-the sun shines every day
-the Thursday night Bucerías art walk: free tamales, sangría, and if you come early enough, cake. Thursday night is always tamale night. YUM.
-strawberries are sold on a truck that drives up and down the streets
-no import tax on corona. just kidding...what's corona?
-every morning my commute involves walking around a corner and gasping at an amazing view of the bay. It's cliche, but true: every time I see it is like the first time.
-the avacado is always fresh and always cheap
-I get to do a job that empowers women and makes their lives better
-every night I walk on the beach at sunset. It is the best part of my day.
-I have a personal relationship with the owner of my favorite café, and every time I come in he brings me "the usual" without me asking for it
-there is this thing called a chocofresa--frozen strawberries on a stick dipped in chocolate. I am also quite fond of it's cousin, the chocobanana. The perfect 80 cent treat on a hot day
-the mustache is back
Friday, February 11, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
Doing the Difficult Thing
Weekends can be rough when you have little to no friends. Ryan and I spent Friday night withering away on our computers in our apartment, as I mentally beat up on myself for not having a vibrant social life by my third weekend in this new place. I struggle with guilt, and knowing this I kept trying to give myself little pep talks: Give it time. This is normal. You are not going to feel like this forever. I was beating myself up for being unhappy in a tropical climate; as if the “At least it’s warm there!” brightside would solve all my problems—it doesn’t. The pity party continued Saturday night; I literally called everyone in my phone (all 5 of them) in an effort to get out of the house, to no avail. Over Skype my mom implored me to join clubs, do crafts, learn to cook, or develop some new hobby.
Her suggestions themselves were good ideas, and I knew that they came from her mother’s heart, from the deep and soft part of her that loves me desperately and sees me as an extension of herself. However, the more suggestions she threw my way, the more frustrated I became. “Mom, I don’t have any money and I don’t want to learn to knit!” I explained (not very kindly or patiently) that her lists of all the things I could be doing only made me feel worse for not doing them. How many people would love to have a free Friday night? I felt horrible because I am 21 and healthy and intelligent and doing exactly what I want to do with my life, and yet I spent my Saturday night whining and waiting for an episode of Mad Men to download on our slooooowww internet.
Weekend nights are the hardest. Workdays are full of clients, email, spreadsheets, marketing, and loan portfolios. Even though work can be frustrating and difficult, the challenge makes me feel good. I spend weekend days at the beach letting the sun warm my skin and lift my spirits. Yesterday I was lying on the beach thinking about the sad little weekend I had just “survived,” and I think I made some attitude progress.
I realized that being successful doesn’t take just one difficult step like moving to Mexico. It takes the courage to keep stepping to places outside your comfort zone. Although I was not excited about learning new skills or finding hobbies to keep me busy, I realized that there are things I can do to feel better here, to make this place my home. What bothers me about developing hobbies is that they seem so trivial, like ways to get my mind off of things instead of becoming truly happy with my reality.
For example, I need to take care of my body. I need to be hydrated and well rested. I need to be eating healthy food and exercising regularly. These are things that I can do, and I know that doing them will improve my outlook and give me energy. So often after a hard day I don’t want to try a new exercise class or put myself in yet another new and unfamiliar situation; I’m tired! But just like eating a ton of junk food after a hard day doesn’t actually make you feel better, many of the easy, knee-jerk things that I want to do in my free time can actually make me feel worse. I need to focus on those things that really will help me in the long run.
Honestly I still don’t have a good attitude about this.
I wish it were just easy.
I’m working on it.
Amy
Her suggestions themselves were good ideas, and I knew that they came from her mother’s heart, from the deep and soft part of her that loves me desperately and sees me as an extension of herself. However, the more suggestions she threw my way, the more frustrated I became. “Mom, I don’t have any money and I don’t want to learn to knit!” I explained (not very kindly or patiently) that her lists of all the things I could be doing only made me feel worse for not doing them. How many people would love to have a free Friday night? I felt horrible because I am 21 and healthy and intelligent and doing exactly what I want to do with my life, and yet I spent my Saturday night whining and waiting for an episode of Mad Men to download on our slooooowww internet.
Weekend nights are the hardest. Workdays are full of clients, email, spreadsheets, marketing, and loan portfolios. Even though work can be frustrating and difficult, the challenge makes me feel good. I spend weekend days at the beach letting the sun warm my skin and lift my spirits. Yesterday I was lying on the beach thinking about the sad little weekend I had just “survived,” and I think I made some attitude progress.
I realized that being successful doesn’t take just one difficult step like moving to Mexico. It takes the courage to keep stepping to places outside your comfort zone. Although I was not excited about learning new skills or finding hobbies to keep me busy, I realized that there are things I can do to feel better here, to make this place my home. What bothers me about developing hobbies is that they seem so trivial, like ways to get my mind off of things instead of becoming truly happy with my reality.
For example, I need to take care of my body. I need to be hydrated and well rested. I need to be eating healthy food and exercising regularly. These are things that I can do, and I know that doing them will improve my outlook and give me energy. So often after a hard day I don’t want to try a new exercise class or put myself in yet another new and unfamiliar situation; I’m tired! But just like eating a ton of junk food after a hard day doesn’t actually make you feel better, many of the easy, knee-jerk things that I want to do in my free time can actually make me feel worse. I need to focus on those things that really will help me in the long run.
Honestly I still don’t have a good attitude about this.
I wish it were just easy.
I’m working on it.
Amy
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
So Much Life
There are many wonderful things to be said about Hope College, but this is not one of them: the pressure to meet and marry one’s soul mate at Hope is deeply ingrained in the culture. It isn’t that students truly believe that they should find their “others” there, or that they run around frantically searching for “the one.” However, the thought slowly seeps into you—this is a place that is full of people just like me, a place full of people my age, of the same social and economic background, receiving the same education, of mostly the same faith, and I will never have so much in common with so many people again.
When I was in high school, it felt like the biggest thing. I remember thinking that high school should be the happiest time in my life, that it was the perfect convergence of independence and lack of responsibility. Upon graduating, the pressure to fit neatly into a category nearly disappeared; I no longer had to decide whether to be preppy or sporty or gothic or hippy. In high school I was unable to see outside of that time, unable to envision myself free of those teenage stresses and hormones and pressures. I remember saying to my Mom once during my freshman year of college: I never thought I could be this confident or happy. I remember saying to her, “There is just so much life outside of high school!”
So much life!
Having just been sent out into the “real world” from Hope, I am experiencing this all over again. Post-high school I realized that I could be much more confident and much more free than I had previously felt. I no longer had to fit into such a tight mold. In college I fell in love with the idea that we aren’t necessarily to “find ourselves” or discover who we are, but to create ourselves to be who we want. This exciting thought drew me to think deeply in college about the type of person I wanted to become and the sort of life I wanted to live post-college.
The trouble with that is that so often I don’t know who or what I want to be. At Hope I felt as if I had to meet my spouse and choose my career path and know all of these things about who I would be for the rest of my life. Graduation felt like a deadline—like by that time I had to know exactly who I was. Well, I am happy to report that since having graduated I continue learning and enjoying getting to create myself.
Last night my roommate and I had a housewarming party, and we roasted poblano chilis, made fresh guacamole and delighted in delicious wine, dinner, and good conversation. As we lingered over our meal, I realized there is a distinct difference in my Mexican crowd and one that could be found at Hope. Everyone was so relaxed about their places in life. We are all in our twenties, working at either PEACE or Sé Más, and as I listened to people share about their love of their work and their current stations in life, I marveled at their joy! If a collective voice could have spoken for our group, I think it would have said: Here we are now, sitting around a table enjoying each other’s company and sharing ourselves with each other. We are loving our work and loving this time, and we have no idea what we are doing next. We are young and thankful, for work and for Mexico and for the sun. In those moments I was overwhelmed with peace about not knowing what the next thing is. In fact, it was even better than peace. Peace to me is calm despite adverse circumstances. What I felt was excitement. and even gratitude that I don’t know what’s next, that I don’t have a predetermined plan. I felt happy and free.
So now that I find myself blissfully adrift in the world—away from the Hope bubble and the demands of having everything planned now—I can once again stand back and say, there is so much life still to be lived. There is so much creating to be done and so many dinners to be lingered over. Right now I am exactly where I need to be, and when I need to be somewhere else I will learn how to get there as I go.
When I was in high school, it felt like the biggest thing. I remember thinking that high school should be the happiest time in my life, that it was the perfect convergence of independence and lack of responsibility. Upon graduating, the pressure to fit neatly into a category nearly disappeared; I no longer had to decide whether to be preppy or sporty or gothic or hippy. In high school I was unable to see outside of that time, unable to envision myself free of those teenage stresses and hormones and pressures. I remember saying to my Mom once during my freshman year of college: I never thought I could be this confident or happy. I remember saying to her, “There is just so much life outside of high school!”
So much life!
Having just been sent out into the “real world” from Hope, I am experiencing this all over again. Post-high school I realized that I could be much more confident and much more free than I had previously felt. I no longer had to fit into such a tight mold. In college I fell in love with the idea that we aren’t necessarily to “find ourselves” or discover who we are, but to create ourselves to be who we want. This exciting thought drew me to think deeply in college about the type of person I wanted to become and the sort of life I wanted to live post-college.
The trouble with that is that so often I don’t know who or what I want to be. At Hope I felt as if I had to meet my spouse and choose my career path and know all of these things about who I would be for the rest of my life. Graduation felt like a deadline—like by that time I had to know exactly who I was. Well, I am happy to report that since having graduated I continue learning and enjoying getting to create myself.
Last night my roommate and I had a housewarming party, and we roasted poblano chilis, made fresh guacamole and delighted in delicious wine, dinner, and good conversation. As we lingered over our meal, I realized there is a distinct difference in my Mexican crowd and one that could be found at Hope. Everyone was so relaxed about their places in life. We are all in our twenties, working at either PEACE or Sé Más, and as I listened to people share about their love of their work and their current stations in life, I marveled at their joy! If a collective voice could have spoken for our group, I think it would have said: Here we are now, sitting around a table enjoying each other’s company and sharing ourselves with each other. We are loving our work and loving this time, and we have no idea what we are doing next. We are young and thankful, for work and for Mexico and for the sun. In those moments I was overwhelmed with peace about not knowing what the next thing is. In fact, it was even better than peace. Peace to me is calm despite adverse circumstances. What I felt was excitement. and even gratitude that I don’t know what’s next, that I don’t have a predetermined plan. I felt happy and free.
So now that I find myself blissfully adrift in the world—away from the Hope bubble and the demands of having everything planned now—I can once again stand back and say, there is so much life still to be lived. There is so much creating to be done and so many dinners to be lingered over. Right now I am exactly where I need to be, and when I need to be somewhere else I will learn how to get there as I go.
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