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semana de Independencia en La Republica Dominicana

*posted Sunday, February 28, 2010, at cercalavida.blogspot (my old blog)*

Sorry if this seems a bit rough, it's late, I'm tired, and I still have some homework to do.

So, right now I am listening to Rumba 98.5 FM, a merengue/salsa music station straight out of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Yesturday, the 27th of February was their Independence Day. I've been to the Dominican twice before during my February vacation weeks in 2007 and 2008. The whole month of February is their carnival time, and the real party begins on the 27th. Even for that whole week, the party continues. People drive by in the early morning hours with a truck bed of huge speakers blasting merengue music. So let me tell you, it was not a boring trip at all. In fact, I am absolutely in love with the DR and I dream of the day I will return. And it wasn't even the fun party atmosphere that enamored me, it was the people. I met so many wonderful people during my time there, the kids and their families that live in the barios around the clinic, the kids at the CCED school and everyone else we met at the clinic. My heart will forever be with the people of San Juan De La Maguana. I went there with a group of people from my church and we stayed at the guesthouse at the Clinica Christiana De La Salud Integral which is run by Solid Rock Missions. When we went, the caretakers/hosts of the guesthouse were Rod and Sandy Nofzinger. They were a wonderful older couple with such kind gentle spirits and hearts for God. In the last couple years they have retired from their mission work at the guesthouse, returning home to their family in the U.S., and a new younger couple has taken after them. My heart and prayers are with the new couple, the Zimmermans, as they get the hang of things and pour their hearts out to the people all for the glory of God. I miss the Nofzingers for sure, but I'm grateful to have met them and I'm happy for them that they are now able to return to their family in the U.S. Seeing as I will DEfinitely be returning to the DR, not sure how soon, I look forward to meeting the Zimmermans, but if I get bad timing, I wish them well and hope to meet them by chance in the coming years. They seem like a wonderful couple from what I get from the SRM biography page and their blogs. And they have the most adorable dog! :D

Anyhow. So this is the week of partying in the DR right now and me and my friend Merridith were determined to make something of it. So I wore my "I [heart] DR" shirt and we listened to this radio station as we hung out this afternoon. The original plan was to make empenadas for lunch, but we took too long at the mall so we got lunch there and when we got to my house it was a bit late and I had to get some homework done.

Let me insert a few things to give you an idea of how the people of San Juan De La Maguana celebrate independence week...

Here is a pick of the kids from the barrios in San Juan.

They dress up like "Hatians" apparently, and they try to look

as scary and intimidating as possible. They also have the

whips that they make themselves and crack the whips

as they walk through the streets all dressed up.

Its kind of like a Halloween party in the streets.

Here is a video that my friend Frank took during our 2008 trip.

Here the kids are cracking their whips right outside the clinic.

Well thats about it for today. Hope you have a wonderful week and happy independence week (PARTY TIME) to the Dominican Republic!!

Procrastination at its finest is me

*posted Wednesday, February 24, 2010, at cercalavida.blogspot (my old blog)*

I should be writing a five-page essay for my American Liturature class tomorrow, but I'm blogging about the dillema rather than working to solve it. Allow me to quote Ricci in Sleepy Hollow when I ask, "Do you think me wicked?" Ha ha. By the world's stadards, maybe I'm not, but excuse me, the world is wicked. Unless of course you're from New England, then 'wicked' doesn't neccessarily mean devious. But that's beside the point - something I seem to be doing a lot lately.

Since probably nobody is even reading this, that only adds to the pointlessness of my procrastination. I mean, if your going to procrastinate, at least be doing something constructive. But no, that is the extent of my pathetic state of slacker-ness.

Well, since I'm already being 'not-constructive', allow me to proceed.

I started this blog mainly because I wanted somewhere to get my thoughts out - isn't that original. I have my days, burst of creativity that I can express through writing, and then of course I have days of writer's block, nothing materializes - nothing good at least. Which makes me wonder if this here blog will turn out to be anything worth keeping. I guess only time will tell. But then again, like music artists say about keeping their older, maybe less impressive, albums, their spectrum of musical history shows their growth as an artist. Whatever. Anyhow, I'm gonna go watch Moonstruck with my mother now. Till next time...

Magic Monday

*posted Wednesday, February 24, 2010, at cercalavida.blogspot (my old blog)*

Facebook status from Tuesday morning:

*last night* so we r all talkin in the kitchen. then Amanda enters the house. full on gym clothing/vibe. half eaten banana in one hand n more produce in the other. she looks at us. slightly confused but still half busy with the song plugged into her left ear. "well this is embarrassing..singles?..i coulda sworn today was Tuesday" LOL love u amanda! plz dont be mad. to say the least- mondays r always good times ;D

Mondays are bible study days. A day I look forward to every week. I credit my friend Merridith for getting me into this group of awesome peoples. I had never been in a real permanent bible study before and I've been sort of reading through studies on my own. So when Merridith invited me in January to join her group I thought maybe this is my cue. She told me the study was held by another church, a church that my family actually used to attend more than 12 years ago, but she said it takes place at a family's house. Naturally, my mother wanted to know where this house is and who is this family? Basically - how do we know they're not a bunch of creeps? I don't blame her, I wanted to know more about these strangers before entering their home. Well, it turns out that they are not "strangers". Come to find out, this is the house of some good old friends that we used to know from our old church. Now I was even more excited to see them but now I was even more nervous! Paranoia prompted me to ask, "well what if they don't remember me?" Knowing how truly irrational this thought was, Merridith and my mother assure me that it's impossible for them not to remember me.

When we arrived at the house, I took my time getting through the door, still nervous as heck, and took my time taking off my shoes. I noticed there was already a well-established mound of footwear, so I wasted no time to add to it. Then I peaked around the corner, and sure enough the faces I had been struggling to remember were right there across the room, and it all came back to me. That's them for sure, Mr. and Ms. Beate! Psyched as ever to see old friends, I waved saying, "Hi! ..Remember me? ..Anne Goglia". Their faces lit up with surprise when they saw me waving. Of course they would remember me. We chatted and caught up a little. I was so happy, I felt like I was in a second home. Then, as I sat there in the kitchen with them, the daughter walks in the door, peaks around the corner into the kitchen area, sees me and announces, "Goglia!!" Ha ha. It couldn't have gotten any better, but I also saw another old friend there. We used to know her from our old church as well, and apparently she is now living with the Beates. Talk about a trip down memory lane.

Throughout these past couple months we caught up some more and reminisced and then I learn that the study leader is also someone my family used to know from back at the old church. His older sister used to baby sit me and my brother when we were little. This is just the coolest thing ever. I am a seriously nostalgic person so to run into this many old friends again and be able to hang out with them every week is just awesome, a true blessing.

As far as the actual bible study goes, it's amazing, so far every week we have talked deeply about each subject in our study packet. Then after each study we just chill. But here's the thing - they have a ping pong table in their basement - so almost every week we play Round Robin, a sort of ultimate ping pong multi-player game. It's tons of fun.

Like my Facebook status says - to say the least, Monday's are always good times.

..Well, I don't know how interesting this blog was to anyone else who read it, but I just needed to document this moment, get down my thought, you know? I feel like I'm in a good place right now with this new bible study group. Now I just need to work on my accademics...

writings from Florida in 2006..

Facebook status from Tuesday, June 22, 2010 (a few hours ago from now):

..in 2006 i visited Florida and this is a bit of what i wrote during my trip- "this is the kind of weather and atmosphere that makes you want to be outside, or let the atmosphere flow through the open house,... and let the wind blow ur face off on the fast roads..." haha, i totally dont remember writing some of this, so its refreshing to reread it, and maybe thats why i find it so amusing, lol, sad..

So that was just one passage from all my pages of documentation during my trip to Florida. And I wanted to share some more so I figured I might as well post it all on my blog.

Here is one other passage that I liked. And as I said in my Facebook status, as I was rereading these entries I truly felt like I didn't remember writing some of them, but obviously I did. But I just found that interesting and refreshing, and some of it was amusing. And so I really liked how I described the moon in this following bit:

"The moon is awesome. It's just a tiny little sliver with a bit of a ring. It looks like the moon on the To Kill A Mockinbird cover, and with the little bit of sunset left it looks like a painting. It's like someone on the other side of the sky cut a hole, or at least started to, and shined a flashlight to see how they did".

There is a lot in this journal that I could rewrite up here to share, but I am tired, and for now I thought those two passages were interesting enough to share. Maybe I find them interesting mostly because I don't really remember writing them and that makes them sound even better. haha.

Well, until next time!

*peace