Alberto Ramriez Lujano

November 2008 - please see here

October 2008

I visited Tasmania with Maritriny, Artemio, Alex and some exchange students from Germany and Denmark. We spend almost the whole spring break there. I saw some dolphins jumping in the beach, something I thought, I would never see. The Tasmanian animals I saw were awesome. It was a experience seeing the animal free and wild rather than in a zoo; sadly I learnt that the famous Tasmanian devils are suffering from a facial cancer epidemic which is leading them to extinction, fortunately, there are breeding programs working on that and are being a huge success. I hope Tasmanian devils overcome soon this terrible disease.

I attend a linguistics party organised by Monash university, where all the students had fun with our lecturers and tutors. This party was really interesting for me, since I had the opportunity to talk with some of the linguistics lecturers who advice me about the linguistic researches going on in Melbourne and how volunteer in them. I met Marisa Cordella the Spanish linguistics coordinator and I am helping her with the data management of one of her investigations about the Spanish immigrants who arrived to Australia after the war.

I was invited by the Spanish studies first year coordinator to attend the Spanish studies semester closure, where students presented magazines the wrote in Spanish and even poems they wrote. I was really happy about seeing Australian and Asians interested in my language and culture and I had a wonderful time sharing my culture with them.

Jorge and I attended the Monash exchange students semester closure party. The party was great and it was really good to see again some friends I met during the orientation week at the beginning of the semester.

I Chinese friend invited me to a kind’s book launch at a well recognised book shop in the city. It was great, I had the opportunity to talk with the author of the book and ask him about the publishing process he went through. I was particularly interested in those matters since I write fairy tales for kids too and I am currently working in a tale about Tasmania which I would like to publish back home in Mexico.

September 2008

It is always difficult to decide where to start since everything is new and the experiences are too many. All Latin-American Peace-scholarship holders got together to organise and celebrate at 5^th of September a ‘Fiesta Latina’ in order to rise funds for kids in Afghanistan. Selling the tickets for such event was a quite difficult but interesting task, we booked a table at the Campus Centre of our university (Monash) and started to give flyers to people while some of us where dancing salsa. Another day I prepared a huge bowl of guacamole and walked around the Campus Centre offering it to people while I gave them information about the party. I met a lot of people and sold some tickets at the same time.

I joined to a Language Exchange Program at Monash campus Caufield where an Indonesian student and I teach to each other our language, which is great because when I volunteer in Indonesia in January I at least will speak some basic Indonesian, I am looking forward to so.

I am still discovering the wonders of the Australian food such as the fairy bread, the rocky road and the vegemite.

I attended a Malaysian cultural festival at Federation Square where I had the opportunity to spend time and play with some of them, and principally learn from their culture.

Regarding school, it is great as always, it has been a little more demanding now that the semester is about to finish but I am doing it quite well so far. The mid semester break is about to start, and I am travelling to Tasmania with other two exchange students. We will meet there Maritriny and Artemio two Mexican Peace-scholarship holders for this amazing trip.

August 2008

Two months have passed since we arrived to this wonderful city and the surprises never finish. I’m part of a kind of hitchhikers association that help travellers all around the world offering them free hostage and cultural interchange. We organised a Free Hugs day so we went to the corner of Elizabeth Street with Burke and offered free hugs to people. The result was a complete success some people even joined us while they were passing by. My friendship with some exchange students was strengthened through Monash Exchange Students Association meetings and birthday parties. The cultural events here are great, I attended to an aboriginal concert at the Melbourne Arts Centre which was stunning. Watching the inauguration of the Olympics at Federation Square was something unforgettable, because there were people there watching it with me from all around the world so when the countries were presented you could feel the excitement in the air, and clap, and shout hoorays for all the countries.

The four Mexican IDP scholarship holders cooked together a real Mexican lunch for the Monash abroad staff; I was really happy of seeing how others enjoyed our culture with us.

Regarding the school I’m still getting used to the teaching method they have here. I just handed in my first assignments of linguistics and I got a 10 out of 10 in one; what made me think and re-value the bases I got in my home university.

July 2008 Update

Well, they have been so far the most exciting weeks in my life. It is the first time I travel abroad so what I have learned, in these days through the real and direct contact with other cultures, has been priceless.

I flew with Jorge Zepeda another Mexican IDP scholar holder and one of my best friends from Mexico-San Francisco-Sydney-Melboure. It was for both of us the first travel abroad so we could not contain our excitement. In San Francisco we had to wait around 12hrs. for our next plane. So we had the opportunity of going around something that was really awesome because it was the first time that Jorge saw the beach in his lifetime!

The orientation week at Monash University was really fun and I met some friends who I will be in touch for the rest life. Regarding school I am taking the following classes: Describing and Analysing Language and Communication, Language a Cross Time, Professional Writing, and Grammar and Expressions. Classes here are totally different from Mexico, so it has been a huge contrast, but I am learning a lot.

Classes just began as well as the extracurricular activities; by the moment I just joined the Anime Club at Clayton and I’m joining the Japanese Club next week in order to improve my poor Japanese besides that I offered my help to the Spanish and Latin American Club to help other students to improve their Spanish and share the Mexican culture with them. The word project has become my favourite daily word. I contacted the coordinator of Linguistics to see if I can provide any help in any current linguistic research running on campus, sadly there is not any research running at this moment so I am thinking about a linguistic research proposal to present to the coordinator. On the other hand we (the four Mexicans) are cooking real Mexican food for the Monash Abroad Staff to thank them for the wonderful orientation week they gave us. On 26^th July we are having our first meeting to for the Afghanistan project where each of us will present ideas an possible locations for the event.

Life is great in Melbourne, I am just in love with the city, the accent and even the Aussie slang is really lovely and I found it as a linguistics student quite interesting. I got a really good accommodation in ST Kilda, which actually is a kind of heritage from a last year Mexican IDP scholarship holder (Carlos). I share my room with another IDP scholar holder (Jorge Zepeda). We live with a Colombian friend (Mario). This is great because Carlos and Mario used to live together when Carlos was studying here and now we are living with Mario keeping in some way this freindship.