this week's playlist

Nicaragua changed a lot about me, not the least of which is my level of physical activity. It started sort of by necessity, not having a car and walking the last mile or so to where my office was located most days. Over time, even though it was SUPER hot, I grew to love that walk. And then last year I was inspired by my roommate to take up jogging.

Even now, 6 months later, I don't know if I can really call it running (I do a 12 minute mile, but my speed slows remarkably over time--this week, for example, I did 2.8 miles in about 45 minutes). Nevertheless, even though it's hard and I feel slow, I keep putting on my shoes and trying. I just don't feel good if I don't get outside and do something active at least 30 minutes a day now.

And now, back here in the States, I have several other friends who are inspiring me to try harder--in the hopes of joining them for a half-marathon in November. We'll see. To keep my motivation up, I've been playing around with my music--and this was my playlist this week:

1-No Hace Falta Un Hombre (Jaci Velasquez)
2-Beautiful Day (U2)
3-El Universo Sobre Mi (Amaral)
4-One Week (Barenaked Ladies)
5-Wheel in the Sky (Journey)
6-Everybody's Changing (Keane)
7-Te Mando Flores (Fonseca)
8-Ella (Bebe)
9-It's My Life (Bon Jovi)
10-Bye Bye (Jo Dee Messina)
11-No Te Pido Flores (Fanny Lu)
12-Dreams (The Cranberries)

the gift of presence

I retold a story tonight that made me cry.

It was the story of my Nicaraguan friend Felix (pictured left), who invited me to spend Christmas with him and his family this past year. "You are part of us," he told me after I had been attending his church for several months, "and I want you to be with us for el 24." The 24th is of course the big celebration night, when churches have their big cultos and families cook up the biggest spread of the year. That evening (actually more like 2am), after all the songs had been sung, the gallina rellena enjoyed, and a little wine poured, Felix asked me if I wanted to go home or if I wanted to spend the night in their spare room. I thought about it for a minute before replying.

"I think I'd like to stay," I told him. "My house will be empty tomorrow morning, and it would be nice to wake up and share at least part of the 25th with people." And so his mom put new sheets on the bed, and I went to sleep.

The next morning Felix and I were sitting at his table at 10am eating leftovers, and he asked me what I would be doing if I were at home. I started to answer, but I choked up. Through my tears, I told him, "I am so sorry I am sad today." He looked at me, took my hand, and said, "It's okay. I would rather you be sad here with me than alone at your house."

Felix did not try to stop me from crying. He just sat with me in that moment and gave me his compassionate love and attention.

Tonight when I retold the story and the tears fell, my friend Jenny likewise did not try to "fix" me or my emotions. She simply listened, with empathy.

I like to call this the gift of presence. Lately when I have found myself in an emotional place, the very best thing is just someone who listens with their heart, who isn't interested in changing me, but rather just wants to walk alongside me, wherever I am.

Today I realized that this same gift of presence is really the only thing I had to offer in Nicaragua. There were so many things I saw that I could never fix, so many people's lives that I could do nothing to improve. But, you know, I never felt that they expected me to. So I learned their language, shared their stories, cried with them, ate tortillas, sat on their rocking chairs, played with their children, laughed at their jokes, danced to their music, held their hands, prayed with them....I lived with them. And I loved them.

And that, it seems, was more than enough.

conversation with mom

Today my mother asked me if I had considered yoga or other eastern forms of relaxation techniques to deal with my stress.

Brief paraphrase of the discussion:

Mom: "You seemed so relaxed when you came home a year and a half ago."

Me: "Well, I mean when I came home last time I was on vacation. And I wasn't thinking about readjusting to this country again, I was just enjoying seeing people and hanging out."

Mom: "Hmm. I really liked that version of you. I wonder if you're experiencing stress because you're driving again."

Me: "Yes, driving here is definitely a cause of stress, but I think I'm much more tranquila than I used to be, even with the new sources of stress in my life."

Mom: "Really? Because I just think you should find some new ways to relax here, you know to deal with the pace of the life and everything without having to go to a 3rd world country again."

Me: "Well, running does that for me. It helps balance my emotional and mental activity level with physical activity too."

Mom: "Really? But running is dangerous. I hope you have a good pair of shoes."

Me: "Yes, Mom, I do." (BTW, Asics rule! :-)

Mom: "Okay, well I just think it would be so nice if you could be relaxed again."

Me: "So what exactly have you noticed in my behavior that makes you feel that I'm stressed?"

Mom: [pauses] "I don't know. I just noticed that in the pictures we took when you were home last time you seemed so relaxed. And now you are different."

Me: "So....that's it?"

Mom: "Um, yes."

Me: [internally] This conversation is stressing me out!!!

the cultural stress chronicles [part 3]

Before I get into this post, I had a request that I back up and define my terms.

What in the world do I mean by cultural stress? Basically I am referring to the anxiety and frustration and other emotional responses I have had to "normal" situations in my current culture (the US) that because they are no longer familiar to me (ie not experiences I have had in the last 3 years), make me feel inadept and produce a sometimes disproportionate response.

When I say cultural, I am thinking of the day-to-day aspects of society (food, how people greet, transportation, the way things are organized, available technology used to accomplishs tasks, language, etc). So I experience "cultural stress" when say, my English vocabulary proves rusty and a Spanish word comes out instead. Or when I'm driving around San Antonio and am suddenly lost and feel frustrated because I feel like I should know my own city better (this actually happened today). My first culture, which in theory should be completely comfortable, suddenly is not. Typically that happens to people who have thoroughly adapted to a new place, gotten used to different ways of doing things (going to market to shop, for example, or taking buses everywhere) and then are dropped back into their former context, which in the meantime has also advanced (exhibit A: the iphone?!).

I felt a surge of this cultural stress this morning again when I completely missed my intended exit without even realizing it, drove to Wal-Mart to pick up some photos, and was suddenly overwhelmed. First, I thought the photo section would be in the front and easy to find, but in fact it had moved to the very back. Then, as I wandered through the store, I felt like I was in daze. There's just nothing like a gigantic box of a one-stop-shopping store to stop me dead in my tracks.

Then, I headed over to Kinko's to make some copies. This is something I have of course done many times here and in Nicaragua. However, I was using special paper and I think I tried about 5 different combinations of placements of my document and the paper before I found the one that worked. (The actual diagram on the machine of how to place the paper was wrong!) In the midst of this process, I find myself growing increasingly frustrated and tearing up for no apparent reason. It's just a bunch of silly copies, right?!?!? But this is what culture stress is like--a seemingly familiar situation gone awry, and wazam! I feel lost and out of control.

Unfortunately, I'm sure it's not the last time.

the culture stress chronicles [part 2]

I don't think I realized how much I love and need routines/structure until I suddenly didn't have them.

My typical schedule in Nicaragua was something like this--up between 5:30am and 6am, jogging, getting ready for work, a 30 minute bus ride (this part was completely unpredictable every day, but you can read my former blog for stories about that), a 20 minute walk, and then 8 hours at the office, followed by a return commute, a Nica dinner (often eggs, beans, and tortilla), and chilling with the roommates.

Since I have been back in Texas, though, I have had practically no routine whatsoever. I have moved houses 4 times in 5 weeks (thanks to many generous friends in SA who are hosting me this summer until I move to Austin). I have been out of town for 2 weeks (once to AZ/CA, and the other to CO). My first several weeks, my free hours were partially occupied trying to see lots of people and trying to get basic logistical things in my life in order.

But there were a lot of hours during that period when I wasn't doing either of those two things, and that's when the real trouble would start. My heart would hurt (pues, it still does), longing to talk to or mejor todavia, see my Nica friends, speak in Spanish, eat at a fritanga and listen to all the fregadera (jokes). So I decided to get MSN on my phone to be able to text los muchachos even if I wasn't near my laptop.

With so little structure those first few weeks, it was hard to feel purpose or a connection to things here. But being present in Texas is awful hard when your heart is still 3,000 miles away.

the culture stress chronicles [part 1]

I knew it was going to happen, but it still took me a week to get used to putting toilet paper back in the inodoro.

I knew seeing massive quantities of food and other stuff at the grocery store was going to be difficult, but the knowing didn't make it any easier. I still felt paralyzed in the body wash aisle {!} for 20 minutes, overwhelmed with my choices.

I knew I was going to have to buy a car when I returned, but after looking at 300 listings a day pop up on Craig's List, I finally gave up and bought the first one in my price range that the mechanic gave a positive evaluation to. In 48 hours, I had dropped a cool $3,000--an amount of money that I might have spent in 4 months in Nicaragua.

I walked into a local cafe, innocently asked for a chai latte, and was surprised to be asked not only what kind of milk, but what kind of chai. "I didn't realize there was more than one," I replied, to which I got a full rundown on the 4-5 kinds available. Not even sure what most of them meant, I opted for the vanilla.

Sigh. It's not the immense wealth on its face that gets me, because I lived in the capital city in Nicaragua (pop. 1M). I visited the mall, ate at nice restaurants, and traveled through high-end neighborhoods on a regular basis. What really gets me are the unending options for EVERYTHING. Suddenly every decision (even the trivial ones) seem to require 5 times as much thought and analysis. Frankly, it's exhausting.

Maybe that's why I found myself with little motivation to do much of anything other than the absolutely necessary for my first three weeks. (Of course, I also missed my Nica friends tremendously, but that's another post.)

extranjera

I wrote this poem about 3 weeks ago, and had shared it with a few people on facebook, but here it is for those who may not have seen it already. It reflects some of the journey I have been on since I returned to Texas.
...
and so i have returned
to suburbia
un mar de manicured lawns
two-car garages and
rascacielos que hacen invisible the dawn

Veo el infinito centro comercial
with its parking lot the
size of monseñor lezcano
Y una brisa cae de mis ojos

Ya no veo niños en la calle
Mucho menos the women
Con sus embroidered aprons
y trays on their heads
Selling quesillos on the bus

Here the colors are muted
La música ya no suena igual
Conversations lack sentido
And me hace falta el español

The street names de mi ciudad
are familiar
But i am often lost
Ni idea donde doblar
So close, and yet so far…

(pjn 5/26/09)

bienvenidos [welcome]

Welcome to my new blog, where this chelita will chronicle the adventures of transitioning back to her first culture after 3 years in Nicaragua, and beginning later this summer, the wonders (and maybe horrors) of being a grad student in Austin.

I chose the title "Sol y Luna" (Sun and Moon) to signify the many paradoxes that have characterized my life over the last several years and into the present, and which I imagine will continue as I pursue my Masters.

Also, this new URL is a shout-out to a dear friend in la tierra de lagos y volcanes, who nicknamed me Pamela del Carmen last year. I looked up the meaning of "Carmen"--it comes from the Hebrew for "garden" and the Latin for "song". I think it fits me. :-)

More to come soon.