First Impression of Overtown

This was the second journey to the school Phillis Wheatley.I went there in my car with Dayana and Karen, but we were following Dayle who was driving her car with Lazaro and Jose. First of all I have to say that we took another route to go there. We went across the Little Havana up to the Downtown and then we made a left and came across the Downtown-Over town area (the end of the downtown and the beginning of the Over town). When we got in to that area, everything changed; there were a lot of African-American people on the streets.The streets, were way different from the ones here around the school, and the houses were painted like in dark- blue and other dark colors. Everything was dirty, there were a lot of cars on the streets and I started getting scared. I was driving and we were listening Cuban music. When we get to this area of the city my first reaction was to turn off the music. Karen who was seated at the back started yelling at me to change the music and everything. She was really surprised and started to say "look at that"!!!, her behavior scared me even more. We got lost like two blocks from the school and on our way we could observe several homeless with shopping cars. I remember something funny happened that day that helped us to control our anxiety and made us laugh when we were most scared. Karen saw a little child playing with an umbrella and she said: "kid, go to school".

Phillis Wheatley ( an experience that changed my life)

I don't think I can describe right now how I felt when I came in through the door and saw too many little kids seated there waiting to met us. It was really a different experience because I had been before with kids, but it was in a daycare where I did my community services hours and there, the children didn't asked why you were there because they were too little. One of the things that amazed me the most was when Alex, my professor asked the kids:"Who were the teachers and the students?". Immediately, they started to telling names and then one of them said:"everybody except for them(talking about us, the college students) and we"(talking about the dreamers). In my personal opinion there weren't teachers, neither students. We were students who are going to teach them the things that we have learned through experience at the same time, the kids are going to be students who are going to be teaching us(because the art of teaching is a two way path). Carlos and Alex are the teachers, but at the same time, students who are learning from us, although it sounds ridiculous. I have to say that I obtained the experience, and for me, every new experience (good or bad) that help you to be a better person is worthy. Maybe we can't change those children at all, but we are going to be there to be their example to follow, their guide. We are going to be there listening to them whenever they want. I think we did a really organized work. The idea of organizing the kids in small groups was the best way to met each other and talk about what we wanted to do. I don't know their names really well by now, but I know that with time I will get to know all of them. For example I'm going to talk about the kids in my group. There was a girl named Kyela and she sang a song (I think her favorite one) for us because she wants to be a singer when she grows up. Also, there was a boy named Kenneth who was the most hyper and enthusiastic of the group; and who I think is the one who will drive us crazy. He just talked to us about what he wants to be when he grows up. That was something that led me got some information about his family and the environment that sorrounds him. He said he wants to be a policeman.

Second Wednesday at PW (notebooks day)

This experience of helping the kids to decorate their notebooks have worked for me.I really got to know them, not only by their cover, as it was until now, today we got in contact with them; at least I started to understand each personality and how a simple notebook can really describe them, their feelings, their dreams, their favorite things. They shared without noticing all what they have inside. I was really impressed by their concentration and their reaction to this activity.

Halloween Day

I sat down with a boy, which was a new and magic experience because until now I hadn’t worked with boys. But this one is very smart. He did everything as it was written on the board. We all had to write about a Halloween theme “It was a dark and spooky nigh...”. He wrote a scary story full of imagination and creativity. Then, after he finished, he asked me to help him with his homework. We started doing something from his English class. I enjoyed a lot working with this boy.

Last Wednesday ( end of the semester)

We arrived there and the kids were amazed of the change that we did in our classroom. Carlos started explaining them the meaning of this change and what we wanted to do from this moment.Also, he explained that this was the last Wednesday of the semester for us and that we will be absent for the next couple of weeks, but after the winter break we will continue working with them. To symbolize the end of the semester and to finish with our decoration, we made the dreamers help us to create stars with our hopes and wishes. We provided them with the material required for this activity such as : glitter, color paper, and markers. I think that what we enjoy the most when we are there is that we can act freely like a little kid. I am very excited to meet the kids againg next semester and continue doing all this rewarding work.

Essay # 1: To Survive the Borderlands You Must Live Sin Fronteras

Could you imagine a world where all the habitants speak the same language? Would this be the most beautiful world or the most boring? This and other questions have been going around inside my mind since the very first day that I read the poem "To live in the Borderlands Means You" by Gloria Anzaldua. In fact, every person who has lived in another country because of an immigration process has experienced the feeling of a stranger, a foreigner who has to learn new ways to live in order to survive. Yes! I do say to survive because I think that when persons are taken away from their culture and their traditions, those people really lose their identity. I can classify myself as one of those persons because I have faced what it means to leave my country and start all over again to build my future since the very beginning in a completely different country.
I left Cuba, the place where I spent all my childhood and came here only two years ago. Leaving my country meant to leave my friends, my school, my neighborhood, and all the things that until that day conformed my little world. I was not happy then, but since I came here with my mom and my stepfather, I tried to not let all the sorrow get over me. I said to myself: “you and your future are the main reasons why your mom is leaving everything behind, so you must be the one who gives support to her whenever she will need it.”
When I arrived here in the year 2005, I only knew a few words in English (hi, thanks), the basic ones. I did not know what the FCAT was, neither the SAT or any other strange test. In my country we do not have that. Therefore school for me, like every kid that came from another country at my age, became a challenge .I went to Miami Killian Senior High, where all my classes where in English with exception of ESL, but in some way I was happy and my classes were not that difficult. Day after day, I began to learn the American culture and its language. But of course I got my first bitter experience. My English teacher did not let me speak Spanish, although she knew I did not know how to express myself in English. Thus, there was one day when I was talking to her in Spanish and she told me she did not speak Spanish in front of the whole class and I told her that I did not speak English neither, so she told me “ok, if you do not know how to talk, write in a paper what you want to say to me”. She did that because she wanted me to effort myself and made me improve my English. At that moment I did not understand the reasons that encouraged her to act like that. Instead of that, I said to a close classmate to translate everything for her and she got really mad at me. I do not know now if I am grateful to her or not but I think that in some way she was not that wrong in her way of teaching. Lamentably, I did not understand that until I went to Coral Senior High and I realized that all the ESOL teachers allowed their students to speak in Spanish and they were not learning anything.
For that reason, this poem and its author made such remarkable impact on me when I read it. First of all, I really got to understand how she is feeling because of her past. We as the people who live in the borderlands (I can assume that Miami is a borderland too because we are geographically placed between United States and The Caribbean) are always looking for all the things that can say who we really are. Those things can really distinguish us from the rest of the people who share this land. Those things remind us about our past and all the memories that we have left behind. That is why we dress in a different way, eat different kind of food and listen to different music.
We are a mix (the perfect one), we are formed from the better of two cultures and at the same time, we learn to respect and love both of them. We take as many things as we can from each culture; the old ones that came with us or we just take from our parents and the new ones that we are still learning in this country ,mix them two, and like in a chemical formula we are the final product. So, aren't we good? I think we are for sure, but there are still many people that continue thinking that there is only a good race and that the people who are mixed are not as good as they are. Those ignorant people who yet do not realize that we have inside us Indian blood, black blood and white blood and that they can not just place us in a box and say we are Latin in other words immigrants, and they are Americans. Yes I am Latin and proud, but they are not native Americans either, they came through an immigration process, so there is no one in this country who has a pure blood and who can say my grandmother was not an immigrant.
Moreover because we live here in a county where there are a lot of different cultures and they are all mixed together, we take one word from this country and one from another and create a whole new language that is neither English nor Spanish but that yes, identify us as the people who live in the borderlands. Although many people have been trying sometimes to discriminate us and push us away because we do not talk the proper American English, we talk the English with an accent ,but that accent identify us and lets other people know what our roots are. I am not saying that Spanglish, as it is known or commonly called by the people who speak it frequently, is the most proper language to write and read. It is not an establish language, but it enables people to communicate among them, although they do not know how to express in English or Spanish perfectly. Perhaps, it is the one that we choose and without noticing we talk the most with our friends and close relatives. Each person living in a city like Miami should have experienced talking Spanglish or hearing it. For example, I use it in simple tasks such as: text messaging and friendly conversations. Every single day, Spanglish is becoming more popular and it is being used more frequently by the borderland community.
However, I have met yet nobody who can speak English and Spanish, or any other two languages perfectly. A person always identifies itself with his/her first language or what it’s called your mother language. In other words, that person will talk, write, or read that language almost perfect, and then she will start learning those second languages; but you will always think in your first language or the one that you use the most.
For me, it’s just amazing how the human brain can switch from one language to another. For example English to Spanish. How your tongue change its position to make the right sound for every language. However, I do not look at my accent as a bad thing that we have to get rid of; I look at it as the thing that lets other people know I am Cuban. Maybe I am wrong but for me everything that reminds my roots and my culture is good to have it with me. Even though, because of your accent sometimes people who only speak English will not understand what you are trying to say. Nevertheless, that not only happen between people from different cultures, it is happening here in the United States among its different regions because all of them have their own accent.
You are the only one who can set your own borderlands. Nobody has the right to tell you who you are and what language you must or can speak. I do not think there is a law that refers about languages and if it exists, who can state that it is right established. No one! Only you can look forward and find who you really are because of your roots, but more important, who you want to be.

Essay # 2 Living or Adapting?

We can say that we know how to adapt perfectly, but we do not know anything about how to live the life that we create for ourselves. I have been doing this since I got sense of being, but the saddest part is that I will be doing it for the rest of my life without any excuse. I was born in Cuba under Fidel Castro’s government. That meant to live in what my mom called “pleno periodo especial”, one of the hardest times in Cuba, when there was nothing to eat at all because of the crumbling of the Soviet Union, which was until that time the main and only source of food and commercial products in Cuba. I adapted myself to that kind of living like every other Cuban child did, of course because we did not get any other reference about other political system. Certainly, for me it was not too hard to adapt myself to that and try to live happy. My mom always gave me everything that I as a child raised in Cuba needed: nothing at all. That is one of the things for which I admire my mom the most. I grow up and then it was just time to go to school and adapt myself to every teacher and classmate’s personality. Some of them became great friends with me, others not, but at the end I will remember all of them. After that I started adapting myself to every new school and with it new teachers, new classes, new classmates, new principal and new challenges.
Years passed and of course my life did not stop, so I had to go to college, which is completely different in my country. It starts in 10th grade up to 12th, and we are required to live on campus. What is it like? That is something you can only understand if you have lived in Cuba. I went to “La Lenin”, one of the most prestigious schools there, where everything was supposed to be better. Contradictorily, it was not like I imagined. I was living there five days but I just could eat hot food made at home three days a week because I did not like the food that was in the cafeteria. I just ate crackers and canned food. I was practically on a diet. I did not go to the restrooms at all. I had to wake up at 6:30 am and be sleeping at 10:30 pm. I had to study a lot because there was a huge competition going on inside the school. Even a 99.9 was a bad grade because it meant I would have been like the number 100 in the “escalafón” (class rank), and maybe I wouldn’t get a good career or the one that I wanted. It was a communist school where you had to believe what they said and support them totally. I was forced to go to “marchas” that I did not agree with. The only good thing about those marchas for me was that I could see my mom, and I could get hot food. The weekend meant to me heaven on earth because I could eat normal food and sleep more. Even though the description above could be very similar to hell, it was not like that at all. There I found my best friend forever. I learned a lot and I worked a lot too. Everything looked bad at the beginning but at the end I adapted to it. And now after all when I put those things in a balance and I asked myself if I would live that experience again, I would say “yes” definitely without any regrets. In that school I learned life experiences that I can not learn anywhere else and it makes me mature a lot because there I had to live by myself.
Nevertheless, without any doubt the most difficult process of adaptation for me was two years ago when I came here and had to leave everything behind. I had to adapt myself to a new culture, a new form of government, a new language, new food, new classes, new friends, new schools, and new houses. By “new” I mean completely different. In Cuba I lived only with my mom and step-father since I was 12, and when I came here I had to live with three other people in their house where I was a host, a stranger. And I had to adapt myself to that as well.
It is so funny how humans spend their lives generally in the same way. Most of us spend our childhood living in little bubbles and dreaming about our future. There is always going to be someone to protect us (usually our parents), and we adapt to that idea without noticing it. When we lose or we are far away from those good or bad things that we are used to, we miss them so much. I watch this scene yesterday when my little cousin started crying and crying without stopping when his parents left him at my house for some minutes. I wonder he must felt like he was alone or maybe that he was not protected at all because he was not with those two people he is adapted to live with. A feeling of adapting is as deep and strong that can keep us alive. For instance that is what keeps many marriages together in today’s world. There is always a minor reason (money or children), but at the end the heaviest one is the fear to lose what we adapt ourselves to, “la costumbre”. Of course, this can preserve painful and unhealthy situation as long as people do not realize they are being victims of an adaptation process.
Next comes the teen age, and at that time is when we all revealed ourselves to everything and try to fight against every single established thing or system. But that’s okay too; we all need to do that. We all have to try to reach our dreams and then after we accomplish them, we have to keep up and find a higher goal. That is just a necessity for us to be alive. For that reason everyone can think that they are going to make a difference. Maybe yes, may be not. I think that we are destined to all those things. However, that’s me because I do believe in fate. The people who are religious will attribute that to some “God”. “Big Changes” and “Big differences” can only be possible to do because of those persons who adapt themselves with or without complain. I am one of those who like to complain a lot. However, at the end in my bedroom, moreover in my bed, where only I place my head I start to ask myself if that what I believe in and defend its correct, if it is true. The bad thing I can not give myself an answer. Instead I just fall asleep.
And then comes a new awakening and with it many others years. Without noticing we are in the middle of our 50’s and we start thinking so mature. We find a place inside our mind where all the memories of your dreams still unaccomplished live. However, we stop thinking about fighting against everything; we do not give up or kill ourselves. We just realize that life is too short and we are getting too old. Finally, we accept our destiny and try to adapt ourselves the best we can, so we do not get in trouble. That could be a good description of a regular life path. The only storyline most of us enact without almost any exception. Although some of us try to make this storyline look better at the end is going to be the same: One trying to adapt and accept oneself.
Two days ago I was talking about this with a friend of mine and when I started asking her what she though, she started to complain and told me I was crazy. Then I told her: “Yes, you can disagree with me and argue that you live because you have an almost perfect life.” At first, almost everybody would think and acts like my friend and that’s understandable too because of course nobody likes to talk about his personal life in public. We tend to recreate a story of our life and make others believe that we have the perfect life. I have tried to change the real world and confuse others with a beautiful shinny smile, but at the end of the day the reality is still the same and I can not lie to myself. Suddenly, my friends will change the main theme of the conversation and start talking about why I am thinking like that. They would say for example that I need to get a life or some of them would say that I am like that because of my professors. None of them were wrong. What is wrong is that they did that so I could stop questioning them. Perhaps, at the end although they did not recognize it at that time, they will realize that they are in the wheel of life and in order to survive they have to adapt to everything.
For that reason, I do not think we as human beings live our life. For me there is no life. We do not have life. That is a misconception! We do not live! First of all, because we cannot live if we do not know what that is. We just know how to get used to or adapt ourselves to whatever surrounds us. We adapt ourselves to our house, our family, our work, our friends, our food, and our environment in general. We are as flexible as a gum. And because of that we can get any form. If you take us and throw us in a different country we adapt ourselves to its language, its food, and its government. We are capable of that ability. So, I cannot say I do live because I do not. The animals may live, the plants, but I don’t. I can say that they freely live because when you separate them from the environment that they are used to, they just die. In others words they choose to not adapt themselves to that environment. For instance if you take a polar bear and place it in the middle of the Caribbean, for sure he is going to die as soon as leave his ice. That must be the correct reaction for all the living things. But we as humans try to survive no matter what, so we choose to adapt ourselves to everything rather than die. I am a human, and as a normal human I have been adapting myself to everything since I got sense of being. I know how to adapt myself to everything in order to survive, and I better do it like that. Although at the beginning of every change I may say “no, I do not like this, and I would change that.” At the end I always finish doing the same thing I just criticized. That’s it, like that is your and my life.