On Mexi-Cowboys and such

2 months ago I moved to Houston.

1 month and 3 weeks ago I turned on the AC and haven't turned it off since.

1 month and 2 weeks ago I started reading Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne. Houston + Claiborne, you can see where this is going.

1 month ago I bought cowboy boots. That night I went Country Western dancing and met the tight-panted, Latino, rich but living simply, orphaned, bike-riding, tattoed, man who wants to foster children of my dreams. Or maybe that actually didn't happen. What maybe did happen was this:

A girl walks into a bar. After noticing the disco balls in the shape of saddles, she walks to the other side of the skating rink shaped dance floor and greets her friends. Her friends happen to be talking to some boys who ask her if she knows how to Country Western dance. To which she replies "no, I just moved here from going to school in Chicago and pretty much the only Country Western dancing done in Chicago is at gay bars." Boy #1 laughs. He says, "Maybe half of 1 % of the guys at my school were gay, and if you were you certainly didn't tell anyone. Also, you didn't tell anyone if you were a Democrat." Boy #2 walks up, boy #1 turns to him and says "Describe Obama in three words." Boy #2: "Marxist, incompetent, and self-absorbed"

3 weeks ago my aunt sent me a pair of TOMS. I was pretty excited after driving my car a LOT that week and struggling with what Shane Claiborne has to say. I put the TOMS on, read the tag, and sadly, they are made in China. Yay TOMS for being cute, for donating to children in Africa.......and for manufacturing your shoes in compliance with local labor laws. Thankfully China has really great labor standards.

2 weeks ago I was driving behind a pick up truck that said "We can achieve change. Palin 2012"

1 week ago I decided that in order to begin assimilating to Texan culture I no longer think hunting is a bad thing to do, and am ok with other people doing it and eating what they shoot. Yum.

3 hours ago I went to the auto parts store to get a new tail lightbulb and air filter for my car. The guy called me baby and installed everything into my car just to be nice and asked me all about my job and where I was from and told me I didn't sound like a Yankee.

So maybe I don't sound like a Yankee with my accent, but my inner dialogue is definitely still Yankee and I'm experiencing culture shock much more than I thought I would. In Chicago I was conservative, in Texas I'm crazy liberal, and learning to be loving and live simply is nearly impossible no matter what state you live in. Thank God for grace, for wonderful people who challenge me, and phone conversations with Hannah Foster.

Latin America

"Events of massive public suffering defy quantitative analysis. How can one really understand statistics citing the death of 6 million Jews or graphs of third world starvation? Do numbers really reveal the agony, the interruption, the questions that these victims put to the meaning and nature of our individual lives and life as a whole?"

Today I learned that on September 11 in Chile in 1973 there was a coup, financed by the U.S. that overthrew the socialist democratically elected president and killed 30,000 people that year. But 30,000 is still just a number to me. Sometimes suffering is so big and so catastrophic that it numbs me because it is so incomprehensible. Pinochet's ruling regime cut up an artist into four parts, shipped each part off to a different part of Chile to teach them a lesson, the U.S. knew about this and didn't say a word. President Nixon called Pinochet's take over of Chile a triumph for democracy.

I'm taking a Latin American Studies course and each week I come home liking America less and feeling like there are more conflicts in the world I, and most others, have no idea about than ones we actually know about. So much suffering, so many wars, so much heartache and poverty and violence, it's hard to process even a small piece of it.

Today at school we were talking about why it wasn't a good idea to play pretend guns. We talked about how guns aren't good because they kill people and when you take someone's life from the you can never give it back. My first graders understand this but I'm not sure I really do. One of the questions I had to answer today was, "How does what we do contribute to the suffering of the people living in desperate conditions and what can we do to change this?" good question.

As we were leaving class today my teacher said, "Remember, silence and inaction are actions as well. They are still decisions."

I have a lot to think about.

NoiseTrade Widget

Joy

One of my favorite things about Christmas, very very very much secondary to family and caroling and friends and presents is the Joy tea from Starbucks. It's just so yummy. I never buy it any other time of year because I want it to be special. I haven't even had any yet but soon.

Today I wore a yellow and brown polka dotted dress to school. It made quite a stir, I guess people don't wear dresses that often. Anyway, on the walk home I was waiting at a light when I turned to see a woman literally an inch away from my face. And she says, "Don't move honey, your underwear are showing." So on the corner of a busy Chicago street, in the snow no less, a random strange woman grabs the bottom of my skirt and yanks it down to cover my undies. Though, they weren't really underwear, they were like short leggings under my skirt to keep me warm. But then, instead of laughing and walking away, she proceeds to put her arm around me and walk me across the street saying, "Don't worry honey, it's just that static electricity! Oh that static electricity, get's you every time. I used to wear those colors when I was young, they used to be my favorite colors to wear." Then we crossed the street, she released me, and disappeared.

So my neighbors downstairs, who also happen to be my landlords decided to put up a big plastic santa claus light above our front door. So if anyone decides to come over, I live in that house, you know the one with the big light up plastic santa on it? Yeah...that one.

some jokes

I was talking to this guy at a bar this weekend and when he asked me why I came to Loyola all the way from MD I told him I had a prophetic dream leading me here. Then my friend Hannah told him her name was Amber. Oddly enough he kept talking to us.

Some of the girls did a survey at school to find out what languages the children at our school speak at home with their parents. One of the kids wrote, "beans and rice."

Usually I don't see the kids from my school outside of school which is odd because I live in the neighborhood. However, my luck ran out as I was buying a large bottle of wine at the grocery and one of my little first graders says, "Hello Ms. Maxwell!"

One of my students today decided to adopt a Jamaican accent. The entire day. We were lining up to go to lunch and the teacher said, "Will you please move that chair?" to which he responded, "Ok mon."

Voting

Today as I voted for the very first time I got chills realizing how historic of an election this is. Even though my vote didn't really count because Illinois is so solidly Democrat, I still felt historic marking the arrow next to "Barack Obama". Maybe he'll win, I certainly hope so, I don't know, but regardless I love it that our country has come to a point where a black man has the chance of actually becoming president whereas only 5o years ago Jim Crowe laws existed in the south and black people were getting sprayed with fire hoses for trying to vote.

Not that there isn't so much farther to go, institutionalized racism is deeply embedded in our country--but at least we have a hope of a president who understands that.