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tontito
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Name: Jeremy
Birthday: 12/14/1982
Gender: Male
Interests: God, Spanish, Guitar, SKI, Dr. Seuss, Ice Cream, photography, lawn gnome adventures, art, singing, dancing, reading, learning constantly, people, latin music, PPG, thrifting, Mr. Bean, seeking eternity in temporality
Expertise: creating awkward pauses, eating massive quantities of ice cream, breathing, double-winking, finding Waldo, sneezing,
Occupation: Not quite professional.
Industry: Prayer-Warrior
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  Tontito
MSN: tonto_el_hombre@hotmail.com
Member Since:
2/13/2005
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| I honestly forgot I had this until someone recently left me a message. If anyone still reads this, I'm still teaching (strangely) since I never forsaw this before graduating from college. I'll be pursuing my master's in Education and Spanish after Christmas. If you'd like to see what takes up most of my time aside from work and church activities, go to: http://www.srjordan.wordpress.com ¡Hasta luego! | | |
| Life is going well for the most part. I've been praying about my future
lately. But for now I see being here, in Milan, is important. We'll see
if God changes anything as of May.
Here's my first attempt at video editing with the camera Joel gifted me. Thanks bro.
Tonight, before Isaí's dad leaves for North Carolina, we recorded a few songs in my apartment for fun.
This
is called "Un día a la vez" ("One Day At a Time") and is performed by
Isaí's dad (Demetrio), his cute grandmother (Lina) and myself.
We're
playing around with harmonies and so it went ok. We're not planning on
busting out a record. But it's fun to sing with other people!
This
one is called "En el hogar, en el hogar" ("At home, at home"). It's
performed by Demetrio, Lina, and Isaí's mom (Irma) in the background
Have a blessed rest of the weekend. | | |
| so at my Hispanic church, people aren't always the most tonally gifted when singing. I've gotten used to it. It's not to say that all Hispanics or most have problems singing. On the contrary, when backpacking through Panama I met some kids from a youth group and there were some girls in the group who sang amazingly well (harmonies and everything). For some reason though, the people at my church have always had problems with intonation.
I recognize that it isn't important to God as the heart is most important. But it is always neat when we have people who start coming and they have been gifted with tonality. Such a thing happened. Isaí's grandmother and father came to visit in August and this past Sunday, they both sang a hymn together. Isaí's grandmother is the cutest old lady and as I listened, I leaned over to Carlitos and amazed told him "SHE'S DOING THE HARMONY!"
So tonight I went over to Isaí's to pick up he and Carlitos so we could all hang out a little bit and after eating some typical Salvadorian dish (chuco), Demetrio (Isaí's dad) was showing me the table/desk he is building for me for my computer. I figured it would be neat to give him work since he's visiting on vacation and back in El Salvador he is a carpenter. So this could give him something to do and also I could get a handmade piece of furniture out of a skilled craftsman who doesn't necessarily know the exchange rate of his labor.  Eh? Just kidding on the last part. It's kind of a double-win though.
But anyways, we were sitting around and I was all excited when I started talking to Isaí's grandma! I blurted out quite pumped up "¡Hermana! ¡Yo no sabía que Ud. podía cantar en segunda voz!" ('I didn't know you could harmonize!') to which she told me how she used to sing a lot with other women at church and she would always sing the harmony. Well, so I asked her if sometime soon she and I could do a song together and then it occurred to me that Demetrio could play guitar and sing the melody, she could sing a harmony, and I could sing another harmony! It would be a treat! So we practiced a song impromptu and it went pretty well. It's so neat that in the Hispanic Christian context, we're almost always ready to sing a song that's upbeat about/to God with a guitar.
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| I think human reasoning is interesting and yet obviously inconsistent. Today I was watching a video on Youtube about Brad and Angelina Jolie staying together and the person showed photos of the couple while playing some romantic song about love. After watching a bit of it, trying to understand I closed the window and asked myself and Felipe (my kitten, who doesn't respond, but since he lives with me I inherently personify him), "who cares?" Honestly, who cares if Brad and Angelina stay together? He hasn't stayed with however many prior females he has been with and she hasn't stayed with however many prior males that she has been with. But what occurred to me after thinking about it more was not as much these two people as it was the idea of love. As our society continues to crumble under its morally relativistic humanist self, people will continue to find despair in the particulars (those things that are not absolute). There is no hope in the finite. Perhaps there is momentary relief, but the key word is 'momentary.' Some people choose to believe in the concrete and attach infinite value to it. We can see this in cultures that have created idols and submitted to their rule. But if I break the idol, what happens to their 'god'? Others might choose to believe in something intangible so as to be less inclined to be proven false, or because it's harder to really define, therefore easier to defend as an absolute. For example, the utilitarian might talk of the 'good of man'. His ideal will be striving for the 'good of man' making sure that whatever decision is made, ultimately it leads to this 'good'. It occurred to me that with Brad and Angelina, they were merely (whether they wanted to be or not), puppets of of this abstract absolute people have contorted known as 'love.' With so many things going on in our world, it doesn't seem to be improving (not that I ever expect it to as is). With our technological advancements alone we might prove our society's progress, yet people still starve in foreign countries. Somehow along the way, we find ourselves able to dissassociate ourselves from others because of this technology and really are probably coming closer to Ayn Rand's idea about everyone looking out for themselves being the best society. The closer we get to that though, the further we mechanize and disintigrate the rest of the people on this world. People become a means to an end, with no apparent worth other than how I might continue to use them for my 'common good' no longer for the rest of 'man' no longer for any high purpose except my own. We all, in essence, become little, fickle, gods in this sense.* I don't know about anyone else, but if I am the god of this world or a god in general, the world is way more screwed up than I thought and I can't live with that kind of worldview. As with myself, I do see in humanity a desire to believe in to better frame their life and perhaps cope with the chaos of this existence (although we might approach it differently). So this Youtube user, I see, made this video because they wanted so badly for Brad and Angelina to get back together because it would prove something that our culture continues to fail at. It would prove that 'true love' isn't simply an idea. It would prove that all the things that the chick flicks try to sell us about 'love' would actually be true if this couple were to stay together. Here's the thing though, I, like this person believe in an absolute love. However, I am not sure though that man is capable of experiencing/conveying/feeling this absolute, as a particular. If Brad and Angelina eventually split up, albeit sad in the sense of further break ups in Hollywood, I can't say it would surprise me. In Hollywood, I don't know that I see much of an understanding of 'love' through the various marriages and unions, etc. It's sad what 'love' has come to, resting on the shoulders of Brad and Angelina. *I was reading recently in Calvin's Institutes about how man does have a footprint of God in him and it can be seen in many ways, one of which since man tries to make himself a deity (or thinks of himself that way). | | |
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