Universitas Studiorum Navarrensis

So, I congratulated myself when the coordinators here decided to let me apply for the Pamplona program in the fall semester. And again when I got accepted by the exchange program on my side. So I'm sure it's getting a bit annoying, but this is kind of the big one. (And I would say that it is the last, but I'll probably get all happy again when I get my VISA approved).

So:


Universidad de Navarra
Facultad de Comunicación
Pamplona, 20 de abril de 2010

Estimada Miranda,

Me es grato comunicarle que ha sido resuelta favorablemente su solicitud de admisión como alumna del Programa de Intercambio en la Licenciatura de Periodismo de la Facultad de Comunicacion de la Universidad de Navarra (ESPAÑA) con efecto en el curso academico 2010-2011 que comienza el 1 de septiembre y finaliza el 18 de diciembre, con una dedicación de más de 20 horas semanales.

La efectividad de esta resolución queda condicionada a la formalización de la matrícula.

Le saluda atentamente,
Miguel García San Emeterio
Secretario Adjunto


Me: ^^

P.S. - The seal of the school has St. George on it, killing his dragon. I had no idea he was a patron saint of the University/Region/etc... but I'm not really surprised. He's basically the patron saint of everything, and why not? Most of the other ones are praying or playing with birds, and St. Patrick's pretty well taken by Ireland. So that leaves St. George who gets to fight a DRAGON. Although this seal is one of the least exciting representations of the scene I've ever looked at... he's basically stepping on a Dragon that almost looks like it could be enjoying the backrub, and passively poking at it with a stick.

Spring Festivities

It's a lovely time to be alive and on campus and not such a lovely time to be bogged down in papers. Today I neglected to bring my camera with me and I was kicking myself all day.

First I passed "Captain America" with his American Flag pants and bandana, his t-shirt with an American flag logo, and the American flag poking out of his army-camouflage backpack. I saw his bike not far away - it's one of those short 'trick bikes' or whatever, all American-flag style too, with flags attached to the basket and the seat. Closest we have to a national costume, folks, look close - I hope it takes it's rightful place next to the Bunad, Kimono, Ledehosen, Sari, and Kilt soon! :)

There was also a little carnival going on at Lowry Mall, the same one I passed through when I toured Mizzou, either through luck or lack thereof (not sure how fair it is to have something like that going on for your first impression of a school!). I had my pockets full of cash from my camping-deposit refund, so I bought a number of honey sticks, (planning to send some of them to Liisa and Rinna... maybe Uni too if he likes), and two deep fried Oreos. At 2 for a dollar I thought it was worth the experience. They were kind of what you'd expect - a little moist cookie wrapped in carnival dough and abused. Strangely, although it was supposed to be sort of a Farmer's Market, there was no produce to be had - only some beef, pork, lots of honey, jam, baked goods from the Amish, (one of the girls had a mustache... I know I shouldn't laugh but it was hilarious), and potted herbs. No basil though.

On the quad there was a little bitty book sale from the Art History department. Very random selection of books. I picked up On a Pale Horse because someone recommended it to me a while ago (I'm thinking Jorge?) and it was a whole dollar.

I finished my profile for Journalism just in time, I think it was fine too even though it was way over the word limit. "Katfish Katy" proved to have a far more interesting life than I had imagined, and I'm not terrible at people writing so I was prepared and ready to work with much less. Our group project is also going well, I feel that for once I haven't helped out that much, haven't taken much of a leadership role, but then I often do in group projects and I am awfully swamped right now. Still, I keep offering my help and my two partners don't seem very bothered. The teacher says we're actually ahead of the other groups which I think reflects more poorly on them than it does well on us, but still. So, with Journalism taken care of, most of my stress right now is on Spanish. I have to whip up about 5 pages of analysis on La Casa de Bernarda Alba tonight. It's for a rough draft, but still.

I wish I could go outside and enjoy the cool breeze. :D And apparently there was an event today where you could climb the Alpine Tower for free. Ju called and invited me but regretfully I had class. ;_; Too bad, I've been meaning to get up there. One of these days/years...

Cebes Bones

On the most recent test we had to fill blanks in a dialogue. I honestly couldn't tell what she wanted me to put there, because the Catalan as well as I could read it said,

Hello, I would like 2 kilos of cebes, please.
__________
Yes, thanks.
_______________
Now I would like a half kilo of cheese, please.
__________
No, nothing else, please. How much is it?
___________
Yes, with card.
Have a nice day!
_____________

The main problem was cebes, and what he could ask me about cebes that I would reply 'yes, thanks' to after already saying what and how much I wanted. You see, I didn't know what cebes were. I thought quickly. It must be a kind of food, but what kind? And what can he ask me about them? I thought about going for something vague like 'ripe', even though it seemed silly for someone to ask if I wanted ripe fruit (shouldn't that go without saying?), but ultimately I was worried that cebes might mean eggs or meat or something (even though I already knew those words)... and ripe beef? Ewww.... So I settled on 'bones' and knew I was giving up the points.

Do you want good cebes? Yes please.

XD

But I got the test back today and she took it. I also looked up cebes - it means onions. Funny, I had learned calçots... but I guess there are several kinds of onions... and it's only reasonable for us to learn all of them before we learn silly things like the words for pants or rain. After all, food is very important to the culture, or something like that. :P Our primary textbook is almost as ridiculous as Liisa's old German book, wherein chapter two was entitled Polypen in der Nase. When we were all in the classroom last minute for this same exam, I suddenly said, in desperation, but with my tone carefully controlled to sound as if it was the most natural thing imagineable, "I hope everyone remembers the word for screwdriver!"

A long silence. Then laughter.

------------------

Emily and Shelby and I were putting our script together and one of us asked the others, "Would you do it again? Take this class, knowing what you know now?"

Shelby said that it had been an accident from the very beginning - she thought she was signing up for a culture class until she came to class on the first day and Monica was speaking Catalan. She hadn't really planned on learning a new language for 3 humanities credits. Emily's going to study in Valencia, so she guesses it doesn't really hurt to know the little bit that she's learned.

What have we learned? I have to admit that I haven't given Catalan enough of my time or vital energy either in class or outside of class, so I feel that I keep dancing on the breaking point without actually treating Catalan like it's own language, rather than some sort of elaborate cipher for Spanish. Doesn't help that every Catalan speaker I know speaks Spanish as well as or better than Catalan, and that goes for most of the genuine Catalan speaking population as well. Another semester, perhaps, of total immersion 3 hours a week (I am fully aware of the oxymoron)... Yes, I can often follow Catalan now - as I could before. I can sort of mock it by forcing my Spanish through an awkward Catalan filter. So would I do it again?

Yes.

We've made history, in our own small way - the first Catalan Symposium at Mizzou will be held this evening, and probably the audience will consist mainly of Romance professors and our own small class, but it's something. Our class was one of the first in a general, non-linguistics focused University, and if Monica has her way, our moderate success will only help her to develop the program more fully.

And as for myself, I got my humanities credits and I could have gotten them learning even more about poetry in the Golden Age instead, and whatever you say about the usefulness of Catalan, I think you'll agree that it might be more useful than learning a bit more Lope de Vega, especially considering my future career plans.

And practicalities aside - there's something you gain from learning, always, I think... I've made friends in the class, I've laughed a dozen times at Monica's habits and antics, I've learned about the festivals, feelings, and history of a proud and wonderful people... I was surrounded by Catalan until my mind started to soften around the edges and admit it's sounds and rhythms, even if it's only a first step - even French seems less foreign to me now, by association, and if you know me you know that's no small thing. I like music in Catalan. I like the high up desperate sound of Raimon (Al Vent) and the quirky Antonia Font (Wa Yeah).

I learned something. And I don't think learning can ever be a waste, not really.

And next time I go to Catalunya, I can ask for good onions or a screwdriver. Totally worth it. Wa yeah!

Snakes in a Church!

"I was learning about these people in Africa, and this strange coming of age ritual where the older men of the village cut grooves into the young men’s heads... The grooves are so deep... they show up in the fossil record."

"It didn’t puzzle me... It was another culture.
My explanation of things were - it feels good. If it doesn’t feel good, it’s another culture."

"This film was the first thing I couldn't explain. Some of the people in this film look like my grandparents. This is my culture."

"This film is a big part of why I became an anthropologist."

"I read some different explanations of this. One of them was Freudian. Wanna guess what it said? I mean, it's Freudian, come on. Yeah, the snakes are phallic symbols. I thought... yes, sex is important. Yes, symbols, mhmm.... but... why not just use a banana? Or if you just really liked the idea of snakes, why not a non-poisonous snake? Why the serpents?"

"Another explanation was sort of like Malinowski. It said throwing the snakes around relieves tension. Uh huh. You come home after a long day in the coal mine and throw the snake around. Gee honey, you seem tense, wanna go downstairs and throw snakes at the wall?"

- Craig Palmer, our Anthropological Theories of Religion professor, about the film The Holy Ghost People

The Photo

It's been almost exactly 8 years since I came across this photograph in a National Geographic magazine. Today, Stumble took me to the photographers portfolio at http://www.art-dept.com/artists/mccurry/portfolio/portfolio.html and I was enjoying all of the shots and the sense of place and life they evoked. And then I came to this picture, and I blinked, and realized, yes, this was the picture.

I had just turned twelve, and I was so taken by the look in the woman's eye... so I sat down and drew it and then I drew and drew and drew. In just a week I drew dozens of pictures that were quite nice, and my mom was so startled - especially by the original - that she actually called my dad and told him that I was at home drawing like a professional.

The quality of each picture diminished as the week went on. I couldn't stop it, strangely. Maybe I got impatient. I don't know. As for the original, and best, picture (not an exact copy of the photo above, but greatly inspired by it)... I left it on a school bus and never saw it again. For a while afterwards I at least tried to find the original photograph, but I never did for some reason, not until this evening.

Hmm.

The Camping Trip from Hell. :D

Got back from camping yesterday and when I woke up this morning it was hard to believe everything we'd been through. I mean, except of course for the lingering feeling of being wet and cold, the barely conscious urge to seek high ground at all times, the slight smell of forest and slighter smell of mildew throughout my room, and, of course, the giant tent filling the entirety of my bathroom. I squeezed around that this morning to brush my teeth and wash my face. I have a pimple in the middle of my forehead for the first time in years. I also have a toothache and a headache. Nice. I spent most of the day yesterday getting each of the four tents to safe and dry place so that they wouldn't mold, and I'll likely put in another 1-2 hours this week getting them folded up, sorted, and returned, but such is life. It was the weekend from hell, as predicted, but it was also awesome. Not only because the company started out good and got better (you can't help but bond through such experiences), but because it was beautiful.

We survived and that felt good, but it made me feel more vulnerable rather than more capable. I was forced to understand nature and my own limits. What if the tornado had hit our campground? What if we didn't have cars? What if we hadn't found the coin laundry? What if we weren't going home after only two days of the pain and cold? And how pathetic - we weren't even in the middle of nowhere in anything hellish - just a fierce two day thunderstorm, in a nice state park that even offered hot showers (which we never used because frankly we were wet enough).

I understood something of homelessness when I slept in the laundry room in a shelf above the dryers, feeling exposed and alone and even though it was hard and cold and uncomfortable still feeling bad for being there at all, that I didn't deserve even that... and in the morning after sleeping on and off I woke up to voices and my first thought was "shit, must be park rangers and here come the questions and, since I /am/ more legitimate than a real homeless person, an apologetic removal rather than one by force..." and I squirmed in my sleeping bag and waited but it turns out that time it was just some hick emptying his trailer toilet into the sewer. Relief. Zahra and I slept another fitful hour and then packed up before the real authorities might take offense.

Everything flooded the first night. We were all cozy and happy at first, eating chicken in the big tent by candlelight and then listening to the thunderstorm and feeling very safe and warm and dry inside. Then Lingxiao came in and said she was a bit wet, and Palak seconded. So Palak squeezed in a bit tighter and Lingxiao came over by me. After a little while Palak said her side was becoming unbearable and so was mine. So we sent Palak and Lingxiao into the cars to sleep, and brought in towels and whatever else we could find to try to keep the middle of the tent reasonable for Megan, Zahra, and I. We kicked out Zahra early on because the water kept coming, but she took the last available spot in a car, so Megan and I tried to last the night. Our tiny dry spot got smaller and smaller and we moved closer and closer to one another, catching only the tiniest moments of sleep now and then. Everything was damp, even wet, but we kept shrinking away from the puddles of genuine standing water until even that reached us. When three inches of water reached my face, I told Megan that we would have to figure something out. She elected to sleep in the front seat of one of the cars, and I gathered up my sleeping bag and went for a hike. It was barely even raining by now although the ground was soaking wet. I went up to the bathhouse and found a coin laundry, used all the coins on me to dry the sleeping bag, running laps around the campground while I waited, and then took the sleeping bag up to a little shelf, about a foot wide, perched above the dryer, and there I slept at last for an hour until the birds started singing at dawn.

We went climbing at Elephant Rocks and Johnson Shut In's, weather be damned or close enough. We hiked through the rain and when it stopped we climbed on the rocks, timidly at first and then a bit more ambitiously. We had to be careful, careful because things were slippery when wet and we held onto each others hands firmly and helped each other go higher and higher. At Johnson Shut Ins it was mostly me who went out, the others hadn't been there before and didn't trust it as much as I did. I had almost reached the other side when the rain picked up, turned into one of those torrential moments that can't last. I was in the middle of the river with the waterfalls and rapids on all sides and suddenly it turned as dark as after sunset and the water became dark grey and troubled. Everyone called me to come back. I did so, but calmly, thinking to myself how many times I've done the same thing in summer when the rocks were just as wet from splashing children and I didn't even have shoes on. God was it beautiful in the middle in the rain.


A dry moment at Elephant Rocks...

... and a wet one at Johnson's Shut Ins.


As soon as I reached the side my friends were on, the rain stopped and in seconds there was a dramatic reversal. The sun came out and the sky was blue - it was the best weather we'd had the entire weekend. I took off my jacket - I was still soaked underneath, but lighter weight, and Ju, Prite and I went out again. Prite was wearing flip flops and started walking through the shallower parts of the water rather than leaping from rock to rock and Ju and I did. Soon he was soaked and gave up on staying dry at all. He started jumping out of crevices and splashing us, so finally I put down my bag and jumped in after him.

We attempted to go up to Taum Sauk and Mina Sauk. We did stop for a while at the highest point in Missouri and took pictures at the overlook with the last of the short sunshine. As we reached the Mina Sauk fall trail, we realized that it was longer than anticipated and also very muddy and nasty, so we decided to head back to camp. It was a good thing, because no sooner had we gotten into the cars then it started raining again - harder than ever. It was such rain that it still impaired visibility when our wipers were at full speed, and here we were trying to make our way down the mountain. The roads weren't exactly in bad repair, or exceptionally steep, but they were definitely going downhill and were very curvy and windy and gravelly and muddy. I kept reminding myself of how it had been driving through the Smoky Mountains in a rainstorm at 60 mph and I knew I could manage. Just as I was thinking about where I would pull over if it got even the tiniest bit worse, the rain stopped again and the sun came back out. We had beautiful sun all the way back home and the drive was amazing.

That night wasn't nearly as bad as the first had been. After a miniature campfire in the pavilion so that Zahra could at last have the halal s'mores she'd been dreaming of and a game of Bullshit under the yellow lights of the bathroom building, we slept relatively well. We set up a new tent that seemed a bit more solid than the first, plus put it on higher ground, plus the rain wasn't as intense. Still, we were a bit scared after the first night, so Megan and Palak elected to sleep in the cars from the beginning, Prite and Matt took one of the 'safe' tents, Ju and Lingxiao took the other, and Zahra and I decided to sleep up in the laundry area again. It's amazing what can seem like luxury after a disaster.


Only picture of the whole group: Zahra, Megan, Lingxiao, Prite, Matt, Ju, Palak, and me.

Would I do it again? Abso-freaking-lutely. But not tonight please. :)

Travel Blogging and Niches

So, this summer I'm definitely going to start a travel blog. A good one. I started a little one that never got much traffic and I don't blame it because it simply wasn't very good. The content was solid but there was nothing that was bringing people back to it. I had too many facts and not enough stories. I've learned a lot from that one and also from my Journalism classes and SATW events and reading other travel blogs, so I think I'm ready to give it another go. I also have enough material, finally, to keep it going for a long time - I have my past experiences, plus a full summer of travel ahead and a semester each in Spain and Germany. Lack of material isn't a problem - the problem might be the opposite.

I want to do everything. And I'm not supposed to want that. I'm supposed to find a niche, a focus... either horizontally or vertically and stick with that. That's what they all told me at SATW and I totally see where they're coming from. Other blogs do this, even if some of them seem to have a theme of all travel, it usually translates to country hopping fairly superficially. Not that that's bad either, just different, and sort of expensive. They told me that if I couldn't sum up the niche in one clear and simple sentence, it wasn't a niche. That's true too, I'm sure. I definitely have interests and I don't feel that I'm a generalist. But I guess I am. I mean, can't my niche be Spanish speaking countries, Northern Europe, and Japan? (Oh, and Siberia too... ideally... maybe want to leave open the possibility of India and Southeast Asia as well... and anyway how can I judge China until I've been there? And I like all of Southern Europe, not just Spain... also German speaking countries... and I'm so curious about Eastern Europe!)

Um.... okay... yeah... a vertical specialty isn't going to work - I love too many cultures, languages, regions. So how about horizontal? One type of travel. Eco-Travel is cool and all, but there are hippies more suited to that. One thing I can say isn't really for me is cute, artsy, shopping travel. The people who write those are much better suited to it than I am. But I don't want it to be off limits either! Even I sometimes find a really cool shop and want to write about it. Hmmm.... so what part/kind of travel interests me the most? Budget! But maybe I'll grow out of that a little bit. And I'm certainly willing to pay up for things I can't get any other way, like staying in a Ryokan on Miyajima. Okay, so maybe not budget, although that's an aspect... Youth Travel! Right, I am young, and I travel. But I'm not going to be young forever, and anyway it's a bit of an open/artificial topic anyway, especially since I go for things that youth aren't always expected to go for. Adventure? That's what SATW was recommending. I do like ice swimming, sauna, ziplining, long walks... all sorts of stuff some would find scary or crazy. I don't have a lot of fear.

At the same time, I have pretty strict boundaries for this stuff that would prevent me from being the best Adventure Writer. I shy away from things that have too much risk involved. Bungee jumping at a reputable place? Sure. Skydiving? Erm.... maybe. Before I have any dependents. Base-Jumping? No way. I'm not afraid of pain but I think I'm too afraid of dying young to really be awesome at that. Cultural Travel? Now there's a thought. It's a growing industry. Actually I have no idea whether it is or not, I just said that. I should probably go look it up. But really, that's what I like to do - immerse myself in the other culture. Learn the language. Do what they do - even if we would find it extreme or something. (Take ice swimming - pretty normal in Finland, pretty 'extreme' here, but I don't find it overly risky because there are people who do it regularly and are fine... it's not invented for the thrill alone.)

Hmmm... that's really an idea. I should see whether they have a market for that. Still, I feel that Cultural Travel requires specialization, because you have to get in depth. Which is what I want, but probably would be better if I picked a more cohesive geographic region. :S Anyway, I'm ending the conversation for now by saying that I think I have a few more years to see the world and decide on my niche. But there's still the question of the blog.... O.O

I can either... keep this blog and get no experience with travel blogging but keep my sanity, make a new blog for Spain only (probably best aesthetically etc, but will necessarily have a limited run and then what? A new blog for Germany?), or make a new blog for all travel and just let it be Spain Heavy for a little while.

Stress and Excitement

I am too busy to blog guilt-free these days. (I'm stealing time to write this in an awkward half hour between classes). I'm really too busy to do much of anything except write papers, but you know what? I have A's in all classes right now. And I'm not going to be here next year. So I need to take at least some personal time, say goodbye to friends and to Missouri. I'm going camping this weekend despite the nagging - no, threatening and trembling - voice telling me I'd be better off staying home and locking myself in. I also need to pack and blah blah blah. Luckily I am at least one step ahead because my room is cleaner than it's been most of the semester, and I'm going to really try to keep it that way.


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? :)

SATW and Kansas City

At the invitation of Diana Lambdin Meyer, with whom I've been corresponding for almost a year now, I spent Friday night and all day Saturday with the Society of American Travel Writers at their Central States conference in Kansas City. I thought I knew Kansas City reasonably well since two of my cousins went to college there. What a joke - I realized that the handful of walks I'd taken in the Plaza and University areas hadn't even allowed me to scratch the surface of the city.

I met most of the members at the College Basketball Experience, where we all dressed up in our college t-shirts (mine was a bit closer to the front of my closet than some of the others', I imagine ;)) and played an assortment of Basketball mini games, practicing our free throws, vertical jumps, and sports broadcasting skills.

Breakfast the next morning consisted of a quick awards ceremony within the society, and then, to my surprise, Yakov Smirnoff, the famous Russian comedian, appeared and spent the better part of an hour with us! He was just as good in 'real life' as he is on the show, everything he said was somehow hilarious and a lot of it had to be improv. I actually even got a picture with him!

Then I went on a tour through four of the neighborhoods of Kansas City - Brookside, Westport, the Plaza, and the Crossroads. In Brookside we shopped our way through two dozen stores including World's Window (ethnic clothing and jewelry), the Barkery (a gourmet pet treat store), the Reading Reptile (a children's bookstore), and Foo's Fabulous Frozen Custard, while in Westport we walked through almost two hundred years of American history, and in the Plaza we saw beautiful Spanish-inspired architecture and several of Kansas City's most famous fountains.

Our last stop, the Crossroads Art District, seemed less impressive than the others at first glance, with construction on the outskirts and more than it's share of rundown buildings. By the end of the tour, however, the Crossroads was my favourite district. One of the first shops we stopped in was Birdies, a tiny lingerie store filled with very unique (and very pricey) undergarments. From there we visited The Peruvian Connection and its racks of featherlight scarves, sweaters, and dresses woven from alpaca and vicuña wool. In Black Bamboo, an Asian furniture store, I fell in love with candle holders carved out of gypsum to look precisely like ice. I would have taken one of those home with me if we were only allowed candles in the residence halls!

The final stop on our tour was Christopher Elbow's Artisanal Chocolate Boutique. After sampling the Caramel with Fleur de Sel, I couldn't stop myself from buying four more of the truffles. Each one was so delicate, beautiful and delicious - almost as fun to look as it was to eat. The Strawberry Balsamic truffle, for example, had a deep burgundy sheen, and the Wildflower Honey truffle was button shaped and looked golden and molten.

In the evening we went to the American Jazz Museum and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, which share the same building. I went in the Negro Leagues side first, and spent so long in there that I had to rush through the American Jazz Museum before dinner. The Negro Leagues museum was small but densely packed with information. "This is not a black hall of fame," our tour guide told us at the beginning. "The negro leagues should never have existed." The purpose of the museum is less to showcase black athletes and more to explain the discrimination and bigotry that was rampant in all aspects of American life between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement.

In the evening I spent time getting to know the travel writers a bit better. They were all such wonderful people, and despite their experience and reputations I found them very easy to talk to and get along with. Of course it's a bit frightening still for me to look three or four years into the future and imagine myself as a professional, but this experience made me if anything more determined to follow my dream. I came home with a large collection of business cards and I fully plan on looking up some of my new friends over the next few years.

Error: Incompatibility

These are some of my favourite trees on campus (they have a lot of competition, too!). They've got very slender, very strong, twisted branches and they're wonderful to sit in.


This time of year in particular, the branches are covered densely in new green leaves and white blossoms, and hang like curtains. It's beautiful.


Some girls were sitting in one of them as I walked home from class yesterday. People don't do that enough, so normally I would be glad, but as it was I was jealous! I wish I could enjoy the fine weather and beautiful flowers. But we just don't get along.



These are such a nice orange! I can almost taste them when the sun shines through like this...


And these are all butter-yellow and are always swarming with bees and butterflies. ^^


Allergies are the cruelest joke. I'm strong, survive the cold winter, love it even - the greys, the whites, the way it makes brown seem warm and lovely and completely disarm me, leave me unprepared for the incredible beauty of the first green buds of spring... and then allergies arrive. They almost make me want to be dark, depressed, angry again so that I can close my heart to the beauty of spring and call it a choice. As it is, I just feel so excluded, so alien to this environment of sunshine, laughter, and organic healthiness.


Squirrels are rushing about with new energy... birds swoop recklessly in front of pedestrians, the sun glints off their feathers but they move too fast for you to even note their colour half the time...


Amidst all of this, I feel... incompatible with life.

Golden Dust

Pictures from my last walk in the hills, with Zahra and Nash:



"What's making you sick, Miranda?" asked my Catalan professor the other day. "Is it this golden dust?"

It's worse this year than normal, and I... can't stand being compromised like this...

Planes of Existance

Rachel had dreadlocks and did go to Africa, and afterward she cut them off and went to Ireland, and Stephanie posts eerie pictures of mutilated dolls and writes about becoming the person she always was and I think about that and about all of us - Kate, Billie, Stian, Christy, Walaa, osv and the list really goes on and on. With Facebook I see what everyone's up to, all the time, trace their progress somewhat subconsciously, a flicker here and a glimpse there and of course it isn't a perfect, even representation either, but anyway I have this feeling, that we're all evolving. Of course we are. But that's not the point. Sometimes I feel like we are - or were - a fanfiction - there's somehow a sense of inevitability but not the kind that there is in a storybook plot, where the heroes develop along an arch that you anticipate and is pure and regular and they become stronger and wiser and this despite occasional trials and crises. No, that's what I mean when I say it's more like fanfiction - like we're somehow predicted by our earlier selves in a way that's both consistant and surprising, all becoming who we always were.

What I can't work out is whether we were more original then or now - because we're becoming more real, living more in the real world, adapting our madness to reality. There's certainly less fuzzy chaos surrounding us and the simple hints at this and that are manifesting. I don't want to gossip or misinterpret, so I won't use specifics unless they are my own. I for example have traded in forums and all their drama and that certain haze of mysticism and those things that were somehow under the law, under or above reality... and now I want to travel the world, live and learn about other people, other languages... and of course that person was there all the time, under the haze, is now coming into focus. When I sent Elindomiel on her tour, which, if I remember correctly, never got farther than Edoras, that was me, I wanted to explore the real world but I was afraid to reach for it, it was too big and too scary and I remember that time I thought about going up North and I realized I didn't even have a proper concept of what the plane fare would cost and the whole thing disintegrated into something undefined and unreal.

It's a feeling that floats and is hard to describe. I just mean... like fanfiction, the worlds I see my old friends moving in now, from the window of Facebook and the odd email here or there, are of a different quality than being with them every day, slowly their characters are flattened out and I feel that one or the other - new them or old them - must be a parody, an extension of the other that hasn't been fully fleshed out or realized. But it's not the fault of our new technology, though that may add it's own tint or flavour to the experience, it can't be because I see it even in myself, without such a filter. It's just a bit of resistance, some inertia in my mind that resists this idea of development, of a fourth dimension, of a seperation between then and now and the possibility that they can be so different and yet still connected and equally real.

The Akinator

http://us.akinator.com/

This is amazing. It's a bit like 20 questions, and this guy tries to guess which character you're thinking of. He's right 99% of the time, and what's really impressive is that he figures it out with a very standard set of clues, and even if you mess up or don't know up to a third of them. It's amazing. So far, I've given it:

Luthien (From the Silmarrillion, part of the Lotr universe)
Tracey (A character from one season of Pokemon)
Mara Skywalker (Star Wars)
Kazooie (from Banjo-Kazooie)
Belgamina (A very random, small character from FFX)
Bruce Springsteen
Thumbelina
Eddard Stark (from ASOIAF)

The only one it's gotten wrong is Belgamina, and it was very, very close there. (It got Yunalesca, another character in the mythology of FFX with a somewhat similar role).

You can even see how it figured it out. For example, I tried Arya Stark, another ASOIAF character. This is how it went:

Question	Answer given	Answer expected
Is your character an adult man?	No	No
Is your character a female?	Yes	Yes
Has your character really existed?	No	No
Is your character a citizen of the United-States?	No	No
Is your character from a video game?	No	No
Is your character from an anime (Japanese animation)?	No	No
Is your character from a TV series?	No	No
Does your character have magical powers?	No	No
Is your character from a Walt Disney animated feature?	No	No
Is your character from a novel?	Yes	Yes
Is your character English?	No	No
Does your character fight?	Yes	Yes
Is your character less than 18 years old?	Yes	Yes
Does your character have a older brother?	Yes	Yes
Is your character in love with a man?	No	No
Does your character have a sister?	Yes	Yes

And, here's with a real person, I tried Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway.

Question	Answer given	Answer expected
Is your character real?	Yes	Yes
Is your character a woman ?	Yes	Yes
Has your character ever been married?	Yes	Yes
Is your character an actor?	No	No
Is your character a singer, or does he work with a singer (as a songwriter, producer, musician...)?	No	No
Is your character internationally famous?	Yes	Yes
Is your character a citizen of the United-States?	No	No
Is your character still alive?	Yes	Yes
Is your character tanned?	Probably not	?
Does your character belong to the royal family?	Yes	Yes
Does your character have grand-children?	No	No
Is your character English?	No	No
Is your character of Arabic origins?	No	No
Is your character currently more than 50 years old?	No	No
Is your character sexy?	Don't know	Probably not
Is your character from Argentina?	No	No
Is your character Asian?	No	No
Is your character a native Spanish speaker?	No	No
Is your character blond?	Yes	Yes
Is your character from the Scandinavian area?	Yes	Yes