Kanye West and Finland?

I saw this and I just couldn't resist.


Immaletyoufinish.com

Back to Work

The chaos of the move disrupted everything. Now I am trying to go back to some projects - my memoirs for last summer, learning Japanese and about Japan.

These things get easier the longer I work on them, somehow, so I knew that I needed to start. I read the first few pages of a book I bought used, called Japanese Inn, last night. It told me about a semi-legendary Japanese beach called Miho's Beach - I want to look it up, and if anything doesn't work out this summer it's maybe another possible destination. You can see Mt. Fuji from the beach, so I know it's not crazy far away from other things we're doing. Miho's beach is supposedly still beautiful today, with it's black volcanic sands, pine groves, and view of Fuji, but in older days, when it had white sands, it was more beautiful yet. So beautiful, in fact, that the legends say that an angel descended from the heavens to dance on the beach, and left her feathery robe on the branch of a wind shaped pine. While she bathed, a fisherman found it, and wouldn't give it back unless she danced for him. She danced the celestial dance as the heavens provided the music, and afterwards vanished into a mist...

My memoirs. Today I brainstormed all the important points I want to cover about Monteverde, Manuel Antonio, and my first day with the host family. I also touched up a lot of bad spots in earlier entrees. Hopefully, by next Wednesday, I'll have Costa Rica done up until the Host Family stay begins, and also do a few entrees of Finland. It's probably unrealistic to have even a rough draft completely done by the time I go to Japan, but it would be nice to get close, because I'm going to have a lot to say about Japan, too!

It's funny, because these days a day doesn't hold much. I get up, I run some errands, I maybe read some, clean a lot, cook, go to bed. So when I'm reading what I did in a single day in my memoirs, it's unbelievable! One day, I started with a hike through a cloud rainforest, then went to a hummingbird sanctuary, then there was a long drive south down the mountains and along the coast, and we went to a club that night and danced after seeing spider monkeys and sloths at our hotel.

I think what's amazing about Vacation is that you expect things to happen - a year goes by in your 'grey' ordinary life and you have to think to realize how much really happened - as it happens it's just life. But on a vacation you're ready and anticipating life to happen. And of course, it does.

I head each entree with a date and a title, often a location. I also say the day of the week. I almost took them out, at one point, then I remembered why I included them to start with - why I like them there. It's odd, but Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday - it's so pedestrian, that it almost ties the unreal world of the trips with the real world I move in every day. Saturday, ha! And to think, ordinarily I would be working at the library all day. Sunday, that's church! No, wait, Saturday was the rainforest, Sunday was San Jose - or something like that. ;) All of this subconscious, of course.

Best Cities To Live

http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/27/cities-best-live-lifestyle-real-estate-best-places-to-live.html?feed=rss_popstories

Rank 2009	Rank 2008	City	Country	Index 2009	Index 2008
1	2	VIENNA	AUSTRIA	108.6	107.9
2	1	ZURICH	SWITZERLAND	108	108
3	2	GENEVA	SWITZERLAND	107.9	107.9
4	4	VANCOUVER	CANADA	107.4	107.6
4	5	AUCKLAND	NEW ZEALAND	107.4	107.3
6	6	DUSSELDORF	GERMANY	107.2	107.2
7	7	MUNICH	GERMANY	107	107
8	7	FRANKFURT	GERMANY	106.8	107
9	9	BERN	SWITZERLAND	106.5	106.5
10	10	SYDNEY	AUSTRALIA	106.3	106.3
11	11	COPENHAGEN	DENMARK	106.2	106.2
12	12	WELLINGTON	NEW ZEALAND	105.9	105.8
13	13	AMSTERDAM	NETHERLANDS	105.7	105.7
14	14	BRUSSELS	BELGIUM	105.4	105.4
15	15	TORONTO	CANADA	105.3	105.3
16	19	OTTAWA	CANADA	105	104.7
16	16	BERLIN	GERMANY	105	105
18	17	MELBOURNE	AUSTRALIA	104.8	104.8
19	17	LUXEMBOURG	LUXEMBOURG	104.6	104.8
20	20	STOCKHOLM	SWEDEN	104.5	104.5

Best Cities to Live:

#1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 16 are all in German speaking Countries! (I would say that they are all German speaking, but I am pretty ignorant about Switzerland, so probably one of those speaks French. XD)

# 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, (14), 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 are all in Germanic speaking Countries! (I put Brussels in parenthesis because I know it's mostly Francophone. But surely it would have rated higher if they let the Dutchies do more talking ;))

The top 3 speak German, the top 20 speak a Germanic language - that's conclusive enough evidence for me that it's speaking German that makes you happy!

Canada did very well, but I was a bit surprised that Scandinavian cities didn't do as well as might be expected given how high the countries rank for best COUNTRIES to live. Yes, Copenhagen and Stockholm both made a showing, but no Norway, etc. I thought about blaming climate, which is apparently one of the factors that they look at, but the cold didn't seem to have hurt Germany at all. I guess it's because of the lack of big cities in Scandinavia, or maybe all the happy people live outside of cities? For all the shit Norwegians give Oslo, it didn't actually do too bad. (It's 24th). America's first showing is Honolulu at 29th. The only real person I've ever heard of coming from Hawaii is Obama, and I've never met anyone from Hawaii. It just doesn't feel real to me, so I'm not sure we can count it. The next one is San Francisco at 30.

By the way, you can count Germanic-speaking countries all the way to 32 if you give Singapore wiggle room (Danial says that everyone there speaks English, and it's the ordinary language, far more than Malay), and count Swedish for Finland (which seems cruel, but oh well.) At that point, France starts popping in, as does Japan, and the list as a whole becomes far more diverse.

21	21	PERTH	AUSTRALIA	104.3	104.3
22	22	MONTREAL	CANADA	104.2	104.2
23	23	NURNBERG	GERMANY	104.1	104.1
24	24	OSLO	NORWAY	103.7	103.7
25	25	DUBLIN	IRELAND	103.6	103.5
26	32	SINGAPORE	SINGAPORE	103.5	102.9
26	25	CALGARY	CANADA	103.5	103.5
28	27	HAMBURG	GERMANY	103.4	103.4
29	28	HONOLULU, HI	UNITED STATES	103.1	103.1
30	29	SAN FRANCISCO, CA	UNITED STATES	103	103
30	29	HELSINKI	FINLAND	103	103
30	29	ADELAIDE	AUSTRALIA	103	103
33	32	PARIS	FRANCE	102.9	102.9
34	34	BRISBANE	AUSTRALIA	102.4	102.4
35	35	TOKYO	JAPAN	102.2	102.2

The numbers, btw, are comparing them to New York, which is 100.

Flags

A black tarp. Several rectangular wooden tiles. Paintbrushes. A ruler. Several cans of poorly chosen paint colours - black, white, red, and pastel blue, yellow, and green. Ten to twenty students putting off studying for finals.

We painted flags.


We didn't have the ideal colours, and our attempts at mixing failed horribly and produced only a useless pink and several variations of equally useless grey. We only had enough tiles for about 30 flags - far less than we needed to even give a reasonably share to each corner of the world. Instead, it was anarchy. People made what they wanted. This meant Taiwan, and no China, a very beautiful Serbia, Russia, Seychelles, and Isle of Man, no U.K., no Germany, an very detailed Nicaragua and Mexico, no Brazil or Canada, a few attempts at the U.S. and Texan flags, only one of which was allowed to remain, a Finnish flag, a Norwegian flag, even a Sami flag (can you tell I was involved?), Japan, Angola, Georgia, South Ossetia, and a Pangaea flag showing the 'old' globe. Some of them turned out quite nice:



Actually I think they all did. :) Next year Pangaea is moving, and they're tearing down all the flags we have scattered around the floor. Most of them are outdated, damaged, or bad anyway... but it's still a bit sad. And the worst crime is that they're tearing down our very impressive map of the world... which must have been done in years past with a projector or something, it's so detailed and lovely. I think it would be just fine in World of Business... it's only one wall, after all, and they never decorate theirs, but they'll hear none of it. Still, at least we can pass these flags on to the next generation. And we signed and dated and labled all the backs. :D

Study Abroad Selections

I had a lot of ideas about where I wanted to study abroad. My final list of ideas looked something like this, in order of priority, interest:

Norway
Spain
Germany? Japan?
Italy? Finland?
Latin America?

Complicating matters significantly was the fact that most of these countries offered multiple locations for Study Abroad.

But I sat down with a chart of my remaining semesters and figured it out like an old fashioned logic puzzle.

Firstly, I have to do one of my semesters through the Journalism School, because I can only take one of my years off from the Journalism school and still get a Journalism degree, and I can only get Journalism credit on one of their programs.

So, looking at the options through Journalism, the most appealing one was Spain, because then I could kill two birds with one stone. The Journalism program in Spain is in the University of Navarra in Pamplona, and you can go there for a full year or for Spring semester. Spring Semester it is.

Next. Norway is really important to me, so I looked at it next. Mizzou has one program in Norway - an exchange with the University of Bergen. The weather there isn't great, or so I've heard, but otherwise it sounds lovely. You can go there for a full year or either semester, but Lene recommended (and it makes sense) going in the Spring - that way the weather is getting nicer, not uglier, you have the summer afterwards if you want to go on any trips, and you're there for Syttende Mai! (Not crucial, but nice)

This meant that I only had a fall semester to work with. For some reason, not many schools have a fall semester option. I started thinking about and looking at my other options. The main two are Germany and Japan. The benefits to Germany are that I could take my classes in German, becoming rather fluent in the process, and that Germany has a nice, central European location, so I could go on a lot of awesome weekend trips, etc. The benefits to Japan are that it's non-European, so I would be able to expand my cultural horizons, and gain maybe a working knowledge of Japanese.

I plugged these into search, and there was one possibility in each country for fall semester. However, the one in Japan comes with a strong recommendation that you have studied Japanese in University, and most of the classes offered at that University are about Japanese cultural studies - interesting, but not easy to apply to my degree.

So I think it makes the most sense to go to Germany - Bonn, in particular. Bonn (a former capital of Germany) looks like it has a lot of culture and great access to several cool countries in Europe (the Benelux, Austria, Switzerland...) which I'd like to go to for a weekend or so while I'm there.

So, it's more or less decided:

Pamplona, Spain
Bergen, Norway
and
Bonn, Germany

The only thing that remains to be decided are which semesters are which - since I have two fall and two spring semesters to work with. I think I'll travel the first fall, and be home the second to kind of break things up and keep myself from going crazy. Then there is just the matter of whether I go to Norway or Spain first, but I'm thinking it might be Norway because there could be advantages to starting my sequence before I go to Spain (if I go the first year I'll be admitted to my sequence but I won't have started).

There is also a possibility that I'd be able to take a summer internship in Argentina at some point, which would be great as I could expand my experiences onto another continent. (I want to be a travel journalist, so this is about more than just bragging about how many countries I have hit ;)) If that works out I might make Lucia come down at the beginning or the end of that so we can have our crazy Chile trip. :D

Life in the Faroes

I realized that I haven't yet mentioned my other blog, Life in the Faroes. I am the secondary writer/translator of this blog, which is primarily written by my friend Uni. Uni is from the Faroe Islands and he is the one who helps me with Faroese when I have time to study it! :D (Wish I had more, I love the language and Uni is so nice and helpful!)

Anyway, we started writing this blog together because we realized that, despite recent increases, the internet isn't exactly saturated with information about the Faroes, especially daily life there... and there is a marked lack of bilingual English - Faroese resources online.

The blog can be found at:

http://roskur.blogspot.com/

An Idea

You know how most fantasy books are so European... like their not really set in Europe, but you can feel it all around; you look at a map, you have a blobby bay where the Mediterranean would be, you have your unexplored southern continent, you have the mostly vertical orientation and the northern, icy oceans? Well Ive decided, that in all the lazy and inaccurate ways I want, Im going to base my worlds more of the American continent. Because I'm not amazingly fond of American culture, and because we have no long term history to speak of, it'll be mostly ecology and stuff that I'm mirroring, but I think it would be interesting, because America is what I know, so I think Ill be more comfortable with that. And; America is the melting pot, and my imagination is basically Western with Eastern ideas here and there, so that should work well, don't you think?