cheetahkeys

So Barnard decided this year that, with the exception of a priveleged few (some of whom I'm friends with and love to pieces but am so jealous of right now), seniors aren't allowed to work on campus. Guess what that means? Nancy has no job. I went from two jobs to none, through no fault of my own (side note: song lyrics as I typed that: "Democracy's a joke." Ha. Ha ha.). Why did this happen? Well, Barnard decided that it looks so much cooler when it can brag to everyone about all its graduating seniors who have off-campus jobs. I should get a job at Hooter's just to show them how their "strong, beautiful, Barnard women" are pushed off the edge of desperation when faced with the treat of unemployment in NEW YORK CITY. Becuase it's not like New York's expensive or anything. And it's not like I didn't already have six classes, two internship rejections, two senior theses, and a club which I'm now president of to worry about already. On that note, apparently Max, the president before me, didn't bother appointing anyone aside from me to any board positions while I was abroad. Meaning as of now CUFP consists of yours truly. Woot.

So given all of that, in addition to packing and getting ready to leave on Saturday, I'm now applying to jobs out the ass. If anyone has any suggestions on places to apply to, I would greatly welcome it. Thanks.

            Sitting in a Procesos lecture and sick of watching documentaries while the professor leaves to flirt with students, so I figured I'd write an lj post. Been awhile since I updated. Oh God this documentary music is so annoying. Anyway. So the weekend after I wrote last, I went to a place called Jardín de los Niños, Garden of the Children. It's a school in the mountains in the north of the country. It is one of my absolute favorite places here. How can I begin to describe it. Twenty-six years ago, a Canadian woman came to visit Dominicana, and while staying with a friend a neighbor asked her if she could watch her son while she went to the market. She said yes. The woman never returned. This proved to be a repeating pattern, and before she knew it, Paulina had nearly a dozen kids on her hands. She was shocked to discover how poor the public services and education system in this country are. Fun fact I learned in my film class today: there are more banks in this country than classrooms. Not schools. Classrooms. So Paulina returned to the country to found her own private school, Jardín de los Niños, en los Tres Brazos, a village in the countryside sort of near Cabarete, on the north coast.

          The school is situated in the middle of a rainforest alongside a river clear as day. In truth it looks more like a gazebo than a school, with classrooms nestled into the first floor and a big wide room up top. The walls are made up of brightly painted headboards from antique beds strapped together to create a series of fence-like windows to let in the cool air. When we arrived, we were taken through a gate where we later built mosaic benches using old, brightly colored ceramic shards and cement mixed with sand, past the main building where the teachers sleep, past the kitchen built around a tree, with a wide trunk twisting through the center surrounded by stoves and sinks beneath a ceiling of leaves with hummingbirds buzzing around, to the schoolhouse, where on the second floor they had arranged a row of antique beds covered with flowery sheets, each with a view of the river below.

          Every kind of tree you can imagine was there. We drank fresh orange juice squeezed from naranja agria mixed with naranja de jugo, oranges growing along the hillside across the river. We ate rice, fresh fruit and vegetables, and a sort of cornbread cake with hot chocolate and tea made from the leaves of lemon trees. And the bread. Italians have our pasta and sauce. Latin Americans have their chicken, rice, and beans. French have bread and dairy. This woman baked the best bread I've ever tasted in my life, four kinds every night served fresh out of the oven with butter.

          During the day, we worked on the school. We built benches of mosaics outside the gate where the children waited in the morning. We washed the pig and her baby. Baby pigs are fucking adorable. Also, pigs make the cutest noises ever. They really hate baths, though. Cleaning them was a real pain, because they hated having water splashed on them and would squeal and run around the pig pen.
When work was done and we were hot and sweaty, we went to swim and bathe in the river. The river water was so fresh, with sand along one side, and cliffs along the other where you could climb off and dive into the deeper water. After swimming, we played baseball in the sand using tree branches as bats and leaf shrubs as bases. Past students who have worked there have compared it to Swiss Family Robinson.
After dinner, we sat around in the kitchen and played bingo and dominoes. Dominoes is fun. I'm going to introduce it to game night when I get back. We quickly learned that all of the children are tramposos (cheaters). However, I can honestly say that they were some of my favorite kids I've met in my life. They were just good kids, and you really felt that it was one huge family, from the two-year-old boy constantly being swept up into someone's arms and kissed, to the older women who cooked and taught at the school. I was so sad when we had to leave. I want to take a weekend trip back there before I go back to the States, hitchhiking my way between guaguas (buses) and motoconchos (motorcycle conchos).

 I never realized before how much I rely on the internet. My host family has no internet, and it's not safe to go out past 6 pm. Even in a group. Yeah. I don't really watch tv, so my main activity every night is being online. I'm so used to having a window open with tabs of at least 3 webcomics, facebook, twitter, nytimes, redlettertribe, and countless other web pages, plus aim. At night my host family likes to watch tv and I usually go into my room out of habit and find myself sitting on my bed toying with minecraft or reading a book when a wave of loneliness hits. You never see it coming. It just drops in on you out of nowhere, as if your ceiling opened without you realizing and a bucket rigged from above poured ice water onto your head. It sucks. I miss my friends. I miss talking to Stephanie and Lucian for hours on aim. I'm trying to keep myself busy—I found clay and built a brick house in minecraft, plus an underground cavern hidden by a waterfall, a harbor for my boat, a bridge over the harbor, and a wheat farm; I have 12 books, 9 I brought with me, 3 I bought here, 4 of them are in Spanish, and I vowed to read all of them by the time I go back home—but it's not the same as talking to real people. And I can't call anyone because it's really expensive for me to make any calls. It's free for me to get them, but that means that a caller from the U.S. is paying 20 cents a minute, 11 if they have google voice or are calling over skype, to talk to me, which is not happening, because we're all broke college students.

When I read the acceptance letter for this program, one thing it said is that living in another country would give you a completely new perspective on the U.S., sometimes in bad ways, sometimes in good. Our director hopes it gives us a more critical perspective of the U.S., but honestly, as much as I'm ashamed to admit it, being here has given me a newfound appreciation to live in America. For all of our country's flaws—and trust me, I know there are many—I can walk outside at night by myself in many, many places and not feel worried, and can walk nearly anywhere at night in a group and not have to worry. Yes, there are exceptions, but the exceptions are not near my house or the places I like to frequent. I also don't have to worry about the price of utilities randomly going up for no reason. Last week the price of everything here went up, by a lot, and I mean everything: gas, electricity, oil, water, heat... literally everything it takes to operate a house and run a car. It now costs more money here to buy a liter of gas than it costs to buy a gallon in the U.S. Put that in your hummer and run it. Because of this, we rarely ever turn on hot water. The only time hot water is used is sometimes for showers, and for the second part of washing clothes: clothes are first washed by hand in the sink, and then put into the washing machine, whereupon hot water is turned on. And hot water here isn't hot water in the U.S. Hot water here is lukewarm water in the U.S. Anyone who knows me decently well knows that my one non-green thing is that I like long, hot showers. After last week we started taking showers like you do on a boat: turn water on, get wet, turn water off, soap up, turn water back on briefly to rinse, done. Super environmentally friendly, but guaranteed to make your teeth chatter, even in 86 degree weather.

The other thing about living in the U.S. is that, for a country which claims to be so anti-socialist, we have more services than people realize. Here, if there's a pothole in the road, there's a pothole in the road. There's no signs, no warnings, no anything. And we're not talking a side road or driveway. We're talking massive potholes on the only highway that runs from north to south. And as for shelters: there aren't even homeless shelters for people, let alone for animals. Stray dogs, disabled people, and kids begging for money are a staple at many street corners. I literally went around asking people in my program and others after the first week what we could do about the people and the dogs, and they explained that they'd had the exact same reactions when they first came here, but there's nothing we can do. I would have adopted 10 dogs by now if not for the whole going back to a house full of four cats in the U.S. thing.

  I'm sitting on a bus from Higuey to Santo Domingo and it's a 2 hr, 45 min. ride, so I figured I'd finally write some entries about my trip. Let's start with the plane.

It is mindblowing to step into a room surrounded by snow, shivering in your sneakers, jeans, hoodie, and leather jacket, only to step off the plane into seventy-five degrees of humidity, peel off your jackets, and wish you'd worn sandals.

Flying is incredible. Has anyone seen the ending of Pines of Rome with the whales breaking through a sea of clouds in Fantasia 2000? (If not, go watch it on youtube right now.) that's what it felt like. It was absolutely beautiful. I made a friend on the flight. A doctor from Santiago who'd been visiting family in New York sat next to me, and when I told her I was going to be studying at PUCMM for the semester, she gave me her name and four numbers where I could reach her if I needed anything. When we landed, everyone cheered. I didn't have a visa, so they told me at customs that I had to buy a tourist card, but I didn't have any cash and they didn't accept credit cards so they told me to leave my license and go through to an ATM, but Nilda, my friend, insisted on just giving me the money. As soon as I have a free weekend, I'm going to call her and take her out to lunch.

My Spanish has already improved a lot because Santiago has no tourism, so almost no one speaks English. They exchange rate is 37 pesos to 1 dollar, so many things are super cheap. Anything imported is the same price or a little more, obviously: shampoo, most brands of bug spray, many brands of clothes. You can find really cheap shoes: I bought two pairs for $8. Food is cheap, and transportation is ridiculously cheap. This 3-hour bus ride costed $6. Oh, and drinks are cheap. Especially the rum. Which is amazing.

In Santiago the public transit system is taxis and conchos. Taxis are "expensive"—40-120 pesos (~$1-3.25) to go anywhere in the city. They have a/c and the cars are a little newer—late '90s models, mostly. And then there's the conchos. Conchos follow fixed routes like buses. They cost 15-20 pesos (~40-80 cents). They are old cars. Often '80s models, with holes in the bottom where you can watch the road whizz by, door handles fashioned out of shoelaces and nails, and always suspicious-colored stains on the seats. Also, a concho takes up to 6 passengers: 2 in front with the driver (you can choose whether you'd prefer to sit on the stick shift or with your face pressed against the window) and 4 in back. Oh, and seatbelts don't exist. I give the drivers a world of credit, though: they never slip-up, whereas I could never drive here. Most street lights and signs seem to exist for decorative purposes only, and I've yet to see a speed limit sign. But I haven't yet been scared to be in a car or bus. Well, there was that one time with the pothole and the driving on the wrong side of the road. But we were fine. Motorcycles are also really common. I am getting my bike license as soon as I get back and can save up the money. Period, end.

I can't really think of much else to write for now. I'm going to have to write a completely separate entry on poverty and race here, but that's for another time.

Well, this is it. In less than twenty-four hours, I will be on a plane for the first time in my life, on my way out of the country for the first time in my life, over one thousand miles away from everyone I know for four months. I am scared out of my mind.

Today is pretty much going to consist of packingpackingpackingpackingFUCKIDONTHAVEBUGSPRAYpackingpackingpackingpackingpackingWHATDOYOUMEANNOSTOREISCURRENTLYSELLINGBUGSPRAYpackingpackingpackingpackingpackinGREATNOWI'MGONNAGETDENGUEFEVERpackingpackingpackingpackingpacking.
Then rush to get Alex's car from Madison, then more last-minute packing, then goodbyes and trying not to cry, then driving to New York, then freaking out at the airport because I've never been past the main entrance room thing in an airport, and then the hardest goodbye of all.
And then there's the whole getting on a plane part. By myself. Fuck.

 I feel like there's a point in every college student's life in which they realize that they're ready to be out in the "real world." Sometimes this happens way past graduation, after being thrown into jobs and apartment hunts, flailing around for a bit, and finally gaining a foothold. Sometimes it happens in high school. It's happening to me right now. I can't focus on school. I really, really wish I could, but I can't. I keep distracting myself with apartment hunts, job statistics, law school rankings, and pet searches. Yes, that last one is important.

Yesterday I got no work done. None. I could've. I should've. There were at least six hours in which I could have accomplished a ton of work. I could be sleeping in my bed right now. But I'm not. Because instead of doing the reading I needed to get done last night, I looked up apartments again. And when I'd exhausted all the online apartment sites for Boston, I looked up pros and cons of being a government lawyer.

Side note: So I'm pretty sure I'm going to go for law school. Everyone's been telling me that film is my passion, that film is what I'm called to do, but honestly, having had a taste of the film industry in New York, I don't think that's true anymore. I love film. I do. But I don't love most filmmakers. The majority of the film community is arrogant, obsessed with money, or both. The starving artist side claims to know more about film/art/starving than anyone else in the world, but when you try to make a film with them, they flail around when you ask them things like "Where should I set up the camera?" Then there's the technical side. That side tends to be caught up in money, especially the producers. So caught up, in fact, that they don't give a shit about your vision or this is the dream that you've slaved over for years. The first question out of their mouths is, "Is it gonna make money?" And then there's the teeny tiny percentage of film techies, who are caught in the middle: overworked, underpaid, and unrecognized for all the time they put into a film. That last part? That's what I'd be doing. Because the thing is, chances of me actually becoming a director are very small. They're not impossible. But I'd have to choose whether to do indie or Hollywood film. If I chose Hollywood, I'd have a better shot at a steady pay, but I'd have to move to L.A. and pretty much kiss any family/social life goodbye. I'd also have to spend decades working my way up from P.A. (read: coffee fetcher). I was talking to a girl who's brother majored in film at Dartmouth. He can't find a job. Well, he can find a job because he's got a degree from Dartmouth University, but he can't find a job in film. He once had an internship working with producers in L.A. and it shellshocked him into reconsidering his career choice. No one left the studio before 9pm. Each night he'd listen to his bosses tucking their kids into bed over their cell phones. No thanks.

Then there's indie film. Indie film used to be great because it was about the art, not the money, but every year it gets more and more mainstream because "indie" is now considered hip/trendy/cool so studios often keep their indie title even though they're more Hollywood than anything else. The other thing about indie jobs is they're unstable. A few weeks ago I filmed an interview with Sebastian Silva, a big Chilean filmmaker. He directed La Nana. In the Q&A session afterward, he explained how after shooting La Nana he and his crew got ready for another big project. They prepped, storyboarded, casted, scheduled shooting dates, and one week before the shoot their sponsors dropped them. He said, "I'm also an artist, so I was able to rely on my paintings for awhile to get me by. But the other guys in my crew, they were pretty screwed." I'm not a painter; I'd be filed neatly into that second category.

I guess when you're an artist, you have to choose between a stable life and your art. You can't have both. At least not in the beginning. And rarely if ever. That's too big of a gamble for me. It'd be one thing if I didn't want to settle just yet. But a steady life is looking nicer and nicer every day. I'm even nervous about going to the DR for spring semester. That's a long time to be away. I think I need to go, though. I think I'll regret it if I don't.

So, backtracking, this past year I've been looking into law. If I did law, I'd be working in the public sector, without question. It's not about the money. The stable job part is nice, but you get that either way. I've been doing research on where to work in the public sector. It's pretty much divided into government jobs (at the federal, state, and local levels), working for NGO's and non-profits, and public interest law firms. The lattermost are hard to find. NGO's and non-profits are fairly unstable. Government jobs are super stable, and have excellent benefits. They are the only lawyer jobs that keep a 9-5, 5 days a week schedule most of the time. They also have good vacation time, apparently. The thing is, I've read a couple of articles that say that government jobs aren't where you want to be for human rights, because you often end up being stuck in the system. I need to do more research to figure out how true that is.

So yeah. At this point, I'm pretty much ready to be in law school in Boston, either at BC, BU, or Northeastern, with an apartment, working a part-time job, and owning a cat. I miss having pets.

Truth be told, ideally I'd like to skip all that and be a lawyer at a public interest firm or working in government law for human rights, animal rights, environmental protection, or some combination thereof, living in an apartment in Boston, with a cat, a dog, and no more homework. I'm so ready to not have homework anymore. School would be totally fine if not for the homework part. College in and of itself is manageable, even with all of the extracurriculars, the two jobs, the internship, the commute. All of that is fine. What's killing me is coming home at 11 pm, bone tired, knowing that I have at least 4 hours worth of homework ahead of me before I can crawl into bed, only to wake up at 8 am the next morning.

Aaand it's 3:30. I'm gonna post this and get back to reading before I really am up all night. If you're reading this sometime before 9 am, go to bed. Good night.

 "It took me too long to realize that I don't take good pictures 'cause I have the kind of beauty that moves."

 This is a story about a mega adventure I had on Megabus.

I decided to go visit Alex Friday night, so we booked a bus that departed Penn Station, New York at 5:10, putting me in South Station, Boston at 9:25. After much scrambling, including forgetting my confirmation number and having to call my roommate to read it to me so I can write it on the back of a pack of Dentyne Ice, I leave my apartment at 4:15, putting me in Penn Station at 4:30. When I get there, I receive a text from Alex saying that my bus is running an hour late, so I buy some soup and a smoothie and make friends with the other travelers.

6:10 Bus arrives. If we leave now, we'll get into South Station at 10:25. Not too bad.

6:30 Bus leaves. Assuming good traffic, we'll be in Boston by 10:55. Could be worse.

7:30 Driver, who has apparently never been to New York before in his life, has decided to take side streets cross town and up to the Bronx, as opposed to the West Side Highway. Still in Manhattan.

8:00 Crossing bridge out of Manhattan.

8:30 On I-84 East in Danbury, CT. Hitting traffic.

9:00 On I-84 East in Danbury, CT. Traffic is crawling.

9:30 On I-84 East in Danbury, CT. Traffic is stopped.

10:00 On I-84 East in Danbury, CT. Have moved thirty-six centimeters.

10:30 On I-84 East in Danbury, CT. Okay what the fuck is going on.

11:00 Still in Danbury, CT. Rumors are starting to circulate. Talk of car crash, shootings.

11:30 Situation confirmed: There was a shooting at exit 5. We are at exit 3. We have been at exit 3 since 8:00.

12:00 Updates on shooting. State trooper pulled over driver. Driver pulled gun. Trooper shot him dead. Cops have closed down entire highway.

12:30 They've turned off air conditioning on the bus to conserve gas. The windows do not open. People begin asking neighbors for food/water.

1:30 We reach exit 5, where we are directed off the highway and straight into Buttfuck, Danbury. Driver stops in front of the U.S. Military Arms Museum (oh, the irony). Driver exits bus.

1:40 Driver still absent from bus.

1:45 Driver still absent from bus. Rumors begin circulating that driver has quit/driver is a sociopath/we have run out of gas/we're all gonna die.

1:50 Driver returns; begins driving without explaining where the fuck he went.

2:00 We are taken on a complimentary scenic tour of the back roads of Buttfuck, Danbury. Driver assures us this is a shortcut.

2:15 We arrive at an intersection where the shortcut meets all the traffic we'd lost. Traffic refuses to let in double-decker bus with sketchy dimpled dwarf man painted on the side.

2:25 Benevolent minivan lets our bus into the 3mph line of moving traffic.

2:45 We enter I-84 East to clear traffic. Applause from the passengers.

2:46 We pull over to the shoulder. Driver exits bus again.

2:48 Those of us still conscious threaten mutiny.

2:50 Driver gets back on bus and hauls ass down the freeway. I have never seen a double-decker bus drive that fast before in my life. I never want to see a double-decker bus drive that fast again.

4:45 We pull into South Station (4-hour ride in a little over 2 hours. Wat.). Greeted by delirious Alex and Friend who have waited up all night in the station with the resident hobos and worried friends and family of other passengers. We have arrived in time for the T to start running again for the early-morning commuters.

5:00 Alex, Friend, and I catch first bus out of South Station to Norwood. Twelve. Fucking. Hours. Later.

My name is Nancy Monaco. I am bisexual/queer/pansexual/polyamorous/whatever the fuck label you'd like to throw in there. "Yes, I like girls. Yes, I like boys. I like boys who like boys. I like girls who wear toys." I like people, in all the beautiful shapes, sizes, and skins they're in.

I wish I had the courage to post this on facebook or twitter. I hope I will next year. No one should ever have to be afraid of being judged for who they are.

Things to Do:

-pay stupid, ridiculous, bullshit parking ticket

-buy textbooks

-request hearing for even more stupid, even more ridiculous, even more bullshit driving ticket

-email Columbia's Goju-Ryu Karate club

-apply for internship at Focus Features

-apply for internship at Warner Bros.

-apply to internship at Frank Capri Photography

-update resume

-apply for internship at Pressman Films

-write a damn cover letter template

-apply for internship at 20th Century Fox



Frank Capri actually emailed me back already and I've got an interview on Sunday. Woot.



Also, I forgot to mention earlier that last week I GOT MY ORANGE BELT IN TANG SOO DO!!! I'm really excited and definitely going to work to keep coming back. I really like my association. I wish I could pick the building up with everyone in it and move it to New York with me. Everyone's really nice and looks out for each other, and the classes are so much fun sometimes I forget I'm learning. Until I fall over. Then I remember.