No internet

I canceled my Cablevision services for the summer, so as of this moment I am signing off...

T minus 162 hours.....

A week from today I will be visiting the homeland [well at least my homeland :-)] for about 7 weeks. I’ve wanted to do this trip for a while now, but it only became a concrete plan about a year ago. My vision is to have a complete change of environment in a somewhat familiar place, where I sort of know people but they don’t know much about me. My home barrio of Nibaje seemed like the perfect place for this. I used my connections in the island to rent an apartment for the time I’ll be there. I will be arriving in the Santiago airport a week from today. I am both excited and nervous about this trip, and in light of recent news about a relative there, also sad.

There will be a humanitarian component to this trip as well, because the altruist in me can’t pass up the opportunity to give back. I will be volunteering part-time in an elementary school while I’m there. I attended this school for about a year as a kid but have very little memories from that time. I’m looking forward to learning different approaches to the ones I use here.

I’m also looking forward to revisiting childhood memories and sharing them with Duke. I am also a little anxious and scared that I have over-romanticized this trip. I’m afraid once I arrived there and compare my fantasy to reality I would be miserable or disappointed, but that’s just a small fear. After all, it’s bad experiences that make great future stories. I am armed with mosquito repellent, a first aid kit, and my rebel….seriously, what could possibly go wrong? I’ll also have internet access so I’ll be posting frequent updates and uploading pictures to my flickr page, so stay tuned.

mdl

mixed_message

mixed_messege
Originally uploaded by NYCmiri

i got this brochure in a health fair at work today, accompanied by an NYC condom. Hows that for mixed messages?

mdl

being part of history

Last summer Duke interviewed me at the storycorps booth in the WTC station. I received this certificate today telling me that my conversation has been added to the collection at the library of congress. I guess this means we are part of history now :-)

mdl

validation

Today the scores for the New York City Math third grade exam came in and once again my existence has been validated. Duke scored a four (meaning he exceeded the standards). Although knowledge itself should be a reward enough, I'm still buying him something nice, deserves it :-)

mdl

I have been sleeping more than usual lately, which is good, I guess but it's also annoying. I'm also remembering my dreams more than usual. A few nights ago I experienced a semi-lucid dream. I was sitting in a classroom while the principal observed another teacher. I tried to read what she wrote on the chart paper and I couldn't. I then looked around the room and it was arranged differently than when I first came in. I thought for a few seconds and suddenly realized i was dreaming,. Of course right after I realized it I woke up. Fascinated and confused at the same time I tried to go back to the dream but couldn't. This is not the first time I experience lucid dreaming but it's the first time in a while that it happens without me inducing it.

Coincidently, while walking in around in the city yesterday i found a copy of this book on sale in bookstore in the upper west side. I flipped through it and found the lucid dreaming chapter. I've actually read this book before in college but never really had time to devote to it and explore some of the ideas in it. I have now become obsessed with this idea and have decided to try it until I can master it ( or die trying...he he). I couldn't prepare for it last night because i was much too tired to concentrate on anything. I am ready tonight, though. Hopefully it'll work and I can do something cooler than just become aware of my dreaming state, freak out and then wake up.

mdl

360 degrees

If we make a 360 degree turn-around would we end up in the same place where we started? This question came up today during staff meeting after a comment encouraging us to help our student make this type of change. Thanx Mr. C, thinking about this and the announcements made me laugh all afternoon :-)

mdl

"mama got shot by GI Joe"

During one of my after-school conversations with Ms. G, she expressed her curiosity for the origin of the chants our students sing while playing clapping games. These chants seem to spread to the most remote NYC neighborhoods. The following is a fragment from one of the rhymes I ‘ve heard my students chant. What's really amazing is that every child in that age range that I've met knows this chant. My best guess is that it was created by a teenage mother and that it was probably made up no later than the early 90’s because of its Barney reference. But I still can't explain why it's so wide spread, perhaps a branch of sociology can be created to study this phenomena...he he

“Mama Mama can’t you see…
What the baby’s done to me
Took away my MTV, now I’m watching Barney
Tic-Tac Toe three in a row…..
Mama got shot by GI Joe”

Talking about this also made me remember some of the chants I used to say as a kid. I don’t think I really knew what they were about, but that doesn’t make them less inappropriate. I can’t remember too many in English since I didn’t didn’t learn English until I was a pre-teen (this site seems to have a lot of them including “down down baby”). In Spanish I still remember a bunch along with the hand motions. Some of my favorites were mariquita abusadora, la caraqueña, las cortinas del palacio, matarile, pollito pleibi, el juego de la vaca and el gallo.

::sigh:: those were simpler times :-)


mdl

commencement

My cohort is participating in tomorrow's graduation ceremony at my college. I thought about attending, after all I have worked hard for it. Then again, I thought about wearing a nice dress under the cap and gown in the 90 degree weather without a chance of shade in the middle of a football field. I'm still entitled to the day off from work, so I decided to stay home and as a reward for my hard work, I will watch tv in the comfort of my AC.

mdl

three out of five

Long weekends are always great, but they always give me a false sense of having an unlimited amount of time. Last Friday I made the following list of the things I wanted to accomplish during this long weekend:

• laundry
• spring cleaning
• hang out with Nao
• Finish final revision
• ship boxes for my trip

So it's Monday ; the laundry bags will have to wait in the same corner until tomorrow and my thesis is staring at me......Well at least I did some much needed drinking and had a really long conversation, two things that weren't in the plans, but what the hell :-)

mdl

watertower

watertower
Originally uploaded by NYCmiri

I decided to do some late spring cleaning this weekend. Nao came over yesterday with Josh and we cleaned, watched office space, drank some hard lemonades and Nao took her traditional nap on my couch. While going through one of my book cases I found this proof I took a few years ago with my Nikon film SLR when I took my first photography course (that explains the bad angle and exposure). I still love this picture, though, it reminds me of Highbridge Park and the neighborhood around it. With the great news of the bridge's reopening in 2009, i love this picture even more.

mdl

Mousse de Maracuya

hmmmmmm........yummy :-P

mouse salad

After a great weekend, despite the rain, I was eager to return to work. My lessons were planned, I had the materials I needed and I was even on time (15 minutes early actually). I also made a special salad for lunch with organic greens, almonds, homemade vinaigrette and chicken. Everything indicated that I would have a good start for this week. Of course, that was too good to be true. At 9:30am one of my co-workers points out that something was moving in my lunch bag. Ms. M, the bravest of the bunch, went to investigate and found a baby mouse eating through my special salad and snack. That was the end of my great Monday. I had to walk up the hill to McDonald’s and get a mediocre salad with mismatch dressing. I hope my day is better tomorrow.

mdl

random stuff........

Having been to Fairway yesterday, I was extremely picky today in the perishable isle at Costco. Nothing looked fresh enough. It was even worse in the cheese section, when the selection of yummy (and extremely fattening) cheeses was reduced to cheddar, mozzarella, American and only one variation of Gouda. But it’s ok, at least I have my veggie burgers, stuffed tilapia and hummus, after all I wouldn’t want my neck to gather any more fat :-)

In other news:

• My love for rainy days was compromised yesterday. my feet were wet and cold, but i guess that's my own fault for wearing sandals.
  
• The Hayden still rocks.
• I'm still in shock after finishing grad school
• only 43 more days till my trip.....cant wait
• confusion - I think I may have stepped into it once again.

mdl

on lashing out at staff meeting......

Today I kinda snapped at someone at work, but don’t worry, it was for a good reason. There was a situation in which a co-worker abused his authority to push his own views. Aside from being unethical, it was insulting, disrespectful and just plain wrong. This person thinks he can sit on his throne, with his unearned status quo and judge things he can’t begin to understand. The saddest part about this is that the person that is supposed to advocate for us (the affected ones) has decided to take an aloof position, maintaining that it’s not as big a deal as we all make it out to be and that it is not personal. This so-called advocate has suggested some sort of mediation that I refuse to be part of unless the mediator is truly neutral to the issue. Anyway, I just needed to vent this experience and I have no clue how the climate at work is gonna be tomorrow. But, frankly I don’t care, I said what I said because I meant it and at least I’m not hiding behind my students to say it.

A Mardsan Giberter for Farfe

see if you can answer the comprehension questions even though this paragraph makes no sense:

do not disturb....

IMG_8910
Originally uploaded by NYCmiri.

Sunday Morning

I guess this is the kind of stuff only parents would do. It is 7:26am on a Sunday morning and I'm already dressed and ready to go. No, it's not a Macy's One Day Sale(you wouldn't catch me dead in one of those), we're going to see Spiderman 3 at 9:15 am in New Rochelle. I promised Duke we would go see it this weekend, not realizing that tickets in Manhattan would sell out a week before. So I have to suck it up and keep my word.

::YAWN::

I opted for not going to bed at all last night, because after finishing a fifteen page paper my brain was too stimulated to rest. Two more weeks of this torture. two more weeks!!

But being awake last night (or this morning rather) gave me time to catch up with E. and and a chance laugh at each other about the silly things we do. Thanx girl, for not judging me...you're not a monkey :-) ...... I also heard a weird pizza analogy and had to endure one more joke about my braces....ha ha

anyway, I'm off to see the Arachnid

Mdl

blue and green....

I recently saw a blue street sign on Jerome Avenue near Lehman College. It sparked my curiosity, so I asked a few native Bronxites if the signs used to be blue in the Bronx. Everyone swore that the signs have always been green and white. After some online research, I found an article on Forgotten-NY that says New York Street signs used to be color-coded by borough, and that the Bronx's color was blue and white up until the mid 80's when the whole city went green. Below is a picture of the blue sign I found on Jerome Ave. and a green one about two blocks away for comparison:

Oh! and no, I wasn't hallucinating...he he

untitled

Today was my first day out since Sunday and it felt a little weird, so of course I took a cab to school even though it's only about 8 blocks away. I caught the flu over the past weekend and have been in bed with fevers, body aches and a hacking cough for the past three days. The worse part is that I don't cease to have a conscience, even when I’m sick. So I the whole time I was in bed and unable to open my eyed to even watch TV, all I kept thinking was " I have so much homework to do, and my thesis isn't finished yet"

I knew this was going to happen sooner or later, I was just hoping it would happen after finals. I have been running on high stress, no sleep and too much caffeine for the past two months. My doctor warned me that the next time I got sick it was going to be serious. He recommended that I slowed down and "took it easy.” But this just seemed impossible to me on my last term of grad school and my tenure year.

My body, however, had other plans for me. It decided to take a well-deserved 5 day vacation. I endure the flu, and slept more in five days than I have in the past four months put together. I went back to school today and realized that the work that I have to turn in isn’t as much I thought. I am almost done with the second draft of my thesis and feel confident I will be able to turn it in on time.

The next four weeks are going to be intense, but I'll try to remember to take breaks here and there.

MDL