This is going to be interesting! It's been a year and a few months since i last visited this blog. I was in a different country and now i'm back home. Boy, time really flies! I'm not really used to venting out my feelings and emotions, well i thought i was really going to change and be open when i got to the states, although i must say, i learned a lot and had some positive changes in my life, but it still wasn't enough to give me confidence to be whole heartedly honest with what is happening inside my head and heart. okay...This is sounding really scattered..probably because i'm emotional, confused and some what depressed right this moment.Anyway, moving on....I just want to update you of what happened in the past year and a few months that had passed.I don't exactly remember when i created this blog but i was planning to record and put all my new, good and bad experiences in the course of my stay in the US of A in here but for some reason i wasn't able to. Well, I got to meet very interesting people - smart, dumb, lazy, beautiful, handsome, rich, poor,male, female, normal, weird and a lot more adjectives to describe the wide variety of human beings i got to face to face with....they were all interesting and created stories that i was able to tell my friends, loved ones and new friends when i came back to the Philippines. I had three jobs in Minneapolis. I worked as an assistant to the director of a charter middle school which my Stepdad created and manages together with my mom and some brilliant teachers. If you caught it,,yes, this makes my stepdad my boss. Whew..it was tough and fun at the same time. He is such a character. I'll have to make another post just for talking about him. I also did volunteer work for a non-profit organization that my uncle started, he's pretty popular with this kind of programs in the city. He has a good heart and a good man indeed. He is a former priest and is now married and in love with my gradfather's sister..technically, he's my grand uncle but i like calling him Tito (Uncle) Joe. Before i forget, he also has a GREEN sense of humor..oops..what i meant was..he also has a GREAT sense of humor. ;-) My last job was a cashier or in a more professional twang, a customer service representative in a convenience store/gas station. Even though i don't plan to put this in my resume when i apply a job in the states, it still counts as a job i had. This was really my FIRST ever real J.O.B. My brother and i walked in the establishment a couple blocks away from our house, talked to the manager named TOM, impressed him, passed our resume and got a call after a few days. Of course, i had to put my stepdad and uncle as my references in the resume(hahaha..:-) Smart or what??) We had to go the main office more than once, which is far and in another city, we tried riding the bus one time but it got us nowhere and almost didn't make it to the interview,thank God for cabs! so we ended up taking cabs in our succeeding meetings in the main branch. I only lasted a few weeks of training, then my stepdad, mom and i decided that it was better for me to just resign, it was for safety reasons. I had a 2pm-10pm shift, I walk home but for most of the time, they picked me up with the car because of unruly weather situations-snowstorms for one(hahaha..lucky me)i had to wipe the counters, fill the donut shelf, mop and sweep the floors, greet customers, man the counter, announce to the customers that the gasoline pumps are prepaid so if they're paying in cash they have to come in to the cashier- the script was something like this "All pumps are prepaid, you can use your credit card or come to the cashier..". It was fun, i made friends with the people i worked with. There was this one shift i was paired with a 19 year old girl, i was also 19 at that time and she was pregnant. I didn't know at first, so we started talking and then she asked me if i had kids???? and i was like..uhhmmm..no!! she followed with another question and i quote " Are you married?" of course i said no again.. I was silent for a while, probably out of confusion and shock. In the Philippines, being a less liberated country that we are, pregnancy and marriage are not popular topics among young adults at the tender age of nineteen..we are practically still kids living under our strict parents' roof. I learned and picked this up early on in my stay in Minneapolis, when someone asks you a question, you have to ask them the same question, after you answer out of courtesy even if you're really no interested. in their answer(hahaha..:-) no offenese) so, i asked my shift partner if she was married and have kids..that's when i found out. We had an interesting conversation after the revelation..Before i forget,,this is when my mom, stepdad and i aggreed that in return for the full time work i'm doing for the school, they will give me a car when i return to the Philippines..one year and 6 months later to be exact..tadah..still no car! :-) That's okay, really don't think about it that much anymore compared to the first few months we arrived.There's so much more that happened, more people to talk about, more places i've seen, 'lessons learned but i think i will have to reserve it for another post.It's 1:33am and i better start hitting the sack! Till my next post..
