I guess I didn't keep up too well with this blog while I was in the DR, and maybe it's for the best considering internet access was always a chore. Also, I always spent more time trying to decide what I should write and what I shouldn't write in a blog, so writing for myself seemed like the better option. But the experience itself was so intense that I was pretty inconsistent with the personal writing too. I'd like to get this blog started up again, in the present, but I'd also like to use it to record some anecdotes from my time in Los Marranitos that I never got down on paper and that still stand out in my mind. Those experiences that are just begging to be made into poems, but are going unused because I am just so out of poetry-writing practice that I am intimidated to even start again.
Most of the anecdotes I have in mind have to do with gender issues. Is it that I'm just obsessed with this topic? Or is it impossible to avoid being a white woman around Latino men? In any case, living abroad, among other things, has taught me an awful lot about being a woman.
Anyway, back to the present for a moment. I am unemployed and broke. But you know what? It's ok. I don't want anyone to get out their hanky and violin. Anyway, it's partly my own fault. So I quit AmeriCorps, because it wasn't my cup of tea. Whether that was a good or bad decision is beside the point. What is important, I've realized in the last few weeks of cover-letter-writing, sending resumes into black holes, not-so-perfect interviews, cancelled interviews, rejections, the PA governor refusing to pass a budget (rrrrrrrrrrr) etc... what is important is that I am learning how to do this. There is not much I dislike more in life than trying to sell myself in a few paragraphs or a half hour interview, but it's evidently a necessary skill. All my life, I've been accustomed to things falling into place in my life because everyone tells me I am bright and talented and show so much potential, and went to a great school, and got A's, and on TOP of that speak Spanish and have social responsibility, etc etc etc, and because of that I've come to feel that I deserve certain things. But being turned down from jobs whose minimum requirement was a high school diploma kind of gives you a new perspective on life. Hey, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. And in this case, humbled. Thank you, Dubya, for screwing the economy so badly; I am learning life lessons I would have never had the opportunity to learn otherwise.
It is a shame though, really. I am a person that likes to feel useful and productive. There is nothing I would enjoy more right now than a job that would take up almost all my time and all my creative energy. A job where I'd feel I was really making a difference in people's lives and growing as a person. I just freakin want to help people! Doesn't ANYONE want to hire me?? But maybe I am just being self-important.
Another of the lessons I'm learning is about being positive. Even looking back at past blog entries, I realize what a negative spin I sometimes put on things. If there's any lesson to be learned from job interviewing, it's to be positive, positive, positive. To turn every challenge and setback into an example of how you used your creative skills to rise above it!! My friend Alice said to me the other day that she's becoming less and less convinced of the existence of "credentials" and learned skills: "People just say they can do things, and then they do them." And I think that's true. It's not that I'm a negative person, but sometimes I think I give up a little too easily, or make excuses to myself for not trying things because I think they're not going to work, when really, I just haven't thought of a way to make them work. My New School Year's resolution is to quit complaining. From now on, this blog is going to be totally positive and nice. No cynicism or sarcasm allowed.
On that note, let's talk about the positive things in my life. I joined a soccer team in South Philly made up almost entirely of Mexican women!!! It is the best decision I have made in awhile. How did I find out about this team? you might ask. Salsa dancing. Yes, since I moved to Philly I have been salsa and swing dancing every week like it's my job. Evidently, salsa clubs are great places to connect with the Mexican community of South Philly. I met a Mexican guy who told me his friend's team was looking for more players, and before you know it, I was playing team soccer again for the first time in 5 years (high school was really that long ago? shit).
Needless to say, part of the fun of being on the team is getting to play soccer in Spanish. I knew Mexican Spanish was different from Dominican, but just how strange it sounds to me after living in the DR for a year is incredible. The other day someone asked me "Cómo estás?", and I only realized what he had said about 5 minutes later. It sounded so different than how a Dominican would say it that it just threw me off.
Soccer practice is two days a week starting at 6, but in typical Latino fashion, no one ever arrives before 6:30. It's a girls' soccer team but we practice with the guys, and they all have funny nicknames, such as "Rebelde", "Indio", and "Chorizo" (isn't that a type of sausage? isn't that dirty?). One guy told me his name was Juan, but they someone else told me his name was Fausto. It turns out he doesn't like the name "Fausto" and "Juan" is the name he has on a fake ID (for passing as a legal resident, not just buying drinks). But both of those names are useless, because everyone calls him "Indio." At least they don't get nonsensical nicknames made up for them by their fathers at birth, like "Pololo" and "Purundingo" (the inescapable family nicknames of my boyfriend and his brother, respectively).
The girls are mostly around my age, in their early 20's, and most have a toddler or two, including one girl who can't play this season because she's pregnant. Even after living among 15- and 16-year-old mothers for a year I still get a strange feeling seeing women ("girls") my age with kids. Maybe being on the same team together is an equalizing factor. I just cannot for the life of me imagine having kids anytime before I turn 30. I assume it will happen one day, but it's still very abstract.
The other day I was talking with one of the guys, in fact, the only one who speaks English, and he claims he's only learned it in the two years he's been here. Because of that he can work as a waiter instead of a dishwasher, and make more money to send back to his family. He told me he'd like to go back to Mexico, but he knows he couldn't earn enough there to continue to help his family. Then I started telling him how I wanted to eventually become a teacher in a bilingual school, and how I had been teaching in the Dominican Republic. He said in English, "I think it's really good, the work you do... because, you know, you're helping Latinos." I thought about it for a second and said, "Yeah, we're in the same line of work. You're helping Latinos too." It was kind of a spontaneous revelation, and the more I thought about it the more I realized how true it was. To a person like me his ambitions might seem lowly, but it takes an extreme amount of generosity and selflessness to do what he does, and he's been incredibly successful at it. I have never had to help my family; on the contrary, my parents have always helped me. It's almost as if I've had to seek out other less fortunate people to help in order to feel fulfilled.
Maybe it would do me good just to have a dull, meaningless job for awhile, one where the main purpose is to make money to live. Just to see what that would be like.
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