The End of the Semester

Well, first of all I wanted to say thank you to all of you for a wonderful semester, craziness and all. You have welcomed me to the BC community and I thank you for that. I have truly enjoyed myself and I hope that you have as well, in between learning a few things here and there. ;)

My hope is that you've learned skills that will help you beyond ENC 1101 or 1102, skills that will help you in your future careers, not just in the rest of your academic stay at BC. These skills include critical thinking, following directions, incorporating research, preparing information, knowing audience and tone, and many more.

For those of you in ENC 1101, I hope that our readings and discussions (circle time anyone?!) were interesting and prodded you to think. After all, we should all be thinkers and not just follow a preset mold. You all have the ability to reason and think critically about topics - use it.

For those of you in ENC 1102, I hope that the selections of short stories and poems were interesting, too. I hope that the discussions we had helped you "read between the lines" and that they allowed you to have more focused strategy. I hope that you enjoyed the projects and that apart from skills discussed above, I was able to interest you (at least slightly!) in the lives and works of the authors we read. And I hope you found some enjoyment in Hamlet, especially when acting the scenes.

For both 1101 and 1102 students, believe it or not, the critical thinking that went into writing the in-class essays and out-of-class essays leaves in you specific skills that will help you in the future.

Thank you again, and in the words of Hamlet's Ghost: Adieu. Adieu. Adieu. Remember me.

I Am

From the Andes and the Amazon rainforest,
and from the sands of SoFi.
A mountain girl in the magic city,
bred with frijoles, sancocho and Burger King.
A speaker of romance whose tongue
becomes a contortionist -
Erre con erre cigarro, erre con erre barril.
Roll your tongue, mija, ole, niña.
A gringa among my people;
a Latina among my people.
Confused for a stranger.
Across two continents, and two
languages, one woman,
mother,
daughter
lover.
A hyphen in an unhyphenated world.
A Paisa and Miamian born in Queens,
who celebrates Noche Buena with
buñuelos and natilla
then spends Christmas morning
unwrapping Santa Claus, Kris Kringle,
Father Christmas, El Niño Dios.
My father used to say in Latin,
de gustibus et coloribus non disputatum,
but we still argued
about the colors of our people.
My mother’s daughter,
a pseudo- perfectionist
who dreams of the Louvre and the Seine
while moving to Cumbia and Vallenato.
My mother’s mother and father’s father;
all the greats in one solitary shape.
Colombia patria querida.
America the beautiful.

© 2009 Alexandra Penaloza Alessandri

Someone stole my credit card number!

UGH! I got an email today from my bank that there were some questionable transactions. Great, I thought, but when we called, I nearly fell off my chair. Turns out that someone took my credit card number (because we had our cards) and charged over $17,000!!! The first transaction was done in Hialeah for the $17K at an auto glass shop 3 days ago, and the others were either gas stations or Home Depots in FL and MD! I felt like saying, are you serious?! I started trying to backtrack and see where I used my card last, but I guess it's almost impossible to track. Sigh. Just be careful with your stuff. You don't need to have the physical cards stolen to get robbed. I am grateful though that we were alerted today instead of when the next statement came in.... that would have been disastrous! And thankfully, it was the credit card and not the ATM/debit card. That would've been worse!

Hope you're all having a better weekend. ;) For those of you that celebrate Easter, Happy Easter! For those that are celebrating Passover, Happy Passover!

Inside a Barnes & Noble Café

I sit in the Starbucks café and look around me at the faces brimming with the aroma of
Café Lattes and Café Mochas.

They peer at the words dancing in front of them,
their rectangular eyes resting
on bridged noses, wondering where
Shakespeare found his talent, and the meaning
of juxtaposition.

Some carry their laptops with them
fidgeting in their seats as
they try to understand the way to
connect with knowledge without seeming
desperate. They hunger at the smell
of curiosity and ability.

Others sit in a huddle, reading
anxiously over algorithms, intervals and
quadratic equations. Their scarlet eyes tell of
desperation and lost scholarships balanced
precariously on final exams.

A few are mothers, breathing in the
caffeine, enough to replace a
few hours of sleep they don’t have. Their children –
some sitting and reading Tigger and Pooh or
the Backyardigans, others running
from their tables – leave them
yearning for solitude.

Most are silent, oblivious to the
cell phone conversations of breakups and
business arrangements or the intermittent
brewing and foaming that takes place
behind the counter. They sit steadily,
eyes fixed, engulfed in metaphysics and Milton.

I wonder if I had ever been like them, noses
insistent on snorting the words and becoming addicted
to layers of philosophy, submerged
in a world of similes and butterflies, oblivious to
antonyms and the bearded man at the counter.

© 2009 Alexandra Penaloza Alessandri

New Additions

I added a "quote of the day" to the blog. I considered adding "word of the day" too, but I couldn't find one whose format/code worked well here. I love quotes, so I thought the quote thing would be nice. I'm also working on a new faculty website that could help everyone. Granted, it's late for this semester (I just went to the class/training on Friday), but I may be able to get it up in time for the last few assignments. It should be informational and helpful, and it would have links to great online resources. We'll see how that goes.

And I know most of your are counting - 3 more weeks (give or take a day or two) until the end of classes! Phew! Most of you are probably planning your next moves, whether they be classes or summer activities. I will be planning my son's 2nd birthday, working on a few writing pieces (bits of the memoir, some short stories, and a poem or two), and maybe taking a couple trips to Disney. I wouldn't mind getting in some scrapbooking time (I have TONS of pics juts laying around that I need to organize) and maybe putting some order at home. Oh yea, and I want to get my son some swimming lessons, too, and maybe try to get in some pool/beach time, too. HA! One summer is not going to be enough time for all that!

But before the summer gets here.... we have the last three weeks of classes and papers to write. We will survive! ;) Hope you guys are having a wonderful (and HOT) weekend!