Senator Clinton…Your average housewife?

Why not? We need a woman to put on her apron and clean-up the existing mess in the house. There is dust under the carpet, skeletons in the closet and lots of dirt hidden in the attic!

How different is she than any woman that has to worry about education for the children, healthcare for the family and balancing the household expenses and keeping peace and quiet in the neighborhood.

Hillary also happens to have a very sociable husband that can make friends, and mend broken relationships in the world community.

So why are we so worried about having a woman represent us? Won’t she just be doing what we women do best? Clean-up the mess? And boy WHAT A MESS!!!

Finally we have a say!

I have been a citizen for the last 20 years and I have voted in all elections. With this administration I felt we had no say as an American citizens. Our opinions, our issues, our concerns were not addressed.

Yesterday YouTube.com posted a video from a viewer showing Senator Clinton as the Future “Big Brother” Not that I share this opinion, but I am happy that at least we finally can make a difference with the internet. Our points of view will be noticed and the candidates will take note!

We are now a force to be reckoned with. We can effect changes through our blogs, videos, votes and opinions and we will be heard as a community interested in change.

In the 2004 election the voter turnout was extremely low among the youth of America. When I asked my children and their friends why they didn’t go to the polls they all unanimously said “why bother, I can’t make a difference”.

Let us all use this newfound control to communicate to our young Americans that not only they can vote but they have plenty to say and IT WILL COUNT!!!!!

Shanghai… Dreamin’

We were traveling around China, last year with a group of friends.

It has always been a dream of mine to visit the Far East. So we went online and found a Chinese company; China Tours Tailor.

They were efficient, very reasonable and everything was included. My husband and I aren’t partial to organized tours; we like to “poke around” the place on our own. But going to China without any knowledge of the language seemed very daunting.

My Jade sister Jo and her friend joined us from Britain and we made a very noisy foursome.

We started our tour in Beijing. There were seven of us, a very mixed international group. 1 American, 1 Venezuelan/Brit (me), 2 Brits, 1 Iraqi/German, and 2 California/Cantonese.

After an evening meal of snake (yes… my husband and my Jade sister, Jo, actually ate SNAKE!!!) we set out for our journey visiting, Beijing, Xian, Guillin, Yangshuo and Shanghai.

Here are some of the highlights. I can only get a few in here as the list is endless!

• The Great Wall is literally wall-to-wall people from every country in the world!

• The Forbidden City has 9,999 rooms. The number 9 is a good luck symbol in China.

• Xian. Looking at the Terra Cota statues in a book is one thing looking seeing them LIVE is quite an experience. There are thousands of them and each one is different and they STILL haven’t unearthed all of them!

• We took a Trip on the canal in Suzhou and the gondolier entertained us singing old Chinese songs.

Here are some of the incidents that show the east-west connection that still make me smile:

• Going into a Starbucks in Shanghai and finding everyone lining up for Cappuccinos. We met a Chinese man that worked there and spoke fluent English. He asked us if we know the owner of Starbucks: Bill Gates!!

• Loosing my husband in the crowds at the forbidden city and the tour guide telling me that we will never find him because “All Westerners look the same.”

• Watching the Chinese eat a whole shrimp. It goes in their mouth whole and the shell comes whole!

• Walking into a restaurant and drawing pictures of chicken and bottled water so we can place an order and be understood.

• Buying a silk rug in Shanghai felt like I was on ‘Deal or No Deal.’

• And… Shanghai… what a city. The modern buildings are breathtaking! The landscape changes so often that even a taxi driver doesn’t know his way around.

One of the most interesting parts of this amazing city is the Pudong and the Bund laying side by side divided by the Huangpu River. Pudong is the ever-changing modern part of Shanghai and the Bund is the preserved old city.

The Bund once was home to numerous banks and trading houses from different countries in the world and in the Chinese 1940’s was one of the major banking financial centers of the world.

The Pudong is presently China’s financial hub. Pudong is home to the Lujiazui financial district and a skyline that includes the Oriental Pearl Tower and the Jin Mao Tower, that is the symbol of Shanghai and China's economic development.

We also visited the Jade Buddha Temple, The Yu Gardens and the Shanghai Museum.

It doesn’t take long to find a place for yourself over here. Shangahi is home to expatriates from many countries and therefore for the first time in 2 weeks we finally were hearing languages we could understand and ate a burger with fries!!!!


TTYL

How “Betty la Fea” became the beautiful “Ugly Betty”

As a lover of Latin soaps I am very pleased to say that our telenovela culture has finally made a cross over to the Anglo world with Ugly Betty.

As a young child growing up in Venezuela I used to watch telenovelas with my grandmother. This was the neighborhood entertainment. We would always share impressions and comments with the butcher, the manicurist, the florist and other people that would make up the community. This was a very important part of our culture. The cliffhangers and final chapters were discussed at length for several days. You could feel the excitement building up as the novela of the moment reached its agonizing end.

In 2002 a little not so known novela “Betty la Fea” made its discreet entrance on Telemundo. It was produced in Colombia and it told the story of a very unattractive but clever girl that was hired by a modeling agency. This broke the standards of traditional telenovelas where the heroine is usually beautiful and her only aspiration is to be married. The show caused a worldwide uproar.

Crossing over from the Latin world to the Anglo world is almost impossible for a telenovela. Now with the huge expansion of the Latino community in the US we are now experiencing a whole cultural exchange with the advent of pop stars like Shakira, Juanes and glamorous movies stars like Salma Hayek. We now have a novela to call our own that is equally appealing to the audience. Ugly Betty made its appearance September 2006. With America Ferrera as the star. The show is entertaining and has made the crossover painless. In fact interestingly enough, “Betty” is also a novela fan.

Yesterday I watched my evening novela with my friend. She had never seen a Spanish show before. She was so delighted she now wants her daughter to watch. By the way, did I ever tell you it is the best way to learn Spanish!!!!

¡Hablamos luego!

Your “NEW” community

The “WWW” is now your new neighborhood!
Here is how it works: Imagine you move into a new neighborhood and you open a new bookstore. You want to establish a community presence to sell your books and to get known.

So you begin to circulate and promote yourself by joining a networking group. Slowly but surely you start meeting people.

You patronize some of the stores for your personal needs, like the local market, the bank and others. As you go along, you invite people over to visit and take a look at what you are offering.

People you meet along the way will come and visit your bookstore and send over some of their friends if they like what you sell.

The web works in a similar way — when you put up a website or a blog, you have now moved into the new community. You invite people to visit your “store” by submitting your blog to social web engines like Digg, del.icio.os, Google, Yahoo and also creating a profile in MySpace.

Then you send out emails to all your friends and tell them where you are and what you are doing.

You will also join online networking groups that will introduce to other online web owners.

You will ask your new friends to refer you and offer them an incentive. These will be your affiliates.

Once you have created a little “buzz” for yourself, you now want some of the pages that you link to, to link back to you. That would be the equivalent of your friends and your vendors in the neighborhood. In return for your patronage they will recommend you if they know you and like you.

Eventually you will get visitors and to come and see you and send their friends over to visit and buy.

The beauty of the online community is that there is ample room for everyone, to name a few: stay at home moms, teachers, lawyers, writers, nannys, returning war vets with injuries, the hard of hearing, nurses, doctors and anyone you can think of that has information they want to exchange and share in the “NEW” community.

So, welcome everybody!!!!

Also stop by and visit me at webmomonline

Happy Holidays and some more thoughts:

During this hectic time of the year we all get very overwhelmed with holiday shopping, parties and commitments. In the middle of all the mess I try to remember all the events that have taken place during the year. I definitely have a lot to be grateful.

1. My family and friends
2. My health
3. My job
4. My readers
5. My freedoms

While remembering all these wonderful things in my life, I can't help but think of the children in Africa and other parts of the world that are enduring terrible hardships.

One of my New Year's resolutions is to be more thoughtful of people in need.

I got an email from UNICEF with an actual shopping list in which it listed lifesaving items for kids around the world. It includes blankets, medicines, food, vaccines and clean water storage.
https://www.unicefusa.org/
I am making a personal gift as I write this! Happy Holidays to all.

TTYL

Where did your ancestors come from?

Did you ever ask yourself who your ancestors were, how they arrived here, where they lived and what they did?
Ancestry.com is a site that tracks immigration records online from 1810 to 1960.

At ancestry.com you can start your family tree, search historical records, stories and publications and many other items on the facts page: http://www.ancestry.com/

So try it out it see what comes up!

TTYL