Friggen Finance...

So, I’m not quite sure where the disconnect is from last semester to this one, but finance is suddenly take a dangerous turn down a murky, horrible, terrible, hideous, confusing, insidious, boring, abhorrent, deplorable road to hell! And to add another little bow to the hand-basket we are all riding in, we have class until 10pm the night before the finance final next Wednesday!! Aye chingado would be the appropriate saying right about now! I’ve never really been a numbers person (I’m a marketer, we have people do the number’s for us), but I’ve also never really been that bad with numbers. I can get by. However, in this class, I have absolutely NO clue WTF is going on. Actually no one does. In class, the professor gives us problems to solve, and it takes about 25 students shouting out their answers before we even come to one that is remotely on the same track as where we should be. Honestly, who cares about the WACC, and levered and unlevered crap, costs of equity, depreciation expenses and tax shields!! Well, actually, these are very important concepts, but so is David Ricardo’s law of comparative advantage. There is no way in hell, I’ll be in the workforce doing finance --- just like, there’s no way in hell that a number cruncher that sits at a desk with a pocket-protector and no social skills at all will ever do marketing. (Ok, I am generalizing, and not being sensitive to the cultural differences between financers and marketers, or Mexico and the US teachers) – but, at this point, I don’t care!

Right, now off to complete the 576 other group projects, assignments, readings and essays we have to complete before Monday…

Rendezvous or Ren-dez-vous

For those who know the infamous "rendezvous" story... i HAD to take this picture in San Luis ...

For those who don't know the story - I am actually surprised, because I fear that this honest reading mistake will follow me all through life... haha, thanks to those who recount the tale pretty much EVERY time I see them (Kristine)!! All I can say, is I was in highschool, and had not yet acquired my "global mindset..." as you can see now... with my "I Love Thunderbird" shirt (that unfortunately got cut off - but that just is more like Tbird style) I definitely am down with with "Thunderbirdness.... and will NEVER make that mistake again ;)

Un viaje a centro de Mexico…

Ok, so we’ve been in Monterrey for four weeks now, and to tell you the truth, the time has flown by. Now don’t get me wrong, there have definitely been more than a few times where time seems to crawl by – or be at a complete standstill, but for the most part, our time in Mexico is winding down. With that excuse, I took the opportunity of a long weekend to go and visit some old friends who are working in fabulous little cities in the center of Mexico.

First stop, Queretaro. After a long week of classes, my friend Meike and I packed up and set off down South. Let me plug something in Mexico for a minute. Of course, after another brilliant recommendation from Sebastian, ETN is quite possibly the most comfortable travel experience I have had. There are three seats that span the width of the bus, and only 12 or so seats that span the length – you seriously have enough space to store just about anything – including the Mexican quintessential VW bug that just won’t make the 8hr drive to QRO but you just can’t bare to leave behind. Anyway, after a long, 8hr overnight ride, we arrived in the beautiful city of Queretaro.

So, I’m not sure if it’s Meike, or me… or perhaps both, but we ALWAYS seem to get the screwy taxistas who have no clue where they are going, refuse to follow directions, and don’t know how to count or read road signs. So, of course, bedraggled after the long journey, and just wanting to get to my friend Kristine’s apartment, we picked this very type of cab driver I just described. 45 minutes, 50 pesos, and 5 calls to Kristine later, we finally arrived!! It was SO great to see Kristine again!! She’s a friend from middle school (who I met because we both were wearing the same corduroy ROXY shorts in 7th grade)!! While Kristine was off to work, Meike and I set about to tour the city! Walking along the “Rio Queretaro” which was nothing more than a canal filled with perhaps 2 inches, maybe 3 in the deep parts of water that emitted a stench of god knows what…. we eventually came to the main road in town which leads to the giant Roman Aqueduct. So cool!!! And of course, we had to follow the aqueduct into the center of city where we were pleasantly surprised by beautiful churches, charming plazas, and quaint architecture that gave this little colonial city, almost a European flair. Again, perhaps this is why I really liked QRO so much because of the striking resemblances to the ancient cities in Europe? After several hours of playing a Japanese tourist, taking pictures of just about everything, we decided to come back home and do some homework. Ahhh, my parents would be so proud! I actually ventured back into one of the plazas, and read a case study for marketing. Of course it took me about five times as long to read the paper because of the constant breaks to view the exceptional people watching!

Saturday morning consisted of traversing through the local market to eat possibly the best huevos con chile y tortillas that I have ever had...

... and yet another bus ride on ETN to get to San Luis Potosí to visit my friend Sebastian. San Luis was definitely not as pretty as Queretaro, but definitely had pockets of absolute picturesque beauty. It was so great to escape the city of Monterrey to see more colonial and older cities like QRO and SLP. Don’t get me wrong, Monterrey has amazing hiking, gorgeous mountains that frame the city, beautiful homes and universities, and actually is the business powerhouse of Mexico. However, because it is so business-focused, the city has lost a lot of the traditional Mexican charm that continues to flow through the cobble-stoned streets of cities like Queretaro and San Luis. Playing tour guides for my friends and I, Seb and his girlfriend were gracious hosts and showed us around San Luis. Everything from brief history lessons, guided tours, posh restaurants and bars, good home-cooked meals, and even chauffeur services – our San Luis experience was fabulous, made even better by being with old friends!
Our weekend adventure concluded with yet another overnight bus ride from San Luis back to Monterrey. We arrived to town Monday morning with just enough time to go home, shower and go to 4hrs of accounting… ugh! Oh well, it was a fabulous weekend getaway, and a great opportunity to catch up with some amigos! Now, it’s back to reality, as finals are literally right around the corner!!! Not to mention several group projects, papers, presentations and other individual assignments. I’m thinking the stress is settling in right about now… “mañana” anyone?!

Cola de Caballo, Santiago, y otras cosas…

Ok, after the last rather hateful blog entry about the lovely idiosyncrasies of Mexico – the country is now back in my good graces… for now. The Internet still doesn’t work, and the friggen TV is out BUT, my phone now works and the calling cards even work now! Ahh, it’s the little things in life that just make the world go 'round! ;)

Between a few all nighters, a medical emergency for one of my classmates, and nothing ever working properly --- this week was a rough one. So needless to say, once the weekend rolled around I was quite happy to “rest!!!” On Saturday, we got a group of 10 Thunderbirds and traveled south to Cola de Caballo. It’s a cool little park with several waterfalls – the main attraction looking like the tail of a horse – or cola de caballo. Once there, we hiked up a path not meant for hiking that led behind the waterfall. In fact, we had to climb through a hole in the barbed fence just to get going!! After a short, but intense hike, we wound up on a main road somewhere. Not wanting to hike back down the mountain we just scaled, we figured it’d be best just to circle back down the mountain on the main road. About half way down, some nice guy in a Ford 150 offered us a ride back down to the main entrance… so all of us piled into the back of his truck bed, said a little prayer – and twisted and turned back down the mountain! Once at the main entrance, a few brave souls decided to go bungee jumping! Deep down, I really wanted to try, but then I just couldn’t stop thinking about Mexican “quality” and Mexican “efficiency,” and I thought it’d be best to stay put!

After the hiking adventures in Cola de Caballo, we then decided to have dinner in a cute little town on the way back to Monterrey called Santiago. It was awesome. What a quaint little pueblo – very charming. It almost had the feel of one of those towns from the 1500s in Spain – like Toledo, (but don’t tell the Mexicans that I am comparing their town to Spain – they might come after me for that one)!! Or perhaps, I liked this town so much because it bared so much resemblance to the country that has claimed my heart – España!!! We decided to have dinner at La Case de Palomas (the house of Pigeons) – but don’t let the name fool you, I didn’t see one pigeon on the menu! Haha. The meal was fabulous!! Hmm, I get hungry even just thinking about it.

After dinner, we crossed a busy 8 lane highway to reach a bus that would take us back to Monterrey. While waiting for the bus, one of our fellow Tbirds, decided to take out his marionette that he just purchased, named Pedro, and entertain an extremely drunk guy sitting on the bench. Haha – hilarious!

So Sunday started off to be a nice day… except for the 25 mosquito bites I discovered on my legs! A friend and I got up early and tried to get coffee at several different places – but to no avail. Apparently, coffee in the morning on the weekends is not a big thing in Mexico – so we wound going to get breakfast at Subway. Haha – don’t laugh, Subway has pretty good breakfast! I know all my Mexican friends are quite disappointed in me that I am in Mexico, yet continue to insist on eating at American restaurants – but there’s just so many tacos and frijoles that you can eat, right?!!! My god!

Anyway, about noon, the nice day turned stressful when my friend realized he had left his designer bag, with several important credit cards on the bus from Santiago!!! Nightmare!! After engaging several people to help us out, including several Mexican friends, a couple Tbirds, and even a few taxistas, we wound up calling the main bus office, then trying to track down the bus on the main drag in Monterrey, and finally heading down to the main bus station in the city. When we got there, we were helped by a VERY nice man, who drove us to the lost and found, where we were able to pick up his bag … que suerte --- how lucky!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And so now, we are all about to go grab a quick dinner and hit the books – literally. It’s accounting, I want to smash the book into a million pieces if I could! Haha. Hasta luego…

Umm, algo funciona?!

Ok, so by now you must be wondering – does she ever have a bad day. Or will she ever write an entry that doesn’t say, “omg, I LOVE this place..” haha. Well, ladies and gentleman, today is your lucky day. Today, as I was telling some folks already, is just a day where all the quips about the Mexican culture, all the subtle (and not so subtle) nuances of everyday life, and the utter lack of efficiency has finally caught up to me! Today was a bad day. For some reason, I guess the “honeymoon phase” is over, and reality set in.

The bloody Internet at our apartment does not work 95% of the time. And the 5% it does work, it crawls at a snail’s pace. I literally have a book next to my computer, and read a couple pages in between web pages loading. And today, after a long day of class, I planned to call my family for the first time since I got here. So, I walked to the cell phone store to buy a calling card, and low and behold, they are closed for 2hrs for siesta! Finally, after searching around for a few blocks for another vendor of telephone cards, I stopped at 7/11 and got a phone card. Eager to call my family, I rushed over to the nearest pay phone and followed the dialing instructions. Ok – now here’s where it gets interesting. I have used phone cards literally all over the world – and even in languages that I don’t speak! From German to French to even Italian! It’s not that difficult. For some reason, here in Mexico – it is. The phone card didn’t work – at all. Even our landlady at the apartments we are renting had no idea what the problem was. Several pay phones, and a couple calling cards later, I still couldn’t get it to work!

And then today, after working until 3:30am on a finance project (which our team royally messed up by the way), we have another group project which will probably take the same amount of time – at least this one’s in marketing, and will be much more fun to work on. However, somewhere around 2am, I don’t think it’ll matter what we’re working on!

Hah – this is funny as well. On Friday, we are going to a “company visit” in Mexico, with bizarre clothing restrictions like, ONLY jeans, ONLY cotton shirts, FLAT leather, closed-toed shoes, hair pulled back in a pony-tail! Well, that would have been nice to know ahead of time… because, none of us girls have any “flat” shoes that are leather. Only tennis.. so I guess tomorrow, it’s off to the mall. And, what if we wear a shirt that’s only 85% cotton – and what if it’s the wrong color?! Quite frankly, I’m not too excited to head into this company and see what they are making?!!! Haha.

Tomorrow I have another phone interview – and three next week. Can’t wait for those. If it’s anything like yesterday’s call where my interviewer couldn’t get thru, and when he finally did was directed to someone who had no idea what to do, and couldn’t speak English! Smooth. We finally had to do the call on my cell phone. Haha, luckily he was very cool about it! Nightmare!

Ok, that’s it for the complaining. I feel better already. Just something about venting that makes you feel better. I might even try to venture out to another pay phone, and try my luck with the calling cards again! Or maybe I’ll start small like tuning in to a TV station that maybe, just maybe might have sound.

Tequila anyone?!!!

Chapter 11, no wait Chapter 6… or is it 7 or 9?

Thought this would be the most fitting title of this entry summing up last week. It’s funny because we are heading into the third week of classes (theoretically, this is mid-term week, as we only have 6 weeks of classes per module), and we are JUST getting the syllabi and expectations for some of these classes now… and for one class, we still don’t really know what we’re supposed to do for the final project. In my accounting class, we have a PhD in marketing teaching the class – so accounting really isn’t his strong point. Yippee – can’t wait for accounting III in Prague!! We are all confused over when the homework assignments are due, which homework assignments are due, and actually pretty much confused over all the material as well. Should be quite interesting come three weeks during our final exam. And to think, our compadres in Glendale are gearing up for another one of Rankine’s killer midterms… good luck guys!

Other than the mass confusion in accounting, not being able to remember how to calculate simple NPV problems on our financial calculators and having to “cook the books” just to get a solution, and trying to work with formulas in finance where we have no idea which letter corresponds to which item – the week was pretty good. The drunken band of tone-deaf Mexicans that like to party behind my apartment is actually improving their singing and trumpet-playing abilities. It must be due to their late night rehearsals running well past 2am of their renditions of La Cucaracha and 6am practices of classic ranchera music. HAHA! But, despite these little nuances and lack of sleep, I LOVE Mexico. It just seems fitting that everything is unorganized, people are up singing and dancing at all hours of the night – but having fun doing it. The country just breathes with life – and the people are wonderful!

Saturday night, about 30 of us went to a restaurant / bar se llama “Papa Bills.” They had AWESOME chicken fajitas! The bottles of vodka we had were pretty good too! After dinner, we all decided to head down to our favorite club in Barrio Antiguo called Manaus – where we proceeded to continue the festivities well into the morning on Sunday… (I think I’ll just leave it at that)!! Now, on to week three!! Vamos!

La Casa Hogar Douglas

Thanks to the most amazing parents ever, I have grown up living a life of giving back whenever I can. Everything from “adopting” marines from Camp Pendleton for Christmas and Thanksgiving when they can’t afford to fly home for the holidays, to animal shelters, to kids/teens mentoring programs to Habitat for Humanity. I am not tooting my own horn here, but I feel like everyone should volunteer for something. If you don’t have the money, then time is all you need. I always felt strongly that rich/powerful executives that take time away from their busy schedules to merely “sit” on the boards of philanthropic organizations, can do so much more if they not only shape the way the organization is run – but also volunteer – paint a house on the weekends, cook meals for the elderly, be a mentor for a child!

This Saturday, a few Thunderbirds went to an orphanage outside of Monterrey called “La Casa Hogar Douglas.” It was an eye-opening experience. Here we are, living an arguably pleasant life – when there are 90 kids in this place who may or may not have food for the day, who don’t even have their own clothes, (nothing new), and who live literally day-to-day with the kindness of supporters who can help pay electric bills and gather money or in-kind donations for food! Once a month, they put on big lunch for these kids – this so called big lunch was a small plate of shredded lettuce, a couple tablespoons of meat and onions, small scoop of corn and a biscuit. All of this fit on a plate the size you can put a teacup on. Although, the kids are allowed to go back for seconds or thirds until the food runs out.

After, one of the little boys took my hand and said “gracias” with the biggest smile on his face! He then offered me one of his two cookies he was given for dessert. I told him thank you, but that he should save it for later if he got hungry… and it was SO adorable, because he then responded that he would save the other cookie for his mother. The boy was no older than 5. Heartbreaking!

Also, the adoption laws in Mexico are pretty regressive. In fact, Mexico is one of the hardest countries to legally adopt a child. Because of this, nearly ALL of the kids at this orphanage will stay here until they are 16 – and then, not sure what will happen to them. Again, thanks to generous donations, La Casa Hogar Douglas sponsors a few students every year to attend one of the best universities in Latin America! Tecnológico de Monterrey (ITESM)! Unfortunately, not all university-age kids are able to be sponsored.

Some of us from Tbird are planning to raise awareness of this orphanage on campus, so that future Tbirds coming to Monterrey to study can make this part of their program.

One of the major donators, an American living in Monterrey with her family had some very sage advice when she said, “you can’t save the world – but you can make a difference in someone’s life...”

El Parque Chipinque

So, this weekend we decided it was time to venture into Beverly Hills, oops, I mean San Pedro (this charming, exquisite, and richest neighborhood in Mexico), to traverse the mountain trails in “el Parque Chipinque.”


The park requires permits approved in advance in order to climb the surrounding summits, so we decided to take the prudent course, and hike the little 2km trails to a little mini-summit. The hike was awesome! It was difficult at times, but a great introduction into the mountainous trails surrounding Monterrey! Filled with breathtaking views of the city, majestic mountain vistas, and even a small selection of wildlife, the hike was fabulous!






At the top, we were even treated to swings and a giant slide – that I just HAD to go down! Of course, after our killer workout, we went to Chile’s where we then proceeded to indulge in margaritas and brownies, followed by a night on the town at the posh V-bar in San Pedro… so I’m thinking all of these calories counteracted our nice workout earlier in the day…

¿Dónde está el flag?

Well, we finished our first week of classes at EGADE!! One class a day for 4 hrs is a bit trying, but at least theoretically, that gives us more time to “study.” Today, EGADE sponsored a tour for the Thunderbirds of the main TEC campus as well as some sights around Monterrey. TEC is awesome! The campus is complete with a Starbucks, gym, a rock-climbing wall, 2 pools, a football (yes, that’s American football) field, interesting and eclectic architecture (and students), as well as geese, ducks, peacocks, and even deer roaming around on campus! We definitely didn’t have animals roaming around SDSU… maybe a couple strange frat boys, but nothing like this! Actually, it’s pretty funny, because at the gym in TEC, they won’t let you in without sleeves… no tank tops! Please! Not quite sure what the rational behind that one is?!

After walking around the campus we piled into a tour bus where we drove to the ‘downtown’ district. Complete with a Riverwalk (larger than that of San Antonio’s), cool buildings, beautiful churches and statues, and amazing history we soaked up the afternoon sun touring around downtown.

With one last stop on our brief tour, we drove to the Bishop’s summer house… not too shabby! It actually was the sight (according to our tour guide), where the last Mexican stronghold was defeated by the Americans to claim Texas, New Mexico, California, and Arizona. 100 years later, some eccentric Catholic dude decided that place would be a nice spot for a summer retreat. Haha. Interesting.

We continued up the hill (a VERY steep hill), to the summit of one of the surrounding hills to the sight of one of Mexico’s largest flags – displayed proudly over the city of Monterrey. Only, there was no flag! There was the biggest flagpole I have ever seen in my life, but no flag. Apparently, during a particularly strong rainstorm, the water washed away the ink of the eagle in the center of the Mexican flag, which then left the Italian flag flying proudly over the city of Monterrey! Somehow, I think our tour guide was probably making that story up too! Regardless, the views from the top were amazing!!! There was even Ranchera (like Mariachi), music piped in to set the mood! I believe as we were leaving, La Cucaracha was playing in the background. Ahhh, gotta love Mexico….