Teri’s Notebook: From Carson to pig head tacos to MIT

I was speaking this week with Keith Shaffer, bond projects manager for the Carson City School District (Incidentally, he worked his last day as a district employee Friday as the bond projects are now nearly complete. However, he will continue to oversee the projects still in progress.)

He mentioned to me a blog his daughter, Kristi, who graduated from Carson High School in 2011, has been writing to keep friends and family informed of her activities while serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In the blog, she writes of the spiritual experiences she has while sharing her beliefs as well as the cultural experiences she’s having in and around Oaxaca, Mexico.

Here’s an excerpt:

“In other news, we ate some pig head tacos this week! Literally the lady just boiled the whole head all together and then chopped it all up with a giant knife! The bones, the fat, the meat, the whatever else there is....all of it! And then we put it in tortillas and ate it with spicy stuff. It was .....

“Speaking of knives! We got to do a service project this week, which was awesome! A nice change of pace! We did it at this train park, and we were there to paint some benches and to cut the grass. I was on grass cutting duty. You want to know how people cut grass here? With machetes! Hahahaha Seriously!! So I just took that giant rusty blade (which people just carry around in their backpacks all the time like its no big deal) and I started hacking around at approximately 5 blades per minute! Haha seriously, machete-ing a whole field is quite a process. I would venture to say that lawn mowers are a little more efficient.”

While I’m giving updates, I’ll pass along another one from Porfirio Jauregui, a 2014 Carson High School graduate. I wrote a story last year after he got accepted to MIT, likely the only Carson High School student ever to have done so.

He sent an email to government teacher Angila Golik this week. She shared it with me.

“Everything is going pretty well right now, but let me tell you that MIT is literally the most fun I’ve ever had and the most stress I’ve ever had all at the same time. The classes here are incredibly difficult.

“Never before have I felt so out of the loop as I do now. Other than having a rough time with classes, the school and the people here are amazing. There is so much going on all the time. I’ve already had an incredible amount of awesome experiences like yacht cruises, steak and lobster dinners, massive paintball wars, an unprecedented amount of parties, salsa dancing classes, and so many random events that I would not do otherwise.

“The people I’ve become friends with are also amazing. They are all nice, funny, surprisingly athletic, and of course geniuses. My roommate Angus for example makes electronic music and can create and manipulate songs within 10 minutes. My other friend Dylan is currently creating an LED lighting system for his dorm that will be used during parties. Also you can look this up as well, but my friend Ben Katz created a small scale roller coaster at my dorm for the East Campus dorm rush party.

“All of this makes me realize just how insane this place is right now. But I have to say that I love it, and I have to thank both FBLA and CHS for helping me get here.”