Road To Mexico; Learning Spanish With Sophia -- January 21, 2022

Mexico refinery almost $4 billion over budget. 

This is a huge story.

PEMEX is heavy in debt; worst among all oil companies in the entire world.

Now this.

This is Mexico's mega-refinery: the Dos Bocas project.

• 340,000 barrel / day
• purpose: halt crude oil exports starting in 2023
• now, the project may fail to produce a single gallon of gasoline in 2022;
• may produce only limited amounts of fuel for several years after that;

Costs:

• original estimate: $9.0 billion
• new estimate: $13.0 billion
  

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Sophia And Spanish

Sophia and I are taking Spanish lessons on Duolingo together. 

 For a break, we are trying something different. One of Sophia's favorite books is Sisters.

We got identical "graphic novels" at Barnes and Noble, one in English, one in Spanish. Sophia "reads" the one in Spanish and I read the one in English. This is our first time through. It will take many iterations. 

Most interesting: the translations are matched up exactly in each book, but so many idioms. It will be a challenge, but it's great fun learning these idioms. Wish us luck. Here we go.

Don't laugh. Our pronunciation is horrible, but this is our first time going through the books. The good news: my wife, Sophia's grandmother's native language is Spanish -- well, actually, her first language was Japanese but she left Japan when she was about two years old. Her first home in America was in Texas and her next language was Spanish until she started school when she was seven years old. She knew no English when she started school. She spoke Japanese with her mom and Spanish with her dad. 

So, our pronunciation is horrible but Grammy will work with us and help Sophia. I'm a lost cause. LOL.