I really miss my mom. It's been a stressful beginning of the semester and things will only get more hectic. My thesis project is starting to materialize and I'm not so afraid of it anymore. I'm just concerned with having enough done to submit it to Graduate Schools when it comes time to apply. With both of my jobs (Intern at the Office of the Attorney General of Florida and the other at the Office of International Studies) I don't have much time at all during the week for work or catching up with reading so I have been spending my weekends working. I only have classes one night a week (both are once a week) on Thursday nights so I feel like an adult now more than ever because my schedule actually has less class and more work in it.

I hope I'm not overstretching myself. Here's to less hectic days and hopefully more time to post in this thing!

Sometimes I feel the weight of the world, and it's so heavy and it's bringing me down...

I am getting bad at posting on this thing. It was a turbulent Summer A session for me. The combination of all my classes and work + internship was really intensive but I am grateful of all the information I gathered and am still gathering (I still have one class until mid-July) from my classes. It was a Latin America intensive summer and I think it'll get me ready for my future studies in the region. I know it's idealistic but I would just love to be an analyst in some sort of government agency or the U.N...hell I might even sacrifice my beliefs and work at some think-tank if it'll get me to where I need to go.

It's been a tough summer without Bianca, but we're managing pretty well. We exchanged birthday gifts still and we get to meet each other in D.C. next week for the National Campus Progress Conference! It'll be the only time we'll see each other until we meet again at the Incubus concert on August 15th in Tampa. I'm grateful I get to see her at all. This distance has made both of us appreciate each other even more, and to be honest I don't know how good of a boyfriend I would have been these past 6 weeks with my constant freaking out about classes and such.

I also went up to North Carolina on the 12th of June to see my brother's graduation and to help them move back down to Fort Lauderdale. It was a really stressful week with all of the moving and my mother's car breaking down and still having to get to the graduation, but luckily my mom made some really good friends up in Charlotte. I am so proud of my brother and I wish him the best and I just hope he knows he has family that care for him and only want him to succeed and be happy with his life. After the 13 hour drive down cramped up in the front seat of a moving truck we spent part of the day just hanging out with the family until we had to unload the whole damn thing the next day...that was 5 hours of hell...and lightning.

After I got back I was subjected to final exams in 2 classes and a week of intensive studying. I think it was reflected in at least one of my classes as I ended up with a C+ in my Mesoamerican Archaeology class. It was really hard for me to get into this course because of how note intensive it was (80+ slide lectures every class!) and it was hard for me to get past some of the problems I have with archaeology and it's mixed but sad history with colonialism.

The professor I had for Geography of Latin America (possibly the 2nd hardest class I've ever had at UCF: the first being Scopes and Methods of Political Science) also happens to be the Director of the Office of International Studies here at UCF and offered me a job in the office for the coming Fall semester assuming that they can afford it in their budget. I am so excited and really hope I get it. Bianca is helping me perfect my resume and so if I get this job I won't quit Knightstop because the free meals are just way too damn valuable!

So, since two of my classes have ended I am now juggling studying for the GRE, preparing my thesis project, one online class, Knightstop, and dealing with this bullshit lawsuit over my fender bender 2 years ago. I'm going down to Fort Lauderdale this weekend for the 4th of July and to possibly handle some business over the suit. Here's to a more relaxed summer!

It's only June and I feel like I have to fight to keep my optimism.
I need more time and Bianca.
I am going to see my mother on June 12th along with my brother and stepfather. I can't wait to see them and get away from here.

I tried talking to my father to see if he would take responsibility for the way he's treated us. He responded to my email, but didn't think it worth it to call me to talk to me about what I said. I feel like I'm done trying to get anything out of him.
It only took 21 years of my life to realize maybe it wasn't me, Bryan, or Karent...maybe it was him all along.

Dropped Environmental Politics, this guy is some craziness. I'm taking Mesoamerican Archaeology instead. It should be really cool and fun. I'm taking a summer jam packed with all kinds of Latin American goodness!

Comparative Latin American Politics
Geography of Latin America
Mesoamerican Archaeology

There goes more than half of my Latin American Studies minor!
Also, I found out that a course may be offered this fall that's called Protest in American Politics...and I'm trying to get all up on that shiz!
I'm starting to get used to waking up early. :]

Bianca got her internship with NBC for the summer so she'll be staying in New York. She just told me that she edited something today that's going to be on TV this Friday. I'm super proud of her. Can't say I don't miss the girl, though. <3

I dropped Sustainability for Environmental Politics. That class is way too intense and I have to concentrate on GRE and my research this summer.

I managed to squeeze by my spring semester with 3 As and 2 Bs. It really should have been 4 As and a B but I took my State, Society class for granted and didn't do as well on the final as I thought I did. That's what arrogance gets you, right?

Today I started my summer courses. I am taking:
Comparative Latin American Politics
Geography of Latin America
Sustainability

All of the classes seem really interesting and the readings look awesome! However, my Geography course only has 4 people enrolled at the moment and only 3 of us showed up this morning to class. It was a bit awkward at first but the professor seems really interested in our learning, and this was fascinating considering he is teaching a class with only 3 people in it. He really seems to know what he's talking about and to really enjoy it, and I love that in professors. I was afraid this class would be canceled because of the low enrollment, but that wasn't the case. It is also the first time it is being taught, so we're the guinea pigs.

Tonight I went Downtown with the American Medical Student Association and Rock 4 Hunger to feed the homeless in Downtown Orlando. I feel that this is an experience everyone needs to partake in. We're fed images of poverty and destitution in other parts of the world, but we usually downplay or turn a blind eye to the poverty in our own country. What angers me the most is when our homeless are written off as junkies, low-lives, criminals, and treated like they're some sort of disease. While there are some homeless people that exploit their situation by taking unemployment, social security, what have you...but a lot of the time these people have mental or physical handicaps or they're just dealt a bad hand in life and cannot help their circumstances. It was interesting seeing these people laughing and talking where as if you saw them on a corner at night you would be afraid of them.

This summer of mine is going to be spent working on my classes, accumulating research for my thesis project for the Fall, studying for the GRE, making a list of graduate schools, working at Knightstop, interning at Jobs with Justice, and with any luck I might become an Organizer for the Iron Workers Union of Orlando.

This is not that post, sadly. I'm sure I will put it off long enough that I will just not do it.

So much has been going on in the past couple of weeks. So much work I've been doing with Jobs with Justice. Just last week National Organization for Women held our Take Back the Night event that we've been planning for since September or October. We started the night off with 20 mins or so of people browsing the tables of local organizations supporting women and providing services for domestic and sexual abuse. Then our march started and it was intense. When it started we had maybe 70ish people and our march route took us from Millican Hall, through the John Washington Breezeway, to the front of the Student Union, around to Classroom I, back to the Student Union and then back to Millican Hall. We had three stops at which we had people doing spoken word and reading poems to the group, it was very emotional. At the peak of our march we had random passersby just joining the march and I believe we broke 100 people on our route. My friend Kathryn (the radical feminist ;) ) took charge of the bullhorn and she was able to keep everyone riled up and chanting. Our voices echoed through the school, we took up the street at some points and it was just so amazing!

After our march we were at Millican Hall for the rest of the night to enjoy more poetry, spoken word, speakers, and music. It really was amazing. It also made me really happy that we had a good amount of men who seem to have come of their own accord. We didn't have any complaints the whole night and everyone seemed to love it. We even got an article in the campus newspaper! They forgot to mention it was NOWs event but whatever, it was still awesome.

I've also redone my idea for my next tattoo. I want to get a red star with black around it and underneath it would say "Venceremos" which in spanish means "We Shall Overcome." I wanted to get "Patria O Muerte" which means Homeland or Death, but I thought about it and that is a very nationalistic phrase used by nationalist revolutionary movements and I don't personally believe Latin America needs anymore nationalism. To me it's about common identity, common history, common oppression, and common goals so that's why I like "Venceremos" because to me it brings together the struggles of all the people in Latin America while not taking into account ridiculous notions of superiority between states or nationalism.

I have yet to talk about my trip to San Francisco and how it's changed me. That post will come, when I manage to make the time for it. In the mean time I have made a Blog over at Blogger for the purposes of writing on social, cultural, political, and economic issues concerning Latin America. It's been a little idea of mine for a while and I just feel that since we don't really know why things happen the way they do down there I should try to make sense of that side of the world because I want to feel more connected to it and want people to understand it.

Join me!
http://thebolivariandream.blogspot.com/

This is going to be a long next couple of weeks...

It started with waking up at 4 in the morning on Thursday. Bianca drove me to the front of UCF's Visual Arts Building and we said our sad goodbyes. I walked out to meet the rest of the UNA club. We drove off to Orlando International Airport and boarded our flight at 6:15 am. I was terrified of flying, and frankly, I still am. We flew into LAX at about 9:01 am (PST..the loss of three hours was really mind-boggling) and then we took another flight to San Francisco and landed at 11 am. It took us about another hour or so to walk to our Hostel. As we walked to the hostel I figured it would be another scary and sketchy experience just like the one I stayed in in Atlanta. It was the exact opposite, the building is gorgeous (still in a sketchy part of town, Viet-town actually) and the rooms were really nic and the beds were comfortable!! The cold weather and lack of heating is the only thing not going for the Hostel but it's nice.

Then, the Conference started. UCF is competing against Stanford, UC-Berkeley, UC-LA, UC-Davis, West Point Academy (the Military Academy), just to name the scariest schools. The speaker, a professor at UC-Berkeley, gave one of the most enlightening speeches I've ever heard. She used to work for the United Nations and when she first became a part of the institution she was only interested in the nice paycheck and the people she would meet, she called it the typical Diplomat's life. Then she found her passion and purpose in aiding the Lebanese people, listening to their problems, and she began to work to create initiatives to give back to the people of Lebanon. She said that she realized the UN represents more than just nations, it represents the people of the Earth. She admitted that the UN has its flaws and its problems, but if more good people do not become involved and begin to look past the bureacratic way of business as usual then nothing will change. She told us to find our niche and become involved in the UN because they are having serious recruitment problems. This professor made me realize that I want to concentrate graduate studies in Latin American politics with the hopes of using my activism for projects in Central and South America.

When it came to competition there was nothing to mention. A bunch of asshole kids pretending to be asshole diplomats.

The Campus Progress conference was amazing. I felt like I learned so much. Our day of action last sunday was a community event in which we went to low-income communities and changed out incandescent bulbs for fluorescent ones. All of the people we visited were really grateful and very welcoming and kind. It was also a very humbling experience because we were in the hometown of Martin Luther King, Jr. and there was so much rampant homelessness and poverty in the African American communities while all of the affluent lighter people walked past them as if nothing was wrong.

During the conference our keynote speaker was Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! a grassroots news report and she was absolutely amazing. I got her to sign a couple of books. Then we had our breakout sessions and I took the ones on Recruitment and Retention in organizations, Introduction to Non-Violent Direct Action, and Human Rights. This being only my second conference of any sort (the first being SRMUN in November, also in Atlanta) I felt as if I gained so much more from this conference...that and they gave out lots of cool stuff.

After the long drive back I was forced to dive right back into school (we arrived in Orlando a little after 4 pm and I had class at 6 pm) and since I've been pretty busy with my internship and classes. I think this may be one of the first weekends in which I've had a chance to breathe in a long time. I also met a lot of cool activists during the conference. Aside from Atlanta being a dangerous place this was one of the best weekends of my life.

Por venti-cinco anos pasaron / siegun los cuerpos aqui temblando....