So yeah, stressful times, but it's mostly good stress. I like most of the papers I'm doing - especially the Nihonjinron one. This can actually be sort of a problem - as much as I'd love to shut myself up for a week (or longer) with it, do field work even, come up with something publishable - it's not in the cards, it's not in the schedule. And that's okay, I guess. :) I kind of wish they would give me June to keep working on it, but less as an extension because I procrastinated and more because I want to devote my full attention to it and make it as good as it can be. And so I can procrastinate, too. ;)
The other two papers are the one for Catalan and the one for Spanish. I think the Catalan paper is going to be about Andorra - perceptions of Andorra from within and without and what it means to be Andorran and how it's shown in media and what people think about it. Again I could go much further with the topic, but in the end I'm just going to read a few books and put together 20 pages of a beginning. The Spanish paper is a bit yucky... we'd only read two plays in class when we started working on it, and I wasn't very enthusiastic about either of them. Two plays later and if I switch topics now I have more work, plus I'm only mildly enthusiastic about one of the plays out of four. I guess drama just isn't my favourite genre. If I don't switch topics, I'll be writing about The Man Who Turned into a Dog and what this means about professions and castes and blah blah blah, especially in a down economy. I'm not excited about it at all, but I could do research about how the current recession and the Great Depression were dehumanizing. If I do switch topics, I'll write about how drama is a more realistic medium than prose or poetry. Not that it's better, just more realistic because it shows us communication - and communication is all we know of people in reality. I'm more interested in that topic, especially for a shorter essay, but I actually think the first one might be easier. There's one more informal essay coming up, so I might write the informal essay about my new idea and see how that goes.
Anyway. I need to say goodbye to Ju and Prite in a manner of speaking, and I'm not going to be seeing any of the others - Zahra, Laura, Tabi, etc for another year as well. Thus the camping. It's going to be awesome and I'm very excited. I'm excited about other stuff as well - Liisa's visit this summer and Scotland and Spain. Still, it's planning and money and stress, however nice. Lucia and Allan and I got together in a three-way chat and started hammering out the 'details'. I'm a bit nervous becuase I'm not 100% when I need to report for my VISA or even what the EU entry requirements are... what if by some awful chance I won't get the VISA until late August and can't enter the EU until then? Honestly? I'd seriously consider hopping to Norway and back or something like that. What are the other non-EU countries that are close by and cheap? Ooohhh... what about Iceland? Not that it's cheap, but I'd actually love that. Well, jk, ideally I'll have the VISA tucked away neatly by the time I take off.
I would tell the details of the plan but this is an ugly stresspost and I don't want to put the details in now and create a redundancy when I repost them with glee later on. Suffice to say that it's all going to be awesome... we've booked the first element (hostel in Valencia for Tomatina)... we've planned an epic six day walk across Scotland... and Lucia won't shut up about Nessie or dressing up as Vikings. Liisa and I have a Skype Date set for tomorrow morning and I should have some idea about what distance we're heading in at that point. :)
So, basically lots of excitement and also a lot of stress. What else is new? :)
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