Hispanic Culture Posters
Vintage Posters
New Painting
So I haven’t painted in awhile, so I decided to just make something up yesterday. It ended up being a beach. Here it is:
Spanish
I am learning Spanish. Well, I am taking it for school; it’s required to graduate. But I’m also very interested in it, because I can talk to my co-workers, Erick, Carlos, Leila, and Herberth, and because I am going to Puerto Rico next year and I want to be able to actually understand what people are saying 
In addition to my Spanish textbook, Erick and I have been writing letters to each other in Spanish, and I’ve started watching movies with Spanish subtitles. I also put some books on hold at the library that are in Spanish. I got “Charlie y la fábrica de chocolate (CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY) ” and “La ciudad de las bestias / Isabel Allende. (THE CITY OF THE BEASTS)” I can’t wait to start reading them! 
My Library Bookshelf
Books on my library bookshelf:
Bearing witness : stories of the Holocaust / selected by Hazel Rochman and Darlene Z. McCampbell.
The Count of Monte Cristo / Alexandre Dumas ; edited with an introduction by David Coward.
Creative journal for teens : making friends with yourself / by Lucia Capacchione.
The devil’s arithmetic / by Jane Yolen
A farewell to arms / Ernest Hemingway
Grace in the wilderness : after the liberation, 1945-1948 / Aranka Siegal
The hidden children / by Howard Greenfeld.
I have lived a thousand years : growing up in the Holocaust / Livia E. Bitton-Jackson.
The night trilogy / Elie Wiesel.
The other victims : first-person stories of non-Jews persecuted by the Nazis / Ina R. Friedman.
Peterson’s new SAT writing workbook / Margaret Moran.
The Pickwick papers [sound recording] / by Charles Dickens
The Pocket idiot’s guide to acing the SAT essay / by Pamela Rice Hahn.
Schindler’s list / Thomas Keneally.
Surviving Hitler : a boy in the Nazi death camps / by Andrea Warren
Most of them are about the Holocaust. Lately I have been very interested in reading about it. Marygrace is reading The Diary of Anne Frank, and also a book written by Miep Gies, who was the lady who kept the Frank family hidden.
Puerto Rico
I have made up my mind. I am going to Puerto Rico for the summer next year. I think living there for 3 months will give me an idea on how 2 yeras of the Peace Corps will be, and I can make my decision better. Plus, going to the beach everyday, I’ll look like a native Puerto Rican when I get back And I’ll be fluent in Spanish How cool will that be? I’ll be able to talk to Carlos and Erick and Leila; it’ll be so cool! Plus that counts as studying abroad AND it’ll look reaaaaaally good on my Peace Corps application, if I tutor my cousins and even just be fluent in Spanish and have experience living in a Spanish country. So I’m definitely staying. I need time to get away and rally think about what I want. I’m alot like Jo, from Little Women. I love to write and daydream, and I just want to travel and get out of here for awhile, see new places and experience new things. I’m going to Puerto Rico.
Dreams and Struggles
My dream is to join the Peace Corps. I want to be a teacher in Central or South America. But before I can do taht, I have to get through college. And to do that, I have to finish my stupid Algebra and Spanish. Ok, so Spanish isn’t stupid; I need it to get into the Peace Corps. But Algebra… I’m so bad with numbers. I’m dyslexic, so numbers are really difficult for me to work with. I always get them mixed up, so even if I know the problems, I still get them wrong because I write them out wrong.
But to continue with my dream, the Peace Corps… Wouldn’t it be awesome??? Going to a foreign country for 2 year, barely knowing anything: the culture, language, people… and depending on the location, living primitavely: doing laundry and dishes by hand, cooking over a fire or small stove, sleeping in a hammock… oh it’d be awesome!!! I want a youth or teaching job in Central or South America. I don’t really care what country I get sent to, but I’m afraid to go to El Salvador because of MS13. I’m so afraid of them. It would be cool to be able to tell Erick that I went there, but I wouldn’t risk running into them. But anyway, I have so much I need to do to get ready to just send in my application. Finish Spanish I and II, get my degree in Early Childhood Education, do as much youth volunteering as possible, and getting as fit as I can, by riding my bike (which is the main form of transportation in PC), and running, and getting my stomach stronger to handle some of the parasites.
Great books from the Library
These are some of the books I have been reading from the library, to help with preparing for the Air Force:
The Ultimate Basic Training Guide - Volkin
Basic Training - Collins
Guide to Joining the Military - Ostrow (Published by ARCO)
ASVAB Basics - also published by ARCO
And then to help with nutrition, in addition to websites, I got the book:
The Diet for Teenagers ONLY - Carrie Wiatt and Barbara Schroeder
Update on previous post
Awhile back I wrote a post called “Big Changes for Me.” Here is what I have accomplished so far:
Finishing Highschool:
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Complete Algebra 1 at home, Algebra 2 at local community college -
Complete US History -
Complete Catholic Apologetics -
Take Spanish I and II at local community college
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Finish my transcript and calculate my GPA -
Take my End of Year CAT test
Getting ready for the Air Force: (I’ve been doing all of this, but I can’t cross it off until the day I ship off to basic training)
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Complete the 14 week fitness training schedule I found online
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Study for the ASVAB test
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Read as much as possible about bootcamp and training and what to expect in general
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Talk to a recruiter… but not alone!
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Take a lot of vitamins and immune system boosters to stay healthy
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Prepare myself mentally for the challenges to come
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Pray!!
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Continue to work at getting physically fit, all the way until the day I leave for training
Preparing for College:
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Finish highschool -
Look into college classes, and enroll at the local community college (April)
