La Vida, La Playa Ensenada, and La Solapa

Rarely do I experience boredom or too much down time here. Even the weekends are packed with a wonderful business. I have started to form as close to a rhythm as it gets here. I am taking 8 classes: a Spanish language class, Socioeconomic and Political Processes (it’s required. I haven’t changed that dramatically…and yes, it is about as awful as it sounds!), Hispanic Women’s Lit, a seminar on living and learning in the DR, Intro to the Bible, a Jesus class, Volleyball and a DANCE CLASS. That’s right, watch out, world, I am learning to dance merengue and bachata and a little bit of salsa. And I love it. The professor is so sassy and so cool. He threw down in class one day after showing us what to do. Made my day. My friend David put it well when he told me, “I really want him to be my wing-man at clubs at some point.” Volleyball’s fun and super entertaining too. Myself and a Haitian student are the only two non-Dominicans in the class, but I’m not sure if Creole or Spanish is her first language because she does seem to speak Spanish very well. At any rate, the professor speaks SO quickly and I’m glad I can rely on my volleyball experience to compensate for my lack of Spanish-speaking skills… o.O The rest of my classes are…class. I’m really blessed to have attended Christian schools my whole life for many reasons, but one of them is that now understanding everything in my Religion classes isn’t critical (although if I’m being completely honest with y’all it isn’t understanding that’s the struggle in this case as much as focus. Shocking, right?) I really enjoy my women’s lit class because most of my favorite themes across all forms of literature come from Hispanic women. Our seminar is….well…interesting. I think we learn more from our moms and taxi drivers about culture than we do in the class but it is a good time to talk about things we observe and I get less annoyed with it than I thought I would at the beginning! I really hate Procesos but I’m not sure yet if it’s the class’ fault: it’s at night and on Wednesdays it’s a 2-hour class after already having 7.5 hours of class. Plus so far we’ve pretty much just watched a documentary on Trujillo made by his family. Documentaries of this historical sort are boring in any language (sorry Dad :/ tehe). In any case, Spanish could be boring but it’s really not. The professor is really good about picking cool things to do so I actually really love that class. It’s weird not having any math and having 8 classes. It’s an entirely different kind of busy!
We don’t have Friday classes, which is favorable for taking weekend trips and trying to conquer some of those 25 Retos! The first weekend we went to and Aguilas game and went to the capital and toured through the colonial zone (diversion from the point: I have become obsessed with the Aguilas. Seriously, I have never ever been dedicated enough to any team of any sport to watch it religiously and if I would have been it never would have been baseball. I thought it was the most boring sport next to golf. But I love it! It’s contagious…) The next weekend we went to La Playa Ensenada, which is a pretty remote beach. It is gorgeous, but a lot of Dominicans said it’s ugly and dirty when I told them I went there hah. There was seaweed-ish stuff right on the shore but past that it was perfect and clear. But the really cool part about it was we took this crazy/a-little-bit-terrifying boat ride out towards the middle of the ocean and somehow arrived at this sandbar/island thing. It was an island that looked like it was constructed by someone who just dumped a pile of sand in the ocean and it had 6 wood shacks on it and nothing else. And it was right by the dropoff. So we went snorkeling and I got to see Dory and lots of other fishies :) But more than seeing them, I swam with them. I would go under and be completely surrounded by schools of fish. I would reach out tentatively with a single finger to touch one but they would always escape at the last second, darting in and out of their cohorts. I nailed my shin on some coral, who leave nasty infected cuts as I’ve been told, but mine healed just fine :) And on the coral were cool things too! I touched a slimy round thing. That was actually kind of gross. But the idea was cool. I have no idea what it was. Anyway, it was so incredible to get to explore part of the great big ocean. I felt so…alive in those moments!
Last weekend, 17 of the 27 people in my program went to La Solapa on a work retreat. This was the best weekend I have had here so far! I don’t hate the city, but things just make so much more sense to me in the rural areas; I feel so much more at home. People don’t worry about what they’re wearing because they don’t have the money to. But everyone knows everyone and everyone takes care of everyone’s kids and they all just help each other out. The sense of community is unreal. People don’t have to worry about the same things they worry about in the city. As long as we didn’t wander off by ourselves, we could walk back to our houses at night. And nobody locks their doors. In fact, they keep them wide open to let the fresh air blow through. Everything is so natural and beautiful. Hens and roosters strut about, sometimes getting into fights with one another and dogs ran around pretty unhindered as well. These combined with donkeys making whatever noise they make makes sleeping at night a challenge (contrary to popular belief, roosters don’t just crow in the morning-they do it all night long!). The stars at night were indescribable. As many of you know I have been hiking in the Grand Tetons a couple of times. I’m pretty sure I saw more stars here than I even saw then, though. It was unbelievable!
We were there to help build latrines. During peak growing season, many Haitians come to pick the fruits and veggies and the people don’t have enough toilets for them and a lot of the people who do have toilets have toilets that don’t flush so they have to do the duty elsewhere anyway. I got to stretch my mathematical muscles (forgive me) by calculating how many of each size board we would need and how to be efficient in our cutting of the boards we had :) It was also fun to hammer things. Great way to relieve angst of any color. Once we built the latrines we had to mix and lay the cement on which to put them. This was not as fun. Cement is heavy! But it was an adventure nonetheless :) We worked really well as a team and got all 7 done by dinner time on Saturday so we had the rest of the time free!
I was a little bit saddened by what our free time looked like. Essentially, free time meant the gringos went in someone’s kitchen to play games (in English, so even the Dominicans who wanted to spend time with us couldn’t understand us) and a lot of the Dominicans did their thing outside. The first night, especially, I spent the majority of my night outside with the Dominicans and I was such an amazing experience! First one of the older men taught me how to dance, and then I danced with some of the little girls. And then a couple more kids came and they wanted to play catch with this block of wood that was “on fire”. Then several more kids came and they wanted to play this other race/structure-building game. I think every kid had their own rules to this game because they changed every time and I never knew what we were doing other than running around a lot with blocks in our hands and building things and taking them down and rebuilding them and so on and so forth. It was exhausting. And it was phenomenal. When you’re playing games with kids you don’t really have time to think about your Spanish you just have to speak it. And they will most certainly correct you if you say something dumb. It’s wonderful. Plus they are so adorable. The second night I finally learned how to play Domino! From the best :) And before dinner we were dancing and playing games with the kids by candle and moonlight (they never go a full 24 hours with electricity and it was off longer than normal this day). I could go on and on about the kids. They were so adorable and so affectionate. The girls love to play with your hair and be held. During the day on Saturday a board fell heavily on my shoulder and about 8 girls nearby came over to check it for me, pat it, stroke my hair, and help me up. It was so precious.
All in all, it was such a great weekend. When we were leaving everyone was asking when we were going to return, and the little kids were so sad! Almost as sad as we were. We left tired, a little hungry, and dirtier than we have been since coming to the country, but I somehow had not yet felt quite so clean, so pure and so alive as I did in that moment.

Reduce.Reuse.Recycle.Reality.

I love nature as much as the next tree-hugger (for confirmation, please ask one of my lovely housemates about my feelings in response to the mouse incidence(s)). I highly value the importance of recycling so as to reduce waste and create a more sustainable environment, obviously because it’s vital in maintaining humanity and such, but mostly because I love the aesthetic and spiritual value I receive when walking though and spending time in green space. However, the other day I was struck and a little awed by what recycling means here. I’ve got to admit, though the US way of recycling is probably more effective, the motivation behind “recycling” here is so beautiful that I was a bit saddened by the US way of doing things.
I had some empty plastic water bottles that I no longer needed. I hadn’t really seen any recycling bins (there are hardly even trash cans by me-lots of it is just thrown on the ground)but I knew my host mom shared my love for nature because she’s explained to me how it frustrates her how many trees are being cut down to build things. So I asked if she had recycling or if I should throw them in the trash. She told me they don’t have a system of recycling and to just throw them in the trash. That way, when they go out to the dumpster, people can take them to make money. Almost every time I walk by those dumpsters at the end of our driveway, I see people sifting through for clothes and stuff. But I never really thought about what they might be looking for. I just assumed it would be clothes and shoes and stuff, because I’ve seen people take those. But the thought never even crossed my mind that other people are intentionally putting things that they don’t need in the trash so that their neighbors can have them. I don’t really know for sure how people can make money off of plastic water bottles. My guess is that they clean them, put purified water in them and sell the water bottles because one time I saw a guy cleaning them. Or maybe they can use them to make other things they need. Or sometimes they take them to a business that buys plastic. But since my host mom drew my attention to this, I have seen so many people taking plastic bottles out of the trash. This is how they make a living.
You may be questioning why people don’t just give the things they don’t need to people who need them instead of making them sort through the nasty, smelly trash to get them. I was too. But this is how society functions. Some jobs are left undesirable so that not everyone wants to do them, which leaves them open as a last resort for those who really need it. Also, there is a huge emphasis on one’s rank in society, as I’ve probably mentioned before. Some of it depends on skin color, and much of it depends on economic status and last name. There is a lot of discrimination against Hatians, who are typically darker, wear their hair naturally (don’t straighten it), and have less money. You are judged by who you know, not what you know. Therefore, your rank in society will seriously decline if you are seen spending time with someone of lower class than yourself. So people who have money can leave their trash for people of lower rank, but if they want to maintain their status, they cannot spend time giving those things to people of lower status or helping them out too much. And status isn’t just an issue of vanity. It’s an issue of being able to get or maintain any sort of job to be able to live. You get and keep jobs based on the connections you make, so it’s important for families to maintain status in order to simply get a job.
This was really hard for me to accept as reality. One of the main reasons I came here was to try and understand poverty and I planned to spend more time with the poor. For a seminar I’m taking we had to write vision plans for this semester and one of my goals was to better understand the effects of poverty and what types of things can be useful in promoting social justice and improving the quality of life for a nation in which the signs of poverty are rampant. But I can’t just spend time in the barrios without worrying about the status of my family. One of my friends was scolded for having a conversation with the door guard because he is of lower status. But it’s even about more than just status. People of lower status are so used to being ignored that if you are of higher status and pay attention to them, they want all of your time. Nobody ever listens to them that’s of higher status so when someone does, they latch on to that person, often literally, in an attempt to keep them around. They don’t mean any harm by grabbing hold of your arm and dragging you around, but it can get you into trouble. This is especially true with woman talking to men. If I, as a white woman, were to spend time getting to know a man, he would think that I am interested in him as more than a friend. It gives the wrong message.
I’m hoping to find ways to get around all of these obstacles. But it’s very sobering to realize that to try to complete a seemingly simple task is to think oneself capable of transcending “historical, political, social, and global systems of power in order to become cross-culturally immersed ‘global citizens’”, as Talya Zemach-Bersin writes in Chronicle of Higher Education. I cannot take the route I would prefer to learn more about these people, so I’m going to have to get a little creative and put more effort into learning more about it. But I think the challenge seduces me even more than if it were to be easy. In any case, I have decided through all of this that the US system of recycling is more efficient (and cleanly), the motivations behind the Dominican “system” of recycling are more intriguing, but that in the end, the world would be a much better place if we could all learn to share just like our lovely mothers taught us to in order to care for each other and the Earth. Disclaimer: I am not a Communist. Nor do I belong in any environmental activist groups. I’m just someone who loves people and doesn’t want them to go hungry or be left on the outskirts of society and cannot wait for the day in which my Savior returns to redeem and restore all of the brokenness!

"We're just trying to find some color in this black and white world".:..

As I began to tell people that I was going to be studying in a country less developed than the United States, I got many different reactions. Some thought I was going to change the country; some thought I was coming to change me. Some thought I was going as a missionary, to bring Jesus to the people; some thought I was coming to party a semester away. Some thought it a terrifying prospect, that I am so brave and that I must be crazy to come live in a developing country for a semester; others saw it as adventure and thought that I must be so excited because I was going to have the time of my life. I am happy to report that even developing countries are livable places and that people live here every single day. They do have internet and cable TV and running water. Many communities of intellectuals emphasized how studying abroad is all about becoming a “global citizen” and how “immersing yourself in a new culture” is the key to doing this and that surely this must be why I was going. Well, here is how it sort of went for me:
Yes, I was very scared sometimes. Scared to leave my family and friends, those who remind me of who am I, of Whose I am, and tell me how much I’m worth when I forget. And yes, I was so incredibly excited to come and couldn’t wait for the adventure, for room to explore, both myself and a new culture that I fell in love with several years ago. I couldn’t wait to be in a world again where everyone spoke Spanish! I wasn’t coming to change the world or anything because if the world actually listened to me it would be an awful place (great advertising technique for this blog…;) ). But I was maybe coming a little bit to change me. I wasn’t coming to party (I could do that in the States if I really wanted) and people need Jesus everywhere, not to mention that I need to get to know Jesus more than many people I meet here. But I really did like the idea of immersing myself in Dominican life. I thought that I could come here, learn how to be Dominican, and end up experiencing how Dominicans live from day to day. But the reality is, I can never have a Dominican experience. I can only have an American experience in the Dominican Republic and here is why:
I am white. (As previously mentioned). I am a US American. Due to fact that racism is pretty prevalent here still, this means a lot of things that I don’t really understand.
1. It means that I get more attention from men, even when their beautiful Dominican girlfriends are cuddled up right next to them. Seriously, the women here are so beautiful! And they put so much work into it. Women with beautiful curly hair have to keep it straightened, which is a painful process from what I’ve heard. And US Americans look like bums compared to these people. They are meticulous and beautiful.
2. It means that tons of people assume I don’t know Spanish and that’s okay. In fact, even when I speak in clear Spanish to people, sometime they are so caught in the assumption that I don’t know Spanish that they don’t even hear what I’m saying, assuming that it can’t be Spanish. And so they try to help with gestures or other things. Yet those who study in the United States are expected to be perfectly fluent in English. But since I’m a US American it’s okay if I haven’t learned the language or put in any effort to understand the culture before coming to study here.
3. It means that I’m paying to experience something these people experience every single day…because I can. Many people here could not do so. Tell me how that’s experiencing their reality!
4. It means that I am so much more conscious of myself as a consumer in efforts to not perpetuate the stereotype of US Americans. For instance, today’s moral dilemma was a pedicure. I have never in my life gotten a pedicure. But all the women here wear cute sandals with perfectly manicured toenails (I am only slightly exaggerating when I say all the women. Individuality is not praised in this country and they pride themselves in solidarity.), and I felt almost morally obligated to have beautiful toenails. I also feel morally obligated to be even more conscious of spending less while I’m here so as not to perpetuate the stereotype of US Americans who invade the country to enjoy the finer things in life while paying less for them. It was a struggle. I opted for the pedicure and Anna and I just tried to get to know the lovely Fanny while we graciously scrubbed our feet. She was so wonderful; someday I need to go back and scrub her feet!
5. It means that I get served more food than everyone else (I’m seriously eating like double or triple of what I was from last semester.) and I’m not expected and sometimes not even allowed to lift a finger to help out because my host mom is so incredible and wants to do everything she can to make me feel comfortable and at home here.

These are a few examples that I have been thinking about the most the last few days. There are many other consequences as well. All I can do is try the best I can to fit in and to do everything I can to understand what the Dominican experience is as I get to know these beautiful people.

Rhythms

Last night we had a cena comparativa, which means in our neighborhoods a group of us went to one house for salad, one for soup, one for pasta, another for dessert, another for tea, and another for coffee. Which means we ate a LOT. And we spent a lot of time doing it, which was the beautiful thing. We spent like 3 or 4 hours eating and walking and talking and getting to know each other’s host families. And we needed our energy because today is the first day of classes!
It’s my first day as an international student. It’s like the first day of high school, except for (in direct enrollment classes at least) I only understand about 40% of what’s going on. I think today is the first time it fully hit me how much I stand out here. Some of the other students in my group are brunettes instead of blonde but I don’t even have that going for me. I am white-skinned, blonde-haired, blue-eyed. And I don’t blend in very well. This is a tough place to be in on the first day of class at a new school because if you’re lost, everyone notices. When you don’t understand something, everyone notices. It’s hard (mostly impossible) for me to escape the stares and the piropos when I walk down the street. I don’t like having this kind of attention on me. I know there’s going to be some kind of lesson learned through this, but it’s still hard to deal with :) .
After class Rachel and I decided to take on the big city together. We could have lost ourselves in it. It was a delightful adventure. In the few hours we spent there, I bought some hair clips and she sent a letter. So we didn’t accomplish much but we explored a lot and had to ask for general directions a lot. I’m not sure why but the men are just so helpful here…:)
These are a few of my favorite things (so far):
1. Translucent curtains dancing in the Dominican breeze.
2. The smell of the streets and the laundry hanging to dry.
3. Jugo de chinola (passion fruit juice).
4. Roosters crowing.
5. Butterflies.
6. Conchos.
7. Banter between little kids (I know this sounds awful but they are so darn cute when they go off on each other, rattling off threats and smack talk. And they’re so sassy sometimes!)
8. Coconuts.
9. Colmadas (they’re kind of like corner stores).
10. The dancing.
11. Albert’s chubby cheeks and big round eyes (Albert is my host mom’s grandson), coupled with the fact that when my host mom refers to Albert she calls him Gordo, or fatty as a term of endearment :)
12. The little distinction between inside and outside.

The Other Side of the Bridge

To get to school Stephen and I have to cross this sort of tunneled off part of a bridge. There’s some trash on one end of it and it smells of urine (we live in the lower income part of town so this is to be expected) but it’s overlooking a pretty, green part of the river. Yesterday while we were shopping with some friends we were walking on the other side of the bridge. It’s the same river, but these banks are completely covered in garbage, except for where very primitive shacks have been constructed of various pieces of colorful tin. People have to live in these. I try to imagine what their lives must be like but I still cannot. And the worst part is knowing that I am the problem. They live like this because I take more than I need. But, as Mother Theresa said, “In the poor we meet Jesus in his most distressing disguises.”
I think I met him yesterday in an 11-year-old boy. In the morning we had a mini-lecture in which we got a list of 25 things we should do while we are here. It’s kind of a lofty goal, and my friends and I are fairly certain we won’t make it through all of them (a little bit because we have to do this whole school thing but mostly because to do all of them would require more funds than we have) but the combination of a challenge and adventure (these tasks are all over the country, which is okay since it’s smaller than Michigan…) leaves me itching to start it right now! Anyway, going to see the murals in the monument was one of the things on this list (check!) and after we did that we decided to venture in the city on our own since we had some free time in the afternoon. We were feeling ready to conquer the big city since we had a “búsqueda de Tesoro” that morning which means we were let loose in the bustling city in teams of four to find various important places and things. While riding in the conchos I was vaguely reminded of the Knight bus in The Prisoner of Azkaban that somehow manages to physically squeeze itself through two cars that are only a lane apart…
Anyway, back to my point. We wanted ice cream. And apparently we didn’t learn enough on our scavenger hunt to know where it was so we enlisted the help of a little boy. Instead of just telling us where to go he took us there himself. Afterwards he wanted something, but the thing about little kids is that they don’t understand that we can’t understand them if they don’t talk slowly and take out all sorts of parts of words. Which is wonderful if you really want to learn Dominican Spanish because they’re not afraid to laugh at you. But bad if they need something. We assumed he wanted a tip for taking us so we obliged. But he just sat there and watched us eat ice cream. He was adorable. So naturally I went over to him, asked if he wanted ice cream, and got him some. There was another man there begging from us who clearly had various mental and physical disabilities, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on which. The boy ate a couple bites of his ice cream while I made small talk with him, then brought the rest over to the man to let him have it. It was such a beautiful picture of Jesus to me.
After talking to him some more we figured out that he actually had been asking for paper for school-that’s why he stayed there for so long while we were eating our ice cream. He didn’t have any pens/pencils or paper for school and needed 100 pesos to buy some paper (that’s about US$2.50). By this point I had started to really connect with and care about this boy, so I wanted to walk with him to find some paper so I wasn’t just handing out money. We walked to the paper store, but it was closed. Since we had led him on so far I felt obligated to give him the money. There was no way I could say no to that face :). Others agreed and Stephen gave him money for paper. Maybe that was a good decision, maybe it wasn’t, but we couldn’t help ourselves. I had seen Jesus in this boy’s face! This reminded me of this one time I was coming back from Meijer and saw an injured man in tattered clothes asking for money and I got that feeling-the one where there’s no option but to help out without feeling tremendously guilty-so I gave him a 20, the only bill I had and tried to say something but traffic was moving and I had to go with it. I spent the rest of the day wondering if that was the right decision and feeling terrible for not stopping to get to know him. For the next 2 days I prayed that the money went to a good use and that God would work in his life. I couldn’t take the money back or go back and find him, but I could pray for God’s work in him. So I can do for this boy.
Today was a lot of fun-we went to Santo Domingo! We learned a lot of cool history things (Dad and Kate would have loved it!) and we went to a couple ruins of slave mills. Santo Domingo is bigger and busier than Santiago, as it’s the capital. Fun fact: Dominicans, no matter where in the Dominican Republic they actually live, will often say that they are from Santo Domingo because it’s the biggest city. What we call Hispaniola (so this includes Haiti) they would often call Santo Domingo. So, since so many Dominicans live in New York and it’s an important city, they will ask us what part of New York we are from. It doesn’t faze them when the answer is Portland, Oregon or Houston, TX because the United States and New York are interchangeable. End of culture lesson for the day :)

Snapshots

Hello again friends. This is my second full day here, but third night in the country (it feels like it’s been 2 weeks). It would be impossible to describe everything I have already experienced and learned about the language and culture-my mind never slows down! But I’d like to describe some of the humble observations I have been making about the city and the culture and myself, or those which others have made for me.
The city is loud and beautiful and COLORFUL and crazy and beautiful. The rules of the road seem very…dynamic. There’s a lot of honking and yelling and it’s totally legit to go the wrong way down the road to chat with an amigo on the sidewalk or park or something. Also, they have motoconchos, which are kind of like motorcycle taxis except they cram as many people as they possibly can on them and weave in and out of the cars. Unfortunately, there is a rising number of occurrences of petty theft in the city, which has changed drastically in the past couple of decades from what my professors have told me. I think being in a big city is one of the hardest things for me to adjust to. The thing I most looked forward to was being able to go out exploring into the city but we usually get back close to dark so it wouldn’t exactly be the best life choice. It will be a little bit before I know where I can go and where I shouldn’t and when, which kind of takes some of the fun out of exploring but there’s definitely still enough going on in the city for my ADD to flourish! Thinking and speaking in Spanish most of the time has its challenges, but since passing through the initial self-consciousness it’s been kind of fun. It’s like a game-every time I’m unsure of a word and look it up I use it with my host mom to see if it actually makes sense. Sometimes she laughs at me but she’s super patient and teaches me everything. She loves to talk :). We walk to school together and she points things out along the way and teaches me everything she knows. It’s beautiful and she’s a saint. She does everything to make me feel comfortable and is super understanding when I’m tired or overwhelmed. Plus she makes the best food. She always watches me closely for my reaction, which is super intimidating but really sweet of her. My favorite part is the fruit juice-she puts in pineapples and passion fruit and watermelon and all sorts of wonderful things. My host dad is really nice too, although I don’t talk to him or see him as much. But he did drive us (by us I mean Stephen-the other CIEE student in my barrio-and I) to and from school today, which was really sweet since it was raining.
Another interesting little tidbit of the country is the piropos. A Dominican would translate this to mean compliments. Americans would call it harassment. Nonetheless, it’s when a guy catcalls to a woman passing by and tries to get her attention by saying things like “If I were your man, your husband…” or “I would always be loyal and stay by your side and take care of you and…” etc. Many of us have heard of these, but the interesting thing is that the men don’t do it to be disrespectful, but quite the contrary. It would be considered a terrible rudeness to let a beautiful woman pass by without complimenting her or letting her know in some way that she is beautiful. In some ways, I think this is very poetic. These men are confident and they don’t care what she thinks, they simply want her to know that she’s beautiful and only get her attention. These men aren’t passive. (Please read the book Captivating, by John and Stasi Eldredge. It will explain the importance of this better than I ever could.) Of course, there are bad sides to this as well and for me personally, it's rather frustrating on most days. Many Dominican men are tigueres-they are very good at saying whatever they have to, convincingly, to get what they want. Very few of them are loyal to their spouses and they lie about whether or not they have a spouse. Also I'm considered beautiful here because I am white and blonde. Value is immediately given to those who have blonde hair and white skin over those of darker skin, only because of what they look like and not because of whom they are or even anything they’ve done, which is really sad and it’s difficult to know how to handle. Lots of times it would be much easier to just not be noticed all the time while walking down the street. I am not one to enjoy that kind of attention.
On another note, last night it hit me that I can be WHOEVER I want to be here (don’t worry Mom, Anna wouldn’t actually let me be just anybody, but bear with me :o) ). Well, I mean, I knew that in my head the whole time but I think it hit my heart. It was so freeing to realize that I don’t have to pretend to be anyone or anything. Other than rubia or americana, I left all of my labels behind. I don’t have to let anyone inform my decision making or my desires. I can choose what I want to do and when to do it based on what I want, not on who else is doing it or what anyone wants me to do. I can be my own person. And last night, I think I got a feeling of who that person is. And I don’t know how to explain her other than her one and true love interest is her Maker. I know I have felt this before, and I’m not really one to give in to peer pressure anyway, but it’s so much more real and true here, where nobody really knows me (besides Anna and Rachel) and nobody is here to inform who I am. It is such a wonderful, freeing feeling and I strongly advise anyone who is able to go somewhere away from everybody they know for a few hours or a few months or a few years to just spend time with God doing something that they really, truly, actually want to do from the heart.