where was you at?

 once again, a list:

substitute assistant janitoring - that is my summer occupation.  i clean at a k-12 private school approximately seven miles from my house.  i work with some...interesting people.  they are for the most part nice, but strange for certain.  between my creepy boss kevin, my frightening boss's boss vince, pat the man voted most likely to show up at work with a gun, taylor and kumar the guys who have worked here for four summers and know every trick in the book and charlene, the woman who sings along loudly with her ipod we've got quite a crew.  there are other people too, such as the soon to be infamous amanda.  the girl who i spend most of my time working with because we both happen to be girls and probably can't do anything strenuous like...lift things.  she might be one of the dumbest people i've ever met, proven time and time again in her questions about why it is hotter in the day and her foreign policy plan to just bomb the entire country of iraq until it no longer exists (yep, that one made me basically furious).  its not to terrible.  a good number of the things said, can be laughed at...and sometimes i get to go outside a clean windows.

the path from God - i knew that the school is about seven miles from my home because i bike there once a week or more.  the old man and i had to go on a rather extensive search for a somewhat safe path, which lead us to the gateway trail.  the state of minnesota took out the old railroad, paved the path and now it is this most perfect path that i can take for about half of my journey to work.  i can also stop there and run or rollerblade after work on days i don't bike (well, not so much rollerblade anymore as my blades straight died, taking my ipod headphones down with them).  the best part is there is always someone to see, such as two old women in matching purple shirts riding a tandem bike, or a man using his fishing pole as a sort of lance and walking on the wrong side of the path (not like i was going to confront him with a weapon like that) or the man who wanted to play tour de france with me by riding creepily close behind me (its ok, i got to work faster).

the weekend of hilarity - one time cree came to visit minnesota.  when i went to the wrong 3rd avenue in minneapolis and we had to be lead to one another with the help of a blind man (true story), it was obvious the weekend was going to be amazing.  and it was.  we spent the weekend at laura's home in eden prairie and it involved mostly laughter, but also some ultimate (also obvious), our friend jim and brian, swimming, a cookie smashed by a suitcase, a drum corps show with an old man we rightfully considered pushing down the bleachers, good convos and, well, laughing.  just an unneeded affirmation that frisbee people are amazing.

"playing the coolest game" - i've been playing some ultimate.  i'm in a league that plays once a week.  and i finally had a good game, one that brought me back to last fall when i was actually in the competitive mindset for ultimate.  there are some people on my team who are like 35 or more and amazing...so i hope i am learning as much as i can from them.  played a bit of pick-up as well (which was especially helpful in the time when the fun part of frisbee was hidden by the frustration build up on our team).  played today actually, and laura came as well.  i had to stop at the police station for directions...but in the words of cree "its all good".  next saturday we, laura and i, are playing in a women's tourney and that will be awesome.  obviously.

the future - i've got plans.  doing quite a bit of reading on things that should be helpful next semester (like ultimate techniques and tactics, books on latin american history, stuff about the environment, and harry potter 7 (if i didn't read it i wouldn't be cool)).  learning to play some guitar...i'm not going to be great by the time we get back to school, but definitely better then when i left school (having a guitar makes a big difference in what kind of progress you can make).  going to see a few plays with the fam (spamalot and hopefully something at the new gutherie).  meeting my future husband at his job (aka seeing josh groban in concert).  biggest excitement right now - mar and i are going to visit liz and alyssa in nyc and basically have amazing adventures.  only tears on that horizon is that meg can't be there.

the past - i've definitely had some i miss mexico moments, but that's to be expected (unless you have a really horrible study abroad experience i guess...that's a sad joke).  some of you might have seen these already if you're pals with anni, but somehow there are pictures of the chiquitos!  i'm going to include a couple, because these children overflow my heart with joy.  and they are adorable.


venesa, pacheco and belin (three of my favs) having a snack.


yamir, my absolute fav, who i now wish i had brought home with me.  he loves that bus.

and that's about that...a basic (rather basic) overview of my summer thus far.  many of you probably heard a good part of that if i've talked to you or written you a letter...but if that's the case i hope you just looked at the pictures.

you've changed

i don't like capitalizing words.  so i won't.

i'm back in the USA and its alright.  i'm fairly certain that i love valpo without homework.  and more than that i love my friends at valpo, more than i even knew.  i just want to make a list of last week's adventures so i will not forget - airport / train station surprises, chilling under merlin, return to the FFL, random dunes trip with lindsay, cree and rach, frisbee!, dunes with the frisbee people and "swimming" in lake michigan, movie marathon and dreads, faux candlelight under merlin, singing with sweetwine!, fondue party...followed by a wine party, out of control cake party, night run / climbing gellerson with my 'brarymate, going back to first baptist, coffee at anneliesje's with pastor katie, pastor jim's cookout with trek to the beach, the end of frisbee banquet, napping outside, fire on phi sig's porch, picnic in the cold at the dunes...with only half of the supposed attendees, valplayso! ("look you can have fun even when you are old"), walking coffee with caitlin, treks to say so-longs to some seniors, morning coffee with holly andersen, the rummage sale (with a really cranky old guy in the morning), SALT meeting, measuring our apartment, celebrate! (which might have involved some tears...but it was a party right?), watching 'the office' in the 'brary, chilling with matt until ridiculously late, getting detoured because of a fire on the way to the airport, ice cream with the boys...and probably other things that i can't think of at the moment.

valplayso adventures!

i'm definitely already looking forward to next fall (slash late summer, because let's be honest, that's when we return to valpo).  this summer is going to be...interesting.  i'm glad to be home, but i know it will be a test of my patience.  i kind of feel like i'm capable of taking over the world or something...but instead i guess i just have to go find a job.  it'll be good though, tomorrow i get to go pick up my brother and finally get that hug that i needed about 2 weeks ago.  and then thursday is my first frisbee game with my summer league...and i think we all know that only adventures can come from frisbee...

not sure how much i'll really post here now that the mexican adventures have ceased...but i hope you all have an ab fab-ity fab-erson summer!

the past three weeks in a list?  i'll see what i can do:

a game test of doom in literature, dancing cumbia with a creepy old guy and then rightfully freaking out when the music changed to hip-hop, climbing up behind a beautiful waterfall, watching lost for 7 hours then dancing for 5 to make up for it, expanding the activist playlist, going to "bling" and realizing that had we gone out without our guy friends we would not have had to pay for drinks at all this semester, writing an essay until 6:30 in the morning and then hiding my alarm clock under my pillow, riding in a creeper (read windowless) van to and from tlaxcala, attempting to start a lawn mower inside, dancing on the trampoline in the rain, making gourmet chicken patties at the cholula house, writing notes to sam and dan in class, becoming addicted to snood (thanks court), the new nightly storm trend, being protected from a creeper by our guy friends, planning and executing the thank you dinner at the house, borrowing dan's socks because it was cold when we had to watch lost outside at night, sitting beside the soccer field with court and her computer, seeing futból siete, "making a party" at luis' house, talking with jess while sitting on the sidewalk at 5am, getting a kids menu at jess's b-day dinner, finding out that yamir is ticklish, stopping the tears of the chiquitos, being made fun of for my pronunciation of "puedo", walking with my novio at night, running with my roommate, watching the boys shoot stuff while i made a nervous leah face, getting 10 pesos for touching a chicken bone on the shelf at walmart and then licking my finger, tearing up at the thought of leaving, feeling that huge bubble of excitement at the thought of going home, realizing that as much as i want to take mexico with me...it'll be a challange...

welp, i've got sun to soak up, pictures to take, presents to buy, mad dancing to do, udla bikes to ride, duck's bills to rubber band (slash you didn't hear that), adioses to say (although i prefer hasta luegos...because who knows where life will take us?) and suitcases that apparently must be filled with things of the old me and of the new me (take it or leave it, at least part of her is coming home).  i'll see you all next week.  or the week after if you are a great-stater.  nos vemos!

God is the common denominator.

Speaking of montañas rusias of emotions...this week can join the trend.  The combo of coming back to Mexico from Costa Rica, the realization we have a ridiculously small amount of time left here and...something else has had me a bit of an emotional mess all week.  I think the vast amounts of time that I have to just think adds into that equation of teenage-like emotions.

First of all there is the idea of returning to the United States...I'm excited and I'm absolutely not.  I think I actually experienced a bit of culture shock going to Costa Rica, in that there were things that were very different from Mexico, and it really brought to my attention the fact that in slightly more than 3 weeks, I'm going to be living where many things Mexican do not exist (silly little things like people trying to sell you things in your car, or guys whistling at you on the street - as annoying as it may be).  Add to this the idea that people are going to want to know what it is you experienced...I know that I'm not going to be able to do an adequate job of making it all real.  I'll have plenty of stories...but I can't fit Mexico into words.  I can't even fit it into my own mind.  As much as I try and capture little pieces to store in my memory, they aren't going to be enough.

And then I began to think about how I will never return to Mexico under the same circumstances.  Even if I randomly decided to come here for grad school...it would be different.  There would not be sitting at the Centro Social with the same people or evening runs around the UDLA or watching Krista and Christopher's soccer games.  And then I realized that we all have circumstances or events in our lives that can never be recreated.  Somethings like a tournament Frisbee game will happen again...not exactly the same, but more or less so.  Other things won't happen again.  In three weeks, there will be no more of these every day Mexico experiences.  Even if in 4 years I gathered up the Valpo Puebla group of 2007, called up the Minnesota boys and Christopher and Luis to come and sit at Centro Social...it would be different.  And maybe that is what makes these things special, that you can't repeat them.

And then, I was thinking about all these different phases in life...like I have my experiences living in Minnesota, then Valpo, there was camp last summer and now Mexico.  I was thinking that how there is no one who has been with me through all of those.  My brother was both in MN and at camp, and there are people at Valpo who have come to Mexico and have both of those experiences...but no one fits into all of those...except that God was there through it all.  He is, to whip out an old math term here, the common denominator.  He's seen me through all of my changes and somehow loves me just the same.  That is definitely a comfort and I think it will be even more so as I struggle to incorporate this Mexican experience into the Mallory of before...find some kind of balance.

I remember that a little over 3 months ago I was thinking of this semester as a little trip or vacation and the idea of staying here for a WHOLE semester seemed crazy.  And now, a whole semester seems like nothing.  How can you go somewhere for a mere 4 months and expect to learn everything you should?  I suppose eventually this will all make sense to me...or at least enough that it won't distort my thoughts like this past week.  As I told Holly, very few people have died from studying abroad, so I would imagine I'll make it out fine.  So this isn't to worry anyone, or cause any concern...perhaps its more a petition for patience...with me and my silly culturally confused emotions.

tiempo con los ticos

Fabuloso...I think that will be my word to describe my week in Costa Rica.  It was absolutely wonderful.  I'll try and describe / summarize my week in a not too wordy and hopefully somewhat entertaining manner.  You can read it in sections if you need to, like chapters...

Getting there and back: I feel like anytime you go somewhere using any sort of mass transportation, there is going to be at least one story.  I got to my gate for the first flight (to Guatemala) ridiculously early.  I was expecting an interrogation about where I was going and why...but they actually did not even care that I had liquids in my carry-on (I carried on all my baggage to avoid the chance that it might take it's own Central American adventure) even though there was a sign that said NO LIQUIDS.  Anyway, I was chilling at the gate for a good couple hours, getting nervous that maybe it was the wrong one, because I was there so early the flight info wasn't up yet.  Then we finally are boarding and the check-in man says, oh hey, you need this stamp on this migration form.  He gives me vague directions where to go and says I'd best do it fast.  So I take off jogging through the Benito Juarez airport looking for...someone with a stamp.  I ended up asking about 4 people finally getting the stupid stamp, and run back to the gate...only to find that the little vehicle that drives the passengers was gone.  I was about ready to cry and then the ticket taker man started talking to me...and I didn't have a clue what he was saying.  It was like in Finding Nemo when Marlin is like "You're real cute, but I don't know what you are saying".  Then this other airline guy came up and was like, do you speak Spanish and I said yes, so very exaggerated he says "No hay problemas" (or there are no problems).  Then I got a sweet ride in a minivan out to the plane, and eventually made it to Costa Rica (with about 30 mins in Guatemala and maybe 45 in El Salvador).  The coolest part about the way back was that there was an entire Mexican soccer team on the flight from El Salvador to DF.  Christopher told me they were the 17 year old team or something though.  But it was still pretty cool?

Rainforest: Once in 7th grade, this lady at our church had us write down things that we wanted to do in our lives.  One of mine was to run a mile in under 7 minutes...which I did.  Another was to visit the rainforest...and now I can cross that off the list as well.  Erica (that's my super sweet, as in awesome and nice, cousin) and I went hiking in a cloud forest actually (the only difference is that it is at a higher altitude than a rainforest, because it was in the mountains).  It was awesome.  We didn't see too much wild life, but there was this random pig-like animal (I was slightly concerned because the stuffed pig-like animals in the Museo de la Muñecas had fangs) that was following a group from Israel.  And then this guide was pointing out some birds, one of which was the fruit-eating guan.  Now, I have no idea what that is, but all these people with binoculars were like, oh a guan, and then they wrote some notes in their little notebooks.  However, we walked past the tour group and ran into some people who asked the lady in front of us what kind of birds she had seen, and she mentioned the guan...and they were totally unimpressed.  Apparently guans just chill in their backyard.  The animals encounters make it sound like the cloud forest was filled with people, but it was not.  It was just my cousin and I on our hikes.  I would offer some visual proof here that I was actually there…but apparently it will take 3112 minutes to upload one pictures on this sweet UDLA internet…so, that just means you will have to visit me and see the proof (in about…25 days).

The ocean: I love the ocean.  So, on Saturday we went to a beach.  It wasn't the nicest beach, especially in Costa Rica.  But it was the closest and for a day trip we decided that was the best, since we rode in a lot of buses during the week and needed a bit of a break from that.  It was still lovely to see the ocean...and all the weirdos there.  Semana Santa, in Costa Rica and probably much of Central America, is when everyone goes to the beach.  I love people watching, and every time I thought I found someone noteworthy, my cousin would one-up me.  There were the cruisers (or obnoxiously dressed Americans on a cruise), with their Hawaiian shirts and sparkle-y visors.  A woman randomly wearing a helmet while she worked...at a fruit stand, a hoppy jogger, a mullet man, with the bottom part braided, with large pastel beads on the braids.  It was fun to just lay on the beach and play a bit in the waves.  Even though Erica had to pee the whole bus ride back, which took more than twice as long because everyone decided to go home from the beach when we left (why bother staying?) and I got random sunburn patches...as though I didn't quite understand how sunscreen should be applied.

Young'ens: I spent a good portion of my week with children, which was ab fab.  I think I forget sometimes how much I like children.  Wednesday we went to an orphanage where the potential future daughter of one of the pastors, Stephanie, lives.  It was a birthday party for her because she turned 3.  There were seven chicitos who were 2 years old, one 3 year old (the birthday girl), one girl who was 4 and a baby (ironically named Erica).  There was one little guy who had glasses, with the strap around the back because he was 2.  He was playing in one of those little cars that are usually red and you propel with your feet, kind of like the Flintstones.  Between the glasses and the hand-over-hand steering while backing up he looked like a dad off to pick up the soccer carpool.  My favorite was Chris, who was adorable and would run around and then find me for a hug.  The children all got little play cell phones and he commandeered someone elses so that he had two, just like Christopher.  We stayed all the way through bath time...which the children needed after the chocolate ice cream cones.  I had my first experience with putting on diapers (please don't hold it against me, I just have never had anyone in my life who wore diapers).  Then on Thursday, Erica's (my cousin, not the baby) friend Diego came over with his wife and 3 month old baby.  He was adorable and smiled more than any baby I have ever seen.  Then on Friday we went to Katarina and Magnus' house for dinner.  They are a Swedish missionary couple in their mid-forties, with 4 lovely children.  I played mostly with Solomon and Miriam, the middle two.  We looked at a book full of pictures of different rainforests.  I would ask Solomon if he liked different animals and he would make disgusted faces at the close-up pics of bugs.  Then Miriam, Erica and I built a tower (taller than me) out of Megablocks (like the big Legos)...which she proceeded to chop down with a wooden sword.  Only to say, "otra vez" or another time.  The atmosphere (there is another word that would be better there, but I can't put my fingers on it) of the family was incredible.  I hope my future family can have the same love and casualness in our home.  And bilingual-ness.

Good ol' Lutherans: Since my cousin works for the ILCO (Igleasian Luterana Costaricense or Costa Rican Lutheran Church), I got to go to a good number of church services.  Thursday night was a Maundy Thursday version of their regular inclusive service, which is a worship designed to bring together members of the only middle class community that the ILCO works in and people who have traditionally been excluded or marginalized in the church (homosexuals, transvestites, etc).  The ILCO is a very social justice-minded church, much more, I would say, than the church in general in the US.  Friday was two different services.  The first was in a poorer community of San José and was a stations of the cross (which apparently is a Lutheran thing to do in Costa Rica...and there are 14 stations apparently...I was thinking like 10).  We would move between homes stopping at some, pre-arranged, who would have tables set up with clothes and flowers and we would put the ceramic crucifix on the table and read one of the stations.  We started out walking through the project housing, made of cement or one of those type of materials, and moved towards the homes made by the people, mostly of the corrugated metal sheets.  We walked past a lot full of garbage, probably that the people had no wear else to put because garbage collection isn't reliable, so they throw it there and then burn it.  We moved on through this maze of small homes, with a sort-of sewage system that ran the used water out of the homes into bigger ditches running between the homes.  It was a kind of poverty that I don't believe I have seen first-hand before.  Yet, at the same time, they were not destitute.  And they still had joy, especially to share their front porches for this church service.  I think sometimes I can forget that the poor have all the same emotions as anyone else and there is joy in their lives the same as hardship (it sounds like a duh statement, but...sometimes those happen).  In the middle of some of the homes there was a sort of clearing, with some trees, and uneven terrain, like a big sort of ditch, and another smoldering patch of ground.  Amidst all of that, these guys were enjoying playing a game of soccer.  After the stations were done, some of the women fed us, some rice pudding stuff, rice with seafood and some fruit...something.  They were so generous though.  And then we had to dash to another service (my cousin was playing cello for it), in what I believe was the middle class community.  The service was centered around different voices of injustice I guess.  We read some statements that we would pray over, after nailing a nail into a cross that was on the floor and lighting a candle.  I nailed in the nail for the statement about the exploitation of the earth and it's resources, which was fitting as that has become something of my passion lately.  And this is real long, so I'm going to write about Easter in another chapter here...

He has risen indeed: For Easter we went out to one of the communities that Stephanie worked with.  The congregation for the day consisted of 3 Ticas (that's Costa Rican woman), one Tico, about 8-10 children, the pastor (Stephanie), my cousin and I...and this random little dog that wondered in.  It was such a casual service, with the gospel reading interrupted by the daughter of the lector asking her mother a question.  The songs were all acapella...and in several different keys.  Communion consisted of tortillas (which actually aren't a food they really eat in Costa Rica, that's more of a Mexican thing) and grape juice, from a juice box that was emptied into the chalice before the service.  It was certainly the most interesting Easter service I have ever attended.  Afterward one of the children, the oldest one probably, gave me a picture she had colored, on the back of which she wrote, I love you.  No wonder Jesus likes the children.

I don't know that I could put the whole impact of the trip, between experiencing people with a life so different from mine, the social justice ministry, the ideas I got for my own future, the slight shock of not being in Mexican culture anymore...I'm certain my brain is still processing it.  In fact, I think I am realizing how much my brain will have to process as this semester is finishing up...but, that's why we do new things, right?  To let our brains process them.  Anyway, that was long enough...as in too long.  I have more stories, but I'm sure when I get back to the states, you all will get quite enough of the Dignin stories...