major, and my life – is to study America from foreign contexts. It's a lesson in self-flagellation, but a worthy one.

Written Sunday night, while my internet was down and I couldn't post it:

As many of my fellow Hendrix upperclassmen get ready to lead Orientation programs for incoming freshmen, I have just been through an orientation of my own.  The “Gente UDEM” (People of the University of Monterrey) program was designed to get the freshmen and newcomers into the UDEM spirit.  In an enormous, temporary outdoor pavilion, we listened to two hours of talks about our potential to personify the university's catchphrase: “extraordinary professionals and extraordinary people.”

The students were seated together according to our majors, so I was accompanied by exchange students and freshmen majoring in Politics or International Studies. We went through an important UDEM tradition during that ceremony: putting on the UDEM t-shirt.  It was surprisingly stirring.  All at once, the students put on a special yellow t-shirt and officially become Gente UDEM.  Confetti shoots up from all sides, and the crowd becomes a sea of yellow.

At the end of the ceremony, the Yellow Sea parted into about 30 groups (again, divided by major) and played several infantile get-to-know-you games, including the Spanish version of the Hokey Pokey. There I met Ronak, a half-Indian and half-Mauritian guy from Hong Kong who studies in London. Phew. Ronak has since introduced me to Sam and Natasha, two Canadian girls, and to a Canadian guy named Jordan and a Hong Konger named Kin Keung (yes, like King Kong).  I have since introduced them to Rick, a remarkably candid Dutch guy who in turn introduced us to Mario, his Mexican roommate who went to high school in Texas.  And thus a friend group was born!

Three of the guys and I went to Wal-Mart Friday to pick up the numerous important things that I forgot to bring: a hairbrush, lotion, pens, scissors, etc.  Although Monterrey is a big city, its public transportation is nothing like London’s.  Instead of having a broad metro system, the carless largely rely on taxis, which are surprisingly cheap – especially when the cost is split among four.

We’ve become largely inseparable.  We went to downton Monterrey yesterday and to see Batman (with Spanish subtitles) last night.  Afterward, we sat around at the Canadian girls’ house, sipped a few beers, and played a game of Truth or Truth.  Dutch Rick’s questions were so unabashed and sexual that the Canadians cut the game short.  After a particularly dirty one, when one of the Canadian’s faces turned red and the other’s lost all color, Rick innocently asked, “Oh, was that too much?”  All was quickly forgiven, though, because Rick can’t help it; he’s Dutch.

Today, the boys – Rick, Jordan and Ronak – and I walked to a nearby taquería and then took a taxi to a local grocery store, where we bought fixins to cook together tonight.

The oddest thing about hanging out with the boys is, I have no idea what their rooms look like; I’m not allowed to go into the boys’ section of the residence halls. The gender separation makes hanging out a little difficult, although it puts us more in contact with the Mexican students.  There are several social rooms and lots of benches outside, but that doesn’t quite replace the intimacy of hanging out in someone’s room.

With the gender restrictions and the absolute prohibition of alcoholic beverages, combined with the buildings’ luxurious appearance and manicured gardens, the residence halls have the feeling of a high-class rehab clinic.  I sometimes expect to see nurses walking around.  Instead, there are just (just?) security guards patrolling.

Here's a shot of Monterrey from the third floor terrace. Built in 2006, the dorms are definitely high-class.

Although these dorms are undoubtedly cleaner, prettier and newer than Hendrix’s Couch Hall, I’m not sure that’s worth sacrificing Couch’s co-ed nature and relaxed, trusting atmosphere.

Although a lot of things are foreign here, I am very reassured to be attending a small(ish) liberal arts-type institution. For those who think Hendrix’s gen. ed. and Odyssey requirements are tough, come to UDEM.  Aside from fulfilling standard course requirements, the students must complete a huge number of service hours, a study-abroad experience, an internship experience, and a final project, plus achieve a high TOEFL score and pass several departmental tests. The kind of people who come here are (I can only assume) the kind of dedicated, interesting people I most enjoy being around.

Classes start tomorrow morning – Periodismo Mundial (Global Journalism) and Política Mundial (Global Politics).  I am so excited!