Day 0: Background, Feelings

Hello everyone!

I wanted to start a blog to document my adventures in Puerto Rico. I leave tomorrow morning at 6am. This is a blog for family and friends and anyone else whose interested in keeping track of what Im doing and the new experiences I will most definitely have. I will be posting pictures, telling funny stories (I hope) and learning alot about myself throughout this process. This trip to Puerto Rico is the latest development in what seems like a very long process.

So lets start with the beginning:

My father was born and raised in Puerto Rico. He left Puerto Rico when he was 19 to join the United States Army. He spent 2 years learning English and the other 4 years serving in Germany and the States. He met my mother while wandering through New Mexico (fresh out of the ARMY). He and my mom started dating and then after a while they had kids (5 total) and he was stuck*. My dad left the island to live with my mom and us in the Arizona desert. I imagine he misses Puerto Rico alot.

*I say stuck, in the best way possible. I dont mean to say that he regretted having kids just that because of new responsibilities he couldnt go back to Puerto Rico yet.

So my entire life my father always talked about sending me to Puerto Rico. When I was younger it was always "When you get done with 8th grade, Ill send you." Then 8th grade came and it turned into "When you graduate High School..." and then that passed and I still never went.

My aunt Lucy and uncle Ramon sent us packages full of Puerto Rican candy a few times a year and we got occasional postcards from them but mostly my father was separated from them. This was my only connection with being Puerto Rican. This lasted for a bit, until my dads job had us moving around so frequently that it was hard to maintain one constant address and eventually we lost this little connection to his family and to Puerto Rico.

I dont know very much about my fathers life even though Ive lived with him my whole life. I dont think he likes to talk about it very much. He is a very quiet person. Very secretive. I think thinking about his past makes him sad. From what Ive pieced together I think his parents separated and his mother left Puerto Rico with his older siblings (so far I only know about Sara, Gregory and Wanda) and left him behind to be raised by some other relatives. My dad was raised with my Uncle Ramon (they are cousins?/brothers), he ran track in high school and as soon as he was old enough he joined the ARMY.

I always knew I was Puerto Rican and for alot of my life when I was living on the reservation (Navajo) I always made sure people around me knew I was "half Puerto Rican". People always pointed it out anyway, I never quite fit in with the other full breed Native American kids that went to my schools so I always fully embraced being different from them.

It wasnt until college that I realized I was something special. I was a very unique breed half Native American and half Puerto Rican. I knew what it was like to be "Indian", I spent the majority of my life on the "rez" surrounded by my moms family and I knew next to nothing about being Puerto Rican.

So around this time my father started to get curious about this "internet thing" and started to give me random names to search for in the computer. We started the search for his relatives about 2 years ago and had no luck, until earlier this fall when one of the names I searched for (Uncle Ramon) came back with results.

I decided to call the number, suspicious that it was someone else's number and not my REAL uncles. The number was real and suddenly there I was speaking over the phone to my long lost uncle.

I dont know if youve ever experienced trying to explain who you are to someone in broken Spanish. I basically had to say something like

"Hello. please dont hang up. My name is Jeannette ..... I am Juan's daughter. Juan...... are you his brother?.... no.... oh.... well you know him then... YES! I am his oldest daughter!"

Eventually this phone call and more searches pulled up more of my dads relatives and after LOTS of wrong numbers and explaining myself to strangers we found some of his sisters, his mother!!!!!, and my uncles.

After talking a little bit with each of them and discovering that a few of them lived in Massachusetts (where I happen to go to school!!) I decided that I wanted to go to Puerto Rico to meet them and find out more about my Puerto Rican side and learn more about my dad's story.

So I saved up money, called my uncle Ramon asked if it was okay for me to visit him and bought a ticket.

This has been a long process and I am very excited to be going. I feel nervous excitement. Ive never seen an ocean before in my life, I know beginner Spanish (my dads family speak very little English), Ive never been on an island and I will be staying with relatives Im meeting for the first time tomorrow for 2 months.

I leave tomorrow morning. I should arrive on the island by lunch time.

I dont have a schedule. This trip is going to be very random and designed by whatever my family wants to do or whoever wants me to stay with them for whichever day. My dad always told me that if I ever visited my family would fight over which house I would stay in for which day and that they would spoil the heck out of me.

He says my going to Puerto Rico is like his return to the island and that his family will see me going there as his return.

I feel like this is just as important for him as it is for me. My dad has never been back and I dont think he can go back for awhile. He has a job to retire from and a family to raise before he can consider going back. So for now, its my job to fill everyone in on the last 30 or so years and I start tomorrow. :)

Thank you for reading and being apart of this adventure with me.

------Update

My dad called me and basically said how happy he was that I was going and that I deserved it. He said he was proud of me and told me to say hello to everyone. He described my Uncle Ramon and Aunt Lucy as very caring and loving people. He told me not to worry and to be very safe. He almost started crying and because of that I almost started to cry too. I feel like this is such an important thing for both my father and I.

I always imagined I would take this trip with him. I guess the only thing I can say is thank you Daddy. I will do my best to document everything for you and because I know how much this means to you I will appreciate every single moment. Wish you could come too.