Shootin' the Shit

I loved that line in Catching in the Rye as Salinger's Holden described his long and stupid chats with his sister, those chats that really meant the world to him. "Just shootin' the shit." That's pretty much what I've been up to. I've yet to start working, as the UFV semester doesn't begin until mid-March. So, for now, I shoot the shit: at lunch, dinner, after dinner, in a car ride, walking around Viçosa, at a bar, in my kitchen. With who? Whoever will listen and is patient enough to handle my weak Portuguese. That includes, my apartment mates, my advisers, English teachers, a Portuguese teacher, my fellow ETA, some American study abroad students, and those social butterflies at bars as well. Disclaimer: Most of these groups know a good amount of English, or Spanish. To say I only speak Portuguese with them would be like saying it's not that hot in Viçosa, or I don't like to dance that much, or rats don't scare me that much. Catch my drift?

The conversations drift from Portuguese phrases, English idioms, foods typical of the Mineiros, names of trees and flowers (obviously per my prompting), the beauty that is Iguazu Falls, past relationships, favorite past times, Brazilian time, and everything in between. I've begun to form friendships, companionships, relationships that I believe will allow me to do what I've come here to do: share my culture to those I encounter and visa versa. As simple as that, my work has begun after all. Indeed, there is more value to shootin' the shit than we know.  Here's a few examples of ways you can enjoy shootin', in case you need some ideas:

Go on a road trip to the countryside

Find a waterfall

Spend time with new friends

Say yes to dinner invitations

Walk around town and find cool hats

Eat, always eat

Orienting Beyond Blueprints

Fresh out of orientation in Brasilia, I have arrived in Viçosa with a blueprint of how Brazilians work and a list of some general cultural norms to be aware of. The orientation prepared us for the good, the bad, and the ugly, and covered the large country of Brazil in the most general terms. Compare it to the continental United States and you will get the picture. Think East Coast, West Coast, Midwest, South and you will understand the diversity that exists within Brazil in a similar way.

Brazil versus the United States in size

That being said, I was having a hard time digesting the generalizations presented, as they came off as a review of the stereotypes we as English Teaching Assistants (ETAs) may have had prior to our flight overseas. How can I consciously fight a given stereotype so I may instead learn what someone really is like? How can I differentiate every new interaction? Of course not all Brazilians can be put in a box. No person can be put in a box, we would go crazy. But as it turns out, our natural tendency as humans is to generalize so as to begin to understand a people, a person.

Not 24 hours into my stay in Viçosa, I was already handed back a generalization about the people of the United States. My host professor and adviser, Ana, had taken Krystal (my fellow ETA) and I to lanchonete. (Lanchonete can best be translated as snack time in the mid-afternoon.) As we planned the next step of the day, I suggested Krystal and I could just walk back ourselves from a potential apartment so that Ana could make her next appointment.

Our warm welcome to Viçosa

After a day of so kindly taking care of us every step of the way, Ana's reaction startled me at first. "Oh yes, yes, yes, that would be good, and then you can have your independent adventure for the day. Americans love that." First thought in my head is astonishment. How does she know that about me, about us! Then, I laughed realizing how true of a statement it was, oh so brilliantly true! This is coming from someone who has spent plenty of time in the States and has a good friend who visits Brazil frequently. In that moment, I understood the blueprint that the Fulbright orientation gave us ETAs. Krystal and I enjoyed our independent walk back, winding the streets after some very detailed instructions from Ana. She knew the walk was something we needed from what she knows of our culture in the United States. She knew that before I knew it myself, and I completely appreciate her acknowledgement of that innate Americanism* that I apparently carry within me.


As we continue to learn about one another, we learn more about ourselves. Turns out, this is a very selfish trip as I become more Maggie everyday. Hopefully I can help someone else do the same in return. For now, I try to keep an open heart for each interaction so as to respectfully discover what that person has to offer. A feat of a lifetime if I can get that one down!

*Yes, Americanism is a new word invented by yours truly.

Arrivederci America

I've committed to keeping this blog up during my nine months in Brazil and I hope it serves as a means of communication to my family and friends around the world. After much anticipation, application, planning, discussion, and celebration here in California I am off to Brazil today! At first thought, leaving on Valentine's Day seemed to be an odd day to leave. But now that the day has come, Valentine's Day 2014, it could not be more perfect. The love and support I have received over the past month pre-trip has been tremendous and I go to the airport today with thousands of hands kindly pushing me in that direction. As challenging as it was to move home after college, it has been a great year and a half living at home in Brea; I've grown so much in this time that I hardly know that college girl. Now, I'm taking another step in the journey into a whole new beast- South America.

I go with no intention of making plans of what I will do when I return in November. I go with the intention to be completely present for first few months before I even begin to think about what comes after. I go with an open heart.

My last post back in November (yikes!) was all about my journey within. I believe that journey will continue on my way to Brazil and back. What does your next nine months look like? With an open heart, it could look like many things. 

What the Stars are Made Of: A Journey Within

I am not going to quote Journey, don't think it again. But I am going to quote an astronomer and a philosopher, respectively, both much more ancient than that rockin' band:

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

"Understand that thou art a second little world, and that the sun and moon are within thee, and also the stars."
-Origen

So what are these two gentleman saying? They both make our guts sound pretty stellar. Turns out, we are all stars. Turns out, there is another world within us. Crazy to believe? At first, yes. But on second thought, it makes complete sense. Considering the world within, you can justify all the emotions and experiences and battles and decisions and storms that you endure on a daily basis. Now, don't you feel a little less crazy remembering that the human experience involves the individual struggle against him/herself?

This past year of post-graduation has been one for the books, terrible and wonderful, but mostly wonderful. About a year ago when I was settling in at home, one of my goals I made for myself was to take a journey within. Not until a couple weeks ago did I really understand what taking a journey within entails.

I was chatting with a gal at my favorite coffee shop in the area and we got to talking about the joys of traveling. For the past several years, she hasn't been able to travel. As she was itching yet unable to get out, she thought about what it was that she loved so much about traveling. She realized this: one is stuck in the moment and forced to experience the immediate surroundings. She thought, how can I generate that feeling in my daily life? As the yoga guru she is, she finds in her yoga practice she can embrace the moment and surrender to the present. I thought about it myself, and this can be practiced through many different outlets, because really it is an internal state of mind that requires one key thing: surrender to the moment.

This encounter encouraged me to go to a yoga class that night. In my practice, I got to thinking (uh oh). If yoga can be traveling, and traveling can be yoga, they both are a form of prayer- of looking deep within and taking a journey into the moment when and where you are at right now…wait, I have been traveling for a whole year! An AHAH moment struck me in the middle of shavasana pose. We are just passing through in this life and every situation is a journey in itself, making us all perpetual travelers.

Just remember, we are made of starstuff, so we will eventually be able to put all the stuff together and glow from one solar system to the next.

Grow Where You're Planted

Today marks my one-year anniversary of living at home. Granted, I have made half a dozen trips to the Bay, one trip to Washington, D.C., one to Florida, another to Portland, to Chico, and another half-dozen to the Eastern Sierras.

Nevertheless, I really have been living at home, inhabiting a princess room, paying cheap rent, and enjoying a limitless food-and-booze meal plan. It really is the good life and I couldn't be more blessed.

My wonderful friend Jenny and I have talked about how getting too comfortable in one place makes us weary, even uncomfortable. It's a worry rooted in the fear of getting stuck in a place, of not pursuing dreams that would carry one out of their comfort zone and lift one out of their super-cozy princess bed. This perspective is coming from two gals that are always on the move and in the mood for an adventure.

But, shoot, what a nurturing and peaceful experience it has been to live at home. To give myself time to think, to write, to create, to explore my beliefs and passions. That opportunity wasn't always readily available in college. With so many people coming in and out of the scene, so many ideas floating around, so many external distractions, it was challenging to focus on what I truly did believe and care about. My relatively open-minded persona was overwhelmed with so many options and possibilities. That still reigns true, but now I am more rooted, which only helps when ideas are flying right and left.

"Grow where you are planted," another one of my grandpa's wise biblical extractions, never became so relevant in my life until I was pushed home on a plane from John F. Kennedy to LAX on August 26, 2012. I had officially graduated; I was officially lost and speechless.

Grow where you're planted. Because I believe God's timing is much slower than my own projected plans. Because I realize people are people everywhere. Because I can find a coffee shop, salsa club, and soccer team in any city of the world. Because I think relationships are the most important thing to nurture. For now, I continue to grow where I am planted in Brea, California, enjoying my princess life.

An adventure is just around the corner, a topic for a later time.

All that being said, my little garden is flourishing, overgrown, and producing tomatoes as large as pumpkins. Abandoned by their gardener, they have done just fine on their own. A reminder that I don't need my princess bed forever.

Pi Phi's Foundations, as Hard as Big Hearts

Pi Beta Phi Sorority sits in the middle of fraternity row on Piedmont Avenue in Berkeley, California. In a certain given week, passersby may hear high-pitched shouts coming from inside chanting, "Who are WE? PI PHI! ..." during recruitment week. Girls come and go throughout their college experience, and some boys even slip in. The house is kept up by the National Pi Beta Phi Foundation, but there are a few individuals that often go unseen and are arguably more of a foundation to the house than anyone else.

Juana, Tomas, and their son Victor have worked in the Pi Phi house for over a decade now; they have seen thousands of girls live in the house and have worked with a handful of house moms through the years. Humbly working the kitchen, they not only feed the bellies of hungry college girls, but they fed my soul with their kind hearts.

Juana and Tomas looking good for their nephew's wedding

Juana and Tomas are from Mexico and are some of the hardest workers I know, enduring so much and making a livelihood for their next generation in the family, always with a smile. Paths crossed in the kitchen corridor as I learned more about their family, and as I was invited to Juana's birthday party, and her nephew's wedding. I learned something different from my time with them than my education at Berkeley. The people I meet are my education, and these two were my Berkeley parents. After a long day at work, I would come home late for dinner, look around for some leftovers, and chat with my favorite company.

It's amazing what kind of impressions can be broken when you talk to someone, when you listen to someone. At first glance, these two were the Pi Phi workers, and that defined them in this house. They are more to me than that now; our encounters at Pi Phi were just a way of getting to know what they were all about- beyond the facade of a sorority house. 

These two are exemplary figures in their family of strength and hard work. They have built a beautiful life for their family in Berkeley and that feeling resonated to my friends that went to the nephew's wedding. It resonated when we went over to their house for Juana's birthday celebration. It resonated again when I recently visited them a year after graduation. They welcomed me with open arms at Ashby Bart station. A dinner out, a visit to Victor's family's house, and a cozy night's sleep- my mind swirling with the rusty Spanish I used all day- and I could not have felt more love and friendship.

I wish I had the talent to draw this feeling of coming back from a long school day to my Pi Phi parents, sitting on the stool in the kitchen eating my dinner, chatting with the lovely pair, and feeling at home. You will just have to imagine it yourself. 

The Grammar of Music: Out in Space

I am taking a group beginning piano class, with the first priority being an excuse to see my good college friend; the piano comes second. The class is a hoot, with frequent snack breaks and chatty cathys. Nevertheless, we always get to the piano part. As the students attentively listen to each other perform our pieces, I get to thinking.

We learn about notation as the grammar of music, everything that makes and creates a coherent piece of music. The accidentals, pauses, time scale, chords, all contribute to something that would sound like a well-formulated, educated...sentence? Indeed it is true, as a faulty note makes you cringe just as a conjugation error might. A wrong chord makes you as unsure as a misused word. Pauses make for a dramatic effect; the speed and strength of playing also add drama, just as they would in speech. And then there's the spaces between notes, as important as the spacebar on your keyboard.

One question from a fellow student got me thinking about what's in a space. "Why do they even divide the notes like that?" Our teacher Ms. Rodriguez responds, "Spaces, Kathy, it's all about spaces!"

About a year ago, I was writing a paper on a few poems and I was heading in the direction of describing how black ink makes words on a page, but the contrasting white paper defines it. Without the contrast we couldn't understand a thing. As annoyingly metapoetic as this is, I see the white page now as SPACE. Just as the space within the lines of a measure in music. Without those spaces, we don't have music- no harmony or melody or symphony or song.

Yet very often we disregard those white spaces- the simple tap of the space bar, the simple break in a line, the simple indent on a page. And yet, they are the structure, the foundation, and the creation of music and literature alike.

Certainly psychedelic is the idea of space, just as it is in our daily lives. To ask for some space or time alone sounds antisocial, odd, and kind of offensive. Yet, really, how are we to live without just a little bit of space to be an individual note on the measure, word on the page, and individual in this grand world? The grammar of music has shown me how to be an individual, and also a member of a chord. Both versions (individual or member) have unique attributes; either one depends on the time and place.

I guess all I'm really saying is that we all need some space to make ourselves individuals, but it doesn't hurt having someone else close by.