Power - Reflection - "Manos y Oídos"

When I think of power I think of the power we have over others. The power we have trapped inside our bodies that we can release through our own actions both physical and metaphorical. When you think about it, the five senses we have are the only way we can express ourselves in terms of showing others how we feel. 

I chose a hand and an ear as my subject matter because I thought they were both neutral senses with great power for good or bad. With your hands you can write someone a love note, embrace someone you haven't seen in a long time, high five a friend, play music, or make art. But there are also things you can do with your hands that aren't so loving. You can wield a knife against someone, punch, slap, shoot a gun at someone, sign an adoption form for your own child, or abort a baby. Likewise with your ears you can hear someone say, "I love you", hear your favorite song, a baby's first laugh, the leaves crunch beneath your feet during fall, a friend tell a story, or absolute, calming silence. But you can also hear somebody you love being hurt, tales of distress and agony, cursing, terrible news, doors slamming, screaming, or crying.

The eye would have played a key role in this project because of all the good and bad things you can see and or do with your eyes but I tried to stay away from cliché objects and for me, the eye is it. After hearing feedback from my classmates I realized that my works were more aesthetically pleasing to the eye rather than conceptually strong which did not come as much of a surprise to me. When Mrs. Rothrock said I could have put them in multiple gestures to get my point across I sort of understood as far as the hand went but that would have been literally impossible with the ear because.....ears don't move.

The hand, as I previously stated, was an older project that I felt fit into the prompt for this assignment. One of my toughest struggles during this project was trying to keep the style of the ear consistent with the precedent already set up by the hand. If possible I would have made them into actual prints like a woodblock or lithograph but I lack the resources and knowhow to do either of those so I went with an old-fashioned ink drawn print. I am pleased with the way these turned out and plan to continue this series in the future with my spare time.

In Class Reflection on "Power"

After seeing the works of art that hold "power" over people I understand exactly why they do. In the case of the pictures on naked children it is not a positive power that they hold but a negative one. Almost every person in the class was in complete cohesion when say that, that shouldn't be allowed to photograph children in that way. Some could understand why and how the pictures were probably taken but no one was flat-out, "Yes. This is okay as art and I have no problem with it."

A couple of the other pieces held different types of power. The Mexican people acting inside the glass boxes really interested me because I have spent extended time in Mexico. I thought it was interesting how people could go up and share their confessions about what they thought about Mexico and how it was almost always a media-based assumption.

The sexual figurines that were shown were definitely meant for shock value. I have come across Takshi Murakami's work in other art classes in the past and I found it interesting how he could make such happy, playful work of flowers and smiley faces with all kinds of vibrant colors and flora and then completely change directions and go to very adult, sexual versions of what look like children's toys. I personally would never make something for a shock value merely because I would rather stimulate thought on a piece where you study every part of it and what it means rather than seeing something and closing your eyes or turning away almost immediately like many of my classmates did.

In this project I am planning on taking some sorts of logos and changing them to become art themselves rather than symbols for, what I believe to be, destructive things.

-N8

Ecology - Reflection - "Luke Gnarles Seaman"

Ecology: the scientific study of the relationships organisms have with each other and with their natural environment. After hearing the definition of "ecology" in class I decided to go for something about the relationship of humans to different environments. I always get asked the question, "Mountains or beach?" and almost every time, North Carolinians prefer the beach and people who have recently moved here prefer the mountains. Point of view. I see it as all environments and how we relate to them is simply a point of view. I, for instance, prefer going to the mountains and climbing rocks, skiing down slopes, and longboarding down hills whereas other people I know prefer the ocean and sun rather than mountains and clouds. It was this thinking that brought me to the thought of doing a project on longboarding.

I spend hours every week longboarding like many people spend them going to the gym or studying for classes. It has become a part of me just as much as my love of music and art and because of that I have focused various different works of art towards it to pay respect to something I love doing. As a longboarder, I look at the world differently. Where most people would see a mere staircase, I almost instantly calculate in my mind, "How many stairs is that? Could I land the impact without getting hurt from that height? Could I jump far enough to clear the last stair?...." When I am driving in my car up/down a big hill most people would see a hill, occasionally you would get people thinking about sledding but that is normally exclusive to fall/winter time and a longboarder would do the same calculation, "How fast could I get going down this hill? Is my board hardware tailored to survive until the bottom without falling to pieces? Are there blind corners where traffic could be coming? If I fall how bad will the injury be?....." It is all merely a point of view.

For this reason I chose to do a picture of Luke (my younger brother) doing a trick called a "slide" where you break the wheels' rolling friction from the ground and slide (much like socks on a waxed floor) until your wheels begin to roll again. I chose a photograph because longboarding is such an action-adrenaline sport and no other medium could really capture what I was trying to express for this project. I chose a sequence of photos because I wanted to show the progression of the slide from the "wind-up" to the actual slide progressing towards the exit. Also because of the nature of longboarding, I wanter to show the speed and high-voltage nature of the sport. The filters and coloring I used are supposed to be a throwback to the 50's when skateboarding actually started and the smudges on the pieces are merely for aesthetic appeal.

If I were to go back and do this project again I would not change a thing. I went out for a boarding outing with some friends originally but when I took the pictures they just seemed too staged. I later went out with my brother and received the shots necessary in a single take which just reiterates how you can't stage something so natural. I don't even remember how I made the filters to look how they did with the reddish tint and I tried going back to recreate it because a friend asked me about my process and I couldn't do it. This whole project was a "fly by the seat of my pants" experience and I thoroughly enjoyed the subject matter and assignment as a whole.

-N8

Fantasy - Reflection - "Bag Man"

Fantasy. We all have them. Devious or innocent. Immediately after being told our subject matter would be the concept of "fantasy" I thought about super heroes. As a kid I remember always wanting to be able to fly like Superman or run super fast like the Flash. One night I even remember my older brother Aaron and I praying to God as young children to give us angel wings the next morning so we could fly around together.

Unfortunately, like most great things about childhood, we come to this realization about what life is really going to be like. We realize that we can't ALL be racecar drivers and astronauts and that most of us will end up with a cubicle job....and that terrifies me. Ever since I was young I have tried to retain different parts of my childhood so that, that never happens to me. I still read comic books, I still doodle on my notes from class, I am still a kid.

This cape made of plastic bags is supposed to symbolize everything I have learned about the difference of adulthood and childhood.

The physical cape as an object itself signifies my desire to stay young. About 2 years ago I wondered if it would be worth it to live to be 80, 90, or even 100. Not a suicidal thought but a life-evaluation. I realized I would rather die young than live to be very elderly. I would rather live a life worth living and die in the wake of some accident caused by my pursuit of higher living than grow old and grey and maybe lose my mind along the way and become a vegetable in some white-walled hospital somewhere.

Since then, my view of life has changed a bit but the thought still remains, I would rather stay young and live young forever than grow old. I want to be a superhero.

The plastic of the cape represents the world around us and how it turns us from children into "adults". When thinking about "The Man" and everything he controls about "The System" I immediately think about big business. Industry Nazis that control everyone and everything in the known world. People who pollute the Earth not only physically with waste but with their actions as well.

Enter the plastic. Name a non-biodegradable substance that is common in use. 10 out of 10 people's first response would be plastic. The direct export of the man. In turn, the plastic signifies the fact that eventually I will have to grow up and get a job like everyone else and eventually work for The Man but the cape signifies my on-going effort to stay young.

I chose the sounds and movements that I did because it's so easy to take things so seriously in life and forget to have fun while doing it. I wanted to just goof around as my action and sound and actually BE a superhero. It was essentially a tribute to my days of playing with plastic Lightsabers and jumping on our trampoline as superheroes.

I thought everything went just as planned if not better except I wish I could have worn a different color pants but I don't own any black pants or anything like that but that is all I would change. Originally, I was going to weigh the cape down with some sort of weights but after walking around my dorm with it on I decided to let it fly whimsically behind me. Overall I am extremely proud of how this project turned out.

Time - Reflection - "Are You Bored With Life Yet?"

When we were given the assignment to express time in some way I almost immediately thought about wasted time. Trying to stay away from cliches, I tried to look deeper into ways that we don't necessarily waste time but things that we spend lots of time doing that seem to fly by. Whether it be something we have to do every day like getting dressed or something that happens every once in a while like shave or something, we spend a considerable amount of time doing such things that can add up.

I dedicated my project to videotaping in slow and fast motion various things we do throughout our day that can be either fast or slow. I put certain things (like shaving) that you can't speed up in slow motion to show the almost trapped feel you can get when doing such tasks that require patience in our hectic lives. I also made some very fast (like walking) that CAN be sped up if enough effort is put in.

The title "Are You Bored With Life Yet?" is not supposed to imply suicidal tendencies or negative connotations. It is merely to illustrate that there are some things in life that are flat out boring. Some things that you wish you didn't have to do every day but that you must do regardless. It is also supposed to very subtly suggest how we live our lives in such hectic fashions that we are so obsessed with speed and success that sometimes we go into autopilot and this is a tribute to all things we can't do without thinking.

I believe my presentation was successful and I had evident confidence in my work. I don't think I relied too much on my PowerPoint to do the talking for me. I minimized the amount of distractions on purpose by leaving the screen black at certain points in my presentation to focus more on the words I was speaking rather than the pictures I had taken. I answered all questions to the best of my ability and was honest with my audience about how I felt about my project. My only regret is that some of the shots were a little "un-artsy". I can't think of any other way to explain it other than that. Some of the shots I had were very wide and were not focused on the subject matter. Granted, I did have some restrictions from what I was attempting due to the camera I was using but I am still proud of my work. I  also was trying to make a silent film but I think some sort of sound accompaniment could have aided my work quite a bit.

-N8

Mapping - Reflection - "Lay and Go"

As a kid, growing up I played with one and only one toy. LEGO. No GI Joe's, no Transformers, and very few action figures (which actually aided me later in life). Because of my deep interest in LEGO products I developed extreme skill in building techniques and intuition. As a kid my friend Zach used to come over almost daily and we would....just....build. I believe that my experience in the LEGO world actually translated into my proficiency in math classes and other analytical classes. When building one must think three-dimensionally and be creative which definitely translates to my life in art.

I have always enjoyed art almost from birth. I remember my father teaching me different techniques and how awesome his drawings always were and I can honestly accredit my interest in art to my early exposure from him. As I've grown in my skill and technique I have learned more and more that I am interested in something I call "anti-art". The practice of shattering walls in the art cosmos. Whether it be choosing concepts that no one else will or using materials for art that wouldn't normally be considered, I enjoy pushing the envelope. And this project is just that.

Generally speaking, sculptures are normally done from some form of clay, metal, wood, etc. but I chose plastic. Specifically, plastic toys. This work is more about the process rather than the actual work. I took a material that is normally looked upon as very linear and horizontal/vertical and manipulated the pieces using prior knowledge to create something unusual. The whole work itself is also somewhat of a puzzle itself the way that the two, distinct pieces fit together to create one, brand new piece.

I believe I did very well in explaining my solution as well as the art itself. I spent quality time on both preparation for the presentation and the project itself. I did not spend as much time on research because I already had much prior knowledge about the material because, as previously stated, I played daily with LEGO and also I worked at a LEGO retail store for the past two years of my life. My only regrets as far as the whole project goes is that 1. I believe that some sort of lighting device would definitely add to the whole composition (with the transparency playing a key factor) and 2. Once I began, I realized that the circles themselves aren't exactly symmetrical in terms of numbers so I believe an EXTREMELY keen-eyed, LEGO-enthusiast could tell that my craftsmanship was a bit off.

-N8

Mexico Day 90 - The End

Like I was never even there.....

Mexico Day 78 - La Tormenta

Not to be confused with the Spanish word tormento which means "torment" or "anguish", tormentA means a thunderstorm or harrow of some sort. "Why does it matter?" some may ask. "An 'o' and an 'a'? That's pretty much the same word." 'Tis not. La cura "the cure" and EL cura is Spanish for "reverend". Cula is a slang term, short for pelicula which is Spanish for "movie" and culO......is not. I admit that was a very edgey Spanish joke and I do not expect many people to get that and that's probably good thing.....

Así, here are some photographs I took during a thunderstorm from my roof, which I admit isn't my best idea in the world but here they are.....

-N8

Mexico Day 70 - Where The Hood At?

A couple days ago I was listening to a song by DMX and it talked about what life in "da hood" is like and I realized the majority of stuff I've talked about and pictures I have uploaded have been of the children's homes and Back2Back property but no chillin' out in da hood type stuff. But now it's April and we really don't have any groups coming until right before I leave so my job description has evolved a little bit since when I first got here.

Now I get to go with people places that normal interns don't. I think. I just sometimes get to chill with people and go off campus whenevs I have a staff member with me. A couple days ago I went and saw Furia de Titanes (Wrath of the Titans) which was ehhh but the experience was pretty shweet. I went with some of the staff que sólo hablan Español so we had subtítulos in Spanish which was a pretty cool experience because every time there was a funny part, Steve, Gabo, and I, all fluent in English, laughed first then when everybody else in the theatre had read the subtitles there was a second wave of laughter. I have always heard people say that the best way to learn a new language is to completely immerse yourself in it (which I have) and get lots of music/movies of said language. Entonces, I have flooded my iPod with everything from Hillsong United's Spanish album to Chilean electro indie bands called Astro. Súper chido (that's Spanish for "super cool"). Another cool thing about going to the movies in Mexico is that my entire movie + a large POP (Joya Manzana is the best drink on Earth) cost less than a normal, non-matinee film in the states. You can also go to a "VIP" movie where your seat reclines all the way back and you can order food while you are actually in the theatre through a device that they lifted straight off those super awesome hospital chairs/Deny's drive-ins which made me thoroughly surprised that this idea has not caught on in United States of America. I must specify the "United States of America" because we are not just "America", America covers everything from Greenland to Cape Horn directly South of Chile and we are not simply "THE United States" either because "Mexico" is technically known in the UN as "Estados Unidos Méxicanos" so we could call ourselves, "some United States" because I am sure there are others. But back to food....

Seriously, think about everything we have that just kind of makes us more flojo on a daily basis. Peanut-butter and jelly no longer need knife nor jar, they both can simply be expelled through a squeeze bottle....the SAME squeeze bottle. In order to make a phone call in the car we merely must talk at our car. OUR CAR and it will make the call for us. Our phones will also googlear (and yes, that is the verb for "to Google" in Spanish, spelling.....not so sure) whatever we want through some witchcraft magically woven into the very cells (get it?) of our phones because typing with our fingers is just too tiring or inconvenient which is why I rest my case that we should revert back to a more simple time. A time of minimal worries where blackberries and apples were just fruit and a nook was a word only used when paired with its predecessor "cranny" (now you have to admit that was pretty flippin' clever for being written at approximately 10:53pm at night). We must devolve our cellphones back to the age of the flip-phone where computers did computer things, video-games did game things, and phones did phone things. Isn't this an ironic wake-up call readers who are reading this post on your iPhones? Isn't it?

Yesterday I had the opportunity to go to one of our new properties called LTP which means something in Spanish that I have completely forgotten. Fortunately, the three people that I went with were all Mexican and only preferred to speak in Spanish so I got lots of practice. One of the chavos de la Programa Esperanza came with us so he and I worked together for the whole day and he only speaks Spanish so we got to talk about our películas y programas de la tele favoritas rather than our favorite movies and television shows. Unfortunately, he doesn't like ANY Star Wars nor ANY Batman and thinks they are both chafa which is Spanish for "cheap" which in my world means, "I hate you, your family, your ancestors, your face looks weird, you have bad taste in movies, people probably don't like to chill with you often, and everything that you have ever liked on Earth is poo poo (that's Spanish for poop)." Ergo, I discredit basically every Mexican movie he told me is awesome because he is OBVIOUSLY misled about que es que. But he DOES like "Walking Dead" and "Avatar: The Last Airbender" (TV show not movie) so all is not lost with this young soul.

I had been to one of the LTPs before but there are two properties right across the street from each other and I hadn't been to the one that we worked on very much yet and it was pretty eye-opening to what a punky, little, missionary organization can do. Seriously.

Over the course of     a certain number of     years we have literally built a new Casa Hogar for one of the homes that we work with to move in to. And this isn't all. Since I've been here alone we've put in underground conduit for electric and phone lines, welded fencing on a chicken coupe that will hold a crap ton of pollos (and yes, that IS a unit of measurement), and just kicked some trasero.

On the way home I once again thought of my homie DMX and starting taking pictures of what a normal side of the road looks like in Mexico and I think it may surprise some people....

And this was really close to the one of the more rural parts of Monterrey where people live in wood huts and cinder-block houses. The first time I came to Mexico I was expecting to see the B2B property as a concrete hut and desert wastelands in all directions but that's not really how it is.

Before I wrap up I just have to share this picture and say that we cut three more branches just like this down BY HAND with a saw.....just a saw, no adjectives needed.

And that I totally thrashed Gabriel "Gabo" Velasco in Wii Sports Bowling, Tennis, and Baseball.....and that I hope he reads this.

-N8

Mexico Day 59 - Month 2

So I know I haven't exactly been consistent with my blogging this month but to my defense there have been a crap ton of groups here and I have been working pretty hard. Fortunately, I have been attempting to take quite a few pictures so here they are....

A couple weeks ago we were totally crossin' the border into Texas to do some storage work and Walmart/Target/Traditional American Store run(s) on the other side. Ironically, the first thing I did when we crossed over and were picking up stuff from a friend who lives in Texas, was drink a huge hand-full of tap water.....simply because I could. It was crazy being back in the states because you actually notice a HUGE difference when you pass from the border of Mexico to the border of Texas when you are only a few miles away from a whole other country. It's as if you are on a whole new planeta and it was a very surreal experience even after only living here for two months.

David (the capitán of La Casa Hogar Bethany), Steve, and I all went to La Casa Hogar Bethany a while ago to install some bunk-beds and bring them new mattresses to sleep on. I think the picture of the "Before" speaks for itself.....Three-inches of egg crates is hardly considerable as a bed. However, one of the things that is unique to Bethany that not all children's homes can say is that they truly are a family. The care-takers there are probably some of the nicest people I have seriously met in my whole life and the kids are just straight up tough sons of guns.

Yesterday we went on a bike-riding field-trip to a local park with Bethany and I was paired with one of the youngest kids in the entire home (excluding infants) and as he traveled at about 2.3 mph on his bicicleta (with training wheels) he fell over greater than or equal to, five times throughout the entire day causing his knee to start bleeding and not one time did he cry. Every time he fell I asked, "¿Estás bien?" and every time he's was like "Yo, what are we waiting around for?" (in Spanish of course). They truly are a family and the director Daniel and other male caretakers are really the father that some of these kids never had and some of them even call Daniel, "Papi."

Last week we had a group of five engineers from a heating/cooling business based in Mason, OH (rep the 5-1-3 fur sure bird) which was pretty sweet. We got a lot of work done with a little amount of people and a little amount of work time which amounted to probably one of the most productive weeks I have experienced since I got here. Unfortunately, the ex-Army Ranger in the group got a little jackhammer-happy a couple times and cracked a main water pipe.....

Did I say crack? I meant completely mutilated the whole thing making the section completely unusable bringing our broken pipe count for that week up to a new record high (for my work teams) of two in three days.

So I simply HAD to put at least one picture of Jahir from La Casa Hogar Douglas up because Jahir is a special individual.....Up until I believe last year, everyone who knew Jahir just kind of thought he was a little "slow" and he didn't really understand when people would talk to him making people think he was just a straight up dumb kid.

Well, last year Jahir's ears were tested at some doctor's office somewhere and it turns out he's deaf....Like REALLY deaf.....I want to say he's about eight years old and has been deaf without knowing it for EIGHT YEARS. Think about that for a second..... He speaks with a slur, you have to speak very loudly/enunciate your words very clearly to him, and he's asked me about six or seven times when I got to Mexico and when I'm leaving and six or seven times I have told him y todavía no entiende but that's okay. From probably around the first time I went to Douglas Jahir has always gravitated towards me. He gives me a hug every time he sees me and one time when he was at the B2B property tagging along with one of the staff I saw him and his face lit up like you wouldn't believe. I feel so bad every time we go on field-trips with Douglas because Jahir always wants to be my partner and every time I have to explain to him numerous times (like usual) that I am working and that I can't play all day like I know he/me would like to. Just a quick side note: one day, out of nowhere, he started calling me "Paco" because I don't think he can say my name so I can now add that forename to my lyrical quiver of Mexican nicknames I have acquired over the past two months which I think is cool pretty sweet. On the upside, he is the only person in all of Mexico that calls me that so I now know that whenever I here a muffled little voice three feet above the ground calling out, "Paco", I know my homie needs me.

I don't know if you can tell what this is by the picture but this is quite possibly the coolest part of all of La Casa Hogar Douglas (minus the people). This is a slide that runs all the way from the church up on the hill all the way down to the Comedor which is amazingly EPIC. Now at first glance one may think, "Wait a minute, that's made of concrete and there's no railing and there is no padding and blah, blah, blah...." One would be missing the point. This is the essence of Mexico (at least Monterrey) all wrapped into one object. In the states you would need the proper permits and licensing to pour your own concrete and do construction and blah, blah, blah, but in Mexico that is not a problem.

In Mexico things are just ghetto enough to where you can kindasorta build whatever, wherever. In the states, little kids cry ever two seconds when they fall down and sometimes just cry because they want attention, but here the kids are tough as nails and only cry when something more profound than a scraped up knee is wrong (except when it comes to soccer when everyone's huevos se van adults and kids, and everybody turns into a crybaby for no apparent reason when you accidentally bump there foot or they fall down, but that's a different story for a different day). All politically correct malarkey aside, the slide is REALLY fun.

If you are un jefe del tobogán como yo than you will be really hardcore and go down without any cardboard or broom to keep your booty safe. Depending on the time of year and the extra material laying around, sometimes they will put water down it or enhance the experience with some other use of impressive ingenuity. It's funny to watch group members watch the kids go down because as they go down every American bone in there body is saying, "Intervene! Someone's going to get hurt and one of these cute little kids are going to cry and I will feel like soooooooooooo terrible!" But truth is: the majority of the people who get "hurt" on the slide (and by hurt I mean scraped knee or skinned hand) are the group members 'cause they ain't got nothin' on our Monterrey flavor, so go and call the Savior, 'cause these chavos are so hardcore and have so much Mexican legitimacy that they're gonna make-yeah........................................cry.

What.

-N8

Mexico Day 39 - Day-to-Day

So I know a lot of my faithful, daily, dedicated, supportive readers have been asking…What does a day in the life of Mission Trip Nate look like? Well, here it is…

Every night I set my alarm for 6:45am and 7:15am. This was a trick that I learned last year and it’s started to work quite well. Now I know that most people set two alarms because they have trouble getting up and need a little motivation but I am not one of those people. Yes, I do have trouble getting up in the morning sometimes but I do not set two alarms for that specific reason.

I have learned that by setting my alarm two times about 30 minutes away from each other I can actually start remembering the majority of my dreams I have. Dreaming is a remarkable ability that God has blessed us with that should be utilized to its fullest. I believe that dreaming is one of the only times where you have absolutely no control over what’s going on in your head. There is a saying that I have heard someone say at least one or possibly even TWO times in my entire life: “Intoxicated words are merely sober thoughts.” I’m sure whoever made up those awe-inspiring words of wisdom was quite the philosopher, but think about it…when intoxicated almost all inhibitions go out the window and there is very little that gets filtered between the brain and action. Now think about when you are dreaming.

When one is dreaming there is no such thing as inhibitions. It’s just an uncontrollable mental diarrhea every time you go to bed. That being said I would like to make my own philosophical galleta. “If ‘intoxicated words are merely sober thoughts’ than dreams are intoxicated words that are stored up in one’s mind and almost immediately forgotten for those who do not get intoxicated.”

“¿Comó te llamas?”

“Me llamo Señor Aristotle” Desafortunadamente, as humans, la mayoría de nuestros sueños are lost late at night in our deepest states of sleep, hours before we will ever wake up and any worthwhile dream is almost always forgotten by the time we awake. But I have found that if I sort of “half wakeup” to stop my initial alarm I almost always dream for the last 30min of my sleep. Granted, I do not always dream right before I get up, but if I do I almost always remember it and I think that’s pretty cool. Try it.

I normally roll out da crib around the 7:45am area to go have breakfast at the two coolest people that live in the second level of the LDM above the age of twenty with a baby girl named Evelyn’s house (notice how specific my ratings are). Jelly sandwiches or Zucaritas (the Mexican version of Frosted Flakes) are the way to go every morning. And yes, I do have weird things I do with my cereal as well.

Riddle me this world…Why are we forced, day in and day out, to put all our cereal in a single bowl every morning and drench it with milk that will eventually lead to the final bites of cereal being nothing more than a sorta-kinda-not-really tasty slag of some sort of foreign, cere-milk mixture? I say thee nay. Every morning when time is not an issue I pour my cereal in a normal bowl like 100% of the rest of the American population but that is as far as it goes. Following the bowl of dry cereal comes a carton of milk. I pour nothing; I simply bring the carton with me to my seat and take the two elements of the cereal experience individually. I take a spoonful of cereal using one of the Lightsaber spoons I won from the box then a drink of milk, spoonful of cereal, drink of milk. Call me Leonardo da Vinci but I believe yo soy el primer hombre  that I know of, to come up with the only way you can possibly get that, “first bite” bite every time for the entire breakfast experience. Running late? No problem. Just return the excess cereal back to the appropriate box and place the milk in the fridge and pick up where you left off whenever the next time of convenience arrives. Try it.

Every morning at 8am we have a “Stand-Up Meeting” to go over what will be going on that specific day and pray for the day that is about to ensue. After the meeting we take out the necessary materials to have a successful work day and prepare to leave for the worksite. We normally leave around 10:00-10:30am and arrive on the worksite around 11. Lunch is at 12 and depending on where we are and what day it is, sometimes the casas hogares may cook an authentic Mexican meal for the entire group or maybe we will eat ham and cheese sandwiches that have been prepared in advance.

Worksite time normally lasts until 4ish to 5:30ish. Sometimes we won’t really do any “work” for the day and instead we will take some of the kids from one of the homes to an amusement park or to rent bikes or just to do something fun to breakup the daily monotony of breakfast, school, homework, dinner, breakfast, school, homework, dinner.

We normally arrive back on the Back2Back campus around 5:30-6:00pm and have time to chill and shower before dinner. Dinner is at 6:30 every single night on the dot unless we go to dinner out at some restaurant. Normally when eating out with the groups we attend a restaurant chain local to Monterrey called “Pollo Loco” which is Spanish for “Crazy Chicken” in case you are completely oblivious to the cultures that have surrounded our country since the beginning of time when Pangaea separated into the different continents some 742.98 buzillion years ago. Look it up. It’s on the internet…

After/during dinner on campus I normally have a bit of time to chill around and say, “whatup” to some of my homies. Occasionally, some of the RIDICULOUSLY CUTE staff babies may be out and about in which case I completely skip dinner and spend the remainder of the night grabbing toes, speaking in “the baby voice”, and letting them grab my long, tropically delicious locks of hair because for some reason they like my hair better than everybody else’s. Coincidence? I think NOT! It’s seriously the little things here that make every day worthwhile. A super cute baby’s smile at the end of a hard day of work or a ham and cheese sandwich smothered in hot sauce. Take your pick ‘cause they’re both amazing.

This is either Alex or Evan....they're twins and I still don't know who's who even though they're not identical twins....

When I die I want to be seen as one of those people who stopped to smell the roses. Someone who stopped to smell the roses and picked a few out to give to someone else and in some way inspired someone else to pick roses for another. As Christ-Followers we should live life in such a way if people look back at our life all they should say is, “Yo, that _________ dude was legit. They actually DID something. For real.” Try it.

Now I know that this has, by far, been my longest post but now you know. Now you know that you can set an alarm early as an aid to maybe remember some of your dreams. Now you know that taking the elements of cereal like the elements of communion at church is the one and only way to get a first bite every bite. Now you know the random mezcla of information that goes through my brain every day and possibly a part of the reason why.

I honestly have absolutely no clue as to how my brain got to be so “weird” over these past couple years. Maybe it’s the contusion, maybe it’s the North Carolinian air, I don’t know. But I do know one thing: I know that when you take a step back from the endless banging of a gong our lives can sometimes become and just chill for a second, God can do amazing things in your life. When you leave the country, change your job, mix up this spiritual uniformity we get trapped in, God shows his true face and it changes you. For real. Try it.

-N8

Mexico Day 29 - Month 1

‘Twas but a month ago whenst I left my humble abode in the most Northern of the two Carolinas for the Central American country of Mexico and what a spree it has been. I almost can’t believe it’s been a whole month already but the time has not always passed so swiftly. Some days it feels like a mere three months and I’ll be back to the states in a jiffy and others it feels like a whole quarter of a year or 90 whole days before I will ever see a Chick-Fil-A or Taco Bell.

Technically, we as B2B staff are supposed to delegate to group members different jobs to do and supervise what goes on and simply “fill in gaps” along the way. The groups come to work, we give the work, and we all go home happy. But for some reason the math doesn’t always add up for me. I constantly find myself jumping in and working because that’s not the way my brain works. My brain cannot, physically or mentally, just sit by and delegate. I am a DO-er. I am a part of Mexico and it, a part of me and if I was to just sit by and kind of just let the groups do all the work…well that kind of defeats the whole purpose of why I’m here in the first place.

Ironically, the times I seem most stressed and “quarter year-y” is in my tiempo libre. I know that it is Biblically sound that everyone should have a day of rest but somehow I feel strange on my days off. I basically spend all day walking around with my hands in my pockets when there is so much more I could be doing. I feel as though I should be going with the groups to the sites or hanging out with the kids at one of the homes but nooo, I have “rest” for a couple days to “regain my strength”. OMGz my life iz like soooooooooooooo hardddddd!

On the other hand though, that’s only one or two days a weekend and I feel amazing the rest of the week when I’m actually working.

When I’m on a work site I am in my element. My alter ego “Mission Trip Nate” emerges from his resting place and I am ready to do whatever, whenever to help whoever, however. An entity I have just recently gotten to know personally takes control and it’s full steam ahead from that point on. Watching the projects progress from group to group is great. And arriving to a casa hogar and having kids who know you by name run up and say hello is even better. But seeing a group of complete strangers, Mexican and American, Spanish and English, gather together for the sake of something much bigger than any individual is just…gnarly.

I can feel my Spanish getting better each and every day. I am actually relied on to translate from time to time for group members and staff that don’t speak either English or Spanish. I make it a point to learn new words every day and my vocabulary is growing almost as fast as my long, luscious locks of hair. Unfortunately, I have been hanging out with some staff, who shall remain nameless, that have been teaching me words that aren’t necessarily “bad” but that one should not say around mixed company so they haven’t all been necessarily useful. But on the bright side if I ever find myself in a heated moment in “da hood” where it is necessary to use some Mexico-specific slang I totes got dat covered. Bang-bang boom-boom. \m/

Last week I was at La Casa Hogar Bethany with David and as we were getting ready to leave with a group of Canadians from another ministry I said goodbye to a kid who I’d kind of been chilling with named Adan. I let him know that I wasn’t a part of the group that was leaving for good so I’d probably see him again soon within the next couple weeks and he told me this…“Si no puedes regresar es bueno porque estamos hermanos en Cristo y si no regresas temprano vamos a estar juntos en Cielo por eternidad.” Now I am not completely fluent in Spanish nor can I remember his exact words perfectly but in a nutshell he basically said this, “Even if you can’t come back it’s fine because we’re brothers in Christ and even if you don’t come back anytime soon we’ll still be together for eternity in Heaven.” He literally said eternidad. And here I thought I was the one trying to help people…

Right now we have a group of 55 people from a local, Cincinnati, private, middle school (that’s four adjectives in a row) on the campus and chaos would be putting it lightly. They brought an ungodly amount of donations including five bins of just soccer cleats plus food and donations for staff on campus which was pretty cool. I may or may not have taken a twelve pack of Gushers and eaten them within the first fours days I got them. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t…we’ll never know.

150 bags of basic kitchen cooking supplies

Every time I see them talking to one another my brain just goes, “Oh, middle school…Oh, middle school.” With their electric orange and neon green sunglasses compiled with Etnies shoes that are probably at least 387 sizes too big, I just thank the Lord I’m graduated. I dare not speak with them about musical taste for fear of being asked if I like AILD, ADTR, or TDWP and if you didn’t understand that joke, congratulations because you’re one of the lucky ones…

Although the majority is not too fond of actually trabajando, on a MISSION TRIP, it’s nice to have a virtually unlimited work force at our finger tips. Sort of. There is, however, the occasional dude or dudette that will go far above and far beyond the call of duty and work all day, sometimes up to six hours in a row and I just think that’s super chido. I saw a kid at the end of the work day yesterday that was drenched in sweat and sun-burnt like no body’s business and I knew exactly why. I hadn’t seen the kid but a few times all day. But I had been inside all day. I had been helping serve food to the vast crowds of people at Río 3 and passing out donations from the basement and he had been outside playing soccer with the kids all day.

These donations...

...for this crowd

The only times I saw him during the day was whenever he came inside to fill up his water bottle and every time I saw him he had the biggest smile on his face. Later that night when we got back to the campus and got ready for dinner, I saw him again and he looked completely exhausted. Well done sir. Well done.

-N8