Jana's Wedding!!

Time to blog Jana's wedding! Jana finaaaalllllyyyyy got married to her long time boyfriend Leon on Saturday 24th May and I was honoured to have been invited. I had a really good time, enjoyed the differences in the ceremony to a "typical wedding" (the wedding was spectacularly located on the beach) and I further enjoyed all of the festivities afterwards - the company was great, (thank you to Galicia and Chayito, especially for waiting for Dong and I an extra 30 minutes at the end as we indulged ourselves a little too much in tecate and whisky!) the food was great and the dancing was fantastic. It was also very nice to see Paul again come over to visit from Canada, and I intend someday to realise my ambition to know Canada, and take his invitation to Montreal.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable night where I was really able to finally let my hair down after this long semester. Congratulations to Jana and Leon, may you be very happy together and enjoy every day of your lives! :)

John

ALL OTHER EVENTS.......................

Rather than write a post about each event separately, I am throwing them all together in one. Writing chronologically, after the pool party and final exams we went directly into the "alumno de calidad" event on the afternoon of Wednesday 14th May. This event honours the highest achieveing students across a range of categories.

Elizabeth Laredo Castro, congratulated in her distinction as a high quality student by her tutor Rozenn.

Mauricio comes to the stage to collect his award.

Then, that same evening was the official "ambigu" (this is a word to describe a formal meeting with light food and refreshments served afterwards) with parents. It was a pleasant evening that involved various speeches from the Director of the Campus, and two selected students from the graduating year. It was a chance to celebrate student achievements before the official day of graduation, which is more of a formal event where their diploma is received rather than a time to contemplate and reflect. No pictures from the ambigu I'm afraid.

The official graduation photo came the following morning, Thursday 15th May. I don't have a copy of this electronically but below are some informal photos that I took with students.

Girls-only photo, and I will write their names for the benefit of my future memory - Left to Right (Top) - Darinka Beltran, Jessica Torres Haro, Alejandra Garcia Durazo, Galia Reyes Bernal, Maria Laura, Carolina Felix Robles, (and at the bottom) Georgina Navarro Rojas and Daniela Felix Ramonet.

Boys-only photo, and I will write their names for the benefit of my future memory - Left to Right - Carlos Guerrero, (Warrior) Alejandro, Mario, Carlos Efren, (Carlos II) Oscar Toledo and Narciso.

The "political" couple Ana Madrid del Rio and Diego Ballasteros.

The offical graduation came next, Friday 16th May. I was sitting up on stage behind the Directors of the School anf invited guests, to proudly watch all of my students receive their diplomas one by one. I also had the honour to watch some ex-students from the University also graduate and receive their degrees, as well as 3 of my students in the University from this semester who were finishing.

Graduation Photo with Juan Pedro Cota, Fernando Biebrich and Narciso Romero Pineda.

Next, and finally, was the official student-organised party, held at the Casino building in Hermosillo. I went along with another John from LA who teaches English here, and stayed until the end. It was a good party although I didn't realise that I would be so encouraged to dance and participate by the students! All in all a really nice night and a fitting way to congratulate them on the next stage of this journey called life.....



John

End of the Semester Events 2 - Final Exams

Final exams, ah don't they hate them! With good reason too, for I don't make them easy. However I decided this time to have mercy and apply exams that were relatively easy in their requirements, with the exception of an analysis section at the end.

Grading the exams were easy, the real problem this semester were the essays that I set - must remind myself not to ask for 140-odd essays and expect to have them graded in a week - what a nightmare!

End of the Semester Events 1

Finally I can begin to note the various events at the end of the semester. I will begin with the pool party on the last day of classes. This was a nice event that took place before the students' final exams, and it is also a traditional event - not only for both students and teachers to relax in a more informal atmosphere, but also for the students to realise the tradition of throwing the teachers into the pool! This is of course the form in which revenge comes for all of those semesters where teachers were screaming at students to be quiet!

It was all in all a nice affair; I resisted getting thrown in until quite late, because I didn't arrive until 3.45pm because of an English class in university. One of the French teachers here also contributed to the conspiracy to find me and throw me in the pool by alerting a group of male students to my impending presence in the sports building next to the pool - hmmm thanks for that! I will remember for quite a while a group of 10 guys waiting outside one of the sports offices for me to exit. I finally resigned myself to my fate and allowed them to carry me down to the pool and throw me in, all in full public display. To top off a nice afternoon, I didn't waste any time getting out of the pool to indulge myself in the pizza of which there must have been about 50 or more! I also had the good fortune to take a pizza home that fed me for 2 more days.

This was event number 1 to celebrate the end of the semester.

End of the semester, so much happening.....more to come

Well I haven´t written for a while precisely because so much has been going on!! In a nutshell, final exams, the swimming pool party, a meeting with parents to celebrate the impending graduation, the graduation photos, the actual ceremony, the student party afterwards, and Jana´s wedding. I will comment on all of these ASAP and post some pictures too. Also I´m due to visit the UK in a couple of weeks and I look forward to it!

Scotland, Scotland.........

This article was written a year ago. I read it today with some interest, because of the title, which only intensified when I read the following part: "There needs to be consideration of when or if the nuclear option is deployed, a referendum on the Union to call Salmond's bluff. He wants to hold such a vote in 2010 as a plebiscite on what he presumes will then be Tory rule by Cameron. Instigated by Unionists much earlier than that, a year from now perhaps, it could shoot the wily Nationalist fox." The article was published on 6th May 2007, and here we are a year later, with the events of this week in Scotland with the Labour leader challenging the SNP to "bring it on." [A vote on a Scottish referendum of independence] Seems like an eerie prediction that came true on the part of this writer. But it still leaves me wondering how we got into this awful mess of devolution leading further and further towards the breakup of the UK.

Read the article here on suggestions to save the Union, written more or less exactly a year ago!

HM current government, what a waste of time you are!

Well, this is Brown all over, saying that he won't change his mind and then he lacks the courage to stand by his convictions. Also, it is terribly demonstrative of Labour policies - you start with a big policy, (e.g. scrapping the 10p tax rate) then you tweak little parts of it to appease certain groups, then you come back and say you will scrap tax rises because of the high cost of living, (showing that they weren't essential to government income in the first place, hence maybe not needed and also showing how Brown is trying to sucker us into a vote for him at the Election) and you end up with a policy picked apart that we'll just have to come back to and completely overhaul in a few years time. (i.e. immediately after the next Election) That my friends is certainly not what I would call consistency.

Brown to abolish tax rises?


Second article:

Gordon Brown faces a "stalking horse" challenge

Well, this would be the icing on the cake! (if there was a "stalking horse" to challenge Brown) Eventually I'll get round to posting on my blog a long list of things I disagree with about this man, or rather, what he represents at the present time. However, for those people who say "Get him out, he's unelected!" Although technically true, it's also true that our rules state that the leader of the party that has has the majority in Parliament is also Prime Minister. So when the Labour Party voted Brown in as leader, he did nothing unconstitutional to automatically assume the role of Prime Minister too.

A long weekend, grading, grading, but time for the beach too........

I am currently in the middle of enjoying a four-day long weekend, with Thursday 1st May and Friday 2nd being holidays (for those of us fortunate enough) in Mexico. In the true style of solidarity (a concept alien to the English I believe) the 01st May is a day reserved for the recognition of workers - this year with Labour Day falling on a Thursday, we have the Friday as a "puente" - or bridge.

I have a lot of work to do currently grading essays which form the final project for my cohort of 144 students about to graduate, but I didn't let that stop me from going to the beach in the afternoon on Thursday, and how wonderful it was to get back to Kino. It has been a while since I last went and appreciated the beautiful shore and the way the sun sets behind the small hills at the end of the beach, projecting a deep purple into the sky that sets perfectly with the waves as they begin to come in further. I will post a picture up ASAP of Kino - a beach that I fell in love with in 2005; one that binds me to this place and finally a place I will miss very deeply if and when I decide to return to the UK.

A Tory victory..........fantastic!

Well, finally we have the full results of the local Council elections of 2008, where all councils in Wales had elections as well as a very many of them in England, and the Tories have been successful in putting Labour into third place. I must say that I haven't openly expressed my political persuasion for a good ten years, but I am very pleased at the result. Having recently joined the Tory party (and not because I am on a bandwagon or because they are the perfect party, but because I agree with some crucial policy approaches, such as NO to ID cards for the UK) this is fantastic news, capped off with the result in London and Ken Livingstone finally losing his mayoralty.

I did not perceive Ken as a bad person, but after eight years in office I felt a presidential-style approach to his reign at the heart of local government in London, and I felt that he was becoming arrogant, and rather like the Labour Party as a whole, just not listening.

I wish Boris Johnson the best in office, I sincerely hope that he does not make the same mistakes as the Tory party did in the 1990s, the days of sleaze must never return, and nor must the arrogance as it currently exists within the Labour Party - the arrogance that imposed tuition fees of £3000 per year; the arrogance that refused a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and thus breaking a manifesto promise. I further sincerely hope that the crazy and extreme politically correct ideology that infests Labour can now be readjusted and we can just have some simple common sense without the fear of racism, xenophobia, homophobia and who we might offend influencing everything that is said and done. At the heart of the matter is the fact that we are still a country of free speech and we need to stop the fear to express ourselves, which seems to me to be a uniquely English trait from my perspective. Now it is ridiculous. Let's not be afraid but let's be prepared to defend what we say, and then we might think twice before saying it. It is my desire to see a touch of down-to-earth politics beginning at City Hall; this means getting on with the job at hand and cutting arrogance and fear out of the ability to get results. Good luck to Johnson.