Scales Suck.

I made a realization today.



...



I was destined for greatness.



You would think that that statement would be accompanied by a smug recollection of all the times baby Allie completed a Rubik's cube or answered the Double Jeopardy question correctly. But no. I say that with a bit of disappointment in my voice, a sad lag in my typing.



For that, there's a two-fold reason:



First of all, I've grown very accustomed to the idea of being a Super Latina, growing up with nothing, doing my best, beating the odds, and striving for many years, until finally reaching my goal of Yale. I was just one of many like me, whether that be a Latina, or a person of color, or growing up in a single-parent household, or being told too many times that mommy couldn't afford that, or being the first of my family to make it to college. I imagine myself coming back to New York, to Queens, to Woodside, and being like, "You see?? You can do it, too!" In a way, I've already started, getting on every younger person I know when they doubt anything about their future. Semilla de la Excellencia Colombiana? A way for me to tell the entire Colombian community of NY that college, and in particular an Ivy League education, is feasible, doable, within reach! It's always been, "If I can do it, so can you."



But what if the playing field wasn't level to begin with? It's not that I discovered I've actually been wealthy this entire time (pfft). I sat down to debate with Shanah over what makes US different from all the other people in the same exact situations. Why we're where we are in life. And it came down to DRIVE. So now you're saying, of course, that's obvious. But I've always supposed you can will yourself to care about things. You can make yourself attribute importance to certain things because you're looking ahead and know you have to get stuff done in order to get where you want to be. You can develop habits of excellence if prompted by yourself or others.



But the difference between me and them, "success" and not, is the strength of the drive and willpower we're born with. Imagine a scale, 1 to 10. The average person, be they rich or poor, White or Brown, settles in at a 5. You, my friends, are most likely 10's. There are PLENTY of people with (a) parent(s) just as supportive as I had, with the same opportunities (or, rather, lack thereof) that I had, growing up in the same surroundings, being influenced by the same media and being fed the same ideas, that are just not where I am right now. Why? I am a 10, and looking back, I've always been a 10.



Score one for genetics in this never-ending battle of Nature VS Nurture.



Which brings me back to: I was destined for greatness. I feel like this takes away from my accomplishments slightly. I feel like the rich kid whose daddy always gets her out of trouble, who knows that no matter how many screw-ups she makes, she's destined to own daddy's company one day and marry a rich lawyer and buy the penthouse in the city (MY penthouse). I loved the sense of battling it out against the world, this injust world where we don't hear about Yale graduates unless they're the type of powerful family that later controls the entire country, much less Latina Yale graduates. I loved working ridiculously hard, knowing that my goal was to be the first Latina _______, knowing that it could, probability-wise, be ANY of us, but that I was gonna personally make sure that it would be me. But if I entered this world, ready and willing to fight, the number 10 unknowingly prominent on my list of traits, then I didn't start off like everyone else. And if everyone else starts off and remains a 5, a 3, or even a 1, then how can I relate?



Which leads me to point number two. How can I convince other people to "follow in my footsteps" if I KNOW that I have something that they might possibly never be able to cultivate? How can I convince a 4 they can become a 10? Should I even be trying to do that? Or am I expecting too much of people that don't even aspire to the things we do? Many are content with different, though not necessarily inferior, embodiments of success. I want to push students to continue, to aim high, to dream in the possibility of greatness, of my idea of success. But if they're not an upper-scale number already...



How do I make someone care?

The Good and the Bad. I don't deal with that Ugly stuff. =P

Ok, sorry in advance, this is gonna be a small and obnoxious post.

I had a dinner of crab yesterday, for the first time ever. FOR THREE REAIS A CRAB. THREE. REAIS. That's not even USD$2. =O

And now for the bad news.

...

...

My camera broke. Please mourn with me. Thank you.

<33

PS Heading tomorrow (finally) to Pipa Beach! Gonna steal Shanah's camera/pictures =)

PPS I have pictures of my kids up on facebook!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003591&l=ecd95&id=1363560260

Not Precisely On Topic...

Hey loves!

Ok, so I haven't updated in a while, sorry! I've been using more of my free time for other things, like filling up my Japanese Kana Workbook (I learned all my Hiragana! Now on to Katakana haha). And of course I've also been seeing a bunch of things and a bunch of people =)

So first off, here's a link to my facebook pictures (I know you guys are lazy haha), in the hopes that they'll tide you over until my next, real post.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003516&l=210b4&id=1363560260

and

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003587&l=86447&id=1363560260

Now for the reason I'm even bugging you guys. I'm in the house, just chilling until lunch, so I decided to change my desktop background because I just talked to Chloe and I realized how much I missed her and my other suities! So naturally, I had to look through my entire "Vandylove" photo album on my computer. And then my "La Casa = Love" one, too.

And I could not stop smiling. I'm a complete camera whore--I love being in pictures, but I love taking them, too. Some people think it's annnoying or excessive, but pictures are the way I remember specific events or emotions. I have the customary oooh-let's-get-together-and-pose pictures, and the typical for-posterity's (and my Alianza Historian duty's, haha) sake pictures, but I also have tons of candid, i-didn't-realize-anyone-was-taking-a-picture-so-i'm-not-self-conscious-about-how-my-face-looks-when-i-bust-out-laughing pictures. And those are the very best kind.

I can't stop gushing about how I excited I am about returning to Yale in the fall. I almost wish it were right now! Don't get me wrong, I love Brasil, I just love Yale more than anything anything anything. It's times like these (which are on a almost-daily basis sometimes) when I realize how lucky I am. I've always been extremely lucky and blessed, but this time...it's Yale, man. And I'm so glad to say that I haven't gotten jaded or lost any of that pure love for my dream school. I'd say that's mainly because the people I've met there remind me everyday how lucky I am to know them. =D

I love you guys SOSOSOSOSO much!!!!!



♥

Yale Name = Limelight for Good

Helloooo my loves! I'm sorry about the lack of updates, this week has been veryyy busy. I've come to the realization that I don't know how people have 9 to 5 jobs and EVER have time for ANYTHING after work! I'm not 9 to 5 and I'm certainly not in an office somewhere, but still.

I'll give you a quick overview of the work we've done so far. And after tomorrow hopefully I'll have pictures to put up of the UNBELIEVABLY ADORABLE kids =D

First off, in a conversation with Shanah, I realized I am not in love with little kids. As in, I don't love all kids (or babies) unconditionally, the way most people do (and the way I love dogs lol). I taught at (and later ran) my karate dojo for 5 years, so I know it's not that I don't like children. I absolutely LOVED my kids--I would talk to anyone who would listen about Jonathan's latest antics (the kid is such a smart-ass haha), or how Fahim once told me, with the air of someone explaining 2+2 =4 to someone, that I was "SuperWoman" because I could fix anything. That's just it--they were mine. Once I get to know kids, I go crazy about them. Hence why I'm having such a good time at Cre-Ser =)

This Colonia de Ferias is a two-week long summer camp for Autistic children. The first session started this past Monday and is for kids between the ages of 2 and 7. The next starts when this one ends and is for kids age 8 to 14. We have 11 (soon to be 12, I think) kids enrolled in the camp, which allows most of the kids to have two interns each, who are from the local university, all majoring in things like Nutrition, Psychology, Physiotherapy, etc. Three of the kids are not Autistic; they are siblings of other kids enrolled in the camp. They are split up into three rooms based on color (YEAH, GREEN) and work on a series of activities with them, such as educational games, arts, sports, social interactions (trying to get them to play together can be hard haha), and other stimulating activities. The kid that I was assigned happens to be one of the few "normal" ones (once again, don't go PC on my ass)--his name is Carlos Vinicius. He's 6, really talkative, and has a great imagination. I really really like my kid, he just doesn't require the attention that the other kids, especially in the green room, need. The professionals at Cre-Ser said that they wanted me to experience working with an Autistic child (to which I was like, well, considering I came from the US to Brasil for that, yeah, that would be nice lol) so they told me to move freely around all the children and help and interact as much as I wanted without worrying about who I was assigned to. And by that I mean that Rose, who is the professional in charge of our room, would watch over Vinicius as he draws while I would go settle Gisele's tauntrum and get her to play with numbers instead. It worked out great the past two days, because the other children in my room are Gisele and Pedro Victor, two of the most adorable little kids I've EVER seen.

Gisele (Gee-zeh-lee) is a regular at the center (I'm sorry I switch between saying Cre-Ser and the center, they're the same thing), which she's been attending since it opened in February. She's 4 and she vocalizes (makes noises only she understands) but she's only just starting to form words; today, watching a DVD concert of Xuxa (DOES ANYBODY REMEMBER HER??) singing a song called Tchu Tchu Cao, Gisele sang along when Xuxa said "peludo," which means furry (the song was about a dog). We were stunned! That's like the 4th word in her vocabulary, the others being chi chi (pee), liçensa (com liçensa = excuse me), and cinco (five) hahaha.



As for Pedro Victor, I could gush about him for DAYS. He's either 3 or 4 and he has the most winning smile I've ever seen. He's really intelligent, can talk pretty well, knows every single animal that roams or has ever roamed this planet, and likes to draw on the dry-erase board. Actually, good luck getting him to stop haha. He draws the same thing over and over again, a circle with two eyes and either a neutral or a sad mouth and then a bunch of squiggles and bigger circles around it: Mamae, or mom. We have yet to understand why the non-happy smile, because he's smiling big all the time, especially when he erases something well by himself and I say "muito bom!" haha. He's like the world's biggest cutie =D



Vinicius is really intelligent and I'm only worried he's not challenged enough in this atmosphere. Not gonna lie, my heart goes out to him whenever Rose (Hoe-zee) makes the signal for me to leave him and she takes over. She's not a bundle of joy and fun all the time lol. He's actually come to ask for me when I'm not with him because he wants me to play with him or see something or just stay at the table with him =) Awwww my kid is sooo cute!



Okay, this is was supposed to be a really short post, haha, but I told you, once I start on these kids, I can't stop. Wait until I have pictures, you'll see what I'm talking about.

Until then, I only have this, which explains the whole Colonia de Feria thing (aaaand has a picture of yours truly with Gisele and two other interns), albeit in Portuguese. Put your language skills to the test, Nico! =)

http://www.farn.br/novo/navegacao/noticias/vernoticia.php?id=617


Hope your summers are making you as happy as mine is!

<333allie

PS I LOVE BRANFROSH!