For My Awesome Cousin, Stephen
This past year has been a big one for many reasons. For instance, this time last year I was studying for my final papers and exams from my first semester in grad school. Thankfully, that is over even though it happened in a bit of a blur.

Then in July, the University of Chicago sent me to Costa Rica to conduct ethnographic research for my thesis project entitled "Home Bodies: Space, Place, and Race in one Costa Rican Household." I took about a bazillion pictures, spent hours interviewing, and basically had the time of my life on the school's dollar. All in all a good experience.

Upon returning from Costa Rica, I realized that my money was running out. The grant money from Uchicago wasn't going to last much longer and I needed to stay in Chicago to finish my thesis and be close to my advisor. So, I set out to get my job back at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music and then began searching for more viable employment. After a bunch of mishaps and aimless desperation, I ended up interviewing for a job under a man named Donald Coxe.

Don turned out to be a wonderful, kind-hearted, genius who happens to be a very popular and influential global financial strategist... in Canada. The work has little to do with my ambitions for the future, but he is a very nice man, willing to pay me much more than I've ever been paid before to do a job I'm pretty overqualified for (printing, faxing, mail-running). I've been working for him since mid October. So now, I work 3 days a week at the Old Town School and 2 days a week with Don Coxe. I'm hoping that Don will hire me full time soon, but who knows!!

And that's where I'm at now as we speak. Two jobs, a thesis, and rent. Oh yes and I have some pretty cool friends that keep me from going completely insane from all the turmoil and uncertainty, but that's life!!

I'll show this to you tomorrow at Grandma and Gradpa's.