Choices, Choices

Not long ago I read a blog from a student in my English class and I decided to share the story about an incident with a not-so-nice clerk at a computer store. Even though everyone has gone through bad costumer service she tells the story very amusingly and encourages us to think about our personal reaction. Click and Read!

Thoughts about the blog:
I’ve always told people who like to talk about themselves that the only way they can proof others who they are with actions. Everyone talks: about things they think, they are, they want, they feel. Most of them are opinions that are not always viewed the same way by everyone. So, how do I believe people show their real selves? Well, we all go through different occurrence in life that presents us with a variety of choices. The choices we make describe who were are a lot better than everything we think and talk about ourselves. The author of the blog goes through a series of options of how to react to an undeserved insult and finally decides not to act at all, which many would say is an action itself. She explains that she chose not to act because of the possibility that the clerk could get into more trouble than she deserved. This is a simple example of an incident that could have had various different endings. Her specific action does not describe everything she is and she could possibly react differently next time she gets confronted with an insult but it definitely shows a side of compassion and thoughtfulness in her. I am not done writing about this, but I will continue in another blog because I want to tell you in detail how this relates to my relationship with my past and current boyfriends.

What a Week...

Let’s start with a brief summary about my week. My weeks start Sunday night. I go to help out teaching salsa and then salsa practice. This Sunday I was at that room for four hours practicing for a performance, which is about two hours more than I had planned. After that I was dizzy, sore, and very tired and definitely incapable of thinking about studying of doing homework. Monday and Tuesday I caught up with some assignments, cleaned the apartment and even did some grocery shopping that needed to be done. Wednesday morning I went looking for black baggie pants at every store in town because the team needed for our hip hop number. This obviously took half of my day and replaced important studying time but it was accomplished before my 12:30 class. I rushed all morning to make sure to make it to my 12:30 class. I knew I had to park my car at 12:00 in order to ride the bus to campus in order to make it to class in time. The problem was that I don’t have a 12: 30 class. When I arrived to my class all of my classmates were leaving and then is when it hit me: my class starts at 11:30, not 12:30 like I’ve been telling myself the whole morning. As soon as I saw Tito, one of the performers of the team in my class, I asked him if I could copy his notes and told him what happened. I assured myself that this error wouldn’t hurt me much because I could easily study the notes that I had missed, but that was not the only thing I had missed. The professor had given out one of those pop quizzes he likes to give out at random once a week. I kept telling myself that this would only make me more focused on making good grades in the class, but it didn’t keep me from feeling very stupid. Wednesday night was our last time to practice for the big performance. All of the team was dancing for what seemed for the first time so it made it harder to teach and organize the choreography. It was a two hour practice where a lot of reviewing and sweating was done but we felt like all the work would pay off competing against the other teams. Thursday was a hectic day. The performance was that night so I needed to make sure costumes, make up, shoes were all packed. I drove my car for the first time the whole semester because I had a heavy bag to carry and because of the disguising rainy weather. When I got to a building I looked for my iPhone which I had seen minutes earlier in my car. I didn’t see it in my bag or any pockets so I thought I left in my car. As a nice touch to my week I still can’t find my iPhone. Those who have an iPhone or anything similar will understand my frustration. It is unbelievable how much we learn to depend on them. We find ways to use them for every single activity in our day. I thought about using it to look at the time before class, to calculate the answer to a statics problem, to text your friend you were supposed to meet to work on the statics homework to mention a few that day. Finally the one thing that makes me forget about the one million things that I’m supposed to be doing was going to happen: it was dancing time! Right before the performance one of our dancers realized she left her shoes at home which made us change formations right before performing. The two performances went well, but there was no doubt that there was not an obvious winner. I’m not blaming our lost on my bad luck that week but both groups knew well that it wasn’t definite who was going to win. I ended up spending the whole week worrying about a dance competition which we didn’t even win. Oh, and I lost my iPhone and got a zero on a calculus quiz on the way. The week is over and I plan to have a wonderful Valentine’s Day weekend while I catch up on all the homework I have for next week. Since this blog is about learning about situations and people I will bring up a thougt that it’s good to think about every now and then: other people have it worst than I do. I know it sounds a little selfish but sometimes the thought of other people’s troubles makes appreciate life a little more, even when everything is not going your way.

Plomo... What?

On our first night out in Houston some of my girlfriends decided to RA sushi. It was almost Dany’s twenty-first birthday and we were deciding little details. Before I continue the story you have to have an idea of who she is. Dany is the second oldest of the group and she is a planning freak. Let me explain: she needs to have every event planned in detail months before an event: what we are doing, what we are wearing, the time, the place, everything. Let’s just say that she already knows exactly what her braid maids are wearing and her boyfriend has not even proposed. It might sound like she is a little bit crazy, but everyone knows that her birthday parties, get-together’s and trips are definitely the most fun to go to. So, that night at RA sushi we were talking about her birthday party and she wanted us to brainstorm of what we could all wear to the party. Like a color theme. Obviously some mentioned the common black-and-white party, or “Wear red” themed. While we were debating between colors and themes Maki, the oldest of us, stopped our conversation and we knew she had the perfect theme. Let’s all wear lead (plomo). I really wish I could say that in Spanish “plomo” is a color we use often, but it is used just as the word lead is used in English. We all looked at each other and couldn’t stop laughing. Lead? We asked. Maki tried to explain what she was thinking when she thought of all of us wearing a beautiful lead color dress, but it was too funny to make sense out of it. Obviously other crazy ideas came up making fun of what Maki had just said. “Let’s all wear baby-chicken yellow.” We never forgot of how funny it was when we all pictured ourselves in lead outfits. The name “Las Plomo” which translates to “The Lead Girls” stuck with us. We all remember it as a night that not only our “name” came up but a night when we realized that we could enjoy each other’s company and have the time of our lives laughing at something so simple as a color.

Las Plomo

My closest friends in College Station are the group of friends that I always wished to have in college. Sometimes they don’t make my life easier, that’s for sure, but they surely make your life happier when I need it the most. My girlfriends are close to me but not because we know everything that goes on in each others life, but because we share a bond we share that not even we can explain. I can start to describe who we are by saying that we are all Colombian, but this is not enough explanation because we are all VERY different. A handful of essential values and our heritage are about all that we have in common. You will realize this when I write more in detail about every individual one that we all have different personalities, looks, believe, and even economical status. These different traits teach me different things everyday and shows me how important is to have friends like them in my life. Sometimes friendships like these amaze me because it’s not easy to trust and give so much of our time and effort to people who you just happen to meet. I will never understand why we give each other so much, specially knowing that they it is possible that our relationship could change any second, but that’s what makes it is so special.