A Friday night

  After a long day of classes the week is finally over and as almost every Friday I went to my parents house.

  A short walk hand in hand with my girlfriend and a pretty normal subway ride, where we sadly have to part ways, and I arrive to Indios Verdes. This is where the trip really starts.

  Trying to leave the city is as chaotic as the city itself and public transport from the Estado de México makes everything worse.

  I take an uncomfortable seat on a bus that looks older than me with it's faded paint, cracked windows and mismatched panels that threaten to fall apart at any moment. Once the driver is satisfied with how many people have to stand in the central aisle he switchs on the bus. After half an hour the bouncing of the bus and the constant brake lulls me to sleep.

  By the time I open my eyes we're past the traffic and two thirds of the way are behind us but something isn't right. We're not going as fast as usual and the air smells like burned plastic. Something in the bus is burning. The driver looks worried but keeps going.

  Two kilometers before my home the bus fails. While the driver and his companion try to revive the engine my dad decides to come for me. While not that far I don't really want to walk and risking having to run from the feral dogs that people let roam at night. In a show of brilliant thinking the driver opens the hood to the engine that's inside the cabin. The smell of gasoline and burnt rubber permeates everything, making me almost gag. Everything get's worse when he starts the bus and presses the acelarator. The smoke that comes out immediately makes me cough and my eyes cry. Putting my hoodie to my nose and,  barely seeing, I exit the bus and it's in that moment it starts moving and lefts me there alone at night, still coughing and with my nostrils full of smoke.

  Without anything else to do but wait I walk to a small cover illuminated with fluorescent bulbs. Nothing but the static sound of the electricity running in the bulbs and the small bugs that fly around the light accompanies me in the cold night until a familiar engine gets near. My dad it's coming to get me! Until he passes me and keeps driving down the road. I don't know how you can miss out a lone person in black under the fluorescent lights at midnight, but whatever. Stunned by the hilarity of the situation and still a bit dazed for the smoke it takes me a few moments to  whistle. He cames back and finally a few minutes later I'm home. I take a shower seeing as I reek of gasoline and then I can sleep. This Friday night is over.

I waited under a cover like this one. A bit creepy I think

  As someone who thinks that higher education should have freedom to choose, had it been me in that situation, I may have been a bit more forceful and active in the weeks that preceded my visit. It might be that I can't fully grasp how dangerous is to go against conservative people in the South of the USA or is because I don't have the same concerns about my general safety as the author did.

  I think we can't really change how people think or their beliefs with just a speech, but we can make a powerful statement for those that might need to hear it, to show that the loudest faction it’s not necessarly the bigger.

  Quoting the author: "these students were, for the most part, old enough to vote and go to war” so to me it seems ridiculous that some parents tried to shelter them from things like female friendship between two young adults or sex. 

  Past a certain age you can't really protect a young person from the world but rather you hope for them to have judgement to face it.

English, why?

  English. One language so widely spread. It's the third language with more users globally and is mandatory in lot of countries as a second language at basic education level. A lot of scientific material and global politics are done in English. Sadly the means to achieve and maintain that are questionable, with colonization and imperialism being the most notorious ways, even at this day. We can't take the cultural and historical influence out when talking or studying a language, they're part of a whole and to learn a language is to get an insight into another cultures and another ways of life.

  Without overlooking all those aspects and faults that English has we can also talk about the language as a tool to communicate: ideas, dreams, stories, thoughts, discomforts and everything that makes us human and alive. It gives us the wonderful opportunity to interact with people that can be on the other side of  the Earth, to know about far away lands and different customs and traditions.

  Taking two hours a class, three days a week, at night and having Friday evenings booked for four months seems a bit excessive just to learn how to write better in English, but written words are powerful.

  Personally, for me everything started as a chore. At elementary school, with a kind teacher drilling for days the colors and numbers to a group of rowdy, messy six years olds. That trend continued to my preteen years when music was a true incentive to pay at least more attention in class. It wasn't until junior year in high school when I started trying to read stories at the Internet and playing videogames in English that I really took those classes seriously and even started to study on my own.

   Now, six years later all that studying payed off at my college courses where a lot of the material available is in English and I didn't struggle to read, just to understand the concepts, I can play videogames and read books that have not been translated yet and even make friends with people in Philippines.

  My relationship with English started as a necessity, an imposed obligation from the system that evolved into the ability to resonate and have fun with another humans. Now I take official classes to reach an standard that will help me in my professional career and maybe, in a future, not only read about other cultures but, having a real taste of them, seeing all those places with my own eyes and making more friends.Worthy of  sacrificing six hours a week and my Fridays for a few months.