One last hoorah

So, I've made this blog sporadic to the point that I'm not sure anyone's even checking it anymore, but for the purposes of those whom I can specifically direct here, I thought I'd post a link to my very random photo album with pictures of the following things:
- the inside of my apartment, including my room, the living room, the kitchen
- bowls of various foods that have been made in my kitchen :)
- a few of my friends at my apartment (including Sunday brunches that I tend to host in small numbers at my place)
- the schizophrenic weather patterns of northern ohio
- Kal Penn (Kumar from Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and Eric Balfour (think: Six Feet Under, 24, The OC, Buffy, etc.) who came to Oberlin to rep Obama

[Click on this sentence to see the album!]

Unfortunately, the idea of keeping this blog during the school year, however noble the effort, is pretty unrealistic. I am swamped with stuff to do here from the moment I wake to the moment I sleep. Suffice it to say, however, that life this year is amazing. Being abroad for a semester changed me more than I realized, and probably more than I understand even now; I feel so much older and calmer and more confident and more passionate about things than I did before I left, and I have a newfound appreciation for the education I'm getting here. I only have another semester and a half, but I have decided to spend the summer here as well, working half-time at an internship with Field Magazine and half-time at Dick's Sporting Goods in a nearby town :) where I recently picked up a parttime job that I already love immensely for the exposure it gives me to the "real world" outside the private liberal arts college bubble.

I'm busier than ever, but I wake up excited to take on everything that each day offers - typically, this includes: drinking coffee, breakfast with Seyeon, a 5-7 mile on the treadmill, working out in the weights room, awesome classes with inspiring professors, afternoon tea or conversation with someone or other, reading a couple novels a week, churning out new fiction each week for my creative writing class, doing lots of work for the creative writing department, continuing to give campus tours for admissions, cooking dinner or baking some banana bread or something, meeting up with friends at the library in the evenings to do homework, chilling with my delightful housemates at night, getting a good night's sleep, then getting up the following morning to do it all over again :)

Weekends offer a little changeup of that routine - you know, I swim instead of run...eat brunch instead of breakfast...haha, seriously though - this last weekend, I went to see an incredible DJ/emcee performance at our school's bar/club/music venue from a group out of Seattle called the Blue Scholars; it was a firstrate dance party, really awesome chance to unwind from the week. Sunday evening, I went on a mini-road trip with one of my creative writing professors to get delicious Indian food and discuss plans for the department. It's cool this year, I feel that I am really bonding with a lot of my professors...this is what's supposed to happen at small liberal arts colleges, but somehow, I've never felt it in action the way it feels this semester; I really feel like I could be friends with all of them, and that's so exciting to me. The presence of adults and mentors in my life the first couple years at Oberlin was a real bummer, and I didn't realize until Amsterdam how much I need older people in my day-to-day life to keep sane.

Thanks for reading :) Get in touch with me if you want to stay posted on the goings-on of my life!

The college life

Life at Oberlin continues to be good, albeit quite hectic and stressful already. Fortunately, I actually like most of the things I am reading and doing for classes, so I don't mind the 1000+ pages of reading per week (no exaggeration)...also, in addition to the five previously mentioned courses, I've tacked on one more for the sake of my future ability to function practically in the world: Personal Finance and Investment! I am auditing it (taking it for no credit) so I can reap the benefits (hopefully) without adding too much to my stress levels.

We have a new president at Oberlin, whom I heard speak last spring and with whom I felt very impressed. Whether the following changes have anything to do with him or not, I don't know, but Oberlin's campus has undergone some nice revamping since I was here last, including: a cafe inside the walls of our main library, as well as a totally renovated "academic commons" on the first floor that is much more homely and conducive to studying than before...also, our gym has acquired a few new cardio machines, including some fancy schmancy ellipticals that I've been psyched to use. Living down the street from the gym is fantastic, because it's so much easier to get motivated to go when it's so close by.

I am no longer part of the vegetarian/vegan food co-op I was last spring, mostly because it was a 4-5 hour/week time commitment I just don't think I could make this year. The dining halls' food is way inferior, but it is nice to be on my own time schedule in terms of meals, and also have a little more freedom to cook for myself now that I have my own kitchen in the apartment! My housemates are nice folks...they even made me a pretty nametag for my bedroom door with a teapot on it :) Speaking of which, check out my awesome new teapot; thank you, Ebay:


The last weekend was pretty great...I caught up with a few friends I had yet to see since returning from Amsterdam, drank a lot of tea, went bowling with old friends, shot some pool, spent many hours in the library (sometimes reading, sometimes napping), went for a run in a blizzard in negative-10-degree-Farenheit-with-wind-chill weather, went to a few parties (mostly mediocre ones, as Oberlin parties almost always are), trumped around campus a lot in entirely too much snow, went to an incredible Japanese Taiko drumming performance, and saw OCircus, which deserves a paragraph of its own to describe its awesomeness.

So! OCircus is Oberlin students' annual circus-like performance: it is written, directed, and performed by Oberlin students; the soundtrack (always incredible) is composed by Oberlin conservatory composition majors, the soundtrack played by conservatory performance majors, and put on for free for the entire town of Oberlin. We have a surprising amount of mind-boggling talent in our modest student body, this year's performance including a girl who could play a violin while riding a unicycle while wearing a dragon suit...two guys who could link arms and collaboratively play an accordion (using one hand each) and collaboratively juggle bowling pins (each using their remaining hand)...people who could play electric guitar and do the tango while on five-foot stilts...incredible tumblers and gymnastics-folks and jugglers and hula-hooping talents beyond your wildest imagination...it was awesome.

And, as promised, a few pictures...of my neighborhood!

Here's my street! (Suburbs, much?)


My house!


My "backyard", i.e. the view from my bedroom window:


(Indoors shots of the apartment itself to follow, once I get my proper decorations up.)

The saga continues...

After some thought on the matter, I've decided to continue posting here on my blog throughout the coming semester, even though I am no longer abroad (thus the web address is a bit of a misnomer from here on out, sorry!) and my entries will probably be both more sporadic and less adventuresome, since I am, after all, in rural Ohio, not, say, Athens. I will, however, be writing occasional updates on how college life is, on general readjustment-to-America feelings, about my classes, my friends, my writing, my life, and, ya know, growing up!


(Yes, that's me being silly in the back. Oh dear.)

With that disclaimer out of the way...Oberlin's been great so far. I am living in a lovely apartment with three other girls (none of whom I knew prior to last weekend when I moved in) and taking five classes, the majority of which (finally!) are within my major (creative writing):
The Graphic Narrative (yes, comics...and graphic novels...we're reading 20 over the course of the semester, and starting work on one of our own)
300-level Fiction Workshop (with my favorite professor in the department!)
Reading for Writing (I compile a reading list, read all the books on it, and keep a journal of my reactions)
Introduction to Comparative Literature (with one of Oberlin's best professors)
Introduction to Economics (my test run for this crazy idea I have to go to business school later in life)

There's much more to say, but the first week back is always crazy hectic, so it will have to wait a couple more days...soon, though: more words, more images (including ones of my apartment!), etc. Thanks for reading :)

Reflections of a Globetrotter

I have always wanted to be a morning person. Unfortunately, I am a diehard night owl. Jetlag seems to be my only hope, as this last week, I have gotten tired at 9 p.m. and woken up effortlessly at 6 or 7 a.m. every day. It's been wonderful. But now it's midnight, I'm still awake, and my brief, glorious stint as an early riser is, I believe, over. Sad indeed, but at least now I've got that late-night-inspiration-to-write thing going on again, so here goes the long-awaited reflective entry on lessons I learned - about the world, about people, about myself - while abroad.



* Boy, are we English-speakers a privileged species. I don't think I ever understood how lucky I was to be born in an English-speaking country until I realized that traveling abroad would be damn near impossible without knowledge of English.

* I also have a lot more sympathy for non-English speakers living in the U.S., and a lot less sympathy for the Americans who are assholes to them. Learning a new language is tough, and it is already incredibly alienating to be in a country where you often can't understand what's going on around you, without the added trouble of people being jerks about it.

* The best way to judge people and situations is on your own intuition; if it has served you well in the past, trust it. It often makes better decisions than straight, objective logic, and will definitely lead you to many more, diverse experiences and people.

* Physical health and good hospitals should never, never, NEVER be taken for granted.

* Being vegetarian abroad, while traveling, is a nightmare for one's physical health. I do not recommend it.

* I have developed a theory, upon observing the children of various cultures, that generally, the amount of discipline kids get corresponds with their level of maturity. There is probably a law of diminishing returns there, in that I certainly don't advocate tyranical parenting...but there is definitely something to be said for discipline. European kids are some of the most unruly, awful-to-be-around people I've ever come across, beginning with the teenage girls at our hostel during orientation back in August that sat down next to Ellen and me and began chanting taunts at us in Dutch for no apparent reason. Perhaps it's arrogant to say so, but I do feel like American kids are somewhat better (and conversations with Dutch folks often backed up this theory) because American parents just don't let their kids get away with the kind of stuff I saw happen all the time in Holland...and oi, when we went to Turkey, I met 12-year-olds with more maturity than the vast majority of twenty-somethings I go to school with, including myself!

* Age is pretty irrelevant when it comes to making connections with people. The five people in the Netherlands (other than my fellow American program-goers) I bonded with most were all in their thirties or older, and yet I felt hardly even aware at all of the age difference when we were actually hanging out.

* I think it's official - I am a type A personality, or at least I want so desperately to be one that I think I get an honorary membership card to the Type A Personality Club. I definitely thrive on being busy, and I'm the happiest when I have lots and lots to do from the moment I awake to the moment I sleep.

* The rest of the world doesn't hate Americans as much as I thought, but there is a general sense of loathing for the following aspects of our country:
- George W. Bush
- the fact that we don't really learn any other languages or extensive histories of other countries in school
- the hyperbole of our social habits (especially the tendency toward overfriendliness, emotional sentimentalism, etc.)

* With that said, upon further reflection, I've realized that the "overfriendliness" I had pegged as a facet of American culture is more specifically a facet of Midwestern American culture. This occurred to me as I tried desperately to make conversation with strangers upon my initial return to New York and found it surprisingly difficult. An enthusiastic "Hi, how are you?!!" to the airport personnel at JFK examining my boarding pass was met with silence and suspicious eyes. Contrastingly, once I got back to Kansan soil, I've struck up conversation with a zillion strangers, all of whom were beaming at me before I even opened my mouth, just as eager as me to forge connections and get to know the other people with whom they share their world. I've realized how ingrained that breed of Midwestern friendliness is in me, how much I miss it when I am away...it does make me question whether I'll be able to make it happily living on a coast, in a city...perhaps someday I will eat all my words about wanting to get out of Kansas and come back to the land of ad astra per aspera and settle down for a nice, homegrown Midwestern lifestyle :)

* With that said, I guess the ultimate lesson was this: You can never truly know yourself completely. Part of this is because we're all constantly changing, being affected by our experiences, adapting, learning, growing...especially at the age I am at now. But for all the things about myself and about my future that I felt so sure of before I went abroad...almost all were shaken up pretty well by these past five months. Some things may have been confirmed, but mostly, I learned that there is always more to be learned. And there's nothing like a foreign environment to get the gears of those lessons cranking.

* I guess I am more American than I realized. What a bummer, huh? I've spent so much of my adolescent angst developing the fine art of anti-American sentiment, rebelling against the grotesque massiveness of everything in this country, against the lens of arrogant superiority and partonization through which we seem to see the rest of the world...I still have problems with those things, of course, but it's no longer so simple. I can't chuck my own culture just because Europeans are better environmentalists, better eaters, better exercisers, better liberals than "my people" back here in America. The truth is, I feel home here in a way I'm not sure I wouldn't ever, living longterm anywhere else. I have all the more respect and sense of awe for my mother for having lived so much of her life out of her native comfort zone.

* It may not reflect on me all that well to admit the first two, but the three things whose absence dealt the roughest blows to my happiness while abroad were: prevalence of the English language, steady internet access, and, of course, the people I love. I must admit to intense relief upon recovering all three upon my return to the states. What can I conclude from this? The common thread between them, I'd say, is "human connection" - and if I didn't know it before, I know now - it's the single most important thing to me in life...feeling connected to others.

* Yes, everything in America is, on average, at least five times the size of things in other countries - whether it's our cars, our roads, our houses, our supermarkets, our food portions, our waistlines, our (mega)churches, our egos, our disregard for the environment, our national debt, our pricetags on higher education, the shortcomings of our healthcare system, there's no doubt about it. Despite the fact that this place is my home, and in many ways, I am relieved to be back on familiar turf, amongst a people with whom I can share genuine, mutual understanding...damn could we stand to learn a lot from the rest of the world! It's a shame it's so easy for us to stay inside our safe little American bubble of SUV's, Wal-Mart, and All-you-can-eat-buffets :/

* But okay, it's good to be back.

* However: once the novelty of being around other English speakers all the time wears off, I will undoubtedly realize just how deep the travel bug's teeth have sunk into my skin :) It's there, I can feel it already, and the list of places I now want to go is already miles long...

* The world is smaller than we think!

Around Eastern Europe in 15 Days

In the interest of your computer not crashing, I've tried to condense each city (after London and Berlin, which I already posted some pictures from) into just three (or fewer) key images...the rest will be in either my scrapbook or Ruth's (or, you know, on Facebook), so just ask!

Praha


In front of the Prague castle:


Memorial to those who lost their lives to communism:


Bratislava (!!)
Train refugees...


Budapest
Parliament:


The Széchenyi Baths, thermal waters, where we spent an entire day:


Our middle-aged buddies:


Αθήνα/Athina


In front of the Temple of Zeus (notably, in a t-shirt):


In front of the 1896 Olympic Stadium, with our friends Andrew, Anthony, and Kayla:


Genève
The Jet d’eau and Alps in the background:


Strolling through adorable Swiss villages:


Hiking the gorgeous countryside:



Europa, I miss thee already...

Coincidences Come in Threes

The final leg of our backpacking adventures in Europe was completely delightful, and also perhaps the most exhausting yet. I suppose that’s the best way to end a globetrotting journey, on a note of I-never-want-to-see-the-inside-of-a-plane-or-train-again, because it cushions the blow of an amazing trip coming to an end. Drama aside, though, I would be lying to say it’s not good to be “home” again. (I put that word in quotes, because the whole concept of “home” gets so much fuzzier and more diffused as you grow up, I guess...and, in many ways, I think of Amsterdam as a sort of home, too, just as I do Oberlin as well, and hopefully in the not-too-distant future, Seattle.) Amidst a myriad of other changes that this trip has wrought in me (which I’ll undoubtedly make another blog post about in the next few days), the last 24 hours have made me one of those ungodly extroverted people bent on making conversation with every human being who comes within speaking distance of me, because I am so excited to be amidst my own language again that I take up every opportunity to forge conversational connections with strangers.

ANYWAY. So, after Athens, Ruth and I embarked on the longest straight period of travel in our whole trip, beginning with a 6 a.m. alarm clock in our hostel (after I went to sleep around 2 a.m. with a “See ya in four hours!” to the guy working reception), a few hours of trains to Patras, Greece, where we boarded for our 23 hours on a ship across the Adriatic Sea...it was actually an incredible, 10-deck cruise ship, extremely luxurious and almost all to ourselves, though we did not spring for our own cabin, so we slept “on the deck”, which I was relieved to learn does not mean you sleep outside on the literal deck of the ship...we did, however, have to sleep on chairs that left my body sore and atrophied after our sleep marathon that made the whole ride seem unbelievably short.

Docking in Ancona, Italy, we then hiked to the train station from the port, and caught a morning train to Milan, and from there, an evening train to Switzerland that put us into our ultimate destination of Geneva at midnight two days after leaving Athens, for a total of 41 hours straight travel time. Geneva, however, made for the perfect relaxation – we stayed with the family of a friend of Ruth’s in their stunning house on the outskirts of the city, surrounded by rolling green fields, gorgeous farmlands, Swiss vineyards, and beautiful snow-capped mountains. The weather was surprisingly warm and sunny, and we spent most of our time there taking long walks, wandering the city a bit (small, quaint, calm, high international population, absolutely lovely), eating Swiss chocolate, and catching up on sleep. (Oh, and going over to France for an hour or so to drive around!)

We left on a night train out of Basil back to Amsterdam, where I spent my last day in Europe repacking everything, catching up with my mom (and having Maoz falafel and Indonesian food, both of which are amazing, and cuisines I will miss dearly about A’dam), walking all over the city and Vondelpark together, having tea with Cinta and Tanja, and catching a few winks before my morning flight to New York. Cinta and my mom dropped me off at the airport in the morning, which made for very teary goodbyes, and I sobbed pretty much the whole flight to Paris, but...so it goes. I guess that even though some Dutch cultural things rubbed off on me this semester, the fact that many of the Dutch people I met scoff a bit at American sentimentalism and extravagant displays of emotion just didn’t. I’m still capable of being my weepy, prematurely nostalgic self :)

So, the flight to New York constitutes Oberlin Students Running Into Each Other Abroad, Part III! Indeed, there was yet another girl from my dorm freshman year who was on my flight (though it was only the middle leg in her journey from South Africa back home to Colorado, after doing an SIT program in Madagascar!), and we had a wonderful talk about our respective experiences abroad. My good friend, Shari (also Ruth’s roommate at Oberlin), came to JFK to meet me when I arrived in New York, and keep me company until Ruth’s mom got there, and then the three of us had coffee and chatted it up until Ruth’s flight got in, and the four of us went out for a lovely dinner in Brooklyn – despite the fact that I was jetlagged beyond belief at that point from having been awake since 5 a.m. European time, and I was slightly delirious at the dinner table. Then this morning, Ruth and Shari saw me off to JFK again for my final flight(s) home...the total travel time being seven hours or so, during which I made at least a dozen new “friends” on various planes and parts of the Atlanta airport. So, ya know, life is good. I’m a lucky girl, I know, and don’t think I’m being flippant at all about the wealth of experiences I’ve been fortunate enough to have in the past five months...but a little more time to process is probably necessary before I reflect fully, so...



Further reflections on the whole semester, and imagery, to come soon!

!!!

Aaand...five months later...I'm finally back in the states. (NY tonight, KS tomorrow.)

!

It's 5:20 a.m. European time now, I'm jetlagged and delirious, hallucinating a little, I think, so off to bed with me. But many multifarious blog updates to ensue soon, including: leaving Greece, Switzerland, final time in Amsterdam, the flight home, readjustment here in New York, and finally, some long overdue photo updates.

Thanks for sticking this out with me, blog readers, I love thee :)