Tristin works forwith the Marketing and Communications Department at Naropa University (He's officially a contractor now with his partner under the name Hat Tip Industries, Ltd. --T). Last weekend the Art Therapy Department held a 48 hour paint-a-thon where teams of students would take shift painting for 48 hours straight to raise funds for art therapy in South America. Tristin was in charge of getting some video footage for this event. I just tagged along for the heck of it.
I love Boulder but MAN OH MAN it is a strange place!!
World, meet the festive Art Therapy Students of Naropa University:
Haha. Priceless!
I had to be discreet about taking this picture. I didn't want to seem obvious at all. I got into my "super sleuth" mode and took pics with my camera phone hiding behind my book as I was pretending to read in the corner.
WOW~ this brings back some memories for us. I remember spending hours designing this in Photoshop with Tristin. That was 5 YEARS AGO!! Where does the time go? We'll be married for 5 years come December. Craziness!
I just had to post this for memories sake. Also, If I ever DO lose the CD with this on, at least it'll forever remain on our blog.
Now all I need to find is the video of Tristin's proposal and I'll be even more happy. Can you believe I cant find that anywhere? Yeah, I wanna kick me too!
Thank you World Wide Web for storing all my memorabilia!
-Lived in 2 different countries -Lived in 4 different States in the USA -Went to 4 different high school in the period of one year -Had my first Thanksgiving meal -Experience my first proper winter (with snow and everything) -Hated my first winter -Lost an accent and replaced it with an new one -Moved 11 times and lived in 11 different homes -Graduated from high school -Went to University -Got my first car -Crashed my first car -Won the Greencard Lottery (technically, my dad won it which automatically got my mom and myself a greencard too) -Spent $28,000 in lawyers fees and applications papers to not get kicked out of this country -Became an illegal immigrant for the period of 1 week (I had to wait for my Greencard papers to get processed, in the mean time my visa had expired) -Found and married my best friend and soul mate -Started my own business at the age of 20 (the first time in Utah, the second in Colorado) -Survived our apartment flooding -Became an American Citizen
Durban Airport, South Africa. September 22nd, 2002
That is the only picture I have of the day I left South Africa. Now just over 9 years later I find myself inside the office building of the U.S Department of Homeland Security Pledging an Oath of Allegiance to the United States, being told I'm now lawfully an American Citizen and watching a Video of Barrack Obama congratulating me on my new Citizenship.
Who knew that today in Colorado, 50 people from 30 different countries swore an Oath to become American citizens? Cheers were cried, a few tears shed and lots of hugs broke out as we were all dismissed and congratulated with a piece of paper proving our new nationality.
To my left sat a man from Nigeria and to my right sat a man from Albania, both dressed in fine suits and shoes. For a second I thought I had missed the newsletter telling me about the dress code. All I wore was my make up from the day before, slightly combed bed hair and a sweater with tights. Frankly, I was uber-ticked that I had to wake up at 6:50am for this ceremony and spent the hour and a half's drive to Homeland Security griping about it. I was humbled when I walked into the office and saw families and friends of families excited for this eventful day. Only then did I realize that today WAS a really big day for all of us. We had all struggled for several year to get the honor of saying our oath and being called American Citizens.
Grumpy, sleep-deprived Juanique was now humbled and slightly excited Juanique. I even wished I had taken time to put some make-up on. I guess the struggle to get to this point wasn't really fought for by me but by my parents. So I have them to thank for this day. I didn't really understand why they were so excited for this day to come. I didn't even tell them I was doing it until I had an hours worth of Stop-Start traffic to endure prior to my ceremony. When my parents got sworn in 2 months ago they threw a big party with all their South African friends and celebrated becoming Americans. They are the ones who struggled with the lawyers and IRS and the people who submitted our paperwork. They are the ones who left their jobs and all they had owned, earned and worked for to come to the States, where as I was just a lucky recipient of their sacrifices.
Thanks Mom and Dad!
So maybe if I was there with them getting sworn in I would have cried in gratitude for all their hard work and sacrifice in getting their children to the USA. If Tristin was there I may have smiled a little more about it and shared with him my hopes and hesitations of this day. However, what I could do was celebrate this life altering day with 50 different strangers from 30 different countries. For just an hour of our lives we were all comrades in that room that had shared similar struggles is different countries and were now at the same pinnacle in our lives.
This morning I woke up a South African, and now this afternoon I blog as a New American Citizen. Maybe on the 4th of July I'll actually get in the American spirit and start wearing Red, White and Blue.
As some of you know, this past week Tristin was away in New York for a Mindfulness Based Relapse Prevention Seminar. So I went to Utah to work and see my family. What I didn't know when I booked my flight was that my mom would be away in Spain and my dad in California... So it was just me, Dessi the dog and thankfully Conryd, Aly and Mr Evan.
Tristin seemed to really like his seminar. There were doctors from all over the world and the USA there to learn these techniques. When he spoke with some of the other dr's there (these dr's having spent thousands and thousands of dollars or seminars and traveling all over the world for them) about what they thought of this training, one of them said that it was probably one of the best seminars she had been to (and she'd been to a lot).
*WARNING, I'm going to get all mushy and "my husband is so wonderful" on you. Brace yourself*
I do have to say I am so proud of him for choosing the program he's in at Naropa and for learning all he can about mindfulness based techniques for therapy. He's going to be one heck of a therapist one day and he's going to help a lot of people. I am so proud of him for it (even though his schooling and seminars are costing me a lot of money....I mean US a lot of money).
One of the training halls at the seminar.
As for me, I got to spend some time with this heart breaker! I'm a lucky Aunty!
if you have a short attention span (like myself) go to 45 seconds into the video. That's when he gets really cute
Last night, Mr T and I went to the Longmont Festival.
We aren't really ones to go out and do festival type things (we can get a little reclusive sometimes) but I'm glad we did this one. It was simple and entertaining enough for me to stick around.
When looking back on some of the video I took I wanted to KICK MYSELF IN THE PANTS!!
Heres why:
Did anyone else see dancing Hippie Man??? No, I'm not referring to the big fake dancer, I'm referring to the guy with long hair and in a pink shirt dancing in the first 4 seconds of my video. Look in the bottom left hand corner!
Why on EARTH didn't I get more video of HIM!!!! GGGGAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!! Great opportunity lost forever! Goodbye Dancing-Hippie-Man.
Moving on....
Mr T and I stuck around to watch a fire show. I won't post all the video I took because even I don't have the attention span to sit through them all. Tristin did make a very invaluable comment to me while watching the show, however:
"Remember, in order to turn something mundane into something interesting, just add fire! So you should advertise Fire Massage!"
there's something about fire....It just makes things so much more alluring.
For the record, I will not be doing fire massage.
Lastly, we ended our evening with contemporary music in the background, tuna melts and salad from SunRose Cafe.
Ya know, I would never live in Longmont, but they do have some really cool things going on in that town.
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