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for my IFE.

IFE, what is that?

Actually IFE is an acronym for Instituto Federal Electoral which is the institute that handles the voting process and the voting laws here in Mexico. When you reach the age of 18, you have to go to your local IFE office and get your Voter ID which is commonly called IFE although that Id says “Credencial para Votar” meaning voting credential.

As you may or may not know, there is going to be a big election here in Mexico this Sunday. It is not the presidential election but it’s important because we get to vote for the district representatives and the mayor.

I still don’t know who I’m going to vote for. My dad and sister are voting for PAN (Partido Acción Nacional) which is the same party of our President. My mum doesn’t vote because of religious reasons (I don’t know what religion has to do with voting but that’s her issue). I don’t know, there isn’t a party that calls my attention and none of the candidates look very reliable to me.

I have 4 more days to make up my mind though.

Now, the story of the lost IFE…

Once upon a time, when Julie went to Silicon Valley, she took with her a wallet which contained: money, passport and her IFE. After she came back to her beloved Mexico City, she changed wallets but forgot to put her IFE in the new wallet.

The old wallet then passed through a number of places and situations before resting at the bottom of Julie’s closet, behind her shoes. Months went by and since I don’t really go to places where my IFE is required I left its lost state in the back of my mind until last week when I remembered that we have to vote this Sunday.

In the process of searching for it I:

• lift Liz’s bed (Liz has a bed for her in my room)
• organized all my belongings
• went over a HUGE stack of papers and notebooks
• cleaned out all my purses, book bags and pockets
• organized my shoes

And there it was, lying behind the shoes. The wallet and I opened it and there was my IFE, safe and sound.

If you’re in Mexico, do you know who are you going to vote for?

Kisses,

Julie.

I don’t have the energy, nor the creativity to think of a title right now.

My summer vacay has been slow, I should start working on the Augmented Reality project or something but truth to be told, I don’t want to think about school right now. I think this semester was very rough on most of us and we need a little more time to get over it.

I’ve spent the last two days playing Pokémon Emerald. No, I’m not a Pokémon fan at all, in fact after the first 150 Pokémon I don’t know about the others. But today, I finally managed to finish it!This makes me incredibly happy because I’ve always wanted to finish one Pokémon game.

When I was very young, I wasn’t allowed to play any kind of video game. In fact, my first (and only) gaming console, a PS2, was purchased when I was 17 by my sister. It was $35 USD and totally new because she used to work in the company that makes them. So, when I was young the little contact I had with gaming consoles was during holidays because of my cousin J. You see, J was a very spoiled boy (we were both very spoiled children) so he always had all the games and gaming consoles in the market. During holidays, we used to go to my grandmother’s house and stay there for 2 weeks. J took his games, consoles, Game Boy and even a T.V. just to pass the time, my grandmother lives in a small town in the middle of nowhere. The only game he ever let me play was Pokémon (Red, I think) but I could never finish one because he took the Game Boy away from me ¬¬. So now, thanks to the magic of ROMs and emulators, I managed to finish one!

My badges, aren’t they shiny?

Of course I used cheats and every trick in the book to finish. I wasn’t going to spend an eternity figuring everything out, the goal was to finish it, not to finish it properly.

Moving on from that, this weekend I applied to some jobs. Today a company called me but after they asked about my school schedule declined their offer. I hate that! The schedules are made that way in order to “give us time to work” but in reality they just force you to be at school all day (in case you have to drive over an hour to get there like me). I guess that I could ditch some classes this semester and work, but I really want to finish college next year (more than anything, to be able to say “I finished college at 21, and you?”, yes, I’m a mean person). Also, Daddy refuse to pay for another semester u_ú.

I guess I’ll have to stick it up for another year before being able to start being economically independent.

What consoles me a bit, is that the company called really fast! It was also a very good job with an excellent salary. At least I know that all the work that I’m putting college is going to be valuable once I’m out.

On Sunday, after our workout, my mum left to go somewhere and came back bearing clothes! She got me a pair of Havaianas and *drum roll please!* two dresses by Isaac Mizrahi form Target! She got my sister a top from American Eagle and a skirt from somewhere. The Isaac dresses where extremely lucky finds (seeing as there is no Target here in Mexico) but my mum knows places and people. I need to go where she goes someday soon, see if I can find something from Alexander McQueen for Target . I just need some money. I promise to take pictures as soon as I get a camera (mine was stolen along with my sister’s car).

Another thing I’ve been doing recently is driving. How I missed driving, and my car and listening to Lady Gaga while on the road. On Friday I drove near my high school to meet with L and yesterday I drove from the Mall home because mum had to leave and sister and I were waiting for her glasses to be ready. While we waited we went into the Apple Store and gawked at the iPods, I want a Nano and she wants a Touch. Since I’m most probably getting an internet plan with a Samsung Black Jack I don’t want the iPhone anymore, however I still need an iPod for when I go jogging, hence the gawking. But yeah, the feeling of moving on the road and the thrill when you push gas, I missed it. That combined with the new car smell of my car (my car is almost 3 years old and still smells like new car) is just heaven for me.

It suck not having a camera or a Flickr PRO account.

Kisses,

Julie.

Yesterday, Mum and I went to the Nike Store to get me some proper running shoes.

The staff was really nice and Mum and I tried endless quantities of tennis shoes but I settled for these ones:

I KNOW that everyone (meaning Alekz, GeNmA and Arely) are going to say that they are red but in reality they are hot pink. They are super comfortable and they come ready to be wired with Nike+. 

BTW, I really hate being camera-less and without a Flickr PRO account, but they will come in time. For now I’ll try to settle with my LG Shine’s camera (which is awful T_T).

Today, Mum, sister and I woke up early to go walking. I really love waking up at ungodly hours to go walking.

The Naucalli Park has a 3km running track, all along this tracks there are like small pit stops where you can stretch, do crunches and other things. You can also enroll is Yoga lessons, Tai Chi, Boxing and running clubs. I like it there because there are a lot of people running and walking with you.

There’s also two open air gyms. The first one is male-oriented and from what D and the mechatronics have told me, it is a very heavy workout. I wouldn’t know since I don’t plan on setting foot there. The second gym is more gym-like, there are machines for working out arms, back and everything else. My favourite is the elliptical machine. What’s different about these machines is that they don’t use weights, instead you use the weight in your body to work with. It was really fun trying to figure out how to use them XDD.

I’ll come bearing pictures tomorrow. BTW, we have decided to start training to run a marathon and today we walked the running track twice (that means that we walked 6km n_n).

Kisses,

Julie.