...home...

I finished up at the BL on Friday with my last presentation for Culture of the Borderlands paper... Now all I have to do is wait for the grades. It was weird to say bye to the javies and some of the staff but esta bien. We can still contact each other so whatevs...

So, one of my reality checks happened about 5 minutes after we pulled away from the BLinks house. My cousin Bill, and a friend Phillip came to pick me up. Everything is good until I tell them "Estoy trieste pero esta bien." (I forgot that neither of them know Spanish, my slip...) Then I get the comment, "You're in America hunny, speak American." Now, I know that I was going to have to deal with this once I got out of the "safe house" of BL but what I was shocked about was that it was 5 minutes after I left... Talk about reality check.

Anyways, after a night full of music, games, and talking over at Nora's I went to sleep and woke up to fly back home. My flight was uneventfull and both of them were actually early. That was cool. So now I'm home, jobless and jet-lagged missing the desert and sun. Funny that I was tired of it until I came home to cold and rain. So, I guess we shall see what happens with the employment factor...

Until Next Time...

ALMOST DONE!!!!!!!!!

Asi, a lot has happened since I last wrote. Los Javalinas (that's us) went up to Prescott College to see Haley and her Sr. Project which was sooo amazing. She did a project on women and how they change Nogales by the little or big things that they do. All of the women were very important people but were all very humble and would always play down what they do by saying that it is the right thing to do. It was good to see Hay again. We all missed her that week that she wasn' t with us and we were all super excited to go up to Prescott and meet her friends and see where she lives. After her presentation, we went back to her place and had a BBQ and slept over. The next day we drove back down to Tucson for classes and the rest of our semester.

This past weekend was a really awesome weekend. It was my birthday and I turned 21!!! YAY! It was so exciting! I was missing my angels and my friends from back home and was wishing they could be with me on my big day but alas I had tons of fun with my javies and cousins. On my actual birthday, we went out to dinner in this "Old Western Town" where they had cowboys and a beer wagon. It was a lot of fun. We just had dinner, I had a couple drinks, ate some cake and called it a night. Friday, aka Cinco de Mayo, was the fiesta. Pero, we were not celebrating cinco de mayo but my birthday yet again. This time, we went to my cousin's, Nora and Bill, house and had my party. It was just the 7 of us but we had a good time full of drinking games and pictures... it was a fun last night out with the javies. Most of the weekend I was over at Nora's hanging out and relaxing before this long week ahead of me. I talked with my cousin, Dustin, who is over in Pakistan working with the earthquake relief and fish farming. It was nice to talk with him and catch up a little bit.

After the nice relaxing weekend it has been hard for me to get motivated again and get to work. Thankfully I only have one more paper to write. I am ready to come home. I have enjoyed this experience but my brain is overloaded and I need time to process and everything as well as take a break from a straining semester. We have been doing a lot of reflecting these past few days and if I have to say what I think again then I might just scream. But I only have 4 more days left! I can do it!! Aaron leaves tomorrow and Anne leaves in the wee hours of the morning on Thursday. It will be weird going home b/c I will actually have to call people to hang out instead of just knocking on their dormical door or walking into a room. All in all, I have made some awesome friendships, grown a lot, learned a lot about the government and want to know more, learned so much about myself, the direction I may go with my life, and being more self-aware. I'm not sure yet, how to bring it all together with my life that I left... but like I said, I still need to process.

Well, I am going to go read some...

Until next time!