First Day of the HYI

***     Thursday, July 21st, 7:03AM     ***

"It'll change your life". That's such a common cliche that we hear ALL the time. 'Here try this burger it'll change your life' or 'oh my god that massage changed my life' and even 'wow she was such an amazing girlfriend she really changed my life'. Except most of the time's the expression "it changed my life" is used to exaggerate something that was really good not what the phrase literally means. 

Well I'm here to tell you that after jut one day the Hispanic Youth Institute (HYI) is already causing deep transformations in my mind. It's not necessarily changing who I am, but boy have I had some really deep reflections today. I was put on a bus with almost complete strangers this morning and just 5 minutes ago I went to say goodnight to my bros in mi familia. That's how close I've gotten with some of the people!

So like I mentioned in my last post I basically went to bed at 2AM only to wake up a couple of hours later at 4:30 in the morning because I, for some odd reason, STILL hadn't finished packing! But yeah I finished packing, got ready, ate breakfast, all that good stuff and then I was off to J.E.B. Stuart High School. 

Ok so the bus ride is all a part of the story that could be easily skipped BUT I just wanted to tell this one quick story that's not off topic, I swear. Ok so back in the 6th grade I was invited into this educational acceleration program called QUEST which provided gifted students the opportunity to take even more advanced classes then what they could take in school and the whole purpose was to get us, the students, into the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. I remember that I became really close to this tall, bloody brilliant kid named Mauricio and he was the closest friend I had at QUEST. Well as we all know I moved to the Dominican Republic and I had to leave Mauricio (as well as an amazing education opportunity fml) behind. So flash-forward to me getting on the bus and sitting across from this familiar looking dark-haired kid. I couldn't stop staring at him he just looked so familiar until finally he caught me looking and I blurted out "did you do a program called QUEST back in the 6th grade" to which he responded, "Yes!! Andre???" and so we had an amazing little reunion and I'm happy I reconnected with him again. =] It's so amazing how tiny the world can be sometimes.

The dorms

My home for the next four days and roomate, Bahram!

Well we arrived after a most uncomfortable bus ride and got settled in and then it was on to ice breakers and team building exercises. The first few games were fun but then we got into a game that was much more intimate and caused the first shift in what I thought of my peers. I was kind of hesitant to mingle during the game, called upside downside, where you go shake 20 people's hands to introduce yourself and tell them something you are proud of as an upside and then when it's downside time you tell people something you are ashamed or embarrassed about, because I am a little shy. So when downside came around all of us were a little superficial at first trying to be embarrassing funny but people dropped that quickly and started getting deep. I mean imagine that, people going up to complete strangers to tell them that 'I am the reason my parents got divorced' or 'I find it extremely difficult to connect with people on emotional levels'. I was in awe of how quickly the HYI became a safe environment where people can just be themselves

After we did all of those games and bonded we went to one of the auditoriums at VSU to hear many important speakers talk about going after success and how to speak publicly but the one speaker that really caught my attention was the Dean of VSU, Dr. Mirta Martin and her story of how she got to where she was. In a nutshell she escaped from Cuba with her grandma and had to leave her parents and brothers behind in order to be able to come to the US. She remembers that her grandmother, who had a Ph. D (imagine that, a Hispanic, female woman with a Ph. D back in the 60s, it was very rare!) always told her that an education was the most important thing she could ever get and to never stop learning. Dr. Martin's grandmother told her this as they were on their hands and knees cleaning bathrooms and offices. Which raises the question in my mind, how many immigrants who cross the border into the US have a degree of some sort?

Well anyways after dinner we were graced with Ernie G's presence. He's a Los Angeles comedian who does clean empowerment funny and was extremely funny in the comedy show he gave us that night! If you know me well then you know that I find comedians funny when they are talking about real things. As I like to say, "it's funny 'cause it's true" and Ernie G definitely spoke of things I could connect with such as "the stare" that all Latina moms give when you've done something wrong! I liked his comedy so much that I went and bought his CD from him later on and got it signed =] It's called "Mama's Boy" lol

Ernie G

And if I thought I would finally be able to go to bed at 12 that night boy was I mistaken! I was just chillin in my bed typing a good portion of this blog entry up when my roomate, Bahram, randomly starts telling me this story about how an influential Iranian (Bahram is Iranian as well) was killed a few days ago. I'm not sure why he felt the need to share that with me but his ice breaker worked. We started talking about corruption, living in a different country, the stereotypes that minorities often have to face, problems with older siblings and more until I finally had to tell him at 2AM that if we wanted to be functional the next day we should really go to sleep. After all we had to wake up 4 hours later and I am not a morning person. Little did I know that that would be the night where I got the most rest...

UYL, 

Andre