Fifty Hours of Springtime

It's spring. The trees around Jesse and Memorial are breaking into tiny red flowers, and the Magnolia buds are swollen and fuzzy-soft. Some days it rains and the wind blows sideways and it's cold. Other days it's sunny and warmish and delightfully breezy.

Nash and I hike up the cliffs by the quarry at dusk, drinking mango juice from Taj Emporium. We walk here and there through the night, hit Noodles and then Starbucks, each right at closing. Then it's two a.m...

The next morning I can sleep in, so I finally slink over to Anthro-Religion right at 12:30, soaking wet and not looking forward to standing outside in it for an hour, but when I do, after class, it's not so bad - the giant apple costume is surprisingly well insulated, especially over my coat, and we sing and dance to get more money and stay warm. The peapod makes up a song and it isn't very good.

I go home for a minute, write up something quick about our field trips to the Missourian newsroom and the KOMU broadcast studio. Then I run over to News class and turn that in and we have to do some spot deadline writing for a fake news conference and then have a few minutes to plan our convergence project. My group is going to do sexting.

I run over to Mark Twain. News class went full time, unusually, so I'm a bit late to eat dinner with Zahra, (British) Laura, Yuki, and Palak. I have to leave, early, too, because I'm covering an easter egg hunt for News. I run back to South to drop off my schoolbooks and grab my keys, and end up helping Tina and Pelumi troubleshoot for their art event. I stay for and photograph the first few minutes of it, then I run out to the parking lot and head for Stephen's Lake.

I drive into the park and reach a parking lot at a dead end. I see the group assembled for the hunt - a quarter mile up the hill and across a bit of a drainage marsh. I'm just barely on time, so I cut my losses and park, working my way across the puddles and then up the hill. I realize after a moment that I'm walking through the hunting fields - brightly coloured eggs are scattered here and there. I suddenly worry that someone's going to accuse me of stealing the candy or something. They don't. Then I think a little bit longer about how random it is that I'm walking into the event from across the park, and it's all little kids and I'm showing no identification as a Journalism student or anything else and I feel grateful that I'm a woman so no one's likely to accuse me of pedophilia (coincidentally this immunity reminds me of a conversation I had with Liisa one time. :P) Its a flashlight egg hunt so by God everyone's brought a flash light and when the first wave is set out at 7:30 it's not dark enough that the lights can really be seen much less useful, but still all the mommy's and daddy's show their toddlers how the flashlights work and ask them not to shine them in the other kids' eyes...

Back at South, Tina's event is still going on so I sit and draw with Tina and Amanda and Tina's professor friend. There's hummus leftover and Tina wants to eat it with me and I say we really need some sort of bread so we discuss the possibility of making a pita run and then Tina gets this funny look in her eyes and says, "Let's go to a park and eat hummus and pita." And then she says, "Do you want to invite Sam Kennedy?" And Sam's a friend of Tina's friend and we've eaten lunch with him a few times and I say, "Yeah, yeah I do." So we call Sam up on the phone and tell him to dress warmly and high-tail it over to South and when he gets to Tina's room we blindfold him and lead him out to the car and throw him in the backseat with all the sleds and stuff. We drive to Hyvee and buy Pita and some chocolate and then further to Rock Bridge, specifically a trail that's supposed to be closed after dark but rather notably isn't, the gate is wide open so we drive in and sit at a picnic table at eat hummus and pita, like we planned. We can see a lot of stars from there and also the moon and we take a little walk because Tina apparently for all of her nature worship has never been to Rockbridge. And Sam and I argue about which direction to go and I tell Sam he's an idiot because the path goes around in a circle and we play by a waterfall under the moonlight and and there are bats everywhere down by the cave and when we start walking back to the car Sam says something silly about Sign-Bears and I say something silly about Totemism and Tina is ashamed of both of us.

We go home to South and Tina has to study so Sam and I play Super Smash Brothers for a couple hours. And then I sleep...

Spanish class, then more Local Food and Local People and in the morning it's cold wet and windy and I shiver in the Apple again and then two other volunteers start a little band, they're reasonably talented and as the sun starts coming out they don the peapod and the apple and a guitar and sing...

"Hello, my name is Peabody and I was grown here locally..."

The song is surprisingly good but I've already forgotten most of it, all I can say is that Tina has some creative and talented friends...

I have to leave for Catalan, but afterward I find myself drawn back to take pictures of the little red flowers in front of the Memorial tower, and before I know it I'm sitting in the sun with Tina and she is the Spinach fairy and I am a farmer and we are talking to Satoshi and one of his friends about Mt. Misen, the aquarium on Miyajima, and what Tina is on to be so passionate about Local Food and Local People.

Then I walk with Palak, a rather long way, send a package to distant Liisa which she'll recieve when she returns from Nepal. And Palak and I talk about life and love and the way emotions flicker, bend, and yet endure across cyberspace; she has her sad stories and I can be there for her in a way that's unusual, so I am, and Palak climbs into Flatbranch cave against her better judgement, thanks to my evil influence.

I meet Nash for dinner at Dobbs, he's heading back to St. Louis and I have to do Health and Safety Checks at South. Kevin and I and then Pelumi, too, we take the third floor and get done in relatively decent time but of course there are a few problem rooms and somehow I end up helping Miguel get those sorted out, including climbing up a bunkbed to remove a pair of flannel pants that someone had artfully pinned up around their smoke detector, not suspicious at all... ;)

By then I'm a bit late, I'd agreed to meet Satoshi and his friend Yasu and our friends Sara and Jenny. I'm tired and don't feel like going out, but they moved the whole event from a bar to Shakespeare's for me, because I'm underage, so I felt an obligation and anyway tomorrow is break so I can sleep then or when I'm dead, whichever.

By the time I drive over to Shakespeare's I'm feeling a lot better, it's weird huh? Almost like I'm turning into an extrovert or something. Sara and Jenny couldn't come but I feel surprisingly chill about being there with Satoshi and a bunch of essentially strangers. Our main group is Satoshi, Yasu, and an American named Matt. Some other Americans come in for a while and then leave. All the Americans seem to be from Chesterfield, close to my hometown, which is amusing. A Thai guy also comes, this guy I know - his name is Dong and he calls me Mirandong and I'm not 100% why. After a moment everyone (Satoshi, Yasu, Matt, and Dong) decide to go out and play pool, and I figure what the hell, my flights not until noon... so I come along too.

I haven't played pool for maybe 8 years and I'm not very good to say the least, but only Yasu's really decent so it's all relative I guess. Matt and I are on a team and at some point between games Satoshi sort of corners me and asks if I have a boyfriend. He says it too casually for it to be about himself, plus he's quite a bit older than me, so I'm wondering what's going on and waiting patiently for that to unfold itself. And afterwards Satoshi and Matt are having a bit of a conversation and the tone makes me even more suspicious, but again I decide to wait and see...

When the Billiards hall closes, the Asians head off to a bar and Matt and I decide to go home. My cars still over by Shakespeare's, and it's late, so Matt walks me over there and we talk. And right as we get to the car his voice changes and he asks me if I'd like to get together sometime and get to know each other. I say, sure, add me on Facebook, we'll talk after break... and I get in the car and drive home and pack my bags and go to sleep.