So, apparently Mexicans have made the jump into the twentieth century in another way. No, not socialized health care or fluid traffic infrastructure, but tempting and innumerable offers of unmanageable amounts of debt!
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mexcredit11aug11,0,2943407.story?coll=la-home-business
Hooray for Mexicans on both side of the border now having something else in common!
As my fellow paisa and kindred spirit Gustavo Ariano, writer of the Ask a Mexican! column, has always claimed, Mexicans really are some of the most American (or is it U.S.-ian?) people on the planet.
Camp goes well. Unfortunately I haven't been able to take many pictures, but those will be provided at some definitely future point in time. There are a lot of characters here that I could go on about, but I won't.
I'm enjoying it. I like my kids most of the time, and UCLA is a really nice place. Also, my brief glimpse of home during my day off this week reminded me of the monotony and boredom that summer unemployment provided me with. Even though the hours are long, it's pretty easy work.
Weekdays consist of me attending classes and watching over the kids during recreation time, evening activities and study tutorial.
The schedule technically goes from about 7:30 until 9:00 at night, but I can usually sneak some break time in between. The classes I TA for are not very intense, and include such academically challenging choices as "Spying, Surveillance and Espionage" as well as "Awesome Archery!" I'm not quite sure why the archery is so awesome or why alliterations are so necessary in naming these classes.
Although, to be fair, Awesome Archery is probably my favorite class. I don't know if it's quite worthy of being awesome though.
Weekends are more laid back. They usually consist of excursions as well as planned activities, such as last week's Super SIG Challenge.
To give you an example of a typical day at work, today, Saturday, I went to the Long Beach Aquarium and the LA Zoo. I just watched a group of seven boys aged 10-12 during this time, making sure they didn't kill each other or disappeared. In regards to this specific trip, the kids had a good time at the first and an awful one at the second. Although that may have been a result of fatigue and extreme heat that existed at this point in the afternoon.
On another note, and in reflecting on other recent excursions, I'm pretty sure there was a higher ratio of Mexicans at the Los Angeles Zoo than in all of Tijuana. It was kind of nice to be surrounded by the version of Los Angeles I'm more familiar with, considering I've been holed up in a dorm in Westwood for the past two weeks. Not even the custodial workers here are Mexican! It's kind of weird. Also, they don't even serve Mexican food at the dining commons. At least they half ass it at UCSB. Not here though I guess.
Also, a special thanks to the city government of the city of Los Angeles for making me laugh. The attempts to capitalize politically on a city owned zoo can be seen fairly obviously at the park, as both a councilman and "Mayor" Antonio Villaraigosa are featured prominently in the map. Way to go, city government. There's a reason no one cares about you unless you are involved in corruption or something sexy.
I can't believe I'll be in Europe in less than two weeks. Should I see Spamalot while in England? What should I spend my 1100 dollars from work on?
Also, when did my problems and decisions in life become so bourgeoisie?
Anybody?
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