Day 11, Sunday 12/13

The morning was spent hanging out at home.  When I woke up and wandered down into the kitchen, Dan was in the middle of making waffles.  Between the three of us, we made breakfast and had some really interesting conversation on culture, the education system, living abroad, and family values.  A lot of the conversation centered around how globalization has caused people to lose sight of relationships with their community and instead created a culture of consumers, driven by materials things and who view success in those terms.

A couple of insights from Dan:

Dan is a surfer and he's been making a few of his own boards.  He talked about how sometimes he'd want to give up on the hobby if it wasn't going well for him, but he kept thinking "This next board might be the one that is amazing" so he'd give  it another try.  What  a great philosophy on life, almost a spin on George Martinez's "A no is just a no until you get a yes."

Secondly...damn, I forgot the other one!  It'll come back to me.

I'm off to shower, then head to the Plaza for some more picture taking.

Observations on the Mexicanos...

Lui and I were chatting and we came up with a list of Things Mexican People Like and it turned it to Observations on the Mexicanos in general.

• Vero: Mexicans like giving their loved ones ridiculous nick names (see: "gordo", "morena", "flaca", "blanca" "mona") Lui: yeah, my aunt's name is Celina and we call her "mona" Vero: I have aunts named Rosario, Leticia, Carmen, Margaret, and Dolores but it's "Negra", "Leta", "Caya", "Mague", and "Pilinga" and our Uncle Jesus was "Cuco"
  
  
• Lui: Mexicans like excuses for parties. Vero: Word. Graduation, confirmation, baby shower, wedding shower, quinceniera, Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, tupperware party...
  
  
• Vero: Mexicans like putting the Virgin on everything from candles, to clocks to nightlights to tattoos. http://www.pbase.com/ohquepretty/virgin_mary_and_los_angeles
  And we believe she shows up everywhere from our tortillas to trees.
  http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/RootWeb/VirginMaryCheese.htm
  According to that site her food of choice is a grilled cheese sandwich, but everyone knows she's all about the tortilla.
  
  
• Lui: Mexicans like the old english letters on back of pick-ups (Lui: although that's a mexican-american thing)
  
  
• Vero: Mexicans like naming their daughters Maria. Lui: My mom's name is Maria de Lourdes Monica. Vero: All my aunts are names Maria de "whatever"
  
  
• Vero: Mexicans like naming their children after virgins and saints
  
  
• Vero: Mexicans like naming their children after themselves. My dad is Roland, my brother is Roland Jr. My grandfather was Jesus, his son was Jesus and one of my aunts sons was Jesus. My uncle's father was Ray, he is Ray and his son is Ray. My dad's friend was Adrian, his daughter was Adriana and his son was Adrian Jr. And the best example yet: Lui is named after her father Luis, and her sister is named after her mother Lourdes.
  
  
• Lui: Mexicans like being late to everything
  
  
• Lui: Mexicans like: BBQs. Vero: and like taking leftovers home on styrofoam plates "for mijo" after the cook out, even if they didn't pitch in.
  
  
• Vero: Mexicans like pinatas.
  
  
• Lui: Mexicans like birthday parties. We went to Dallas and we went to get something to eat at some hotel and it was midnight and on the door of one of the ballrooms was "Alexis 1st birthday!" and of course latiin music coming from the room. Vero: You have to celebrate mijo's birthday with carne asada and beer and tres leches cake. Lui: and dancing.
  
  
• Lui: Mexican people like the song "El Rey." Vero: Any song by Vicente Fernandez is a classic. I don't know a Mexican who doesn't know the words to "Llorar" and "Volver"
  
  
• Vero: Mexicans like calling everyone mijo or mija, regardless of whether they are related or not. Lui: and everyone is Tio or Tia
  
  
• Lui: Mexican American people are Mexican OR American when convenient
  
  
• Vero: Mexicans like tacos out of trucks
  
  
• Lui: Mexicans have padrinos for everything
  
  
• Vero: Mexicans ask you to be their sponsor for everything. For their weddings, quincenieras, for school trips...
  
  
• Vero: Mexican women always have makeup on
  
  
• Lui: Mexicans love chanclas *flip flops* and often use them to kill bugs and try to kill their children(many a mexican child has been threatened by "chanclasos") Vero: Chancla, the trabesura stopper. We feared a chanclaso
  
  
• Vero: Mexicans will willingly paint their house hot pink or neon green
  
  
• Lui: Mexican people love gossip. Vero: Chisme! Lui: all kinds of it
  
  
• Vero: Mexicans believe if someone looks to hard at something, it will get the Ojo. Lui: Superstition! Vero: My mom used to tell me that if my feet got wet and my hair didn't I'd get sick
  
  
• Vero: Mexicans love home remedies. I've been blessed with a chancla before and had an egg in a bowl under the bed to cure me of the Ojo. Lui: I was made to drink tequila as a child to help me go to sleep! Vero: I don't think that was a remedy so much as your parents were alcoholic. Lui: It was just a sip. Vero: Ri-ight.
  
  
• Vero: Mexicans like saying that the gringos are trying to keep us down.
  
  
• Vero: Mexican people will eat chile with anything. Lui: and mayonnaise!
  
  
• Lui: We like complaining that people think all mexican women are hot and spicy but secretly we love that we're hot and spicy.
  
  
• Vero: Mexican men know how to romance their ladies, but don't know how to respect them
  
  
• Vero: Mexicans will brag to no end when one of their kids or grandkids accomplishes anything but everyone esle will complain that that person thinks they are better than them or "se cree mucho"
  
  
• Lui: Mexicans love white skinned babies
  
  
• Lui: Mexicans like pronouncing an "e" before any "s" word like "estudy" or "especial"
  
  
• Vero: Mexicans love watching shows where girls are scantily dressed and jump around. Lui: it's like every show on spanish tv. Vero: It could be a kids game show and there are the chichonas in their thigh high boots. Lui: there is this sports show on saturday mornings with men in suits and sports highlights and girls on the side in skimpy clothing who do NOTHING. They don't contribute to the show other than to dance in and out of commericals
  
  
• Vero: Mexicans love watching adults dress up stupid things in their television shows like that guy who dressed like a grasshopper or adults acting like little kids. Our shows are second only to Japan in their stupidity. Lui: El Chapulin Colorado! They love him!
  
• Vero: Mexican men love boots, cowboy hats and a big belt buckle.
  
  
• Lui: Mexicans love cheating the system. I just went with my dad to Jason's Deli and I wanted to just get the salad bar and instead of us getting the salad bar and an entree for him, he got the entree and a "side salad" so that it would not be as expensive but I could still go back as often as I wanted!
  
  
• Vero: Mexicans love Chinese buffets. Maybe it's the fact that you can eat 3 lbs of food for $6.oo
  
  
• Lui: Mexican men love "las gueras". Vero: True, the lighter skinned the better.
  
  
• Vero: Mexicans love mariachis
  
  
• Lui: Mexicans love flea markets. Vero: La Pulga! The only place where you can buy a mattress, a Frito Pie, a hammer, gold hoop earrings, and a cell phone, all for under $200 bucks.
  
  
• Lui: Mexican men: love mustaches Vero: Mexican women: have mustaches
  
  
• Lui: Mexican people love meddling in everyone's business
  
  
• Lui: Mexicans apparently love Obama http://www.amigosdeobama.com/
  
  
• Lui: Mexicans love saying "Viva (insert anything here)!"
  
  
• Lui: Mexicans LOVE novelas! Vero: No one does overdramatic like a Mexican actress.
• Lui: Mexicans love trying to squeeze the whole gang into one car (just sit on their lap)
  
  
• Lui: Mexicans love nalgas- pinching them, slapping them, taking and looking at pictures of them
  
  
• Lui: Mexicans love a nice long siesta after a 2 hour meal
  
  
• Vero: Mexican men want to marry someone who will baby them like their mother. Lui: oh my god yes and their moms tell them no woman will be as good as them!
  
  
• Vero: Mexican men like scaring the hell out of their daughter's boyfriends
  
  
• Vero: Even after we're dead, the fiesta continues.

Things to remember:

• You can't wait for motivation, you have to get started.
• Don't let things you can't change ruin your day. Sometimes you just have to let it go.
• Try to surround yourself with good thoughts, people, and environments. It makes a difference.
• Don't be afraid to ask for help. Be persistent if needed.
• Put yourself first.

In other news, I just helped my best friend book herself a wedding venue. Hopefully this will be the last city, date, location change. I feel great that I was able to be of help, and it made me feel like I was still an active part of her life, which I admit I'd been lacking.
I'm feeling a little low lately, for some reasons I uderstand, others I don't. I'm requesting some good vibes and thoughts please.

Help in a flood

Did you ever hear the story of the man who's in a flood? His neighbor knocks on his door and tells the man to leave his home and come to safety with him. The man responds that he's waiting for God to come and rescue him and refuses to leave. Hours later the flood gets really bad and another neighbor with a boat comes by to help the man to safety but the man responds the same way. Hours later the water is rising and the man is on the roof when a rescue worker comes by but again, the man replies that he is waiting for God. Finally the flooding gets so intense that the man drowns. When he gets to heaven he asks God why he didn't save him after he had so much faith in Him and God responds, "Who do you think sent those three people?"

After a long night last night I woke up this morning with a better understanding of that story. Yes, things are not ideal and I don't get to see the people I love as much as I want, but I do have support.

A late night phone call, an email from a friend to check up on you, a ride to work when your car is in the shop. These are small signs but they're ways in which people show their support and extend the their hands to you when you feel like you're going to drown. Maybe it's not in the form that you want or from people you expect, but love is there and if you can open your eyes and see it, then maybe there is a path out of the rocky times after all.

Harsh.

"Dinky Pluto loses its status as planet" - header of an AP news article.

Man, like it's not bad enough for Pluto to get demoted, it's got to be insulted in front of millions? That is bunk, you'll always be a planet to me Pluto. Then again, I have no memory for geography so I'm probably just being lazy and unwilling to learn your new reclassification. Either way, here's to you 9th rock from the sun.

Gratitude

I'm working hard on being grateful, despite the small annoyances and difficulties that arise in day to day life. Forgiveness is also a good one, yeah, I should work on that as well.

In this life...

you get what you think you deserve.

Quite a bit has happened since my last post. I got sick about a week after I wrote that entry; I had to go to Mexico since I don't have insurance and the whole thing ended up costing me around $1,200. This ended up coming out of my savings acount, which reduced it by a good amount. I had planned on using that money to go to Costa Rica, but at that point, I would have only been left around $400 in savings, which I was not comfortable with at all. If any other emergency were to pop up, I would have had to slip back into debt and I was not about to put myself in such a precarious situation again.

This led to some hard thinking which made me question why I really wanted to go to Costa Rica. All the pros and cons I mentioned in my previous post still held true, but there was some disconnect in me that wasn't behind the decision to accept the job 100%. But, they wanted me. Me. It is so hard to turn down a work position since as a Hispanic Studies major I didn't have a rush of people fighting for me to work for them. I think that it shook me when I graduated and I had to settle for a job that I didn't want, because it was the only one that I could get and it was selling mattresses. MATTRESSES, people. Granted, I made mucho dinero, paid off about $17,000 in debt in 8 months and paid cash for a trip to Thailand, but at the end off the day? I was still a mattress salesperson. I felt like I was wasting my hard work for my degree staying there.

Ultimately, I thought of the Costa Rica position in these terms: there were too many things about that job that I would have to work around or change: the lack of support structure, the curriculum, the financial instability, the lack o relationships with other organizations and the fact that I had no real network down there to help me. I believe in challenging myself, but I also would like to think that in the past 4 years that I've learned something about how I thrive and what works best for me. Yes, you need to challenge yourself, but you do not need to do it on all fronts, while in a foreign country with no friends or family.

So I didn't. I declined the position. The very next day I got an application from National Council of La Raza to staff their 2006 Lideres Summit in Los Angeles July 2 -13th. And even though I only had a week to do it, I got my recommendations together and my letters written and submitted it. I guess the right opportunity really does show up, you just have to be cognizant of when something is right for you, and when you're just doing it because you think you should, or it's easy, or it sounds like something you should be doing.

And now, I've just finished my Aspiring Youth College For A Day event at Rice. I had 80 at-risk middle school students come in and experience the Rice campus, talk to admissions officers, college students and role models. It was so so much hard work, but it was worth it. For the first time in a very very long time I feel proud of myself. This is something that I dreamed of doing my junior year, and four years later, I single-handedly made it happen though dedication and the people I know. I feel like I'm being the person that I always knew I was, but had lost touch with for a while. I feel like myself again, and I feel like I'm going to continue to make a difference in the world as I discover my path. Thank you thank you to all who helped, who prayed and who believed in me.

Here I am, nearly two years after leaving Costa Rica, and I am contimplating returning. I have been offered a job as an Executive Director of an after school program for Nicaraguan immigrants. There's some great things about the position, there are some not so great things about the position.

Pros:

• Great resume experience for graduate business school
• An opportunity to improve my Spanish
• An opportunity to leave my comfort zone and do something scary
• An opportinity to learn to love being alone. Being able to see that as an exciting thing and not a scary/depressing thing is a shift I really want to make
• Great chance to build my skills in taking initiative and collaboration. There are many organizations that I could work with for this project. Peace Corps, Rotary Club, Ashoka, Rice Graduates in Costa Rica, Rice Volunteers (CIC), Amigos de las Americas
• Improve my ability to uproot myself and take chances.
• Have an adventure while I am young and not attached to anyone or anything.
• Living in Costa Rica. The place is tropical paradise and I would get to see Ana Ligia again, and Dougie maybe.

Cons:

• I would be leaving everything/everyone I love. However, that is really only my family because Tracy's in Atlanta, Tara's going to NY or Dallas, Reada's going to Peru and Sarah and Avanti, who knows. So maybe it's more like I'm leaving my comfort zone. I'm remembering the feeling I had when I walked out of my dorm room freshman year, looking behind and realizing that I was the last one to leave. Of course, at that time I still had three years ahead of me, but it felt very much like I was leaving. Graduation didn't hold the same effect, because Tracy was already gone and Alex was still going to be around, for a few months anyway. But Houston has really become my home though, and I love this city because I know this city.
• I would not be making and money, or paying off any debt. This is already hard to face because a year ago, I made a lot of money and paid off a lot of debt which was such a great feeling. This year I have been in limbo, not paying off so much but not incurring any more debt either, except the car that is. It is really hard to face drastic reduction in income though. But again, now is the time to have that adventure.
• I would be in a mostly friendless situation. For someone as relationship focused as myself, it would be hard to be in a new place without people to count on, and making new friends could be difficult. It could also be a great opportunity to learn to be alone. I mean, I live alone currently but I do so in a very comfortable situation
• I would be working in an unstructured situation. This is another challenge/growth opportunity. I like things highly structured, however it would be great to learn how to work in a situation like this, even if I choose not to make this my strongest area.

My steps now are to check and see if I can defer my student loans and then to book a ticket to C.R. to check it out.

And I thought they were gone for good

Oh no, they're back. That's right, the knots in my shoulder had gone fishin but now they've returned to set up shop. God, in spite of all my drama, I really didn't have much stress here but now I have a huge headache and I wish I had my loveseat, a bottle of wine, some chill music and some candles.

Ok, I do not have control of other people or they're actions. Or for that matter what kind of time they have when they come visit me in Costa Rica, what they're doing at home, what happens if I'm not there to help them in their flower shop over Valentine's Day, what's gonna happen to them if they get caught one more time by the cops, what kind of state their marriage is in, NADA. I only have to worry about my budget here in Costa Rica, not missing too many classes, and remembering to slather the sunscreen on. That is it. In the long run, everything is trivial and trivial things do not merit stress. Ok, feel better already.

Perceptions

I've been thinking about so much stuff lately that there is literally a constant pressure in my head. How people perceive the world boggles me. I mean, perception in general shapes what you believe, how you act, and what you think. We make all these judgments on people based on five minutes of what we see in front of us, never knowing what is going on underneath what they've shown us. We don't know people's pasts, or who they are when they're alone or with different people. Everything we see is based on us, on who we are and what's going on in our lives which means we could be wrong about so many things that we've perceived in the past.

Another thing that I'm confused by right now is trust, faith and belief. I mean, the idea that to trust someone, you have to believe that they are telling you the truth when you have NO idea what is really going on. I mean, it's almost like closing your eyes and jumping off a bridge because someone tells you there is a net under you. I mean, it makes no sense. People could be doing anything, and telling you something else. Yet, a life without faith or trust is so empty. God, how do you just not go crazy thinking of all the things someone could be doing while you aren't with them.