Yo Tomaría Su Clase

While I continue to work on my other blog about Madrid which happens to be taking a long time because I don´t have pictures to job my memory, I will write a little bit about more recent things. First of all I was elected by my the chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia as president of the chapter for the 2008-2009 school year! I was definitely not expecting to be elected as such and it really makes me feel good about everything I´ve done in PMA. This past year was a difficult one in terms of planning and paperwork, not to mention brotherhood... but I strongly believe that I´ll be returning to a very well organized and strong group of brothers. I must say it´s a difficult thing to create a real strong dfeeling of connection to lots of people when you lead busy musician lives and there aren´t very many manditory kinds of service or actions or whatnot... I guess you really have to want to be there. Because of said issues, this semester there was no rush process, all time was spent between the brothers. Of all I read from the chapter this semester it looks like people are really making an effort to be involved and to want to do things together, a good sign is definitely heavy interaction with another group - the women´s music fraternity Sigma Alpha Iota (ee-yota). I really look forward to being able to oversee the functioning of the chapter and keep everything together as best I can - I guess there´s still plenty I´m not sure that the President does, I´m curious to see what I don´t know.
Another thing is my consideration of Tau (taw, like the vowel of 'clog') Beta Sigma. Having been dating Bethany for nearly two years, I consider myself to have been (for a non-member) heavily involved with Tau Beta Sigma, the music service sorority that she is a strong member of. I have thoroughly enjoyed the large amounts of service they do, and the sisterhood events that they have, and the great traditions they have accumulated... not to mention the outstanding organization and participation (all of these things I somewhat envy, and in part have shamelessly plagiarized into the work of PMA... with full knowledge and consent of Bethany of course... so I guess it´s not plagiarism?). As it just so happens, Tau Beta Sigma is in fact a coed fraternity, and I figure having helped Bethany with finances, participated in sister events and fundraising and lots of service - I might as well just join and know all the behind the scenes stuff too. This presents just one problem: timing. All of our meetings happen to be at the same time. You might have been thinking it would be wierd to be the 'sister' of my girlfriend, but KKY brothers date each other so I suppose it´s not as wierd as it could be. Then I suppose there´s the whole denomination of 'sister' for me, which is perhaps a little less normal than a girl being called a 'brother' of a professional fraternity. I´m sure exceptions could be made, I would consider myself a brother anyways. I guess that whole business is a little strange but the bottom line is that I love the work that TBS does and I love the way they do it, not to mention the girls are awesome... although perhaps I´m a little biased.

It was a little while ago that I got a package from Bethany including none other than homemade cookies and treats! I shared as much as I could before scarfing it all down... it seems like no mothers here really make desserts, no cookies or brownies or cakes or anything - they buy all that stuff. I think that´s a real shame, and rather prefer the American home-baked dessert tradition. And I was rather excited to have gotten a baked treat from my far away sweetheart.

Then the other day I got a package from home!!! Thank you very very much mom, dad, sister, d-daddy, Dana and Mountain View! Right when I got them I shot into the pancake mix and maple syrup. I don´t think my madre liked me taking over the kitchen so quickly to make some pancakes, but I cleaned up everything and even shared my precious maple syrup :-). I have also bit into the Thin Mints and downed a bunch of Reese´s. I look forward to playing with the spices and tons of goodies! Thank you guys, I´ll keep up my practice in the kitchen. My next project is chocolate chip cookies!

Another thing that was very exciting for me was the experience of teaching a class. In my political science class, every Wednesday a student must present a scholastic article about Latin America to the class, and this past Wednesday was my turn. I was of course given the economics article which made me a little bit nervous about getting it all right since it is my major after all. But I got up in front of the class and I really felt good about what I was saying and while sometimes less clear I thought I had some good examples and really tried to explain the article and thereafter my thoughts on why it was wrong and misdirected. My favorite part of it was definitely adding my own commentary and analysis. To give a short version of the presentation, I presented my personal thoughts and ideas in Spanish (or whatever I could manage of Spanish) and the details of the article in English (since it was written in English). D.C. economist John Williamson in 1989 wrote an article outlining a set of reforms that he considered to be common agreement in D.C. that Latin American countries should adopt for the betterment of their economies. This list included 1. Fiscal discipline (balancing the government budget) 2. Public expenditure reorganization 3. Tax reform 4. Market determined interest rates 5. Competitive exchange rates 6. Trade laws liberalization 7. Liberalization of laws on foreign businesses buying or merging with internal firms (Foreign Direct Investment) 8. Privatization of state enterprises 9. Deregulation for ease of market forces and 10. Security of property rights. Then Latin American countries tried to enforce some of these ideas, which failed miserably. Williamson himself noted that there was little specification and no organization to it, and further that it was crazy of countries to adopt something written in an article without more research or discourse. My personal argument was that these were all meaningless reforms since the majority of work in Latin American countries is corrupt and black market. No matter how much you dress up the written economic work, if noone follows the rules in the first place you´ll get nowhere. The only way to improve these conditions would be to improve worker´s rights and protection and enforcement of business laws. As unnecessary as it might sound, the higher ups really do need to be paid more to avoid the temptation of bribery and further oversight of leaders and decisionmakers is never a bad idea. Without the education and protection of workers and leaders alike, no economic reform will do good for the country.

That´s the shortened version of my presentation, and I got the feeling as I was standing in front of the small class pointing at my chalkboard notes that I actually enjoyed that. It was an exciting feeling to have people taking notes on what I was saying and writing! I must have been channeling the teacher abilities of my dear Bethany. Afterwards some of them noted that if things didn´t work out I should work as a professor, 'I´d definitely take your class.' That made me feel good.