I love stories like this ...

When William Kamkwamba’s parents couldn’t afford the $80 yearly tuition for his school he sneaked into the classroom anyway, until his teachers found out about it a few weeks later. Without hope of being able to go back to school, William continued his education by teaching himself, borrowing books from the small library at the elementary school in his village. One day, when he was 14, he went to the library and came across a fifth-grade science book called Using Energy. In his autobiography, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (co-written with Bryan Mealer), William wrote, “The book has since changed my life.”

After reading the book, William figured out how to make a windmill out of found objects and how to harness the wind for energy. This changed everything for him and his family.

The fact that William overcame his extreme circumstances; starvation, a lack of education, life in a country plagued with drought, famine, poverty, disease, a corrupt government and low expectations gives me so much hope for people that can think creatively - this is so inspiring!

Forget the Stereotypes ...

Coming up quick, on the first weekend of October, Tijuana will celebrate the arts, culture and music of it's artists at an event called Entijuanarte at the Centro Cultural. One of the goals of the event is to demonstrate another face of the city of Tijuana and to be a meeting point for the cultural and artistic diversity of the Baja California and the Southern California region.

By the way, I love the tagline they are using in their advertising;

Discover a new world of art and culture at your doorstep, but be warned; You will never think of this city in the same way.

"Arte es Poder" translates to "Art is Power". I think art has to power to give sight to the blind. What I mean by this, is I took a tour of the videos on youtube and more than 90% paint a picture that TJ is all about beer, hookers, drugs, violence and quite an ugly place. I don't agree with that picture. Sure it's dirty, yes it's a poor country, yes there's some violence, but name a place in the U.S. that doesn't have violence too. I think we need to be looking to see the beauty that is just beneath the surface. It's starting to boil up to the top now and I'm so happy to see events like Entijuanarte, that expose us to the emerging cultural revolution happening in Tijuana, Mexico. I'm hoping that Jon and I can make it down with the girls that weekend, I'll let you know how it goes.

And for the topping this little piece o' mexican pie, I have a wonderful little interview with Tanya Aguiniga. She's a Los Angeles based furniture designer/maker raised in Tijuana, Mexico. Tanya’s work is informed by border experiences: the interconnectedness of societies, the beauty in struggle and the celebration of culture.



I say "You Go Chica!"

** If you can't see the video from within Facebook, you can watch it on my blog at www.sophiacarolina.blogspot.com or you can just click here **

if you need a link to get more info;
Si hables español, click here
OR if you need an English synopsis click here to check it out **

What do you want? ...

Psalm 23: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

Hmm, if that's true, which of course it is. Then why do I want what I think I need? Maybe I don't really "need" the things I want. Maybe if I saw it as; "I won't lack the important things God knows I really need" and the other stuff is just my human thoughts mucking things up.

Let me give you a little perspective on where I'm at with all this. Right now we're living here in San Diego as part of an intentional community. Oh geez! Stop rolling your eyes, it's not what you think. It's not a commune. We're actually part of a mentoring/coaching community that we are helping to lead, but that's even harder to explain, so for the sake of getting this blog post out of my head and put into words, I'm just going to go with "intentional community".

Last week, as a part of a book we are reading together, we were asked to list the words that came to mind when we hear the word "community". I must admit I struggled a bit with being honest. The first words that wanted to fly out of my mouth were bad hairdos and weird clothing (but that's just too much TV coverage of the wackos that had 400 kids taken away in a raid on their ranch), but what I ended up saying out loud was "challenging". A few years back, I would have ran away as fast as I could at the thought of living in a "community"; when I was in high school one of my sisters went off to live in a Kibbutz (that did not end well) and I had many pre-conceived ideas of what living in community might look like. So far, this experience is not stereotypical.

And now that it's been almost a year into the adventure, I am starting to see my role here a little more clearly and my definition of "community" is changing. One of the things I've struggled the most this past year is with giving myself away and keeping my love tank full. I saw a great quote recently, it went something like this:

"In order to receive love and acceptance, you only need to give it away."

Think about that for a moment. Isn't that so opposite to how our culture stockpiles away everything for ourselves? That's what I've been doing emotionally and relationally. I've had to dig deep to get to the heart of this one. I suppose it's a good thing to realize something isn't right.

The truth is that I need to be needed and wanted, but really, unless I need and want others I'm not going to get what I want. I'm still thinking this one through and as a part of that conversation with myself I'm going to re-read a great book that I went through about 10 years ago, called "Search for Significance", maybe it will help me remember who I am and why I want the things that I do.

So in celebration of my "aha" moment today, I share with you this fabulous vintage Cheap Trick song that I so can relate to today. Enjoy!



*** if you are coming in via FB, to see the video you'll need to visit my blog by clicking here OR just watch the video on youtube

Another movie on my must see list ...

Right off the top, I have to say I love the 60's setting and the soundtrack! It's received rave reviews at Sundance and now it's at the Toronto International Film Festival and continuing to create quite a buzz.

One reviewer said;

The story is adapted from Lynn Barber’s memoirs by British novelist Nick Hornby. Jenny is a top A-level student who has hopes of attending university at Oxford in the early 1960’s, but she meets a charismatic older man (Peter Sarsgaard) who offers an exciting alternative of seeing and experiencing life. An Education is a beautiful film about the loss of innocence. It’s extremely smart, sharply written, and almost feels like a of the classic films from the 1960’s.

I'm definitely going to just have to watch it for myself and see if I agree. Chances are it will be worth checking out!

This makes me want a Wii ...

This is an awesome piece of advertising for a new Beatles music game. The site says the game is compatible with PS3, XBOX and Wii, but since I don't have any of them I'll just have to enjoy the video clips. How cool! Check out the Beatles Rock Band website for more cool stuff like free wallpapers and icons.



**if you are trying to watch this via facebook, you can click here to watch it on youtube or here for my blog**

Back to school ...

The girls are back to their studies, and I'm back to teaching them. After being home-schooled for 7 years, Emily (my oldest) has moved up to middle school and is now attending a hybrid home-school academy. As a 7th grader, she attends twice a week and then does her studies at home the other 3 days. It's a pretty great program and the perfect size for easing into a more traditional school setting in preparation for attending High Tech High School in a couple of years. It's working out so much better than I expected, she really plugged in quickly and is already making friends and straight A's. Nat & Stef are still homeschooling with me, with the same goal to attend High Tech H.S. So far, we're off to a good start to the 09/10 school year. We're still doing Math, Grammar, Writing, and following The Well Trained Mind classical education module and enjoying a year of Early American History and lots of fun reading.

My favorite subject this semester, is Earth Science. In addition to some fun field trips and nature walks, we'll be watching lots of fun videos and performing our own experiments. As part of our studies we are covering geology. So as part of my research I came across this fun video to get the girls excited about understanding the periodic table elements. What a creative idea, I hope you like it and share it with your kids!


**if you are reading this via FB, you have to go to my blog at www.sophiacarolina.blogspot.com OR click here to watch it on youtube