Bridal Shower

I attended to one my best friend’s bridal shower on Sunday Dec. 6. I’ve have never gone to any bridal shower before and the version of my friend Leslie was nothing like what I watch on TV--you know the ones at a nightclub with strippers, etc.

Leslie and I know each other since we were in high school, since 2003 and I still can’t believe she’s getting married. Who would've thought that six years later I would be writing about her bridal shower? She just turned 23. She’s from Mexico and so is her fiancé. Most of her family lives here in San Francisco and most of them were all at the shower.

When I got to the party I found so many guests, many of whom are friends of her from church (Catholic) and most of her family which is big. There were some men, her fiancé, of course.

Eventually they started doing some games. The first one was passing around 15 little bags of food ingredients--pepper, seasoning, ground cinnamon, and so on. We had to guess each of them without smelling them and whoever got most of them correct would win a gift. I didn’t win. The second game had to do with fixing scrambled words (they were related to the word wedding). I didn’t win here anything either. However, I actually won a game they did in which all of us women whether single or married would make a circle and pass around a bridal veil while dancing at the same time. When the music stop whoever got the veil in their heads will be out of the game. I won because the music never stopped on me. I won a calendar. According to them that means one would get married for sure. I don't know if I would get married someday, but I don't have any plans of that for the moment.

After half an hour the eating time arrived. They had tons of food. I was really hungry so I ate a lot. And meanwhile I was eating, I was chatting with the couple about the wedding day and if they have everything ready. Leslie said most of things are ready. She’s just waiting to finish some details of her dress, which I have not seen because she doesn’t want anybody to see it until the actual day of the wedding.

Then, the moment that I liked the most came. They did an activity they called a “spiritual dynamic.” Here the couple sat in the middle of the room and some of the adult couples would give them a gift, something that represented a symbol of how to deal with their lives as husband and wife. They also read to them a little dedication and the best wishes for their lives together. The most important moment was when her sister and her mother gave them their gifts. Her sister gave them a bible and as she was talking she started crying and so was Leslie. I cried too, almost everyone in the room did. When her mom gave them a framed pictured of Virgin Mary it was a very sentimental moment as well.

After more food and more fun, they opened the presents. Most of the presents were for Leslie--you know things like interior clothes.

I really had a great time and I am really glad for my friend Leslie. She’s getting married on Dec.19 and I hope the best of luck for her and her future husband. God bless them!

What's behind our career choices?

It’s very unpredicted where destiny can lead us to.

For instance, many of us as students decide what we want to study because something happened in our lives. That something may be related to us wanting to be a doctor, a social worker, a firefighter, a nurse, a journalist, a teacher, a lawyer, and the list goes on and on.

I have a friend how wants to be a doctor because his mother died of cancer and according to him she wasn’t treated well. Now he wants to have the ability to save people’s life to honor his mother. I have many other friends who want to major in social work because they say they want to help people. They say that there’s this need for more social workers who can assist poor people. Whatever the reason, the true is that most of the time, there’s something behind a decision-making, specially when it comes to career choice.

Personally, I’ve always wanted to be a journalist. Many times I have said I wanted to study journalism because I grew up with the love for the news. My grandfather would always watch the news so he sort of instilled in me that love. But another event that reinforced my dream to become a journalist was when the hurricane Mitch, the most horrendous natural disaster, destroyed my country Honduras back in 1998 (I was still in Honduras around this time). It really impacted me the work of the journalists whether broadcast or print journalists. They informed people where to go to evacuate and what to do in a worse-case scenario. And many people were able to save their lives because of the information provided to them. So I thought, I want to do that. I wanted to be like a bridge between the people and information--an information that could be valuable for them.


However, there was another event that led me to think of another career choice. I also wanted to study law enforcement and be a homicide detective. Back in 2001, just around this time, about a week before the elections in my country, someone killed a candidate who was running for a representative for my hometown. He was literally killed in my house. He was killed before his younger son’s eyes.

I still remember that night like it was yesterday. I heard the seven gun shots that killed him. I lived with my grandparents then and our house was like two houses in one. So the candidate, Pacheco León was renting a part of my grandparents’ house--it was like his office. Almost every night he would come to the house around midnight. He was no relative of mine, but my grandfathers knew him since he was a little kid and they were very enthusiastic for him running for such a position. So they supported him and his campaign. He belonged to the National Party, the same party Porfilio lobo who won the presidential elections this past Nov. 29 belongs to. He was about 45 years old and had a wife and two sons. They resided in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras and it was the first time his younger son was accompanying him that time that he was killed.

There are many hypotheses around his death. The rumor is that it was allegedly somebody from the opponent party (Liberal Party) who was running for the same position as he was. Nobody knows that for sure. The police never captured his killer and to this date nobody knows who killed him. He was much loved for the people and nobody can explain why this happened to him.

It was a very breaking point in my life. I was 14 years old and I never thought something like this could happen so close to me. All I wanted to know was who killed him and why and to have the power to put his killer behind bars. It was like I woke up from a dream where the world was perfect--no killings, no suffering, no cruelty, no evil. Yes I saw violence on TV and that someone killed someone else, but I thought that could never happen around my town, my family and my friends. And it was cruel to wake up from that dream into a world of evilness. But that’s unfortunately the reality of the world we live in.

I am telling all this background because now that I see TV shows like “Criminal Minds,” “CSI Miami,” “Law and Order,” and my favorite “Cold Case” I want to be a detective and be like Lilly Rush and capture a killer from an eight-year-old homicide case, to capture León’s killer and to really have a closed case.

Well right now at least I am making one of my dreams come true, pursuing a career in journalism and serve my community, my people as I said like a bridge. Who knows? Maybe I’ll study law enforcement. After all life it’s very unpredicted.

Well that’s my story behind my career choice. What’s yours?

Back to School

By Kalah Johnson, Rico Allen, D’Amontae Warfield, Chanthavara Seng and Maria Umanzor

Tuesday, Oct. 27, seems like any other day at SF State, but after a four-day weekend due to budget cuts furlough days, many students didn’t want to come back to school because they said, the hassle of classes comes back as well.

“I am having a stress full morning,” said Edgar Baez, liberal studies major as he was sitting down at the food court typing his four-page essay he had to turn in at 2 p.m. Baez had trouble getting to his first class on time, which started at 9:30 a.m. because his bus line #43 left him. However, Baez acknowledged that that’s what he deals with every morning and it’s not a big deal that he had to come back from a long weekend.

But as the morning progressed, other students just sat around on campus as they waited for their next classes. Annette, a graduate student was sitting down at a bench in the Garden of Remembrance area, where she was reading a poem after she got out of her British literature class. “It was really nice to get work done over the weekend,” said Annette when referring to the long weekend break.

In the same area as Annette was Nicole who was reading a book "just for fun" called, Ishmael. The second-year and sociology major student said she didn’t want to come back to school, but she admitted she was awake during her Spanish class, her first class of the day which started at 11: 10 a.m.

Yes, it is like any other Tuesday on campus and even after a long weekend break were most students don't want to come back and deal with their class, the truth is they had to. At least some students didn't have their first class until later in the morning and that certainly helped them digest the "back to school" idea. Now let's wait for the next long weekend break!

Kalah Johnson, Rico Allen, D’Amontae Warfield and Chanthavara Seng are students at Fremont High School Media Academy in Oakland.

Ramparts, a Magazine to Remember

Last week, in my editing magazine class, I was editing a book review piece on “A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America” by Peter Richardson in the San Francisco Chronicle written by Jonah Raskin, who also had the opportunity to write for the Ramparts magazine once.

This piece seems more like criticizing what Richardson wrote in his book about what Ramparts magazine was. “‘A Bomb in Every Issue’ is a good title for a book about Ramparts, but this book doesn't capture the magazine's or the era's wildness, and irreverence, ” writes Raskin.

At first I didn’t give it too much importance. It was just another piece to edit and I wouldn’t probably see any similar article again, but I was wrong.

It seems like there are many reviews on this book because it sorts of brings the magazine alive again. Major newspapers have reviews about Richardson’s book mixed with information of what the magazine meant for Americans.

But what makes this magazine so especial? Is it its writers? Is it the way its writers covered the stories they covered? Or is it the stories written in the magazine?

It certainly can be all of the above, as a matter of fact, most reviews talk about all these.

The LA Times review book, for example, seconds and agrees with Richardson when acknowledging the fact the magazine changed American.

The New Press also explains the Ramparts contribution to change America by pointing out the kinds of issues it covered at a national and international level from publishing the "first conspiracy theory about JFK’s assassination" to covering first the Che Guevera’s diaries.

Locally, Richardson writes in his book that Ramparts was published in Menlo Park, California in 1962 and then in 1968, it moved to San Francisco's North Beach with a monthly circulation to almost 250,000 thanks to coverage it delivered.

Other book reviews on Richardson’s book, define the magazine as, “the groundbreaking muckraking magazine of the 1960s and early 1970s.”

Dream big, It's possible!

Since I was a little girl, I wanted to be someone in life. I wanted to have a good job doing I what like the most--working as a reporter for a news channel or for a newspaper. I grew up seeing my grandfather watching news and reading the newspaper so I got the love for it. Now that I am in this country, I am working towards getting there through my education.

I am from Honduras and I came here when I was 16 years old. Now, at 22, I am a senior at SF State, studying journalism and Raza studies. I am the first one in my family to go to college and I feel very proud of what I’ve achieved so far. But I want to continue until I achieve my dream like many other Latinas have, whether immigrants or from any Latino heritage background.

Personally, stories like Sonia Sotomayor's have inspired me and confirmed what my parents, my grandparents, my teachers and my counselors have told me: get an education.

Last week I heard another amazing story. Eva Guzman was appointed to the Texas’ Supreme Court by Gov. Rick Perry becoming so the first Latina nominated for that position. It’s like there’s no more excuse to keep ignoring that fact that there are talented, capable Latinos (in this case Latinas) and as a matter of fact, there’s this need to acknowledge the achievements of them in this country.

Another woman, who in the last couple of weeks has made headlines, is Sonia Sotomayor. She is without doubt a big inspiration for many trying to pursue a dream. This woman with Puerto Rican roots has become one of the most important Latinas in the history. First chosen by President Barack Obama and then confirmed by the Senate to be the U.S. Supreme Court justice, Sotomayor became the first Latina, as she calls herself, to have such a job. It’s still unbelievable to learn that Sotomayor who was born in Bronx, New York; and who comes from a humble Puerto Rican family, made it to the country’s Supreme Court after a hard, long path. Again, her story leads to the idea that everything is possible.

It’s also perfect timing to point out these successful stories when Latinos represent the largest minority in the country. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, the Latino population in the United States will triple in size by 2050 making up 29 percent of the total U.S. population. It really emphasizes the fact that as a large group in this country, there should also be a growth at an educational level. In other words, as the Latino population grows, Latinos college graduates should also increase.

Unfortunately, Latinos in education continue to be characterized for high dropout rates. It seems very scary considering the fact that education is very important in order to succeed in life, especially in this country, and also considering the growth of the Latino population in the country. Stories like Guzman's and Sotomayor’s will hopefully inspire many to stay in college and graduate.

Both Guzman's and Sotomayor’s stories are rooted to humble beginnings portraying so the idea that it’s through hard work, effort and dedication that everything is possible and that we should dream big even in difficult times. Meanwhile, I will stay in college to complete my Bachelor’s degree in journalism and of course, will keep dreaming big. It’s possible! We’ve seen it!

Preferable Identities

A few days ago, a friend of mine asked me what was the difference between the terms Hispanic and Latino. I quite frankly didn’t know how to answer. After all I use both terms interchangeably.

I do, however, acknowledge that I use the term Latino more often than Hispanic.

The answer to this question is more complicated than what it seems like. After being caught up with a question I thought I should have known and after doing some research, I came up with a not so inspirational answer, but here it is: It depends.

Using Latino or Hispanic has to do more with a self-identification, which means it’s up to an individual’s preferable identification. Some identify with the term Hispanic, others identify with Latino and others use other terms: Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, Chicanos, Central Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and so on. Once again, it depends on what you identify yourself with.

People living in Latin America identify themselves as Latin Americans. I came to the United States when I was almost 16 years old. Back there, I never thought of myself as anything but hondureña (Honduran). Back here I am still Honduran, but I’m also Latina or Hispanic. However, it is not something that keeps me from sleeping though.

The use of the terms also has to do with a geographic location and how one grew up with, especially here in the United States.

“Often it depends on where in the country one live – SF [San Francisco] leans more towards Latino, Texas towards Hispanic,” said Cristina Azocar, a professor at San Francisco State University, who teaches cultural diversity.

According to Raza Studies Professor Carlos Cordova, the term Hispanic was created by the U.S. Census Bureau around the 1980s to identify people from Spanish-speaking countries, which includes Spain.

"Hispanic is more like a symbol of colonization and that many people don’t identify themselves with it," said Cordova.

Latino relates more to Latin American countries and “Latinos” from these countries relate more to it because the label Hispanic is more imposed to them, rather than a choice. In addition, Latino emphasizes gender. Latino refers to a male and Latina to a female.

Cordova who was raised in San Francisco, identifies himself first as Salvadoran; second as Central American; third as Latino and last as a human being. He said he deals a lot with these kinds of questions in his "acculturation issues of Raza" class at SF State.

“In New York people use the term Puerto Ricans and in Miami, Cubans,” added Cordova. “Mexicans don’t use Hispanic, they don’t like it.”

After all we are an ethnicity, not a race. We are very diverse in culture and color. We are dark-skinned and white-skinned, blue-eyed and blonde. Yet, we do have to mark an X in the non-white Hispanic category in government forms.

There isn’t a definitive answer for the proper use of the terms Hispanic and Latino. In the end it's not about what terms we use to identify ourselves or what labels the U.S. Census Bureau places us into, it’s about knowing where we come from. That's what makes the difference.

Our Readers First!

John Diaz, the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial page editor stopped by my opinion writing class at San Francisco State on Sept. 24 and gave his thoughts and suggestions when it comes to write Op-Ed pieces or first-person pieces.

Although Diaz counts with a long journalism career, I liked his humbleness. When he got to the class he explained why he was some minutes late. He said he was at a meeting with Mayor Gavin Newsom. Diaz also read us parts of some of his writings to show us the importance of putting our personality and voices in our pieces.

Picking the right topic, think of ourselves as readers and doing enough research prevailed among the thoughts of Diaz. However, one suggestion that really got my attention because it is something I deal with a lot when I write first-person pieces is to avoid foreign language terms unless really necessary. He said he deals with writers who do this all the time and some of them drive him “crazy.”

I really like to write pieces that have to do with my culture--immigration, cultural events (Day of the Dead, Cinco de Mayo, Latino Heritage Month), about my country, profiles of Latinos and so on. Some times when I write first-person pieces I tend to write things in Spanish or throw terms that only the Latino community or people who understand Spanish would relate to. I am sure I am not the only one!

When I asked Diaz about his thoughts on a piece I am working on for this same class, which is about the terms Hispanic and Latinos; he said in this case it’s fine to throw some words in Spanish, but he emphasized that if we do use cultural terms in our pieces we have to explain them so they can reach out to a larger audience. However, he said that it also has to do with the publication one is writing the piece for. For example, if we are writing a piece for newspapers like La Opinión, then it’s fine because its readers are mostly Latinos.

The overall point here is that even when we write a piece in which we bring our own experiences we have to think beyond that. At the end of the day, it’s not about us, but who will read our piece.

I just want to thank John Diaz for taking the time to come to my class and share his expertise and experiences as a column writer as well as providing his thoughts on first-person pieces. We will definitely have them in mind, at least I will.

"Desinformación Internacional"

El siguiente enlace que aparece abajo es del periódico La Tribuna de Honduras. Es un editorial que me pareció muy interesante porque hace énfasis en que hay una "desinformación internacional" acerca de lo que realmente es y representa Honduras. Y esto según el artículo hace que los turistas lleguen al país con prejuicios y una idea equivocada.

Básicamente el editorial habla de que algunas enciclopedias internacionales e inclusive algunos analistas dan una información limitada de Honduras que no necesariamente refleja la verdad de este país.

He aquí el enlace: http://www.latribuna.hn/web2.0/?cat=10

Copan Mayan Ruins in Honduras

Please take a look at this beauty from my country, Honduras. It is one of my favorite places there and I want to share it with you all. There are two videos that I found on YouTube: one in Spanish, which I thought was interesting and it shows all those little corners of the ruins; and a shorter one in English (a friend recommended to me) so you can sort of figure out what's been talked about in the first one. That's one of my long-term goals--Capture the beauty of my country as a journalist.

¡Ya Era Hora!

Ya era hora de que la gente se tomara las calles para protestar en contra de las intervenciones en otros países del presidente de Venezuela Hugo Chávez.

Ver imágenes en muchas ciudades de Europa, pero sobre todo en ciudades de Latinoamérica de tanta gente disgustada, manifestando su repudio contra Chávez y gritando, "No más Chávez" es seña de que la gente no quiere más estas intromisiones del mandatario y han decidido tomar la justicia por sus manos o en este caso, tomar las calles para hacer escuchar sus voces de descontento.

Sin duda alguna, las intervenciones de Chávez ya sea por medio de comentarios o acciones mal intencionadas han colmado la paciencia de muchos sobre todo al ver que nadie se toma la molestia de ponerle un alto al señor Chávez. La verdad personalmente ya estaba cansada de escuchar a Chávez opinar y juzgar, pero sobre todo amenazar a otros países interveniendo en asustos que no le competen.

En Latinoamérica por ejemplo, Chavez ha hecho casi lo que le ha dado la gana. Ha logrado atraer a mandatarios como Daniel Ortega de Nicaragua, Rafael Correa de Ecuador y Evo Morales de Bolivia, entre otros, creando así un grupo izquierdista que pretende asumir roles que no le corresponde. De Chávez y los hermanos Castro de Cuba pues ya se sabe que siempre han unido fuerzas para doblegar a sus propios países. El presidente depuesto de Honduras, Manuel Zelaya pretendía seguir estos pasos, pero gracias a las intervenciones de otros poderes en Honduras que lograron parar su cometido, el país sigue manteniendose alejado de Chávez.

No obstante, Honduras que también se sumó a las protestas, ha sufrido de cerca las intervenciones de Chávez en los ultimos días. Después de que el ejército hondureño sacó del país a Zelaya el pasado 28 de junio en un hecho también condenado llamado, "Golpe de Estado" por querer éste cambiar la Constitución de la República de Honduras, Chávez hizo sentir su poder de intervención cuando amenazaba en enviar sus tropas para según él obligar a las nuevas autoridades de Honduras a restituir a Zelaya. Ese era el miedo de muchos dentro y fuera del país. Si esto hubiera sucedido, el resultado pudiera haber sido lamentable.

Y así como en Honduras, Chávez ha manifestado su interes en querer inmiscuirse en asustos internacionales buscando lo que él no tiene en su propio país: libertad y democracia.

Estas noticias en Estados Unidos han sido transmitidas y divulgadas en su mayoría por los medios de comunicación en español. Qué lástima que no todos los medios de comunicación, sobre todo los periódicos de alto rango en Estados Unidos como The New York Times le brinden tanta importancia a esta noticia de tan gran mérito.

Ahora no queda más que darles un A+ a los organizadores de estas protestas de descontento contra Chávez esperando que este mensaje le llegue al mandatario para lograr de una vez por todas que no intervenga más en asustos de no le conciernen.

When I speak in "English"

Whenever a person listens to me speaking in English whether in a classroom setting or on the bus I feel the need to explain them why I speak English "different" or at least I feel like I do.

It's not about explaning them why I have an accent, it's more about answering the questions that I think they have about the way I speak: in a "broken" English. You might probably say, who cares? Well the reality is that I do. I am the one who feels bad when I know I said a word wrong and that feeling will keep on hunting me until the end of that day.

Somehow I feel like I am that weird person in the classroom or that newly-arrived Latina immigrant on the bus. And I feel like that especially in a classroom in which the majority of the students are from a "I speak English perfectly" background or even in a classroom full of Latino students like the Raza Studies classes where the majority are Latinos, but were born here.

I am from Honduras, Central America. All my family is. I came to this country six years ago with no English at all and really frightened to start a life in a new country, a new culture, a new language. When I was in Honduras I never worried about learning to speak another language and neither I had the opportunity to do it so. My father came here when I was two years old and my mother when I was eight. I basically grew up with my grandparents on my father's side. So yeah, this is also what I feel like explaining or telling people for them to somehow understand me. And again, who cares, right? I do.

My years in school here have passed by very quick. I graduated from high school in two years. I didn't go straight to a four-year institution because I didn't have the four years of English or math and other requirements. ESL didn't count. I went to City College and stayed there almost three years and I transfered here at SF State last fall. So I feel like my stay in school is being like in a rush. It's like, I have to take these so many classes that weren't necessarily grammar/spelling English classes.

Well, now that I am at SF State let me tell you about journalism. When somebody asked me what's your major, I go "uh...journalism," as if they would critique me because they know that if you want to be a journalist in this country, you must know English. And I mean good English. Sometimes I said to myself that I think I am majoring in journalism not only because it has always being my dream, but because I think that when it comes to English I am better in writing than speaking. Feel free to disagree! In Spanish I think I am good in both. However, when I read these great articles whether in a newspaper, the Internet or some of them even written by some of my own classmates, I go like wait a minute, do I really know how to write? And this question keeps popping on and on.

Journalism means "periodismo" in Spanish. And it was this word I grew up with. When you speak about periodismo you don't really differentiate broadcast and print journalism. It's the same. So I was like I want to be a "periodista" (journalist). First, I wanted to go to broadcasting, which I still do. I would spend hours in front of the computer reading my favorite newspaper Website's articles in Spanish called La Tribuna from my country Honduras like it is a teleprompter preteding that I am a news anchor or something . Yeah laugh! In other words, maybe I think I would probably do a better job in any Spanish-speaking media. My ultimate goal is to be a correspondent from Honduras to here or vice versa for whether a Spanish-speaking newspaper or a news channel.

Again, maybe people don't really care about me speaking good or bad English, but the true is, I feel the need to explain. At least that way I wouldn't go home thinking about that wrong word I said in the class or that sentence with grammatical errors I said on the bus.