The week has been full of fun experiences. I have been enjoying to the fullest the fact that I can get in for free to a lot of events. For example, this Saturday I went to a play titled Pranayama. Pranayama follows a group of characters and their different struggles in life–all of them are connected by a morning yoga class that they take. Even though the ending felt too abrupt for my liking, I could still appreciate watching a play that has characters expressing their anxieties about the Trump presidency in 2016 because of how much those anxieties are still present now that he is president for the second time.
Chautauqua is a place where finding political activities is quite easy. Walking
around the institution, I’ve encountered people giving lectures on antisemitism and how Donald Trump managed to get people to vote for him by promoting himself to those citizens of the United States who felt that they had been abandoned by the government. But at the same time, it is extremely easy to find activities that will help you turn your brain off and just have a nice time. This week, aside from the play, I watched Pirates of the Caribbean with a symphonica playing the music from the movie. I also saw dance recitals and gossiped with some of the other interns by the lake. But do not think for a second that I’ve been doing nothing this whole week, since my work at Chautauqua never ends.
Time felt especially eternal on Thursday. Not only did I had to work at the Poetry Makerspace, but I also had to
help during Jonathan Eig’s book signing for his Martin Luther King Jr. biography (titled King: A Life). While helping at the book signing, I met some interesting people. For example, I met an old man who was extremely excited about telling me a joke that went on for too long, and which he prefaced with “this is going to be a sexist joke”. The joke was sexist indeed and, maybe it was the fact that the heat was stronger that day, but I honestly did not care enough to get angry at the man. Of course, it wasn’t all weird interactions. For example, I drank a punch that tasted like sprite, if they had invented a sprite with an apple aftertaste. And it may sound cheesy, but enjoying a cold drink under the sun reminded me that there are times where it is good to focus on the happiness that the small things in life can bring us. It’s good to remember that, especially during this political climate. I have told myself that during my time here, I will try to do things that bring me joy and that help me better myself. That’s why I went and got a Chautauqua library card. That is the same reason for why I read a short story that I wrote for one of my classes in front of a crowd of complete 
strangers.
The piece of writing that I presented was a short story that I wrote for Sally Wen Mao’s “Invoking Speculation and Folklore in Writing”. For the short story, I took inspiration from the legend of “El Chupacabras,” which is a Puerto Rican urban legend about a creature who eats farm animals by sucking on their blood. I was honored to be the student nominated to read my work and thus give the people who sat down for my reading a taste of the type of work we did in the class. And even though for Deanna Nikaido’s class I did not read anything, that doesn’t mean that I did not enjoyed Nikaido’s “Giving Voice to the Poem Inside.” Since I wrote a poem with a visual story that I was very proud of, but I just felt like the work that I did for Sally Wen Mao’s workshop was better. And now that I will be taking two other very different workshops for this following week, I am once again quite excited to see how it plays out.
