Wednesday, February 24, 2010

snow

Hey Everybody! Buenas tardes... Boa tarde
heya!!
I hope this finds you well and that your day is going unbelievably well. Today I had boot camp class in the morning, Spanish class, and a test in international law. Then I went to work and now I'm back here.
So yesterday we had a snow day, which was amazing, but this morning there was still a ton of snow on the ground and the remnants of people's snow days all over the place. I saw snow men, snow sharks, snow trains, and an igloo. It made me start thinking about the snow. Snow is ironic. The people who really like the snow and go out in their front yards and play in it but the more you play in the snow the faster it melts. (At least in Texas where snow only lasts one day) It seems that snow is a lot like other things in the world where the people who like it end up going through what they have a whole lot faster than the people who don't like what they have. The other crazy thing is the more snow you get the less its worth to you... like people in Alaska probably don't care about nor want more snow. However if you compare how much fun kids from Texas have with the sames white H2O...every once in awhile, its not the same; the whole law of marginal utility stuff (thanks coach P) and relativity theories all wrapped up into one.
well thats what I was thinking about today.
yall be careful and ojala que estes con una sonrisa

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

good old days

Buenas!!!
Hey everybody how are you all tonight?
Today we had another snow day here in Abilene... my roommates and I went to the brand new Pizza Inn here in town and then we came back and had a snow ball fight. Then I did some laundry and watched a weird zombie movie with the roomies. All in all a good day, I should have been a little more productive but I didn't.
I just noticed that this is my 50th blog post, that's halfway to what my goal was and to a point still is. I'm more glad that its a cathartic experience.
Sometimes I wonder about when people talk about the good old days, if those days were really as good as they remember. Some people seem to think that there was some kind of moral purity that is associated with older generations. I think some of that has to do with the childhood innocence that people remember from past ages. Also I think that the same issues we are facing today people were dealing with them too. I think that today our world is just a whole lot more exposed and there is media everywhere. I mean look at this blog that I'm writing, I feel like I let a little of me into this every time I put my words out onto the net for the world to read. There is facebook and twitter where some people let everyone know when they have finished brushing every individual tooth. Then there is the openness of people about things that in the past were taboo to talk about. I don't know if that is a good thing or bad thing but it seems like the only way to solve problems is to bring issues out into the light and discuss them. I think that when we look at the racism, of the past and the memoirs of people who were living in the drug/free love years you could argue that we might even be moving society in a better direction by talking about the issues like STD's and the effects of drugs than ignoring them.
If you look I know today we have less racism and there is more awareness about what is going on around the world in places like Darfur and Burma, but we still have a whole lot of problems; old ones that linger and new ones that we are developing ourselves. I hope that this generation can create a time where the good old days were really good.
But thanks again for reading and I hope this finds you well
Yall be careful and ojala que estes con una sonrisa

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Holding up traffic

Boa tarde
Buenas tardes
Today is Sing Song here at ACU, and I am currently in between the first performance of the day and the second one. Sing Song is ridiculous.
I'm sitting here watching Pawn Stars with my roomy brooks. This show is pretty funny, its like Antique Road Show but with recurring characters and tattoos.
It's pretty funny watching the ways they do what do. Their entire life revolves around haggling. It's very interesting to see them work at trying to get people to sell their stuff for cheaper. It's like watching a social experiment every time. Its amazing to see the things that people have squirreled away in their houses or backyards. My grandpa is one of those people, he has his backyard full of stuff, anything from glass insulators for telephone poles to old satellite dishes. You name it he probably has it. He has a notorious reputation for stopping and picking things up out of the middle of he road. I know one time he actually stopped his truck in the middle of traffic and got out to go pick something up. It was stuck. So he went back to his truck and went to his tool box and got a screw driver to pry up the street treasures. All of this while holding up traffic.
Pawn Stars really gets me conflicted, because on one side I see people come into the shop with items that are really incredibly old and are apart of history others come in with stuff like Rolex watches or antique cars. Now my conflict is this, I think some of that stuff is incredible and I think its really interesting the connection that you can make with the owners of the past. I think that its also important to study history to understand why we do the things that we do, but its still just stuff. So while I may have tendencies to be a collector like my grandpa and I love the historical side, and the memories that you can associate with things, I still think we don't need all that much stuff.
So this post has bleed over from yesterday onto today, but Sing Song was fun.
Yall be careful and ojala que estes con una sonrisa.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

i love college

Hello!!!
ooo
How are you tonight? I want to thank you for reading my blog today. You have other things you could be doing but your reading here...and I thank you for it.
I don't know why, but for some reason all of my classes seem to always overlap each other. Like right now I'm in International Law, Politics of the Middle East, Peace, Power, and Politics, Spanish Liturature, Ethics, and Boot camp class. Ethics seems to relate to everything, like we have discussed game theory and thought about why people do the things that they do. It seems to me that there are three...maybe four reasons people act. 1. They are afraid 2. there is a reward. 3. they are moved by self-interest 4. there is something deep down that moves them to do what they think is right. I think that many times self-interest can come into play even when the deeds seem to be good deeds. I was writing a paper the other day for Peace, Power, and Politics over religion's role in peace and I started writing about some of these above mentioned topics. In this paper I started out with using a saying in spanish that goes "todos las monedas tienen un otro lado"(every coin has another side) which i had heard in spanish class the week before. In this paper I was writing about religion so naturally Islam came up which brings me back to politics in the middle east, because there are states that are theocratic in the Middle East. From there I go back to spanish class because back in the day the Moors from north africa came up and conquered most of spain, and were stopped from conquering europe by Charles Martel of the Franks. Which brings be back to Peace, Power and Politics because they were definitely not at peace but most religions would say the Franks were right to defend their homeland. O and all of that relates to International law. Now I'm not exactly sure how to connect boot camp into it all without taking a whole nother million sentences
ah college
yall be carefull and ojala que estes con una sonrisa

Monday, February 15, 2010

Bracelets

Buenas Everybody,
So I'm writing a paper right now and I realized that I have not been writing lately and I am missing it. I think that with writing daily my brain was having to strain and overcome obstacles and without writing I'm leaving a part of me wilting. Wow, so it has been over a month since I have added anything to this mess of a blog. I promised to be better and I didn't deliver. I am sorry to anyone who had put their trust into my blogging. Life has been immensely convoluted the last month I have been learning Portuguese, practicing almost everyday with my friends Pedro, Rebeca, and Dr. Brown. I'm pathetic at it, but I love it. I am currently in Sing Song with the IEH group(International Students Association, Essence of Ebony, Hispanos Unidos) and while it may seem that I would be out of place with this group my friend Aryanne is the director and she needed more guys. So while I don't ever want to go to practice I have a blast hanging with everyone and goofing off(I may actually be a detriment to the getting stuff done part of Sing Song)
When I was in South America I started collecting bracelets that I wore on my wrists. I had two from Uruguay, one from Brazil, and then this summer I bought three in Mexico. They have been falling off the last few months and each one has been sad. I was down to my last one...the biggest one I had which I bought from a hippy girl in La Plaza Independencia en Montevideo. I just now realized that its gone and I don't know where it is. I have gone almost a year and a half with this same bracelet, never taking it off. I rarely thought about it when it was on but now I mourn its loss. It is an unexpected sadness, because as each bracelet fell off I knew the day was coming that it would fall as well. It's just one more connection to that seems to be lost, because even if I find it and tie it back on it will be my hand that ties it instead of hers.
I am not very good at most things, however, I do have the ability to make very quick very intense connections with people. While I am a very lighthearted person, when these connections sputter out the relationships I have with people change and people drift in and out of my life, its lamentable and it hangs heavy with me when I think about it.
But the other thing that I am really good at is procrastination and I need to get back to this paper.
Yall be careful and ojala que estes con una sonrisa