Until we meet again - ABQ, NM

With the training winding down, I tried to squeeze some sightseeing on the last two days in ABQ.

I met some friends at the training who were nice enough to take me along their trip to Sandia Peak--one of the number one tourist sites at Albuquerque. Sandia means watermelon in Spanish and the peaks turn a beautiful watermelon color at sunset.  We rode a 15 minute tram up the mountain and were greeted by beautiful skies and mountain peaks. 

My last day, I visited the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center.  I was really moved by the poems displayed throughout the museum, the love and respect for nature, and the resilience of these people who have really endured an unjust history by the Spaniards, Mexicans, and worst of all the Americans. And the injustice continues. 

A couple of my favorite poems: 

Child of beauty

  Are you ready?

Return my healed heart to earth

Bring with you seeds

  Of a new generation

Begin

Only when it is safe

And plant wisely

I will guard these seeds 

  with my life 

--Veronica Riley, Laguna Pueblo

"Grandfather said, 

'At school things are different. There the white man teaches you his way.

He wraps his feelings up in words and puts them with marks on paper for you to see. 

Here we keep our feelings in our hearts. To know them you must live them.'"

-Sun Journey, Zuni Pueblo 

Also, I learned that in Pueblo culture, people don't say good bye, they always say "Until we meet again". I thought that was really beautiful. 

Some images from the museum: 

These patterns are drawn by those yucca leaves that they used as paint brushes! 

A week in Albuquerque, NM

Hello! I'm in Albuquerque, New Mexico this week attending Stat Camp! Stat Camp is an intense, INTENSE, one week 9am-5pm training on different statistical models and methods. I'm taking the structural equation modeling class, and boy, is it a lot of information at once.  Usually at the end of the day, my brain is fried. 

But! I'm really enjoying my time in the evenings visiting Albuquerque and learning about the city through my many Uber drivers and my AirBnb host.  

1) Albuquerque is beautiful - so much history, few high rise buildings, quiet, and beautiful skies. 

2) Look at all these murals!! I walked around the area of U of NM and snapped these pictures. 

3) The food here is delicious - I'm eating green chilies with everything and also ...wow, sopapilla is such an awesome dessert. 

4) People are so kind here- a restaurant owner gave me a free sopapilla because I had said I never tried one before.  I didn't know people still did nice things like that and I was so heartened by it and grateful. 

5) Old Town, Albuquerque is a preserved area of the city that capture ABQ from its past. It is beautiful, yet somewhat saddening at the same time, as I'm seeing lots of Native American gift stores that looked a little run down or I suppose it felt like hyper capitalization of the culture. 

Some pictures from the first few days, two more days to go and I'm very excited for what I have planned for the rest of the week. 

june gloom

There is such a thing as June Gloom.  And then there is May Gray.  For some odd reason, June and sometimes May are cloudy in Southern California.  I often wake up to windows filled of white where you'd expect blue skies.

These days, I find myself restless, anxious, and unable to sleep. And it doesn't help the sky is gloomy. I'm shocked that in 18 days, EIGHTEEN DAYS! Chris and I will be hosting a marriage celebration for some 100+ people.  I feel incredibly unprepared for this and I think I'm most likely forgetting things, very important things, the kind of things all the wedding planners who I interviewed kept eluding to, but wouldn't dare share. ...but then on the other hand, I'm just super excited to share experiences of LA with friends and family coming from afar, and to just see everyone together in one place, meeting each other for the first time, or reconnecting after years. And then...I'm like fuck it. At least I know the food will be good, the venue is unique and very L.A., there will be alcohol, and if everything isn't perfect, or even close to perfect,---perfect meaning not fancy enough, our friends and family will forgive us.  

In the face of a million gazillion options and logistics, and desires to create the environment found on my many pins on pinterest, I find myself frozen in the fear of making the wrong decision. Which is ridiculous. But ...not surprising.  I've always done better when I had less options, but wedding planning is anything but having  limited options (at least in the U.S.). With the clock ticking---work starting to become demanding, and will be until the wedding, and decisions that absolutely NEED to be made at this point, I know Chris and I will be forced to make decisions--whether they are the right ones or wrong ones- something is going to be done. On that note, back to researching options!