What up G!!

Hey Homie!

Just kidding. How are you Juan? It has been a while since I’ve written to you.  Been through a lot actually in the last few months; have been healing from various injuries from exercising mostly my shoulder, hand. They feel a lot better because I’ve been getting pricked with needles; acupuncture it really does help. That and the extra deep massages they game me each time I went to a session. I recently got over a little health scare. The doctor found an ovarian cyst…so I had to wait out 3 months to see if it was dangerous to my health or not.  It wasn't. I’m abut to turn 32 so technically I’m considered low risk para esas cosas. Still it makes you think the things that are yet to come for me as my body ages. Not sure if you remember but I’ve always been an active person, physically I mean I’ve always liked to run, be outdoors work on my body and now my bones ache. Still I want to run a marathon! It’s one of the things on my “bucket list” things I want to experience before I die. 

I started teaching. I’m working with high school students at Roosevelt High in East LA. It’s an after school project that I am overseeing.  It’s a fun thing to be involved in because it has so many layers. Well first let me tell you that it’s an oral history project, students are going to interview a few older-female-activists that have shaped and influence the communities of East L.A. and Boyle Heights.  They will interview them, on video camera and then we’re going to take all the video footage to create a documentary called “Las Grandes de East L.A. and Boyle Heights”. I’m really excited about the whole project but have been a bit bummed cause we’ve had such low attendance.  Only two students have come consistently and of course we’ve continued the project with only the two of them.  Actually we’ve had really good sessions with them, they have liked the class discussions and the materials we’ve shared with them so far. I think they’re into it.  Ok I know they are I should stop being in disbelief about it.

This Sunday we’re going to go see a play called “Boyle Heights” I figured it's a good way for them to see te we work others in the community are creating about this community. At the end of the project students would have contributed to the preservation of history of that community.  They are being historians. So back to the layers…well you have the youth, Adilia (program assistant) myself, Dionne (professor at Cal State LA) and Susana the (lead teacher at Roosevelt) and finally the older women activists that we’ll be interviewing. That makes for a whole lot of generations!  It’s awesome for me too because I get to visit a high school campus very different from the one I attended. Here they have 5,000 students and the campus is pretty big, my high school had 500 students and we took classes in bungalows. So it’s cool to see the jocks, cheerleaders, activists, rebels, cholos, chachas, nerds, loners. Roqueros and what evers walking around.

 

Dude! Let me tell you the one thing I am totally grateful I didn’t experience at my high school that they have there is the rat problem.  This one time we were meeting and then we saw one race from one end of the classroom to the other. But hey look on the bright side-the district is spending money on uniforms, 2 per student. So it’s nice to experience the contrasts in my high school experiences.  I almost can’t wait to get to the end of the project cause I know the work we create is going to be so awesome. Just like the process has been. 

p.s. got the image from www.museo.org/site I believe it's from their current exhibit "inside/Outside North&South.  No artist name listed