Salsa

This is the brand new (2012) Dancing contest :D. We performed on March 10th.

Salsa Dancing

Each year we have a Dance Festival between different campuses from ITESM High Schools. Along with friends, we presented a Salsa Choreography representing our campus. Below I include a video from our presentation recorded by a friend, and a picture of us.

Literary Creation

In the Literary Creation Workshop of my High School, we write different kinds of stories and poems in Spanish. We read them to other members and then we discuss about it and each one, giving a personal feedback highlighting our likes and dislikes, and whether or not we understand the idea.

I certainly prefer to write short stories. Below I include one of my shortest but favorite stories. I included the original one and my translation for it. I certainly like the Spanish original version.



Seda y Cena

Luego de dejar pasar a dos palomillas y hasta una suculenta mosca, nuestra protagonista decidió emprender su labor. Al son de agilidad y destreza, se alejó de su piedra preferida y subió al lomo del Sr. Encino. Empeñó un cuidado especial al escudriñar las ramas, aquí y allá, hasta encontrar un balcón hacia la luna; esa noche sí que lo lograría, lo podía sentir.

Estudió las ramas, hizo su geometría y ya después enhebró su aguja. Empezó entonces el concierto: seda volando, un diseño áureo y una arácnida en plena odisea. Pronto quedó terminado, su teselado pegajoso, su trampa invisible. Esperando ansiosa a cenar, se mimetizó en la corteza del Sr. Encino. Pasaron los minutos, y el primer inocente cayó. Era una luciérnaga.

Regodeándose se acercó a disfrutar su triunfo. Delicadeza habitual, colmillos afilados, ponzoña goteando; el hambre de un mes y la luna llena, la velada perfecta.

ENGLISH

Silk & Dinner

After two moths and even a tasty fly passed, our protagonist decided to undertake its labor. To the sound of agility and dexterity, she left her favorite stone and went over the back of Mr. Oak. Pawning a special care, she searched in the branches, here and there, for a balcony facing the moon. That night she would make it … she had an intuition.

She studied the branches, made her geometry and threaded her needle. Then the concert began: flying silk, an aureus design and a spider in full odyssey. Soon it was completed; her sticky tessellations, her invisible trap. Waiting anxiously for dinner, she mimicked in the cortex of Mr. Oak. Minutes passed, and the first innocent fell into. It was a firefly.

Basking she came to enjoy her triumph. Usual delicacy, sharp fangs, dripping poison … the hunger of a month and a full moon: the perfect dinner.

Mathematics

Math is certainly one of my passions, and while being a participant of the Mexican Mathematics Olympiad, I certainly learned to see Mathematics as something MUCH deeper than what we learn in our schools. We were constantly writing essays for the English Class, and once I made a short essay about my experience. I find it a condensate of what I have learned from it, and I want to share it.

This is the logo of Nuevo Leon's Organizing Committee: OMMNL

To do mathematics is to engage in an act of discovery and conjecture, intuition and inspiration; to be in a state of confusion— not because it makes no sense to you, but because you gave it sense and you still don’t understand what your creation is up to; to have a breakthrough idea; to be frustrated as an artist; to be awed and overwhelmed by an almost painful beauty; to be alive, damn it.

Paul Lockhart, A Mathematician’s lament

My perception of math is completely different from that of many people I have met. When I hear my classmates say something like, “I hate math!” or “I hate science!” or “I hate everything related with numbers!” I just can’t figure out how such wonders could split us so sharply into “lovers”, “haters”, and “those who simply don’t care.” Is it just a matter of taste or are we prejudging that which we barely understand? Perhaps we keep looking for a sense that should not be found, but fashioned by our own imagination. It is hard to say when I became a “lover” of math, but the OMM (Mexican Mathematics Olympiad) definitely had something to do with it. My impression of the OMM as merely another math contest was drastically transformed when I was given four hours to solve an exam consisting of only three questions! Even my notion of “a problem” was reformulated when I discovered that there are no answers, only solutions that arise from single, brand-new ideas generated by ourselves. Math, then, is the process of using your imagination to unearth those wonderful ideas. The OMM taught me that knowledge is far more complex and nuanced than we could ever imagine, and that math is “the art and craft of problem solving”.