Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Una Oportunidad

Hoy tuve la oportunidad de conocer a cuatro compañeros de trabajo quien son bolivianos. El director nacional de Bolivia, el administrador nacional, y dos coordinadores de programa están en Little Rock por dos semanas.

Solo uno de ellos habla inglés muy bien. Los otros pueden entender un poco pero tuve el razón de hablar español. Casi nunca uso la lengua ahora que he graduado. Se me olvido el español muy rápidamente. Una conversación en español pudiera simple en diciembre, pero ahora es muy difícil.

Es muy importante que pueda ir a España para aprender el idioma o probable se me olvido. No tengo muchas oportunidades en que puedo hablar el idioma. Si puedo ir a un país donde hablan español, tal vez puedo hablar con más comodidad cuando regreso a los Estados Unidos. Y si hablo más, aprenderá más.

No quiero olvidar. Estudié por muchos años el idioma y quiero usarlo en mi trabajo. Hoy fui uno de las oportunidades raras.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Never Stop Learning

I heard that we never stop learning. Education is a life-long journey. I agree. If we aren't learning something, something is wrong.

Whether it be learning how to do something or a new fact, there should be something. One of the Human Resources employees asked me the other day how my internship was going. I responded, "Great!" And she asked if I was learning anything. I told her I think I learned something new every day. Whether it be a random fact, how to do something or just sharing ideas, there is always something.

Some of the lessons I have learned already include saving my work. Not only save it but copy the text before clicking save. I have had several times where I click save and everything locks up on me. I lose everything. Then there are other days where I learn something new about my job, the company, or computer programs.

Today I had the opportunity to do my job while learning at the same time. We went to the ranch to do a few interviews and we followed some of the participants around. Never did I think I would stand a foot from a beehive with them buzzing around. I was there to video and take photos but was able to listen in on the class being taught and learn a lot myself.

It really is nice to have a job you love.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of

The day started off normally. I was in my grandmother's house, next door to my dad's house, visiting my family. Then BOOM! Everything started getting weird. I heard the unusually loud boom and ran outside to the front porch to see what had happened. What I see is a plume of black smoke and some trees on fire across the road. I look up because I hear lot of engines humming in the air. When I looked up there were several dozen planes in the air engaged in a dog fight. They were flying very close to the ground and I saw the tail on a few with German markings. They were old planes from World War I.



Dreams intrigue me. Science doesn't come easy to me but if I were to study it, the brain would have to be the most interesting. Most of the time, I don't remember what I dream or even if i dream or not. I sometimes think it would be cool to control your dreams and often thought maybe the last thoughts before falling asleep were what you dreamed about. I tried to think about something to create a dream. It never worked.

Yesterday, I watched Night at the Museum with Asuka. It is possibly one of my favorite movies but this time I was pointing oddities out (living museum exhibits aside) such as how Larry, the new night guard, calls Cecil during the first night. The telephone was a corded phone, with an operator. That was obviously out of the time period. Cecil was at a party and just happened to be able to answer another wired telephone. Where were the cell phones? So there were some anachronisms there. Maybe that is what was going on in my dreams last night.

After seeing the German aircraft dropping bombs and engaging in aerial combat, ran to my dad's house. There had been no warning sirens. I hadn't heard anything about the threat of war. I had to go to my dad's house to see what was going on. Why were we under attack in the middle of Arkansas, of all places. Surely that information would be available on CNN, after-all it was huge news. But I never found out; I opened the door and woke up.

When I woke up I knew I had just had a weird dream and rolled over to go back to sleep. I had hoped to finish the dream but it didn't work. I don't remember if I had any dreams after that or not.  When I got up Sunday morning I still remembered having a dream. I knew it was a weird one. But I could not think of what it was. Then my memory was triggered a few hours later when I was going to CNN in real-life. It is funny how memories are triggered.

There are many places one can go to "interpret dreams." It is said that they are actually suppressed emotions displaying themselves in our subconscious mind.  So what are some of the things this could mean for me? I took a few guesses before looking at one interpretation website. My thoughts were that maybe I was at war with something in my life-- an idea or something. Maybe in my case Spain. Another possibility was that I was living something that was not in its time.

Here is what Dream Moods had to say:

War
To dream of a war, signifies disorder and chaos in your waking life You are experiencing some internal conflict or emotional struggle which is tearing you up inside. Alternatively, the dream indicates that you are either being overly aggressive or that you are not being assertive enough. Perhaps you need to be prepared to put up a fight in some area of your life. On a more direct level, the dream may be reflection of current wars around the world and your personal feelings about it.
Bomb
To see a bomb in your dream, indicates that you are going through a potentially explosive situation in your waking life. The bomb could represent repressed desires and unexpressed emotions that are on the verge of exploding or bursting if not dealt with soon. 
There were relatively few things in this dream to even look up. But those were the two I could think of. Terms such as "anachronism," "war plane," and such did not turn up any results. The whole concept is interesting.

How what we call dreams work may forever elude me but will probably never cease to interest me.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Fourth of July Weekend

Another 4th of July weekend has come and gone and this one was great like all the others. Asuka came down for the long weekend. On Saturday we went to Perryville to see Heifer Ranch. Afterward we met some family in Little Rock and later went to dinner. There I got to see my aunt who I hadn't seen since 2007. After dinner Asuka and I went to her house to visit for a few hours before making it back to Sheridan where I passed out.

Sunday was just a relaxing day. We stayed up until midnight and then shot some fireworks. Monday we went to Conway and had lunch at my dad's house. We were able to visit my grandmother. And we made it to Little Rock to see the firework show. It was enjoyable but still not nearly as cool as the one I saw a few years ago in Red Bank, New Jersey. And last summer I was able to see fireworks in Washington D.C. But it was still enjoyable and I didn't have to fight traffic afterward. I had parked at the office, went out the back way and got on 440-5:30.