Things we would do if you came to visit

I've kept a running list in my head of things we would go do/see in Berkeley if you were here and now I'm going to write them down for the next time you are here.

Day 1:
1. Go to this place: https://universitypressbooks.com/ It's a bookstore called Ten Thousand Minds on Fire. Apparently it is one of the few academic bookstores left in the whole country. They do awesome stuff like read essays of Montaigne around a dinner table on Saturday nights, while eating and drinking. It appears to be the nerdiest of nerd bookstores. I couldn't hold my own there, but with you by my side we would be alll right.

Our minds would be alight with new ideas after we visit this bookstore!

2. Then when we would feel like we need a spot of tea, we would pop into The Musical Offering next door. This place is a cafe-bistro that always has "early music" playing. I think that is a fancy way to say classical music. They are also a CD and records stop, so we could peruse their music collection once we've had our lovely hot drink.

3. The in the evening we would put on our best frocks and have a night at the theater! There are several old, historic theaters to choose from in Oakland. One of them is the Paramount Movie Theater which shows movie classics for $6, Wurtlizer organ included! Other fancy theaters include The Grand Lake Theater and the Alameda Theater. Grand Lake Theater has $5 movies on a Tuesday night and the Alameda Theater also has a movie classics series.

 Alameda Theater. This theater is from the Art Deco period.

Classic Movies shown at Alameda Theater.

 Grand Lake Theater. It's 90 years old.

 Paramount Theater.


3. Depending on how late our movie got out, we would take a stroll around Lake Merritt in Oakland, which is nearby the Grand Lake and Paramount Theaters. Aah. Isn't it heavenly?

Day 2: Beach!
1.So far my favorite beach has been Ano Nuevo state park. It's rather isolated and not that far from Santa Cruz. Also Ano Nuevo State park has elephant seals, and during the mating season apparently things get pretty crazy. Bull fights, pups being born, mating. Tour guides take you to various vantage points of the beaches and you get to see the circle of life before your very eyes. There is a beach free of elephant seals that seems fun to hang out on and have a picnic, and unlike Monterey or Santa Cruz, it is not overrun with human tourists.

Tourists getting some sun.

2. If we wanted to grab some lunch, we could stop in Pescadero and get tacos at Mercado y Tacqueria De Amigos. This place is THE BOMB. It doubles as a Mexican mart and tacqueria, and believe me, only the most legit tacquerias are run out of mexi-marts. I know from experience. This is because in order to find the tacqueria you have to know that tacquerias sometimes exist in mexi-marts (or you Yelp it, like me, haha). This way the tacqueria weeds out all the hipsters who only go to places that are aesthetically pleasing and would never go to a convenience store for their one of a kind culinary experience. No my friend, in Mercado y Tacqueria De Amigos you will only find construction workers, old white people who popped in to buy a soda and then stayed for lunch once they realized "Why, yes. I think a taco sounds good right now," and us. Do not be fooled by the unassuming store front! So many people pass Mercado up for the Pinterest-inspired "country market store" down the street that has artistic chalkboard menus and sells $12 kale sandwiches or whatever trendy people are eating these days.

 Say what, there is a tacqueria in here?

Oh yeah there is! And they have the best tacos ever!

Avoid avoid avoid! Don't be fooled by it's cuteness. Pescadero Country Store will charge you out the nose.


Day 3 (Pretending we have infinite days together, let's keep this vacation going).
1. We would take a secret stair walk detailed in this wonderful book:

We would walk up stair cases that look like this (this is literally 1/2 mile from my apartment!)

And see views like this once we get to the top of the staircases

So fun!
2. Then we would take our ease and go to Bette's for a late brunch:

or if we were feeling in the pie and pastry mood, swing over to Fat Apples, a bakery that sells apple pies that look like this.

3. In the evening we would revel in civic engagement and attend one of Albany's free "Music in the Park" nights. Sadly, they don't have bagpipes, but they do have this really cool band playing on Sept 21 (so if you could make it by then, that would be great). https://www.reverbnation.com/kickinthemule
From the program:
Kickin the Mule is "Old school New Orleans R&B witha  twist of blues and '50s rock 'n roll."

Aa! So much more to do, so little time. But for now dear friend, here is an idyllic three day itinerary of all the little nooks and crannies I've been wanting you to see. Come visit soon!

Music

There is this guy in my ward named David Bradford who loves music. He writes a music review every couple of months on his website and it reminds me of that Jazz class you took in college and how wonderful you were at writing music reviews. So here is his April's music review. I was so pleased at how it held my interest. https://dbradmusic.com/2016/05/02/five-quality-tracks-april-2016/

This lady popped up on my Pandora the other day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stacey_Kent
She also seems pretty cool.

In other news, I decided I'm going to write on this blog more often because I like talking to you. But not just talking to you, writing to you.

My mom is in Cuba right now. She decided she wanted to go, so she found a tour group to go with and left my dad and brother at home. Hahaha. Whoa Nelly.

Daniel and I watched Going Clear this weekend. It's a documentary about Scientology. I had mixed feelings going in. The way other people view the LDS church (I use the LDS acronym because later I talk about the Church of Scientology, so things can be confusing) has been on my mind almost obsessively because of my cousins leaving the Church, so I wasn't too eager to watch a documentary that lampoons a church and casts it in a bad light, even if it wasn't a documentary about the LDS church. But I have come to the conclusions that Scientology is actually pretty bad and also profiting unfairly off of people. But I did ask myself some questions: 1. Am I purposefully ignoring unpleasant aspects about the LDS church that are harming people currently? 2. Is my membership in the LDS church harming people? They are kinda the same question. I know the LDS church does not have a spotless history, but I believe it's progressing towards good. I don't think the LDS church is on a power trip or harming others through its practices or doctrines. So I feel like the answers to those questions are no.

I really like what you had to say about agency the other night when I was in Provo. Even leaders of the LDS church have agency and sometimes they use it to make poor decisions on the church's behalf. One reason the church isn't perfect is because God gives us humans the ability to choose. I feel people often demand a perfect institution and also members who have complete freedom to choose anything. I think those two requests are a paradox. If the institution was perfect, the members of the Church would have to be controlled. But people should not be controlled, so the Church is imperfect. Some people are displeased with this conclusion, so they abandon religion all together, which is what I feel was my cousin's thought process.

On a different note, have you listened to Hamilton? I know I'm a few months behind the Hamilton boat, but I am BLOWN AWAY. Daniel and I listened to it while we were driving to and from various places at my family reunion in Seattle. By the end I had a few tears rolling down my face and I was trying really hard not to let anyone know I was crying because we were in the car with my cousins who were not aware the most amazing piece of work had just ended. I looked over to Daniel and he was crying too. Hahahaha. Oh my gosh, but it's so good. Daniel says he feels like it's like the Book of Mormom when you are on a mission. You try and tell people you have just found the BEST THING EVER and you want them to experience it themselves. And the people you are telling this to don't understand you until they actually read the book. And then they are converted. You cannot comprehend how wonderful Hamilton is until you have listened to it yourself. Now I understand missionary work better. The musical moves me on several levels. It really evokes strong emotions of patriotism and rekindles belief in the American dream: "How does an orphan, bastard, son of a whore... become one of the most successful people in American history?" ( I couldn't remember the whole line, so I just ad libbed.) And when you think about the Revolution and the odds they were up against your heart starts to beat a little louder. And you realize that the Founding Fathers did not all get along, but they all had a dream of the United States, so they worked through their differences and accomplished something amazing. And when you think of politics today, some tears escape your eyes and you wonder how it's been reduced to bickering parties with no common goals (and Donald Trump!). And the story is so moving on a personal level. Eliza and Alexander! Phillip! Oh, it's so good.

Last thing. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Have you read it? I read it for Berkeley book club and I really liked it.

Famous

Just a thought that popped into my head. After we both pass away somebody will find this blog, and since you will have been a famous writer, our blog will be IMMORTALIZED. Similar to the Adams-Jefferson letters. The only catch in this plan is that I will not have been a famous writer, so my end of the letters might be a tad boring to your fans. But still, I'll be a tiny bit famous!

Hi

Hello. I'm full of nothing to say but I want to talk to you. So here's a blog post. 

One of the things I miss the most about living with you is that I had so many opportunities to divulge the most insignificant details of my life to you and that in itself was a lot of fun. Some examples: talking to you about people in my English class that I really didn't like (or talking about the English professor I had a mega crush on), or describing the time when this guy asked me how old I was and when I said "18" he said, "Never mind, too young." Haha. I wouldn't really go out of my way to tell people those things so nowadays they mostly are kept to myself. But I still really want to tell YOU! Because I feel like that's how we bond? We just weave this web that we both are so familiar with and the same things are funny to us, and the littlest events have some sort of significance because the are placed in this context of a million back stories. 

So just some weird little things I want to tell you that don't really solicit a Skype session or phone call, but that I would tell you if we were roommates. 

Writing this on the bus. Oh yeah, being so productive on my 30 minute commute. 

Guess who snapchatted me yesterday. Kelen Capener! I don't know if you remember him, but he's the guy in a rock band who I met in my econ classes sophomore year. He left BYU after my sophomore year so I haven't seen him for awhile. It was the weirdest thing. I rode the BART on Saturday into the city and I started thinking about how Kelen is from Walnut Creek, which is on the BART line and wouldn't that be weird if we randomly saw each other on the BART one day? And then a few days later I get this snapchat. So I think we are going to hang out this weekend. Except there is the snag of being married. It's makes socializing awkward sometimes, not because I'm in love with Kelen or anything like that. It's just weird to bring people from two different time periods together. Like, should I bring Daniel along because why would I leave him at home? But he doesn't know Kelen at all, so I don't think it would be very fun for any of us if I forced Daniel to come. Remember when I brought Lincoln to the cabin? That's how I'm imagining this could go, haha. In my mind mashing people together who don't know each other seems like a fine idea, but in practice it's awkward for all parties. 

Second thing I want to talk about. ZUMBA. Zumba is worthy of its own blog post, but we'll start with a paragraph. I have the zaniest Zumba instructor. He's this lurpy Jewish guy who's wears cotton gym shorts and a fanny pack, but he is so cool that those seem like the coolest gym clothes ever. Our hour long Zumba class turns into a crazy social experiment every week. He gets everyone so pumped up on Lady Gaga and Katy Perry that we lose all abandon. We are all just dancing like we are the last people on earth and no one is the least bit self conscious and the whole time he's screaming, "You're beautiful, you're gorgeous, you're a model! POSE POSE POSE POSE." And then we all unashamedly strike model poses for the imaginary camera. ALL OF US. It's so crazy. And then he'll make us "freestyle" around the room and hi-five 3 new people and EVERYONE DOES IT. It's like a hairspray movie. "Hi, I'm Carla," I say while I'm doing jelly-fish legs. One time a girl collapsed mid-Katy Perry song and when she was able to get up and walk herself out of the room, the class erupted in cheers. And we were all chanting, "She'll be back, she'll be back," like we were one mega dance team. No one knew her, but in a way we all knew her because we were her, dancing our hearts out almost to the point of a frenzied collapse. And the best part of all is this instructor made us dance to "Having the Time of Our Lives," and I truly felt like we were the Dirty Dancing cast at the closing scene of the movie. Magical. 

Little Thought

Here's another entry. It's just a little thought all wrapped up. After talking to you last week about how you don't feel like yourself I realized that I couldn't say to you that even after a year I feel like "myself" again. And I started to cry a little (this is something the new me does. I cry ALL THE TIME, which I can't say I'm okay with but right now it's the best way for me to deal with things) because I felt sad that I wasn't totally "myself." I was thinking "Why haven't I been able to climb back on the old horse?" But then I realized that it is impossible for me to be exactly my old self and feel exactly the way I did when I was single. Because getting married means changing. Getting married means not being by yourself all the time. Getting married means having less control over your schedule, your life and so many little details that affect you.  And you build something new of yourself in order to build something with this person you decided to marry. To make a marriage work, it's impossible for both of you to continue on exactly as you were when you were single. There are a hundred small compromises and a few large ones each of you has to make. And I realized that all this compromising and working together has definitely taken me away from my old self. But I think that is ok, because what I'm getting back is very worth it; a loving, supportive marriage. So I guess I wanted to tell you I don't know if you will feel totally like your old self, but you do feel better. I feel more normal and understood and as time goes on I'm better able to put my finger on what little parts of me I feel like I'm losing and whether I should work to keep them. And also, my life metrics have totally shifted since I've been married and that makes me feel less like my old self. Things that weren't important to me before are now important to me now, so I adjust behavior to reprioritize and those behavior changes make I feel less like your old self because I am less like my old self. I think differently now. There is always another person in my radar.  And it's a totally different state of mind than when I was single. So that's my little thought.

School of Thoughts

I've been meaning to write a blog post for a while now. This is going to be an introspective blog post, so maybe more like a journal entry but one that you get to read if you want, haha.

For the past month or so I have been feeling out of place in my econ program. I just don’t think I'm doing anything important or anything that I am especially good at. They always say your first year is the hardest, so I wonder if this feeling will pass, but I'm not sure it will. These thoughts all started with my week and a half of midterms and paper deadlines. I felt really defeated and tired and fed up. I just spent hours and hours studying for tests and racking my brains for paper ideas and then I just thought, "Why am I doing this? I am not happy right now. I don’t think what I'm doing is helping anyone. I'm stressed." And then I just couldn't stop thoughts like these. As these thoughts were going on in my  mind I had several experiences that helped me process these thoughts, but not really come to any conclusions.

The book for the Relief Society book group was A History of the Present Illness. The book was a lot of short stories put together about the life of patients, doctors and medical students. And I just related so much to the medical student chapters. Some lines like, "I took a walk to remind myself of things like fresh air, sunshine, and that conversations existed without the words hemorrhage, boils and blood.…" That was paraphrasing. I'm not a medical student, but I did this exact same thing yesterday. I just couldn't do any more homework, so I randomly strolled around the village, hoping to run into someone I  knew so I could just chat with them. There was another part of the book where the first year medical students attended a talk by a famous doctor and they did not understand a single word. That happens to me ALL THE TIME. But the thing is, I'm not doing anything noble or good or useful right now but these medical students are. They are going to a lot of hard school to become doctors. They know what they are going to do and it will be a very good thing that they are doing. Me, I'm just learning math and stuff and can't save anyone's life and won't be able to at the end of my schooling. I don't think economists are super useful in general. Economists think economists are cool, so they have made this economist smart club and I feel like the whole grad school experience is just trying to get into that club. But it the club generating any useful research? Not really. The club wins some Nobel Prizes every year, but the club isn't curing cancer here. We are just poorly explaining this world that we live in. And we argue with each other and no one agrees on anything. Some econ papers to me are interesting; the idea is novel, the data use is creative, the writing is very good, but at the end of the paper, all I can think of is how much time that paper must have taken and how it really hasn't changed the world we live in. But it got published, so that author is considered successful. And that's a career. And that just really bothers me. That doesn’t sound cool to me at all, but that is exactly what I will be doing if I stay on this path. So that is what A History of the Present Illness left me feeling. Like I could have spent these grad school years in a more useful way.

One positive turn to this process was reading The Economist. How ironic, the Economist managed to cheer me up. This past edition included "A special report on America's Latinos" and I was SO STOKED to read it. But it was kinda of depressing. Because Latinos are poor, they have high pregnancy and high school dropout rates. They don't go to college. They get low wage jobs. Their kids are more likely to be obese, many are undocumented. But they are such a huge part of our young population. Currently the number of white babies and the number of Hispanic babies being born are the same in the US. So in a few years we are going to have a lot of high school dropouts or something has to change. And then I got to thinking, I could help change it. I could figure out a way to keep Latinos in school and to help them get better jobs. This sounds like something an economist could do. And I feel like I would have more credibility than the average white person, because although I am an elite Latina in the sense that I learned English, did well in school, never worried about my parents getting deported or not having a job, and am now doing a PhD, I am more Hispanic than a white person, haha. I don't think people in academic positions or powerful businesses really concern themselves with this problem. And I think this stagnation of Hispanics is a big problem. I look at my classmates and I really don’t believe that it is possible for poor Hispanic kids to get where I'm at. Because none of my classmates, including myself, come from that background. The Spanish speakers in my cohort are rich people from South America. The white people are rich people from the US. I think my family's income is among the lower incomes represented. And my family is really blessed and comfortable. The US's Hispanic population is just not being represented in higher education. So I think there is some work to be done there and I think it's useful work and I think I could do it.

The positivity built when I went to a graduate student reception hosted by the University. The dean emphasized what a wonderful opportunity it is to study at Berkeley, especially on a fellowship. And I realized, yes, this is incredible. Someone is paying for me to go to school and Berkeley is not a bad place at all to be. And last year at this time I was jumping for joy that I got into Berkeley, so why am I just thinking this is so useless. This is an awesome opportunity, how could I have ever considered to throw it away? And of course grad school receptions are supposed to pump you up like that, but it did make me feel a lot better. It reminded me that at one point in my life I really wanted to be here, even if right now I don't like it that much.

Then I listened to this episode of This American Life about two high schools in NYC that were three miles away from each other, but drastically different. One high school was private and was mostly white, the other high school was public and in a poor neighborhood of mostly blacks and Puerto Ricans. One theme of the show that struck me was that when the poor black or Puerto Rican kids did make it to college, many failed because they felt like they didn't belong there or that they didn't deserve it and they were just afraid and too skeptical to fully take advantage of the opportunity presented to them. And I feel like this a lot. I don't feel that smart compared to my peers. Not so much now, but at the beginning of the semester I was so worried of looking stupid. I'm still way intimidated by my professors and I don't really imagine myself excelling here. It feels too difficult. Sometimes I really think I was not endowed with the brain power that I need to succeed here. But listening to this story about kids who were in college and feeling these same things made me realize that I need to stop feeling intimidated. I should just take this opportunity and run with it. I'm here. I made it, Berkeley. You let me in. So I belong here.

The last small thing was a presentation I went to about how your rank in your class affects your success in school. They were basically arguing that if two kids with the same abilities were placed in a classroom where they were they smartest kid and the least intelligent kid, the kid who felt like he was the smartest would succeed more, even though both have the same intelligence. Hopefully that made sense. A simpler way of saying it is that you always feel smarter when you around dumb people. And I thought, "I am that kid. I would much rather be the best player on the worst soccer team than the worst player on the best soccer team." And I feel like I made that switch. I used to be the best player and now I'm not, even though I'm the same person. Berkeley is just a better soccer team. So I guess I felt validated that some professor actually did research on this phenomenon. And I came away with a good tip. The professor suggested that instead of stressing your class rank, you should stress your global rank. So globally, I'm doing pretty well, although within my class I'm not above average, haha.

So sorry for that spill of thoughts and words that aren't super interesting. They are just things I really wanted to say and write down. And for some reason it makes me feel better to know that you will read this. Feel free to leave lengthy thought posts anytime.

Serial, Star Wars and Misc.

Oh Ali! Your dress is so beautiful and you are the most beautiful person inside a most beautiful dress. I think it looks so great on you! And happy two year anniversary. I can't believe it's been that long. Seriously, the attic, the big bean bag, your mission call seems so close but so far away.

Those books sound good. You know, even though Daniel also served in the South I think he would be frustrated with Henrietta's people too. I think you are good in that you take people seriously no matter what. I will put that book on my to read list. Right now I am reading To Have and Have Not. I am not loving Ernest Hemmingway so much anymore. I really liked A Moveable Feast, The Sun Also Rises, and A Farewell to Arms. The books everyone else likes, haha. But this one just seems too rough. It's trying to convey the hard scrabble life of a fisherman in Cuba, but it is too drastic. "What the heck, they just killed his mate?!" "Wait, he doesn’t have an arm anymore?" "Oh man, shot to the stomach, that is rough." I just keep flinching through the whole book. I think I have read the Martian Chronicles. Ray Bradbury, right? If that's not right, then no, I haven't read the Martian Chronicles.

This week something surprising happened to me. I hung out with another girl for a couple hours kinda spontaneously. That doesn't sound surprising at all now that I am rereading this. I didn't realize that since dating Daniel I stopped going just hanging out with people. This girl, Laura, is in my ward and we decided to get hot chocolate on our way home from campus. And then we just chatted for three hours. Haha. And it felt so weird. Really familiar, because I can totally imagine doing something like that with you, Jordan or Amy, but so unlike what I usually do now. I just didn't realize how much my social life has changed until then. And it was so exciting to have someone who thought I was cool enough to just hang out for a few hours.

Star Wars. Daniel and I finished watching them in chronological order. I love Star Wars. That's all.

Serial. I finished it this weekend. I think Adnan is guilty. What do you think? Also, do all teenagers do drugs and have sex? So it's normal not to blink an eye at that, we just assume everyone does drugs and has sex and then decide whether or not they are a good kid from there up? That was surprising to me. Aaaand I really hope my kids don't do that stuff.

I hope to talk to you later today!