bleed, baby, bleed.

thanks, heart. i knew you hadn't abandoned me.

friday was our first community day. if i haven't explained this before, what that means is that i get a day off work to hang out with my five roommates and the ladies that live in el paso, either just to chill and be together, but more likely to learn about something relating to our positions, or just being on the border. this month we decided to go to the national border patrol museum in el paso.

although the museum itself isn't funded by or related to the gov't at all, they seem to have a good relationship to this branch of homeland security. two officers gave us a presentation on what the border patrol does, what their goals are, and how to become a border patrol member (turns out, this is pretty rigorous. widely considered the toughest law enforcement/paramilitary station).

[for the record, i spent much of friday saying, "i just don't understand how you can think that!?!" which is unfair. i will attempt not to say that here, or anywhere else in the future. your opinions are your own. i struggle to reconcile many conservative policies with my own morals, but it is my struggle and not yours.]

at the start of the presentation, the officer asked, "who's here to pick a fight?"

becca pointed at me.

at first i was mad, but i guess i can't blame her. that's kind of been my role thusfar in the bsc. to get outraged. to rant. to cry over the women who can't get vawa visas b/c they haven't actually married their abusive partners.

and, i did want to pick a fight w/ him. i want to pick a fight with the world. not b/c he was a bad guy. to the contrary, he seemed really nice. he seemed like he cared about his job in a human way. he claimed he was more concerned about keeping people safe than "keeping the mexicans out" and i wanted to believe him, even if i wasn't completely sold. maybe he just needed a good job, and that one offered $60G a year and health benefits (no, that's not a typo). maybe he really believes this is what it will take to keep america safe.

i do want a safe america. for all my revolutionary tendencies and che-fangirl giggles, safety is very important to me. i wish i could travel and not wonder if it would be better to pretend to be canadian in this airport. i wish i could put a flag on my lapel in good consciousness. but when a man stands in front of me with an american flag on his shoulder and a gun at his hip and says he's being proactive about the things that threaten this country, i wonder if he ever thought about what happened before 9/11. it pains me to be a part of a country so proud and so certain that it doesn't pause to wonder why people might want to blow up a piece of us. we are a country so holier-than-thou that it takes 3,000 dead civilians for even some of the most open-minded and considerate pieces of the population to consider the way people worldwide might consider us.

i am trying, perhaps too hard, to be calm in this post. i am angry. i am terrified. i am indignant. but i cannot fix the world. and that makes me the saddest of all.

EDIT: ps. wtf, economy?

aww craps

this morning for breakfast, i ate the last of the blueberries i picked this summer in aunt carolyn's yard. they were delicious, but now they are gone.

dearest david, and others who might happen to see this

you might or might not have seen the lengthy comment david left on my last real post. in case you missed it, David said...

First off, did you always not capitalize things and I'm just now noticing it?

I feel like German encouraged rampant use of capital letters for me.

I am really curious how our experiences will overlap cause of being Americorps members. Did you have to read that incredibly long and ridiculous contract? We had it read to us by this guy in the office, who is almost as toneless as me. I'm half convinced it had nothing to do with the contract; it was just a test of our mental endurance.

Sidenote, semicolons? They're quickly becoming my favorite form of puncuation cause nobody gives them love. I mean I had to look them up to see exactly what they're used for, and I'm still not sure I'm doing it right.

I hope once you get into your job a little bit more that it becomes more fun and exciting. I definitely prefer the "working" world to college, and I put "working" in quotation marks not cause we don't work hard (I was in the office till 8:30 last night), but it's not really a work atmosphere. I mean I pulled my team aside yesterday to play Big Booty just cause everybody looked bored.

I am worried about you working/living with a bunch of girls. I know what it's like to be around mostly female coworkers from last year; there are definitely aspects I didn't enjoy, and you've always struck me as a guy's girl i.e. you're comfortable hanging out with guys, and they're comfortable with you.

i thought that some of this might be things other people would want to hear about (read: i didn't have a real post to make today but felt obligated to write something and this gives me an excuse) so i decided to share my comments out here, rather than in the comment section where few dare to tread.
note: there was also a comment about a molestache in there. i'll leave that one alone for the sake of clay's pride.

i tend not to capitalize things unless i feel like someone might be reading who would be offended by my laziness. maybe this is because i read too many e.e.cummings poems in high school. maybe it is because i grew up on instant messenger. maybe it is because i want my parents to cringe every time they think about paying for my english degree. you be the judge. long story short, i struggled with whether to use capital letters on this blog initially, but came to the decision that it's my blog. it's about me. and i don't really like capital letters. i don't think i'm going to use them.

i, too, love semicolons. so much so that i used them all the time in high school and made my a.p. teacher explode (again, i lovingly blame e.e.cummings). since then, i have invested a good deal of time in learning how to use them properly; i believe i understand it now. but i do so sparingly, for dramatic effect and whatnot.

if you don't know, david is a senior member of city year in columbia because i am an amazing friend and i changed his life by peer pressuring him into applying and he loved it. i don't really think that my experience "with americorps" will be the same, though, because although what we're doing here in new mexico is under the umbrella of americorps, our work placements are in outside organizations, and not within a structure set up by the americorps program. also, i don't have any co-workers who would be willing to play "big booty" with me. ever. no matter how bored we got. i work in a non-profit work atmosphere. there is a lot of time in front of a computer and answering telephones (which, by the way, i am so tempted to do by saying, "dunder-mifflin, this is pam.") and filing things. this will probably change some once we start building (in two weeks! eek!) but we'll see.

and finally, david weatherly, master of all insight, has struck upon my single greatest fear about this year: living with five other women. i don't really do girly things. if given a choice, i would rather not watch a romantic comedy. i hate nicholas sparks novels. i prefer belly laughs over giggles. generally, girls make me suspicious. i was raised with brothers--and even the girl cousins i had weren't exactly lady-like--and barbie-resistant parents, i spent all my free time with boys in high school (thanks drum-line!) and in college (thanks habit!), and it wasn't until jennifer brackett grover forced me to be friends with her that i had any real relationships with girls, ladies, or women. i relate to guys. i can talk to guys. i am petrified of this year. but so far, things are going well. maybe we're finally getting to the point in our lives when the petty girl things don't matter as much. maybe i'm starting to relate to people on the basis of being human, rather than sex. maybe i just don't know another living soul within 100 miles. no matter what the reason, and despite my not-so-miniscule hesitations, we're getting along as well as roommates can be expected to get along. sure, we argue or get stressed out every once in a while, but i mean, come on. there are six of us. working stressful jobs and not making any money at it. what do you want?

p.s. i am so glad to have friends that know me so well, who can anticipate the things that will make my life unpleasant before i'm fed up, that love me even though, historically, i could have gotten along better with a mountain lion than five girls. i guess what i'm trying to say is, at least my crystal gayle shirt hasn't been ruined. yet.

you can thank caleb for that allusion.

also, i found out this week, only 7 months behind the rest of the world, that the format broke up. i'm so sad.

aww crap.
what do they say about good intentions?

alright. let's review, shall we?

got to new mexico on a wednesday. i figured for sure there would be people here already, and i was right in a way. i was the fifth person to show up, but two were in el paso, one was the returning volunteer in the las cruces house but was home for the time between the two terms, and one was staying with some other friends for a while. so, really, i was the first one to get to the house. i stayed there by myself for two days, and i was trying to get settled, used to the time change, etc... so i didn't explore much.
buuuut it wasn't long before everyone showed up and things went crazy!
becca (last year's habitat volunteer, now working at the church) showed up on friday, and we hung out, went to barnes and noble and whatnot. saturday we got up and went to the farmer's market, which was pretty awesome. i'm pretty sure we did something else all afternoon, but it was a while ago and i forgot... whoops.
most people came on saturday, which was becca's birthday, so we made calzones and went to high desert, the local brewery/bar, with all but one of the people in bsc.
sunday i went to the quaker meeting, which has an amazing worship space, but is a bit smaller than the meeting in columbia and doesn't seem to be quite as active in the community. overall, i like them, but i am thinking about going to the unitarian church to check things out.

monday training started, so i spent the whole week with all nine of the ladies and ryan, our director, talking about our tenents and rules of being an americorps member, visiting our worksites and all that... we visited juarez, which was really awesome but deserves its own post. i'll get to it... i hope. i think we learned a lot, about each other and what it is we are really striving for down here, but it was a little overwhleming to be with everyone non-stop for a whole week. saturday and sunday we were in silver city for a retreat, which couldn't have come at a better time because i was starting to get really upset about how flat las cruces is, and silver city is a little bit more hilly. it was a cute town, too, with little antique/thrift shops and a gelato cafe. yeah. i was pretty happy.
on the way back we drove through gila national forest, which was GORGEOUS.

i put in one week of work already, but i'm still not exactly sure what they expect/anticipate from me. this week they sent me up to albuquerque to this habitat for humanity international leadership training conference. on the one hand i'm glad to be here, to see what other affiliates are doing and to know that other people are facing the same kinds of challenges that i am, and to kind of re-focus my efforts. on the other hand, this training is put on by the corporate heads, and it's not the side of habitat i've been involved with in the past. it's not the grassroots effort to change the world. it's a pragmatic organization with rules and guidelines and pr.


i guess all i can say for now is that i'm doing fine. it's still weird to me to be here, away from everyone i know and love, with a (kind of) real job and no homework. it's a transition. i'm not sure i like it?

i'll put pictures up when i can, but my camera's broken right now, and i haven't convinced my roommates to let me steal theirs yet.