austin update

i lived through a hurricane!

here are some interesting articles about some things completely unrelated to hurricanes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/opinion/31kristof.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html

i'm in a coffeeshop in austin and i just read them.

ok so... hurricane dolly came and threw down some havoc in the greater mcallen area. there was flooding (not much where i was living, but not none), power outages, trees and wires down, roofs being torn down houses, etc. it didn't hit hidalgo county as hard as it hit SPI and everything (that's what was in the news) but it still hit pretty hard. it sucked, but it's not too interesting to write about... just imagine an incredibly loud windy dark storm that lasts for a long time and everyone is calling you over. also, one of our interns, MJ, lives near SPI and she hasn't been returning anyone's phone calls or anything and that is WORRISOME. it is actually pretty bad, but i don't know what to do about it.

anyway hurricane is boring to write about. i'm done with my internship, it was a great summer. i'm so glad i came down here instead of stayed up in new york or went to do anything else. i learned a lot and it was pretty incredible, and everyone i worked with was so extra-awesome that i could hardly believe my good luck. corinna, abner, jaime, moira, laura, yessica, jayne, kyle, MJ, GENEVIEVE, ann... i'm going to miss everyone a lot! but i'm excited to get back up to the east coast and see all my friends. and also go to some awesome job interviews. today i interviewed for MADRE, a women's civil rights organization that works globally and with the UN a lot. I'd really like that. Tomorrow i'm interviewing with Amnesty International, and in the next few weeks I'll be interviewing with the Global Workers Justice Alliance, CONNECT, and a civil rights firm called Lansner and Kubitschek. there's a few more organizations i want to send my resume out to as well. i'm looking for a fall internship that won't be super stressful but that i can hopefully segue into a cool summer internship. we'll see though.

so now i'm up in austin with toni and gino and patrick. corinna and the work gang were up here as well but they left yesterday. so weird - corinna's best friend is patrick's brother, we realized that the other day. we hung out with him (chris) and his friend (christian) yesterday, they made us dinner. it was delicious. christian, i believe, has a crush on toni, which is extra cute. he wants us to go out tonight but i can't... toni and gino aren't going to either. we just discussed it. i think he's going to be getting an upsetting text message in a moment, from toni, from my phone, so taht will be confusing maybe. but i have to be prepped for my phone interview tomorrow.

also it's annoying, apparently for the student organizations i'm part of we're supposed to have a schedule of events completed and sent in by tomorrow. i have not even thought about these organizations for one second while i've been up here, because it's the friggen summer and i'm busy and the other people in the organizations are in new jersey, new york, or in one case, zimbabwe. but whatever.

so there's your update, mr. postman. check out some pictures:

hello dolly

living at laura's

well i'm not homeless - laura was nice enough to extend her hospitality to genevieve, MJ and I. She has a two bedroom apartment in McAllen that is really nice - it's small but she has such good taste that it is full of nice things. Of course, she's moving at the end of July so most of her things are packed up. She hasn't got internet though - right now I'm sitting outside on her small deck stealing wireless from some hapless Texan. She told me her old roommate used to be able to get a wireless signal sometimes, but today was the first day it worked for me. Good thing too, because everyone is gone today and I wanted to work on some job applications and get them sent out. Which I did.

Lets see what's been going on. Yesterday was the big NO BORDER WALL rally and protest. It was really great - they had a forum a few weeks ago that I thought would be tough to top in terms of attendance and enthusiasm, but yesterday evening definitely took the cake. They had speakers first, in an auditorium at UT Pan-Am, who spoke about the issues everyone has heard before - immigration, environment, etc - and then Emily, the lawyer whose house Genevieve and I stayed in for a week or so, spoke about the pending lawsuits against the government right now. Specifically DHS, since they haven't been obeying their court order to consult with landowners about buying thier land, they've basically been strongarming peope into giving up property. She said she doesn't expect to win but she want to draw attention to what is going on here. Then a student group from the University spoke, and the girl in charge got everyone fired up, and a few minutes later we marched on the courthouse. Picket signs and all. It was very cool - we marched down a length of the highway that the police had blocked off for us, and the other side of the highway had people beeping and waving, and storeowners were coming out of their stores to cheer us on. I think there were something like 600 people or so. It doesn't seem like a lot if you compare it to the amount of people who have written letters to their congresspeople in support of th border wall, but most of those people don't live - have never lived and will never live - in the Rio Grande Valley, and don't really understand what a terrible impact a border wall will have. In terms of economic loss, environmental impact, human fatalities... I don't think anyone in their right mind could support the border wall if they knew what havoc it will wreak down here.

So that was a lot of fun, and Genevieve took a lot of pictures, which I'll wrangle out of her at a later date. She's at work now so I can't harass her about it at this moment.

We went up to Austin last week and stayed with Gino. It was great! I think the weather is just about as hot in Austin as down here, but there are a lot more places to swim and cool off up there than down here. The first day we were there we swam in a river, the next day in Gino's pool, and the last day we went to a place called Hamilton Pool - one of the most gorgeous natural formations i've ever seen in my life. It was absolutely incredible - for the first hour or so that we were there I din't even want to swim, I just wanted to look at it. I got more tan in those few days than I have been in the past few years of my life, I think. I really love Austin. We went to a party there on Saturday and everyone was so incredibly nice and welcoming... even to me, and I am about the most shy and boring person alive. I actually ended up just falling asleep in a hammock for something like five hours. During the party. While fireworks were being set off not 10 feet from where I was. (See, I'm boring.) Patrick was there for a bit but he headed off after a few hours, I think to try and patch things up with his boyfriend (which didn't end up working, since the next day he told me they were no longer seeing each other). And Gino of course was there, he's the one who brought us, and Genevieve, but she left early to go see another friend of hers who lives in Austin, and to watch the fireworks over the lake. Like I said, I missed most of the fireworks in my area because I was sleeping. I wish I had a hammock at home, they're really great. The last day of Austin was kind of ruined for me for stupid reasons, and I was so upset at the time that I left my phone charger up there like a moron, so now in addition to not having internet i also haven't got any battery in my phone. I've been getting a lot of reading done, basically. Anyway though, I'm pretty excited to get back up to Austin at the end of July for a week - and Nick has been saying he might be able to come down as well! (Patrick is SUPER EXCITED about that, hahaha). So it will be me, Toni, Patrick, Nick, and Gino - some of my best friends from before lawschool sucked my life away. If only my Belmar friends were coming as well, it would be like a 24-hour party.

I know there's been more stuff that's happened in the past three weeks or whatever it's been since I've updated, but I'm getting hot out here and I want to go back inside where there is no internet, but I can read more. I'm in the middle of 'Eiger Dreams' and 'Persian Fire,' two books which John mailed me because he's the best. They're both awesome.

i'm almost a homeless person!

so the dorm we've been living in, casa de colores, with bathrooms like something out of martha stewarts worst nightmares, was built a few years ago by a bunch of orthodox jewish teen volunteers at proyecto azteca. my theory is that it was like a training camp for them before heading off to israel to build jewish settlements (this theory has been confirmed by jaime). before casa de colores was built, most volunteers apparently would live with host families, to get the real south texan experience, but i guess the jewish kids were real masochists and wanted to build a horrible little building that doesn't conform to any fire or safety hazard codes in anywhere in the country, or anywhere in any country, barring possibly some places in africa or siberia or what have you. places which, i think in general, don't have fire codes, is what i'm trying to get across. because this place doesn't. have them, i mean.

so we're living in casa de colores, it's not THAT bad because there's only three of us (another intern, MJ, moved in on monday - she's from Rutgers Newark too which is a pretty crazy coincidence if you ask me!) and it has two giant bedrooms with 6 bunkbeds each, so it has enough room, at least, even though it hasn't got enough of many other things (hot water, for example). but we've been told ever since the beginning, that at some point over the summer the jewish kids would return because there is a group that volunteers every summer. today we got the details: on saturday, two adults are going to arrive, a guy and a lady. then on sunday, 9 girls are going to arrive (that makes 10 ladies incoming to CDC) and 7 dudes (that makes 8 incoming dudes). also two other women are going to arrive, but they are super orthodox and need seperate sleeping quarters entirely. I'm not sure why, or how they expect that to happen - genevieve mentioned that they were planning on sleeping in the STCRP office. which is absolutely ridiculous, we have no idea who these women are they can't be sleeping in a law office with client files and things, also we WORK here. also they don't want to pay for any of this.

so like i said, girls room & guys room have 6 bunk beds each. meaning 12 beds, meaning that since there's 10 women incoming and there's already three of us here, there aren't enough beds for girls. guys room will have 4 extra beds, but guys and girls apparently can't sleep together in the same room. so genevieve, MJ and i are basically in a lot of trouble.

laura said it's possible that we could move in with her, but she isn't sure yet because she's trying to get a new place to live. Jayne said her landlord/roommate has two spare rooms, which we might be able to move into. Ann at proyecto azteca has a spare room, but Sr. Moira uses it as an office so we're not sure if that will pan out. so if worse comes to worst, genevieve, MJ and I may actually end up having to sleep at STCRP! i know i just gave reasons for the two other ladies not to sleep here, but different rules apply to us, i think, for many reasons e.g. we are not strangers, we work here, we are allowed to look at client files anyway, we spend everyday here as it is, etc. STCRP has a bathroom with a shower, and it has an oven and a microwave and a refrigerator - actually the bathroom is better than the CDC bathroom so it might not be all that bad - but seriously, if i end up sleeping and working in the same place, i will literally never go outside, and i will return to new jersey white as a ghost as if i had been living in a cave. there's more i want to write about too but i'm on my lunch break trying to eat and i can't type and eat at the same time.

real quick: genevieve and i went to this place 'la mexicana dos' which was really good, and i got these nachos called 'panchos' that were DELICIOUS, but i couldn't eat them all because it was too much and they were absolutely covered with jalapenos. so i brought them home but seriously, two day old microwaved nachos covered in refried beans and guacamole aren't as good as you might think. i was once of the opinion that anything microwaved will taste good, provided it's greasy enough, but i have been proven wrong. so wrong.

oh also, going to mexico tonight!! and we went to a drive-in movie theatre yesterday and it was FANTASTIC!!

oh no oh no oh no oh no

Genevieve and I are going to be house-sitting for Corinna's friend Emily for a few days, which couldn't have come at a better time BECAUSE I JUST SAW A ROACH IN THE DORM WTF.

Fucker was like the size of a cocker spaniel or a cat or at least a large cigar. This is not like spiders which are only around to be pleasant and maybe sometimes bite but it is a friendly misunderstanding, these little bastards take orders from their insect overlords and they are out for blood. Plus i moved the garbage can it ran behind and it's not there anymore which also means it can turn invisible! This is a threat that we can't handle!!

They want my food, they want my clothes, they want to cut off my skin and wear it and assimilate into human society, they want to run up my pantleg and freak me the fuck out. what the fuck man what the fuck! john said i should buy a BB gun and shoot at it but that will just make it stronger god damn it a branch just tapped on the window and i about fell out of my chair this is turning into teh blair witch project. i'm sorry everyone i'm sorry i did this it serves me right coming to texas



update: we killed it, genevieve is smart and she wrapped her boots in plastic bags and we saw it come out and i screamed and we both went at it with smashing and it got smeared all over. ugggghhhh. genevieve said that i was exaggerating, it wasn't the size of the remote control. and she also told me this isn't like men in black, or gangland, where if we kill one of them they kill one of us. so that's a relief.