Buenas from sunny Roatan, Honduras!

So after a week of not being able to log into my Spanish version of Tumblr bc I forgot my password, not because of the whole being in Spanish thing I finally remember that I’m dumb and my password is dumb. 

Everything is going well despite the fieldschool students arriving…wait no. Did I say that out loud?

Yes. Yes I did.

P.s. our cooks (who are AMAZING! best food ever!)  make homemade soaps with all natural everything.  We bought some today and I will be buying more.

We used the anti-no-see-‘ems tonight and it was amazing and smells amazing.  There’s also one with pumice actually in it, which I’m going to get for my mom.  Another that has avocado.  Not sure how that’s important but I got one.  Another with lemongrass.  And the last one is made with madre de cacao and is supposed to be use for any type of skin problem (ANYTHING).  However, that last one has tea tree oil in it, which I’m crazy allergic too. :( ah well. 

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Goodbye beautiful macbook pro, hello tiny netbook with improved operating system (thank you, Kevin!). 
Goodbye huge, incredibly soft bed with the fluffiest pillow EVER.  Hello possible tiny airmatress in the undergrad bunk room.
Goodbye beautiful, clean and bug free shower without water limits.  Hello…oh wait this place is so fancy they boast hot water. WHAT?! It will still be a shared shower and probably full of bugs and slime. 
Goodbye drinking water from the tap, hello intense fear of returning with more amoebas. That’s cool, I’ve already had them, I don’t need that again.  Pick on the undergrads.  
Goodbye savings, hello debt.  Hello paying to TA undergrads on a tropical island (yes, that’s right. I am paying the professor for the right to TA these kids. You got it). 

Goodbye English, hello hopefully improved Español skillz. 

Goodbye fluffy, incredibly cute tiny roommate that I nerdily named after a Maya goddess…I will miss my little Ixchel (Chelly…aka Chelly nuggets, Chelicious, AWESOMEST CAT EVER). 
Goodbye my giant roommate/soulmate.  I will miss you both more than my fluffy bed and my shiny mac.  

I would say goodbye interwebs but I’m pretty sure our house also has wifi. WHAAAAT?! Yup. These kids are going to a fancysmancy field school.  With a freakin house, indoor plumbing, wifi, a swimming pool, and a washer/dryer. WHAAAT?! Crazy. 

I should be sleeping since we need to leave in a few hours…but I can’t. 

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Not really sure what I did for the last 10 days I had free but I somehow still don’t have everything I need and found out that my shots might not be up to date…I leave tomorrow at 6:40am. 

So last minute target trip and thinking that my typhoid vaccination doesn’t actually expire until mid June and really it takes 2 weeks to take affect anyway and decided that I don’t want to do the 2 year shot this time because there’s not enough time to make sure I don’t have a reaction….so yeah…here’s hoping I don’t get typhoid fever!

Good news:  I still have 1 more year until I need to get the tetanus booster.

AND I’m not taking crazy malaria pills this year.  Yay for hopefully no very real dreams of a man leaning over the foot of my bed with a machete. 

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I leave in 3 days.  So today I went and spent way too much money trying to get last minute things together…how am I still missing so much stuff?!

Then I cooked an awesome dinner for us thanks to Smitten Kitchen. 

Now I will continue to hurry up and cook/bake before I can’t for 2 months by making some chocolate pudding also thanks to Smitten Kitchen. 

I am still bloated and full from the who knows how much beer we drank at Brew Riot yesterday.  It was amazing! We stopped drinking probably around 7pm (or maybe earlier?) and Kevin and I were still drunk at 3am.  That’s a good day. 

The difference between Kevin’s family and my family…

There are many differences, stemming mostly from the obvious reasons of the different regions that they’re from.  If you don’t know much about Texas let me explain something to you:  different regions of Texas have VERY different cultures, traditions, family ways of doing things.  Especially when you’re a 5th or 6th generation Texan like me (ouch…I try not to mention that too often, keep it on the DL and please don’t judge).  

So my family is from West Texas, which makes us a particularly intense type of stubborn and tends to make the things we do alittle less…um…sometimes the only word that can be used is classy.  But we’re fiercely loyal, and extremely slow to forgive when the family trust is broken (see my brother and I not talking for 6 years and the fact that I still haven’t returned his phone call).  For graduation and my birthday my parents helped buy my new awesome duffle and gave me way too much money to help with my field work this year. Also, a beer glass painted with diplomas on it. LOVE IT. 

Kevin’s family, the part that’s actually from Texas, is from the hill country.  They’re alittle more proper (at least compared to my crazy west Texan peoples).  His parents are amazing and gave me so many wonderful and thoughtful gifts for both my birthday and graduation.  Kevin’s mom even helped him pick out a beautiful bouquet of flowers for me.

Here’s how the 2 families became glaringly different:
Kevin’s brother and sister-in-law had already given me an amazing card and gift card for graduation.  Since my birthday was on mother’s day they got busy and forgot to call (can’t really blame them, it was her day too!).  But they called on Monday and apologized a ton for missing my birthday.  Then today they sent me a gorgeous bouquet of roses and a vase because they felt so bad.

My brother (the one I talk to) - I talked to him on the phone when he called mom on the way to the Rangers game on Sunday.  He didn’t mention my birthday.  He still hasn’t realized that he missed it.  Chances are he’ll call next week after he realizes that “sh*t it’s May?!” 

2 totally different worlds. 

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Some of my birthday presents!  Kevin got me the board game Tikal.  Where you travel through the uncharted jungle and excavate temples and treasures.  We attempted to figure out the rules last night and Kevin won.  He beat me at a game that’s supposed to be my career.  Innnnteresting.   And for Mother’s Day and my birthday yesterday my mom decided she wanted me to go to the Rangers game with her.  I went ahead and took one for the team and went..jk jk it was awesome.  Especially seeing that awesome grand slam.  It was my 2nd to see live.  Oddly enough my first was a couple of days before my birthday last year when my mom took me.  It was Moreland’s first grand slam, but the game got rained out and it didn’t count and we had to leave after sitting around for hours hoping the storm would pass. So my first real one.  My dad worked inside the bull pen for the first part of the game and gave me another bull pen ball for my collection.  I have 2 now.  The first came from Feliz and this one he didn’t say who it was from.  It’s covered in grass stains though so it’s probably from batting practice.  I also got official sunflower seeds and bubble gum from the bull pen.  And a couple of the other security guards sang/spoke the first part of “happy birthday”.  Which was amusing.  Not a bad birthday for having to share it with Mother’s Day and my graduation weekend and with most of my friends already out of town.  We ended the night with a beer at Libertine, a piece of cake from Cafe Brazil, and trying to figure out how to play Tikal.

Some of my birthday presents! 

Kevin got me the board game Tikal.  Where you travel through the uncharted jungle and excavate temples and treasures.  We attempted to figure out the rules last night and Kevin won.  He beat me at a game that’s supposed to be my career.  Innnnteresting.  

And for Mother’s Day and my birthday yesterday my mom decided she wanted me to go to the Rangers game with her.  I went ahead and took one for the team and went..jk jk it was awesome.  Especially seeing that awesome grand slam.  It was my 2nd to see live.  Oddly enough my first was a couple of days before my birthday last year when my mom took me.  It was Moreland’s first grand slam, but the game got rained out and it didn’t count and we had to leave after sitting around for hours hoping the storm would pass. So my first real one. 

My dad worked inside the bull pen for the first part of the game and gave me another bull pen ball for my collection.  I have 2 now.  The first came from Feliz and this one he didn’t say who it was from.  It’s covered in grass stains though so it’s probably from batting practice.  I also got official sunflower seeds and bubble gum from the bull pen.  And a couple of the other security guards sang/spoke the first part of “happy birthday”.  Which was amusing. 

Not a bad birthday for having to share it with Mother’s Day and my graduation weekend and with most of my friends already out of town.  We ended the night with a beer at Libertine, a piece of cake from Cafe Brazil, and trying to figure out how to play Tikal.

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So I got a B on my final paper for that class because I used the wrong sources….ah well. 

MOVING ON: 

I need to pack! ahhhhhh

Leaving for Honduras May 24th btws. 

In grad school getting a B feels like an epic fail.

I managed an A- in 2 of my classes but got a B in the class that didn’t give me any feedback on how I was doing the entire semester.

Which especially sucks since my friends got As and I got the same grade as the dude who basically got yelled at all semester. 

So I probably broke a big rule and emailed the chair of the department, the prof of the class, and asked what my break down on everything was and if he had any tips for future stuff. 

So I could have either done something good by asking for feedback or something terrible and not allowed by questioning the grade he gave me. 

We shall see. 

Every morning I over sleep, and I wake up to my phone going crazy with emails.  Usually it’s undergrads b*tching about something or another random forward from the department.  But not today.

Today it was an email telling me 1) I PASSED MY MA EXAMS and 2) I’m staying to get my PhD.

In 1 email I went from being a MA candidate to having another degree (MA! woot woot!) and becoming a PhD candidate. 

The question is, can I put MA at the end of my name for the title pages of my last 2 papers? 

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It’s weird to read facebook stati of people I know still in undergrad complaining about writing 10 page papers. 

22.3 pages done of 30 for tomorrow’s paper. 

0 of 20 pages of rewrite done for the midnight one tomorrow. 

Welcome to the life of a grad student.

Yes we still procrastinate, but not by choice.  I put off writing these papers because I had Masters Exams last week which I had to research and study for in my “spare time” while working on grading undergraduate papers and projects and doing all the other class stuff. 

I wish I had procrastinated for fun things. 

Grad student whine done.