Pre-Departure Preparations

Hello Everyone!

Moving out of La Jolla
So, I've been spending the last few minutes in my apartment in La Jolla as I pack up my car with the last of my things and will soon be heading off to San Bernadino to visit my sister in the hospital before I make the long trek up to Atascadero to visit my parents before my flight to India at 5AM on July 5th.

Vaccinations
I had a bit of an ordeal getting vaccinated, but, I finally managed to get Typhoid, Yellow Fever, and Hepatitis A. I also received a prescription for malaria and a special prescription for the very feared and unwanted extreme cases of diarrhea and stomach "problems" that the other UCSD students and I must, unfortunately, prepare ourselves for getting.

Pre-trip Conversations with Indians and International Students
I keep noticing all of the collegiate Indians that are in San Diego and then I wind up talking to them about my upcoming volunteer project. The women have been more than supportive and it is such a joy to know that I am going to Dharamsala with the blessings of Indian doctorate students. And, after the heart of my gregarious and talkative grandfather Bill, I struck up a conversation with an Indian who is the leasing manager for the apartment in La Jolla that I hope to move into when I return from my summer travels. Our conversation started with India and ended with making comparisons between the concentration of wealth and overwhelming amount of poverty seen in India and Mexico.

Long Over-Due Appreciation for America
As I am quite hard to categorize because I have a light complexion and appear completamente juera but still can communicate well enough in Spanish, in addition to being a Mexican-American with roots all over the world, I am the quintessentially perfect example of what it is to be "American." As a country that has been founded by immigrants from all over the world, citizens of the United States are multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-lingual. I pray that the United States continues to respect its very own essence and not only embrace cultural diversity but also cultivate and encourage it.

My Inevitable Soap-Box-Cameo Paragraph
We live in an international world and every country is interconnected through technology, politics, immigration; and most importantly, we are all connected through our shared humanity. India, China, North America, Africa, Central and Southern America, East Asia, the Middle East, Australia and Europe may be geographically separated land masses but there is a borderless flow of knowledge, technology, tourists, immigrants and refugees. As a Mexican American with grand-parents and great-grandparents spread out across the world (Mexico, Spain, England, Germany, Denmark, and Native Northern American soil to name a few), I am just one of the many millenials who exemplifies through the very blood flowing through me just how international this world has become. As such, I find it crucial to address the distribution of poverty and various concentrations of wealth across all of them--for they are directly tied to each and every one of us, whether we are aware of it or not.

So, as I step off of my Soap-Box, here's a hearty cheer to the young at heart, the hopeful and perhaps disillusioned generation that's dedicated to social change and proactive lifestyles that demand justice for all of humanity....