econspeak

Studying for comps has been more and more intense... but I never thought I'd start speaking another language!

Today, Ach surprisingly called me at 9am and woke me up --he woke up before I did??? And he woke up before noon??? woooah...--. At first I was a bit confused that our conversation was actually in English. Five seconds later I realize that I had been dreaming about the end of comps, our trip to Ixtapa, and my return to Monterrey. When I finally go home, my cousin Zita is super excited to see me and asks me, "So? How was your semester and the trip to Ixtapa?" And then she freaks out when she realizes that I cannot utter a single word in Spanish... "rvewebvevu, rvswbqvsvu..." She looks at me disdainfully and says "Whaaat?? I don't understand you!" As I exasperatedly attempt to tell her about the end of the academic year and our amazing trip to the beach, I can only mumble, "HKIPKICIQI!!!!!!!!!!!" She then starts screaming "¡No te entiendo! ¡No te entiendo!" And then I finally have an apparently briilliant idea and yell triumphant, "FKL!!!"

I take out a photo album and show her the pictures that brought back such beautiful memories. The first one is something that looks like one of the first drawings of St Exupery's pilot ("The Little Prince") in his attempt to represent an elephant inside a boa. "What the hell is this?" says Zita. I flip the page and we see a picture of me hugging some weird creature, with two skinny legs and then just one single crooked extension from the "waist" up, no arms or head. We keep turning pages and see similarly ridiculous pictures and she starts screaming nonsense in Spanish in addition to "I don't understand what you say! I don't understand what these pictures mean!" I try to explain myself again and, once more, articulate: "HKIPKICIQI!!"

I pull out a piece of paper and write as clearly as I can,

H(k,I) = Pi(K)*k - I - C(I) + q*I

rVe = (w - e) - b(Ve - Vu)

rVs = w - (b + q)(Vs - Vu)

f(K,L)!!!

At this point Zita is going crazy and I try to calm her down and explain the pictures. I point at the first one and then draw a bell curve on the reverse side of my piece of paper. I draw it big, just to make sure that she gets it. Very frustrated, she tosses my paper and pencil on the floor and throws at me all sorts of insults in Spanish. I feel quite frustrated too. I thought she'd understand something more "normal"... but no. I understand less and less of her jabber until it becomes totally incomprehensible. I still try to explain the second photo and tell her that "lambda" and I have become super close friends throughout the year but, apparently, she could not care less...