Juan of Words

A Twitter Party con Benefits! Close Even If Far Away #CricketContigo

You know it’s a party when the piñata gets thrown into the mix.  Excuse me!  I mean a pachanga.  That’s what I’ll be co-hosting next week as the Only and First hombre to have ever been invited to soltarse el pelo and tweet-chat with the ladies of Latina Bloggers Connect.  What an honor!  Though, I’m still a little confused as to why they chose this schmuck to be their primero.  Como quien dice, don’t ask questions you don’t want to hear the answers to.  Mejor me quedo en el who knows?

But enough about me!  The pachanga, or virtual chat on Twitter, is really about a great topic: Cerca aunque lejos / Close even if far away, the painstaking process of being separated from your loved ones, but the hope of always feeling close to them no matter how physically far away you might be.  Growing up, this reality was always just a part of our lives.  Por suerte, my parents and us were never separated.

They unfortunately weren’t so lucky.

And sadly in those days it was almost impossible to communicate regularly with their familia.  It was expensive!  And in our rancho only two people had phones that worked cuando les daba la gana.  Half the time service was just unavailable, like the water and light too.  But we made do.  That’s why it was really cool to learn about the new things that Cricket is doing to bring families closer to one another across borders!  They’ll be telling us all about it at the fiesta.

And the mix of hosts isn’t too shabby either – joining me for the convo are @CuponeandoLive, @ohmariana, @spanglishbaby, @latinaish, and myself (@JuanofWords)  – the platica will be moderated by @lbconnect with special guest @micricket.

Just by showing up, you’ll qualify to win some pretty great prizes, including the aforementioned piñatas.  But you have to RSVP!

So sign up and see you there on : Tuesday, November 15th, 2011 at 7pm-8:30pm EST/6-7:30pm CST on Twitter. Hashtag: #CricketContigo.

(Read more about the chat and prizes here and then go HERE to RSVP to the #CricketContigo Twitter party!)

Disclosure: This is not a paid or sponsored post. My participation in the Twitter party itself will be paid. This post conforms to WordPress.com Terms of Service. As always, all opinions are my own.

Home Is Where The Heart Is

There’s something about visiting one’s parents that always makes us feel at home.  Even when we’re long gone, with homes, lives, and families of our own, nothing quite compares to the feeling of showing up at your parents casa and feeling the familiarity of home.

It doesn’t even matter that the house they’re living in now isn’t the one you grew up in, or in my case, the half dozen we lived in growing up.  There are still the familiar little things everywhere that remind us of years gone by… far too many of if you ask me.  Anca mis papas it’s the pictures on the wall, the ones where we were all thinner, younger, with less wear and tear, bad clothes, hair, and all; the costuras on this table or that one, the ones my mother or one of her sisters embroidered; the vitrina chocked full of papers and random mementos, from the decorative plate that I gave to my mom one year for Mother’s Day, and which is now broken, but she refuses to throw away, to important letters and documents that she’s holding on to for one of us to look over when we come by, everything but the fancy china that’s supposed to go in there; to the smell of her towels in the restroom; and of course all of the food.

Dios mío, all of the delicious food!

Nobody walks into my mother’s home and walks out hungry.  If you do that’s only because you want too.

It doesn’t matter how much we might have just eaten.  When we walk in the door the immediate second question after ¿como les ha ido? is always ¿tienen hambre?  ¿Quieren comer?  Aunque no tenga hambre I never say no.  Instead I’ll nod or just walk straight into the kitchen to look under every lid to see what’s in each pot.  On some level, literally going through my own little treasure hunt.  Nothing beats finding chile con queso or homemade fried chicken, still my all time favorites.

The only thing that can make these visits even better is having the rest of my siblings there too.  Every time we get together it’s like time has just resumed, and while we’re all un poquito diferentes now, maybe a little more grown up… or out, however, you choose to look at it (no offense intended, lol), we pick up just where we left off the last time, right where we started out to begin with, en la casa de mis padres.

I’m so grateful for this!

¡Tan, Tan! & the Winners Are…

Drum roll please!  First and foremost let me say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who participated in the first ever Juan of Words Online Halloween Costume Contest!!  I could have never imagined how big of a success you all were going to make it.  In all, 80 entries were received from everywhere in the United States… and even Mexico, ¡Guau!  And the number of people y’all rallied to vote, also amazing!  So yes, I am truly grateful to each and everyone of you who participated in this contest, in any way.  I’d also like to give a giant shout out and and ¡AJUUA! to my definite better half, Anjelica (my wife)… who always has the most creative concepts to share with me, and of course to Ford en Español who made this contest possible with their sponsorship.

Y’all know I’m one broke-a&$ Meskan, LOL!

So sin más borlote… here are the results, and more importantly, I know this is what everyone wants to see, the winners of the Juan of Words Online Halloween Costume Contest:

First Place – Shirley with the Evil Cat Entry

Second Place – Joseph with the Zombified Entry

Third Place – Brooke with the Punk Fairy Entry

Congratulations again ladies and gent!!  I hope you all had as much fun with this contest as I did.  As I had specified on the contest outline, the winners walk away with 1st Place – $300, 2nd Place – $125, 3rd Place – $75 Gift Cards!  Enjoy!!

For everyone else, your entries were so amazingly creative and fun that I couldn’t help myself.  I wanted to do something special for all of you, and have created the below Spooktacular video with all of your entries.  Hope you guys enjoy it!!

Thank you once again, and stay tuned for more fun hopefully in the near future.

De Paisano a Paisano: Una Calavera – Day of The Dead

So today my good friend Sue Valencia dedicated a special calavera just for me – in return, she asked for nothing more than a calavera in her honor.  Now if you’re thinking the more traditional painted-white-artistic-rendering-of-a-skull, I’m sorry to disappoint, but I’m just not artistically talented in that way.  The calavera we’re talking about here is of the other variety: the traditional satirical poems written in Mexico to commemorate the Day of the Dead.  These poems are about the living and more often than not describe how the object of the calavera will die.  Eerie-sounding I know, but these works of the written word are meant to honor and celebrate the living while poking fun, together, at the inevitable: ¡la muerte!  Personally, I’m not that comfortable with the idea of death, and so this humble offering on El Día de los Muertos is more a lighthearted dedicatoria to all who can relate.

I hope you guys enjoy it!

De Paisano a Paisano: Una Calavera         

They say we’re the problema.  Los burros que no entienden.
They kick us out, and we come right back.
They build a fence; we swim around or underneath it…
Unos nos la brincamos.  Otros, we just walk on straight through it.

They say we’re inconvenient.
We say they’re inconsiderate.
They say we’re uneducated.
We say “dame una chanza please!”

Una chanza pa’ demostrarles lo que podemos.
Una chanza pa’ demostrarles que somos luchadores.

We’re not on Main Street or Wall Street.
We’re on streets like Macario García and Cesar Chávez.
Pounding the ground every day, batallando to put food on the table…

Every day!

We’re cooking, cleaning, working outside…
Doing whatever we have to.
Going without, Doing with less.
Making it however we have to.

Un día cuando ya no estemos,
You’re going to look around and miss us.
Los burros that always kept their heads down,
That never said a word.
La burla de todos: El Mentado Sleeping Giant!

Los burros that always said “yes” and never called your bullshit!

Pero ¡ojo!
Los días ya están contados,
And as they say in your americano,
Nothing lasts forever!  

Te lo digo de paisano a paisano.