A Little Something Sweeney: Family. Friends. Fiction. Food.

Thanks Bon Jovi, for starting us off right. That's right, folks, this week, I will have successfully completed half of the mission. Please, hold the applause. I can't hear it anyway. Part of me is like, "what, where did that go?" The other part thinks, "I have (get) to do this all over again before I can eat a Tina's frozen burrito again (yes, that is THE only reason I'm excited to go home). Nine months feels pretty legit though. In two more transfers, I'll have a whole year, and then it's just ice cream and sugar cookies from there. You learn to measure time very differently on the mission. Immediately after turning nine months, I will start to say, "I'm working for 10." It sounds super goal oriented, but really, it just brings me personal comfort. So, how will I celebrate the big day? (the 27th). My companion Hermana Bryant and I will be ordering a pizza through our mission grandparents, the Browns. They're the go-to guy ...

So, I´ve heard it said that small and simple means can bring about great things. Well, I hope that´s true, because sometimes even small and simple is hard to come by. Being without is not a feeling I´m used to, but the funny thing is, I used to think of myself as taking things in stride. I mean, my family acquired a TiVo a mere few months before I left for college. Then I went to college, and- No TiVo! I had to GET UP to change the channel! The indignities of life were many. But the thing is, I got used to it. Eventually, I just knew that when a commercial came on, I couldn´t fast forward my way out of it. So I started to make good use of my time during those trying periods of overly-played promotions and got up to get a snack. It´s amazing how ingenious we can be when duty calls. And now, once again, I find myself being called to the front lines. I am left to ponder how I can make a mountain out of a molehill. I have to accomplish something big or at the very least, SOMETHING, with li...

Well, I am so full to bursting with things to say, I just don´t know where to start. Or maybe that overly-satisfied sensation comes from the fact that I´ve spent the past week ringing in the Semana Santa with an unhealthy amount of habichuelas con dulce (sweet beans). And I do mean A LOT of sweet beans. It may make me a sadist (it doesn´t), but it was amusing for me to watch my companion child try and choke them down each time. She is not what you´d call a fan. But then at Christmas time, I was the one suffering with the espeguettis, so we´ll call it fair. Anyway, according to my good friend Romeo Santos (the only music artist that my part of Azua ever seems to feel like blaring at night, morning, and all times in between), The Kings... stays king. Yes sir! I think Romeo might know some English because he loves to throw phrases of my native tongue into every one of his songs. Some of them make more sense than others. And I know for close to a fact that he did not make up the one abo...

Well, from what I remember of American culture, I like the band, but to them, I am not currently referring. Essentially, what we got goin’on in our district is a parade of the pale and pasty. We are an all-American district! This is my first experience in a district without any Latinos in it, so I’m sorta just letting myself enjoy it. If I absolutely feel the need to express myself using some English then by George, I can do it. As Prince and Ms. Spears would gladly attest to, that’s my prerogative. Just to let you know, every Tuesday we meet as a district to discuss how we can better our part of the mission and help our investigators. And whenever we’ve had Latins, the conversations have always been more, er, spicy? The Latins I’ve met have not even the hint of a problem expressing themselves and there opinions, so if there was ever a problem or a situation that arose during a meeting, they’d just let out how they thought it should best be handled, and that was that. Hmmmmmm… Which ...

Well, if you have never heard of the more-than-slightly provocative musical Rent before, consider this your crash course. It is a story of seizing the day and enjoying every moment of life. And yes, there´s your plot about gay relationships and drugs. But I will focus more on the former. Let me know if I veer off track. Anyway, maybe it´s the fact that I´m weird or that I´ve been living in a different culture for a little bit but it has become clearer and clearer to me that America is a little sick with a fever, and no, the prescription is not more cowbell. The real problem is how we measure, and the yardsticks we use to do so. Once again returning to Rent, in the most well-known of the numbers (“525,600 Minutes”), the characters question, “how do you measure a year? A life?” What questions! How do we? In numbers, numbers, NUMBERS! Why are we always measuring our happiness this way, especially when so doing makes us miserable? Another great question. I´m full of ‘em toda...