Summer has been good to me; after graduating in May with my Masters Degree in Spanish Linguistics, I've decided to play the role of house husband. That's right, I'm a "mantenido"; my wife is making all the cash for the family, God bless her. Niko, Orlando and I have bonded over trips to Chicago and lazy mornings when I pretend to not let them watch TV, but then let them do so so I can sleep a while later. The biggest decision of the day usually rests on whether to stay holed up, playing Strat-o-matic Baseball, or to go the gym. Surprisingly, the gym wins more often than not. Today is the first relatively cool day in a couple weeks; I laid in front of a fan and its open window for an hour and listened to Niko and Orlando play cars before deciding to finally start this damn blog, which I'm hoping will be a good transition into moving towards the gym...
Not that anyone really gives a damn, but in recent weeks I've been inspired by an old friend, Nicole Van Velzen, and her writing, and decided I wanted to emulate her. This, in and of itself, is not all that unusual; I've often emulated Nicole in my life. I think I first decided I may want to start a blog a month or two ago and as the gap between thinking about doing something and actually doing it goes, I think this is about par for the course. (Actually, it's much better; most things I think about doing are lost in the large amount of empty space between my ears...). The title of my blog, as astute Venezuelan readers may gather, refers to the time I spent living in Merida, Venezuela, and though it composed a small percentage of my actual life, I like to thing of myself as half-Venezuelan anyway. I'll leave that for the Venezuelans to determine. Anyway, I think that more often than not my writing will sort of reflect on the dynamic of a gringo turned latino who remains very gringo but more latino, except when I feel more gringo. Got that? Sometimes I'll write in English, sometimes in Spanish. Sometimes I'll do what we linguists like to call "code-switching", and ramble in both languages. Because make no mistake about it, if this blog will do anything, it will ramble. (I'm still having trouble calling myself a "blogger". It sounds so self-important). I'll mostly deal with serious subjects on here, except when I deal with trivial ones. There'll be a good deal of political commentary, and baseball (because God knows those are the two subject matters to which not enough digital words are devoted to). I'm pretty sure the NSA will be watching, so be careful if you decide to read...they'll be watching you too, then.
The best part of this whole gig?? No more long, winding "notes" on Facebook to bother people with. Now if you want me to bother you, you'll have to link here. Don't say you weren't warned.
Besos, Mark
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