A Little Bit About Work

CIMAT has been a very welcoming center.  When we arrived, the first challenge was finding a place to put us!  Our counterpart Laura didn’t want Antoine and I to share an office since she knew that we would basically talk English all day together-which is definitely right!  Since space is at a premium, it was a challenge to find two spaces.  Luckily we both ended up with offices rather than a card table in the software development room!  Antoine is sharing an office with a post-grad student and I have my own space which is an office of one of the researchers who is currently on sabbatical in Spain. The center is currently finishing construction on a new building that will house a robotics lab as well as the software department and it is my understanding that eventually towards the end of summer we may move there.  But for now, I am not complaining.  The only challenge is that our center is built on a billion hills and there are something like 10 buildings built up the hill and so it is really difficult to get to know anyone and to gather round any facsimile of a water cooler!  So that is the bad news. Here is photo so you see what I mean-very challenging on the knees by the way, especially at almost 8000 feet up!

 

But I am hoping that once we start to teach some English classes we will get to know more people. Our first project here is to help with the transition to a new website for the center.  They are scheduled to go live with the new site at the end of June and while there is currently content on the old site, it really needs to be rethought and rewritten both in Spanish and in English.  Since the communications director has a very busy schedule, we decided that the best approach is for Antoine and I to rewrite the site in an English “Lite” version and then once we all agree on content, they will translate the new copy into Spanish.  So far, the process is working and it is a great way to get know every aspect of the center since we spend hours studying the content that is on the old site, studying work documents, and trying to understand how to communicate all the aspects of the work done here at the center.

The highlight of the first week was an invitation by the Director of the center to join him for lunch along with our counterpart at one of the nicest restaurants in town.  They both insisted that we try one of Mexico’s specialties called Escamoles, which for the culinarily challenged among you, translate as ant larvae!  In this case they were served as a starter in the form of a sope-a  little masa pancake and they were very good-kind of nutty and buttery as they are described-but better not to think about what you are eating!  Here is a photo:

Aside from the amazing lunch, we welcomed an opportunity to spend some time with our Director who is a brilliant and busy man.  He has won the national prize for mathematics here in Mexico and it was interesting to listen to the kinds of projects he is interested in working on for the center.  We will see how they all develop and how we might be able to contribute.

Meanwhile, we have the website to keep us occupied.  We also will be starting some English classes in the next few weeks.  Antoine will be leading a conversation group for interested staff members and I will be focusing on a business English class for the people in sales and the people who work with industry.  So it is will be interesting to see who signs up and how those courses proceed.  For now however, May 1^st is a holiday here in Mexico, so we have been enjoyed both Monday and Tuesday as a holiday!  Not a bad way to start off our new jobs!