Biking and Birthdays

Friday night a couple of us went to Parque Fundidora after work to enjoy the nice weather. You can rent bikes there (100 peso deposit, and you get your money back when you return the bike), so we all took advantage of the 1-speed demons. They aren't very adjustable, so you can see me here ignoring the pedals and just pushing off with my feet...I managed to go just as fast pedaling this way as with the actual pedals...



Last night a coworker had a birthday party at his house. There is a tradition here of a mordita, or a little bite, where the lucky birthday person has to take a bite out of the cake before everyone else digs in. Of course, this winds up with the person getting their face pushed into the cake! I didn't get a great shot in the chaos, but you can see his friends helping out with the mordita here.



Also, the aftermath is below. It was a pretty cool cake made up of cupcakes, which is what you see in the face-imprint.

Latin Danza

Yesterday I had the chance to go watch a dance show funded by a government grant. It was really good! They mixed together various styles (like hip-hop, salsa, tango, etc.), with couple dances and choreographed pieces.



At the end, they even had a scripted, Bollywood style part where some "audience members" got up on stage and did a song with the cast! And I swear the song is a Spanish version of I Will Survive...

Peace Corps Foro in Querétaro

Last week I returned to Querétaro for some in-service training and a two-day Foro on Innovation and Technology Transfer put on by Peace Corps. We had done a Foro last year, but this year we had a much bigger and diverse audience--over 100 people attended! It was extremely well put together by the staff and received a lot of positive feedback. We had some amazing speakers cover topics about Myths of Innovation, what CONACYT is doing at a national level, FUMEC (a national-level technical agreement between the US and México), and panels on how industry currently works with academia and research centers.



In Querétaro I had the chance to eat dinner with my host family again, which was very cool. Their dog is a bit older and slightly better behaved!

Since it is the bicentennial and centennial of Mexican independence and the Revolution, respectively, the city of Querétaro is putting on a bunch of events (the city has played a huge role in Mexican history). Friday night I went to a concert at the beautiful Teatro de la Republica and listened to the Querétaro Philharmonic.