Christmas

Sometimes I wonder why such a time of joy, days off, trips and vacations can be so stressful for some families. People get moody and mean during Christmas. I always expected people to be full of joy, thinking positive, enjoying being with family, but all I see is selfish actions, pressure from family members trying to manipulate each other on deciding where or with whom to spend Christmas with. Most of the time, I don’t see any Christian feelings, or even people talking about the fact of Christ’s birth. Seems like Christmas is only for exchanging presents, getting together with family, eat a lot of traditional foods and watch old Christmas movies that most of the time don’t have anything to do with Jesus’ birth. I guess I miss my Brazilian Christmas where we would fast dinner until around midnight, before we eat we would pray with hands together thanking God for sending his only son, so we can have the chance of being forgiven.

 I remember that when I was a kid I didn’t see Christmas as anything to do with religion, but now I think it’s all about thanking God for Jesus and sharing this joy with family. Presents are definitely fun, but why tell the children about Santa Claus when the only one that give us strength to provide work and the possibility of getting presents is our God almighty . I just see Christmas so commercial at this point. It’s so much more about people than about Jesus. When I have my own children I want to make sure they will know where it all comes from.  I will always remind my child that God is the one that gave mommy and daddy strength and work to provide presents and we give present to each other to celebrate Jesus’ birth.

I can see how it’s hard for a 3 year old to be thankful to God for Jesus’ birth, But I can see a child that age being thankful to God for all the presents he/she got that year.

Frustration

I spent three of my life dedicated to college in Brazil. I had no boyfriends or social life. I had an unknown number of nights that I couldn’t sleep.  I wrote a one hundred and seventy give page thesis and had to present to three hundred people in order to graduate. And now, all that sacrifice is worth nothing. Sometimes I really regret of moving up here. The U.S not only not recognizes my degree, but also doesn’t accept many of my credits. I overload them to be able to graduate sooner. I have a GPA of 3.7 and here I am worth nothing. I could teach Portuguese if I could, but nobody wants to learn it. Sometimes I wish I speak Spanish like many people think I do.  

Frustration is a big part of who I am now. I would like being a teacher, but I know I will never write in English as I do in Portuguese. It’s very difficult for me realizing that what I used to do the best was writing and in this country it can’t be appreciated, because I can’t write as I used to in this language. Thinking about that, I decided to try a carrier that wouldn’t require great writing skills. I tried computer science.  I had an introduction to programming course and found out that I have no patience for fixing computer’s bugs. I gave up two of my classes and kept my English one. The one that I know I will never be very good at it.

It just feels wrong to me that I don’t feel useful for this country. All my expertise isn’t valued here. If I was in Brazil I could be working in multinational company helping Brazilian company to do International business. I would be helping my country grow and I would be feeling good about myself.

Now I am trying to find out what ability can I add to the ones I already have that would give a job, a degree that would be recognized, and the feeling of satisfaction. What would I be good at in this nation? I need God’s guidance, because now I feel like the biggest loser.