With One Week to Go

On Saturday I'm leaving for Kansas City, where Laura and I are going to hang out for a few days, having a bit of fun and making our last preparations for Japan. We're leaving for Japan on the 15th - it's coming up rapidly.

I've been busy with family matters, (and, yesterday, the fourth of July :)) but I've still been doing a bit each day and getting closer to being ready. With all the hotel reservations finally confirmed, most of the rail journeys at least generally planned, my phone on it's way, and my railpasses and passport in hand, the most crucial thing remaining is to pack. I'm planning to get my room tidy tonight, and perhaps even come up with a packing list, so that it will be easier.

I'm planning to pack light, with ideally just my smaller red suitcase and a backpack (probably my dad's big one, which I've uncovered in the move). Still, I haven't decided what I'll do for the way to Kansas City - I may well check the big red suitcase with clothes and stuff I'll want at Mizzou but don't need in Japan, and carry on the little red suitcase and the backpack. It's a lot to carry on, but I've done it before. If I can't fit everything into the small suitcase and the backpack with room to spare, I'll bring the big suitcase instead, but wouldn't it be nice if I could carry everything easily, and even avoid checking luggage? Maybe unrealistic, but I can still dream at this point. I also might plan to mail at least one package home (or to Laura's house) with souvenirs or something of that nature, but it's fairly expensive, so we'll see.

I've also been reading a lot. I'm halfway through Japanese Inn, which is probably not the most densely edifying work I could be reading, but hey, I got it at one of the used bookstores around here and it's a nice look at Japan over a long period of history. I may not finish it before I leave, and I'm not particularly worried about it. I do, however, want to finish Turning Japanese. I only wish that it was more up to date - it was written in the 80s - but I still feel as though it's a fascinating look at Japanese culture from a very unique perspective, and, completely apart from my trip, a fascinating work of introspection. I have a lot to say about this book as well, and I'd like to write a blog post about it - perhaps one before, and one after, my trip to Japan.

I've also read more about the sites we'll be going to, and tourism in Japan in general, on Wikitravel. They have a lot of good information on rail connections, restaurants, etc, and I'll probably print 30-40 pages of it to have with me in leiu of or in addition to a traditional guidebook for the trip. This page in particular, though long, is at turns useful, fascinating, or both.

Our itenerary is pretty much finalised at this point, with only three days (out of 21) that are uncertain and probably will be until they arrive. We'll be hovering fairly near Osaka during that time, so good possibilities are Kobe, the valleys around Hiroshima, or more Osaka. The only site that we're missing, would be reasonable to do, and I care at all about is Mount Fuji. I don't really need to spend a day or two climbing it, but it would be nice to go somewhere that at least has a good view of it. We may well do that with the last of our fuzzy days, as we head back towards Tokyo.

Looking at Japan's Top 3 made me quite proud of our itenerary. I really think we've struck a fairly good balance. We can't do everything in Japan, or even the highlights of Japan, in three weeks - which is a good thing! I have a feeling that I'll be back if I ever get the chance, and that's before I've even stepped fut in the country. Still, out of most of the Top 3 lists, we've done 1 - not bad for a first trip.

Amoung the Three Views, we are seeing Miyajima.
Amoung the Three Castles, we are seeing Himeji.
Amoung the Three Famous Gardens, we are doing Kenrokuen.
Amoung the Three Sacred Mountains, we are doing Mount Osore and Mount Koya.
Amoung the Three Big Buddhas, we are doing Todaiji and Kotokuin.
Amoung the Three Holy Places of Oshu, we are doing Mount Osore.
Amoung the Three Great Inari Shrines, we are doing Fushimi Inari.
Amoung the Three Great Tenjin Shrings, we are doing Kitano Tenmangu.
---------------
Amoung the Three Famous Mountains, we may be doing Mount Fuji.
We won't be there for any of the Three Great Festivals.
We're missing the Three Hot Springs.
We're missing the Three Great Night Views.
Amoung the Three Hidden Regions, we are approaching Shirakawa-Go, but not making it there.
We're missing the Three China Towns.

I also checked out "Off the Beaten Track in Japan" - areas that aren't so well known to tourists. I wouldn't expect that we'd make it to any of these on our first whirlwind tour of Japan, but actually both Shimokita Peninsula and Mount Koya make the list.

What I think I'll find is that I regret not having more time to spend on the Shimokita peninsula. I heard about it late enough in the game that I was incredibly lucky to be able to work it in at all, and we're only going to have one full day there - I could spend two weeks.

I took a break a few lessons from finishing Unit 2 of Rosetta Stone Japanese and today I got back on it. As I started Unit 3 I realized that the difficulty has made a pretty steep jump. Still, things are going fairly smoothly. I got out one of my old Japanese textbooks yesterday and wonder if Rosetta Stone is spoiling me - I had a hard time focusing on black text and forcing myself to copy sentences into my notebook. On the other hand, I've never been too impressed by that particular textbook, so maybe it has nothing to do with Rosetta Stone.


Here is a screenshot showing my progress. We're definitely into sentences now, and I can introduce myself or someone else, and ask enough questions to have a 2 minute smalltalk section on a train. Unfortunately that's probably not going to happen, and I'm kind of getting anxious to learn hotel and train related words. But if nothing else Laura and I can cram that at her house before we leave and on the plane ride over.

Things are looking good!

My Beach

I Googled my beach so I could show it off. :)

This picture came up first...

Erm, lil' awkward. Such a spot may exist in the general area (perhaps within a half hour's drive?), but it's definitely not /Redington/ beach. I would have found it. Now I'm quite curious, it looks gorgeous! All those rocks - we don't have those.


This one claims to be in North Redington, which I haven't extensively explored, so I can't rule it out. It looks a lot more like my beach, with the right lack-of-rocks and sea oat combination. But my beach has more distance between the water and the sea oats, and of course, has more people on it.

Okay Google, I give up. The reason I was Googling to start with is that for some reason I haven't taken hardly any pictures of the beach that we walk to every night, other than the sunset itself. Here's one my sister took, with me in it. It should do for now - I'm planning a post with lots of Florida Pictures later.

Homesick

It rarely happens to me that I wake up in the night, unsure of my surroundings. But it's happened here, in the darkest hours of the night, when I'm woken by rain on tile roofs and the swishing of palms on my windowpane. I stretch, am surprised by the cool metal of the home gym as my arm hits the weight machine, which comes right up to the edge of my mattress. I don't know where I expected to find myself - at home on Burgundy Lane, or back in Laws.

Laws, Mizzou, last year, is an awkward memory for me. There are moments, especially in the waking day, arguing with my family, that it's hard to believe I ever went away, and lived for a year alone, with a bunch of loveable and crazy foreigners (and even crazier Americans) in the huge concrete monstrosity of Laws hall. Mayumi, Mitsuki, Ben, Clint, Mimi, Laurence, Tomomi... Timur, Santi, Pat and Maria... even Laura, Tabi, and Jorge to a lesser extent - is it really possible that we met, lived together for a long year, and then, now, it is over? And Mayumi, having been my roommate, that is the strangest.

When I wake up at night I don't wonder about having lived there - the whole environment is absolutely present in my mind, less as a memory than as a reality. Without my eyes, I could climb out of my bed, make my way out of my room, and to the bathroom, or perhaps down the stairs. I might even get as far as Dobbs.

But no, I am here in Florida. And that's strange indeed. My family is here and all of my things. The furniture and paintings that surrounded me throughout my childhood have been transplanted to a new climate, almost a new nation. It feels like a crossover fanfiction or something, strange.

I am vaguely aware that this is one of those magical places people leave their own homes and spend loads and loads of money to come to and go to the beach rain or shine and take pictures and bring home memories. And that's strange. I've never lived in such a place before, and I always thought that if I did I should appreciate it a bit more. But the beach isn't really my scene, at least not yet.

When I walk on the beach I feel old. I feel like walking slowly and watching clouds and sunsets and seagulls and thinking about my life, maybe even writing about it. Except that I haven't hardly lived my life. It is a peaceful place - no place for me now. I am not ready for peace.

Being transplanted has had another effect on me - one that raises questions and may have long term implications. Or it may mean nothing. I am homesick for Missouri. It happens a little bit with silly things, like longing to hear "Dierbergs" and "Schnucks" instead of "Winn Dixie". And it happens more with bigger things, like Winter.

I miss it for myself, a bit. I watched a few minutes of Greys Anatomy and Meridith walked outside in a coat, the whole world grey and her breath coming out in a mist, and I felt it in my chest. I am so grateful that I am going back to Missouri in the fall - I'm not sure I could manage without the winter. Go ahead and tell me it makes no sense, I already know it.

But it gets more complex than a longing for snow - I was playing Rosetta Stone, and some of the pictures show late fall, and early winter... and in no exotic way whatsoever, but perhaps a little girl in a little coat, smiling shyly and standing in front of a suburban street with bare trees and pale grass behind, the last few leaves of fall dancing on the lawn. That street could be in my old neighborhood, that coat could come from Wal Mart or Target, that child could be my own -

I understand suddenly, this want to have your children grow up in the same way you did. It gives me a certain feeling to imagine my children growing up in colourful warm parkas, playing with scattered leaves, feeling their cheeks and ears and nose turn bright red in the cold, going door to door on halloween, going off to the woods because they know thick winter clothing makes the thorns more bearable, cracking frozen puddles with their feet, watching sleet hit the windows as they snuggle under blankets indoors...

A lot of images go through my mind. I don't require my future children to experience each and every one of them, but each one of them makes me smile and think of them. Not that we need be in Missouri - almost all of these things could happen, for example, in New England, and most of them (swapping out Wal Mart and giving up Halloween) could happen in Scandinavia (if I went far enough north I would lose the leaves, and they won't be exactly the same anywhere else).

Just some thoughts and feelings, is all. And even if I were to move off to some exotic land, there's nothing saying that I might not be able to take my kids home for a year or two for them to understand America. I am planning on shipping or accompanying them back to the states for a month most summers anyway. Still, it's imperfect - there's a difference between having Trick or Treated, and growing up doing it every year, from being carried by mommy dressed up as a pumpkin to being a little witch whose daddy follows her around holding pounds of candy to going to high school costume parties dressed as a... bunny?

And I've avoided mentioning deep winter and Christmas and New Years altogether! I've avoiding thinking about them, if you want to know the truth. If leaves falling and winter coats make me so lonesome, what will the thought of Christmas without snow or Santa do to me? :P But I'm sure I'll give it all due thought before I make any of that sort of life decision.

And one can't have everything. Even people who never leave their own small town grumble about "when I was your age", and I know my children won't have Pokemon or Pottermania as part of their childhood. So, I dunno. :)

I'm just thinking onto paper.

An Outburst of Organic Life

"By forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive Nature accomplishes her beneficent designs - now a flood of fire, now a flood of ice, now a flood of water; and again in the fullness of time an outburst of organic life.”

- John Muir

Alligator Man

Melissa and I took a walk, making all lefts so that we came to the sea wall across the bay from our own house. When the tide is high it's fun to walk along the concrete edge, seeing the water lap against the side and, here and there, where the old wall is beginning to crumble, swirl into the land and fill tiny rushing pools.

Melissa won't stop talking about Alligator Man. Debbie has told her that there is a man with a pet alligator in the neighborhood - he lives in the tall grey house, she said, with an alligator mailbox. It was a bit further than Tidbit and I usually walked, but we agreed to help her investigate. So it was a left at the end of the seawall, and then a long street, and then left again into a little cul-de-sac.

The tall grey house had no Alligator mailbox. Or so we thought at first - a second glance revealed that it was green, with a slight attempt at scaly texturing, and when seen from straight on, the unmistakable tail of a gator on the back of it. It was like finding a giant red X on the ground. We looked at each other, and then slowly at the house, as if we would hear the Alligator roar and gnash it's teeth from the side of the road.

Rediculous, of course. But there was an enclosure there, where someone else might have a screen porch. It didn't look big enough for a gator, or strong enough to hold one. But then again, there was the mailbox to consider, and why would Debbie lie to us? We didn't want to be creepers, so we walked on.

"After all," I said. "Just because there is an alligator on the mailbox and an enclosure in the front yard doesn't mean he has an alligator. After all, here's a mailbox with a giant seahorse on it, does that mean they have a giant seahorse in their front yard?"

We turned and looked at this house, in a mockery of searching for a giant seahorse. And I kid you not - they had a giant aquarium in the side of their house, just visible from the road. This was all getting to be a bit too weird. We circled the cul-de-sac in mock hysterics, Mel screaming, "Look here, palm trees on the mail box... and palm trees in the yard!!"

We came back around to Alligator Man's house. Still no gators, but there was a very large grey dog there, who was free and roaming around a bit too much for our liking. We had Tidbit to think of, after all. I picked her up and I think she knew better than to make any noises. We tried to make our retreat as quickly and quietly as possible. We were almost to the corner when a man on a large and loud motorcycle came around and towards us. Moving out of the way we saw him stop at Alligator Man's house and talk to the dog.

We thought we were saved. And then we heard the man calling the dog, and revving up his motorcycle again.

"He's going to run with the dog!"

"No, surely not!"

But just the same, we were on a narrow street with no sidewalks and no public areas, just the long (and lengthening) avenue of houses before the right turn back to the seawall and safety. We heard the motorcycle behind us, the man calling the dog again. We ran.

Melissa was in flip flops and I in sandles, and carrying 16 pounds of Dachshund besides. We were halfway there when the man on the motorcycle turned the corner. I was still thinking to myself, 'surely not'. Melissa, who without Tidbit had a bit more mobility, risked a quick look back.

"The dog is following!" she confirmed. We ran as though the man was leading a team of gators on our tails. The motorcycle grew louder and louder in our ears, deafening. We reached the seawall with seconds to spare, through ourselves to the right and onto the public grass, and the motorcycle raced by, the grey dog running alongside it at top speed.

I was a bit high on Rosetta Stone, and Japanese words came tumbling out of my mouth at that.

"Inu wa hashitte imasu," I whispered.

Breathing hard, we watched in amazement as the two sped to the end of the seawall, then rushed back at us, and again. We clung to the concrete edge by the sea once more, working our way back home.

I do believe that was Alligator Man. And I do believe that he is capable of owning an Alligator.

Tidbit and I won't be going past the seawall for a while.

Japanese Update

I've been playing Rosetta Stone pretty much nonstop. I'm still pleased with it for the most part, although I'm starting to wish I had done all this while I still had Mayumi around to practice with! It's a bit depressing to do it all on the computer. Still, I'll be in Japan in just a few short weeks. The frantic pace I've been moving at reminds me of a quote from the trailer of Memoirs of a Geisha - "What takes years to learn, you must learn in weeks." XD That's an exaggeration, of course. I knew random bits and pieces of Japanese before, which is definitely helping. And despite the fact that I've read that each level of Rosetta Stone should take a year to cover, I'm having a hard time believing that's true. Even assuming that you only did one of the exercises a day, you should finish in a few months.

In these three or so days, I have almost finished Unit 2 of Level 1, and here are some of the things I can say:
(About half of these are word for word from the exercises, the other half I made up, but using only words and grammar from Rosetta Stone)

What colour is your hair?
My hair is brown.
Is that your father?
No, that is my grandfather.
Is that your older sister?
No, that is my younger sister.
Nice to meet you.
What is your name?
My name is Miranda.
How many cups are there?
There are 8 cups.
Where is the ball?
The ball is under the bridge.
Where are the plates?
Two plates are on the table, two plates are in the kitchen.
My brother is watching t.v. in the living room.
My mother is cooking in the kitchen.
My children are playing in the park.
Her horse is running.
My friends’ cat is watching my fish.
What do you have?
I have a pen.
What are you eating?
I am eating rice and egg, and I am drinking juice.
I love my dog.
He loves his mother.
Our son is walking and our daughter is running.
The man is kissing his wife.
Where is the newspaper?
The newspaper is in the bathroom, on top of the sink.
Where are the sandwiches?
The sandwiches are in the kitchen, on top of the table.
How many apples are there?
There are five apples.
How many flowers do you have?
I have six flowers.
The girl and her mother are eating rice.
My mother and her friends are reading books.


I can write a lot of these as well, but I admit that I am not really studying the Kanji involved. I could already read the syllabaries, though I believe I am getting to a point where I might know them /from/ Rosetta Stone, but the Kanji aren't taught much, and not knowing the stroke order and whatnot I have contented myself with recognizing them in context, but being unable to produce them myself.

The speaking sections are getting on my nerves. They want me to speak very loudly, they almost never catch the last word that I say (sometimes I have to add nonsense syllables to the end of the phrase so that they catch it), and sometimes I can't figure out for the life of me what's wrong with my pronunciation. It is much stricter for single, long, words, than it is for sentences too. I sometimes disable them, but I do think it helps my learning to say things outloud, and if I disable them it takes away the nice space and reminder to do so. I wish they included an option where they prompt you to try your pronunciation, but pass you whenever you utter roughly the right amount of syllables. I don't need them to help me sound like a native - I'd just like to have a chance to repeat after them.

Rosetta Stone Version 3

My review of Rosetta Stone 2 wasn't very positive. I thought it was a reasonably well designed program, yes, but nowhere near worth the hype or the price tag. Now I have tried out Rosetta Stone 3, and I feel quite differently about it. While it still follows the somewhat controversial total immersion method (no English), I would liken the experience of Rosetta Stone 2 to being dropped into a foreign country and trying to figure things out, albeit with ideal context clues. Rosetta Stone 3 is like being dropped into the same situation, but with a native speaker, who, although they don't speak any English, is trying to help you and teach you the language. No, the program doesn't actually use role-playing like that, but that's sort of how it feels. In Rosetta Stone 2, you were on your own. In Rosetta Stone 3, the software is teaching you.

In addition, Version 3 teaches the written language, and is much better at testing pronunciation (although it's still a computer program... so... :() and tasks other than listening comprehension. The variety of exercises is much better.

Above: This exercise teaches you to spell using the Japanese syllabary, Hiragana.

While there is still no cultural content to speak of, Version 3 at least seems to acknowledge that languages are different. While so far I have only tried the Japanese version, many aspects of it seem tailored to teaching Japanese, as opposed to any language (and by that we mean, ideal for Germanic/Romance languages, less good for others).


Above: This exercise, which asks you to differentiate between the three writing systems used in Japanese, is clearly unique to the Japanese Version.

One area in which this differentiation between languages has actually regressed from Version 2 -3 is in the pictures. Version 2 had at least two different photo sets for Asian and Western languages, so most of the pictures in the Japanese version were taken in Japan. In Version 3, Japanese pictures are enough of a minority that I suspect they use the same photos for all languages. Still, I can't bring myself to complain much about this. While there is only one set of pictures, they are much nicer than in Version 2. The quality is high enough that you never find yourself wondering whether a character is a boy or a girl, and the variety is impressive. At times, Version 2 looked like it was creatively picking pictures from stock photos to represent the words - Version 3 very obviously planned and took many of the pictures expressly for the purpose of teaching the language.

Above: Version 2 might have contented itself with showing bigger and smaller flowers in stock-like photographs. The magnifying glass over the 'small flowers' and the girl standing behind the 'big flowers' makes it obvious that Version 3 took each picture precisely for it's function in the software.


Above: Version 2 showed different colours of cars. Version 3 shows close ups so tight that you know they're talking about the colour itself.

The user can also moderate the difficulty to a greater extent than in Version 2. You can determine how strictly your pronunciation is graded, and you can pick between using Romanji (Japanese spelled with our alphabet: much easier, but less authentic), Hiragana, Kanji, and Kanji with Furigana. Including Kanji with Furigana was a nice thought on the part of the designers, but in actuality it makes everything so small that it's not worth bothering with.

Above: In this exercise, you can read the Kanji, or click on the green speaker icon to hear how the sentence is sounded out, depending on whether you want to learn to read the language, or just understand it.

In conclusion, I find Rosetta Stone 3 to be a very well made computer based language learning program - perhaps approaching the best such a program can possibly be. Version 3 addresses many of the shortcomings of Version 2, making it worthy of the hype and the price tag. However, the fact that it is a computer program, and that it follows the 'total immersion' learning philosophy, means it is still quite a challenge for those who, without any linguistic background, would learn a language using ONLY Rosetta Stone software. Ideally, users would have a teacher, or a dictionary and a grammar book, as supplements.

The Florida State Fairgrounds

It had been on the calendar for months. We were going to the Florida State Fair Grounds to see Trace Atkins and Toby Keith.... mostly Trace Atkins. We've lived on our island for almost a month now and had unbelievable weather. We've had rain twice - hard rain with wind, too - but short lasting, and this during the worst season in Florida. It seems the winds around here blow storms inland, or out to sea - they miss the island. But we went into the interior for the concert, far enough that the palms thinned and turned into trees draped in Spanish moss. And as we sat on the highway, stuck in Tampa traffic, the skies darkened and it began to rain.

We had planned to go to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner first, but it seemed as though the rest of the concertgoers had the same idea. The parking garage nearby was full - absolutely full. We went up five stories of wet dripping concrete only to find every spot full and dozens of cars circling. Madness. We cut out losses and headed to Steak and Shake. Twice during dinner the power went out and we heard the generators buzz as it flickered back on. But the worst was when it came time to pay. They sent me to the register with the money, and I waited. And waited. The rest of the family joined me and we waited. No one came to help us. There was a crowd of employers there who stared at us blankly.

"Can we pay?" my dad asked, again and again.

One woman just kept staring at us with an absolutely blank expression, shaking her head slowly. My dad was ready to just walk out, but my mom was sure we'd be arrested. So I reached into my purse, found exact change, and laid it out on the counter. Then we left. What that was all about, we had no earthly idea.

The sight of the fairgrounds looked like it had been taken out of some horror movie. Everything was grey-blue and threatening, wet with rivulets of running rainwater and lit up by flashes of lightening. Here and there revelers waved the Confederate Flag proudly over impromptu wet shirt contests and tailgating parties.

We parked the car and started the long walk, through marshy, swampy areas. We were in sandles, my sister in high heels, and the mud and water came up over our feet with almost every step. We dodged the deep puddles, but even the shallow ones put sand under our toes and set frothy foam coming up out of the soles of my mom's sandles. And she kept muttering about snakes and gators. Gators was rediculous, unimaginable in the crowded parking lot, even with the wilder areas surrounding it. Snakes seemed unlikely as well, but at least possible. I kept telling her that there wouldn't be any snakes there, it would be a snakes' worst nightmare, etc.

There were cowboy boots and hats and American flags everywhere. Women hard before their time. The ubiquitous beer belly. The smell of cigarettes. Harsh voices. All excited. This was a big night. We got our tickets, walked a little further. We had reserved seats, so we were part of the half of the audience with a tarp over their heads to keep the rain off.

Trace was good. He was a huge man, just as described. My mom kept shrieking that he was an absolute monster. He's about 6'6'' and filling every inch with muscle, anyway. The screens sometimes showed him from the pack, a profile, topped with that big cowboy hat. He looked almost rediculous, like a giant shuddering snowman as he moved to the beat. It was just the angle, though. Straight on, he was the picture of masculinity - traditional, arrogant, muscle-bound masculinity.

The young boys in the row in front of us were rather interested in my sister and I. I sat on the far end from them, so my sister got the worst of it. Between Trace and Toby, the older one came over to sit by me and started flirting rather shamelessly with me. I replied only when absolutely necessary to be polite. I felt a bit sorry for him, after all. It's not as if he knew. He told me he was 15, and I sort of gave a smile and a laugh, and thought I'd finally end it.

"I'm nineteen," I told him.

Well, he was surprised, and seemed to acknowledge at first that he was way out of his league, but then he pressed on at a slightly different angle, admitting that he could at least brag to his friends about 'impressing' a college girl or something like that. He didn't know. Didn't know that the youngest boy I'd ever kissed was six years older than this boy was, that all I kept thinking was, "Boys and Men, Boys and Men." And it was a little bit too bad. We had a few things in common, and he was cute enough. If only he had been five years older. ;)

Toby Keith came on. He's who the rest of the crowd had been waiting for, and they exploded. Out came the American Flags. The show started with a Ford Commercial on the big screen, admittedly an absolutely hilarious one. I looked for it on Youtube but I couldn't find it. :( It was called, "America's Toughest", and was a contest between different fake celebrities, and Toby Keith. The rappers tried to meet every challenge with cursewords and shooting, the pop group was made up of absolute pansies, there was a new age woodwind player who tried to chant and magick his way to victory, and best of all a heavy metal group who tried to be scary and ended up just looking stupid and rediculous in the hot sun, with their high heels breaking as they tried to run, and failing utterly to lift weights or do anything other than scream and hiss. And then Toby Keith, confident, smiling mockingly at the other contestants, easily winning each contest singlehandedly and by a huge margin, as teams of sexy blonde midwestern girls cheered him on. It truly was amusing.

Then he sang a few songs. It was just hard to care much about him after Trace, so we packed up after the third or fourth song and thought we'd head on out before the herds followed us and filled the concert grounds with traffic again. We waved goodbye to the flirting high schoolers, went down to the concession stand area, and my sister bought a shirt.

Then we ventured back onto the grounds, the swampy, swollen parking areas. We walked and walked. My sister couldn't decide whether it was more painful to walk with or without her high heels on, my mom was still petrified of snakes. Slowly it became apparent that we didn't know where we had parked.

Abandoned ticket counters, mossy trees, groups of latrines... each one began to look the same as those we had passed a thousand times. Were we going in circles? It was eerie to be walking around in the rain and flashing lightening, with water up to our ankles, our sandles soaked and slimy, through the rows and rows of shiny parked cars, all alone. We searched together. We split up. We shouted at each other from reasonable distances when we had gone a while without seeing the others. Each time we shouted, the other group responded hopefully, thinking we'd found the car. We hadn't.

Finally mom and sis parked themselves by a group of latrines and a tree labled "H" and my dad and I set off again, just the two of us. My dad kept clicking the alarm button on his keys to no avail. The fear that we would continue searching until the herd poured out, all found their cars and drove off, leaving only our G35, grew in us and suddenly felt very real. We found a G35, but it had Florida plates. We kept looking. Finally I found it, gave a screech... we all assembled and piled in, my sister and I wet and exhausted in the tiny back seat, pulling off wet shoes and revealing slimy dirty feet that were beginning to itch mightily. We tried to sleep on the long drive back.

Heat Waves

BBC informs me that the U.K. is about to be hit with a heatwave. My grandfather, who never curses, says that it's 'hot as hell' back in Cape, and our old neighbors in St. Louis say that there's a heat warning and they're supposed to stay inside as much as possible. A Finnish friend says it's 30 degrees in the shade - the Faroese are having trouble coping with 20. And where am I during all of this?

That's right. Florida.

Ludicrous

Not worrying, for once, about millipedes or coral snakes, I cross the weeds in a rush.

A minute ago I was riding high, flawless, simple and shining with the sweat that covered my arms, legs, forehead, not quite blinding me. The breeze was cool and I waved to everyone I passed. There was a cool, easy serenity to the moment. Old anime songs drifted through my mind, filled the air with youthful gladness. Until I heard words I don't want to hear, and you know why.

You know why it's more than a sad story, happened to somebody else.

Despite the heat I feel chilled, seek the refuge of the hot concrete of the seawall, which has been baking in the sun all day. For a moment I am shaken, remembering five years ago, remembering concrete on my skin before, in winter, when the earth was cold, and the heat which emanated from my own body seemed immense.

The tide is unnaturally high this week, and the waves hitting the seawall almost reach my bare arm, hanging partly over the edge. With each wave I feel - sad, desperate, sick, mournful, worried, nostalgic, alone. I don't weep, I don't throw up, although I almost want to. No easy release. I can't purge myself of this.

I can see the light of the sunset on the water, all shades of cotton candy. The surface looks strange, like something you see in Final Fantasy. Boats rock. It's unreal, too simple, too clean, clear cut. It seems ludicrous, considering the rest of the world. I close my eyes, I can't look at it.

It helps a little when the wind comes, tearing the glassy surface into something like human skin.

More About Rosetta Stone

I read the Wikipedia article on Rosetta Stone today and found a lot of interesting things. First of all, because it is so successful and expensive, I had assumed that most (consumers and experts alike) approved of the software. I was surprised to see that there is a great variety of opinions on it's efficacy, in particular one scalding review by a user of the Russian version, and a much better review by a user of the German version. Both of them reviewed older versions, so some of the issues may have been corrected, but what the Russian reviewer had said went fairly well with what I have mentioned about the Japanese program. He wrote that the program introduced many complex cases early on, in the section on prepositions, which would overwhelm a beginning learner, that the words were clearly too centered on what was important in English, and that the pictures didn't fit well with Russian subjects. The German reviewer was much kinder - perhaps because German isn't as grammatically distant from English? This might indicate that Rosetta Stone is quite good for Germanic languages, or perhaps even Romance languages as well, and not as good for languages that aren't as closely related to English.

Apparently the same phrases, in the same order, are used for every language except for Latin. At least they had the sense to realize that learners of a dead language have different needs than those of a living language! Another interesting quote from Wikipedia: "He called the company regarding the picture sets, and was told that four are in use, one for Western languages, another for Asian, and two sets unique to Swahili and Latin."

Finally, this quote sounds a lot like what I began to mention in my last post, about adults learning languages as adults: "In 2008, author Tim Ferriss, who is fluent in multiple languages, reviewed Rosetta Stone. He said that it was faster to learn languages as an adult instead of a child and the aim toward learning as a child did not lead to producing the best results."

Since I have the software, I have continued and will continue to use the Japanese program for the time being. I enjoy the challenge of learning from context, and it's good to have the listening practice. However, I'm not sure I can recommend the software wholeheartedly to the average learner, especially for more exotic languages.

Before I completely write it off, however, I would like to sometime try out Version 3, which according to Wikipedia has a somewhat different approach.

"Instruction takes the form of four units per language level. Each unit is then subdivided into four core lessons. Each core lesson is approximately 30 minutes followed by sublessons. Sublessons take the form of Pronunciation, Writing, Vocabulary, Grammar, Listening, Reading, Speaking, and Reviews. At the end of each unit is a Milestone, which reviews the material covered in that unit in an interactive activity."

http://www.rosettastone.com/personal/demo
You can try out a bit of Version 3 here. It's no accident that they chose the first lesson of Swedish - Swedish is probably one of the easiest languages they offer, and I think the method probably works best earlier on in the process. But it does look nice, and it teaches you a bit more than Version 2, which is a lot of trial and error.


This is a screen shot from my progress so far in the Japanese Version 2 program. It says aloud, "Is the pink car new? No, it is not new.", and displays it either in Kanji/Hiragana, Hiragana, or normal English letters. For this screenshot, I set it to display in English characters.

Japanese is very different from English - you can't translate word for word. Word for word, the translation would be something like, "Pink colour of car (subject) new is (question)? No, that (subject) new(not) (subject) not-is!" It's somewhat of a challenge to figure these things out from the program alone.

Post Number 1000

I've reached post number 1000, And I'm going to use it to share two recipes that I have prepared recently. The first one is a super easy stir fry thing I made up myself. The second one I got from some old copy from a recipe book, but I changed it around some.

Easy Teriyaki Stir Fry

Teriyaki Sauce, 1 Small Head of Broccoli, 2 Chicken Breasts, 2-3 Cups Cooked Rice,
1 Egg, Light Cooking Oil, Salt and Pepper to Taste

Heat oil in a skillet, add chicken cut widthwise into pieces. Cut broccoli into florets and add to skillet, add cooked rice, a little more oil, and the egg. Stir quickly so that the egg chunks are very small (ideally, more of a coating on the rice). Add teriyaki sauce, salt, and pepper to taste.


Cinnamon Butter Chicken

6 Tablespoons Butter, 2 Tablespoons Oil, 2 Onions, 3-4 Chicken Breasts, Salt to Taste
3/4 Cup Dry Vermouth, 1-2 Teaspoons Tomato Paste, 1 Teaspoon Cinnamon

Melt the butter and oil in a large skillet. Cut the onions to whatever size you like - I left mine in fairly large chunks. Put the onions into the butter and cook slowly until very soft. Add the chicken and brown on all sides. Remove the chicken and set it aside. Stir in the vermouth, tomato paste, cinnamon, and salt. Return the chicken to the pan and cook, covered and on low heat, for about 30 minutes.

Rosetta Stone

I've heard of this language learning software, and it's hefty price tag, so often that they've become almost mythical in my mind. Routinely, I have people ask me whether I use it. I'm finally trying it out. I'm working through Japanese, starting yesterday, and a friend is working through Farsi. We've been comparing notes. I also got on the Danish version for a few minutes for yet a third opinion. So far I have mixed feelings.

Rosetta Stone is supposed to be the best, period. Hence the price tag. It's supposed to be complete immersion, and bringing you back to the experience of being a child learning it's first language. When I see things like this, I can't help but think of two things. Firstly, that the way a child acquires a new language is in many ways mysterious, and we seem to lose much of our ability to do this past a certain age (around ten). Secondly, Barry Farber (who wrote a book on language learning, which I own), said that adults should learn languages as adult learners, with the disadvantages and the advantages that this presents.

So while, in theory, I like the whole 'natural method', 'any background', 'total immersion' idea, I can't help but feel that it's a bit of a gimmick. Also, while I sort of enjoy the challenge of puzzling out the different meanings on my own, I doubt the average language learner cares about a challenge... and didn't they just pay obscene amounts of money to have the language made easier for them? The trickiest parts so far have been a picture of man falling off a bull (I learned which gibberish went with it, but I still don't know what the gibberish is supposed to mean - the rabbit, or the scurrying), and a counting exercise that showed hands, but was counting fingers... this was before they had taught you any numbers over 10, and suddenly you see six hands full of fingers.

Still, once you accept this method, they do a pretty good job with it. The pictures that they use are very creative, and there is never room for ambivalence, once you figure out what it wants you to do. There is a good deal of variety for every subject. So far I've gone through a very few basic nouns, prepositions, verbs, and adjectives, as well as the colour section, and am midway through the number section, including telling time. For the numbers, they have pictures of the numbers on football fields, refrigerators, go-karts, etc. Numbers has you counting plates, balls, children, and more. The variety really is impressive, and I did find myself learning.

Now let's do some cross comparison. This is where I started to be disappointed. The Farsi version, from comparing my notes to those of my friends, seemed eerily similar. And that's just the problem. There are some things that should come early on or later on in any language. For example, pronouns should be introduced fairly early, whereas the names of different Marsupials can probably wait a bit. But that doesn't mean that all languages are the same. The Norwegian version, for example, would waste time in having a section devoted to conjugating verbs by person, whereas such a section would be quite useful in the Spanish version. There's no reason to go into noun gender in the English version, but it might be helpful in the German version.

We're in counting now, and counting is one of the trickier things about Japanese. You see, different words take different counters, which you can make sound easy or hard. If you want to make it sound hard, you can say, truthfully, that you use a different set of numbers to count different objects, depending on things like how they are shaped. You can also make it sound easy by reassuring the learner that these attach to the number stems, and aren't so different from counting bottles in English, instead of 'waters'. The fact of the matter, however, is that there are at least two full sets of number 'stems' that prefix these counters, and some of the counters are irregular. So when Rosetta Stone has you counting plates, and then windows, it seems to expect you to know that three (plates) is (sara ga) sammai, while three (windows) is mittsu (no mado). I'd love to see a learner, completely new to Japanese, work through this chapter and give me their impressions. I got through because I already knew about counters, and had a vague idea about the two sets of stems and even some of the most common irregulars. I knew, going into it, and it was still tricky. I admit it, tricky to explain without breaking the whole 'immersion' theme, but you could give the Japanese learners more time on a section that will be far more difficult for them than for say, Danish learners.

That's a real, practical example of when it might hurt the program to have it be so similar from one language to the next, but there's also just the idea of it. Rosetta Stone markets itself as the best of the best, and has a price tag to support it. So it's a little bit bothersome that the different languages seem so copied from each other. Did they expect that 99% of their users would simply use one language, and never ask questions? Well, probably. But it's still annoying.

Speaking of reusing content, I mentioned to my friend that, even if the subjects (and sentences, and even picture layouts) were the same, at least the pictures were Japanese themed. There were too many Kanji in the background, too many Japanese faces for it to be chance. The first non-Japanese used in a picture was introduced as a wakai, young, woman - I immediately guessed that wakai meant foreigner, or even white. When I told him this, my friend seemed surprise. He said that in the Persian version, the people didn't seem Middle Eastern at all. For comparison purposes, he asked if I had a little boy under a picnic table. I had a Japanese boy, he had a black one. I fired up the Danish version for another perspective. The pictures were different from the Japanese one, and from the Persian one too, I think. They weren't as strongly Danish as the Japanese ones had been Japanese, but it seems as though there was a good deal of effort made to customize the pictures, which I appreciate.

The best thing I have to say about Rosetta Stone is this - it's somewhat addicting. I'll be playing with this more before I leave for Japan - mostly Japanese, of course, but I'll probably try out a few other languages just to check it out.

Thinking of You

We're low on the water, and when the tide comes in the sea seems high enough to overflow, and the water is moving quickly. I'm thinking of you, I often am, as if thoughts of you are woven into the fabric of everything else.

Close your eyes, close your eyes
Breathe the air, out there
We are free, we can be
Wide open

For you opened my eyes
To the beauty I see
We we will pray,
We we will stay
Wide open

Don't analyse
Don't analyse
Don't go that way
Don't lead that way
That would paralyse your evolution


- Analyse, Cranberries

Neda

There are riots in Iran right now, and they have produced at least one viral video. You can see it on Youtube (if you are over 18). There is a young woman, standing peacefully, and then they shoot her, and she dies. You can't see her very well. By the time the camera moves to her face, there is blood everywhere.

Her name was Neda. I have seen different ages reported for her, but many reports say she was a teenager. I know a teenage, Iranian girl named Neda, too.

It kind of hits close to home.

Tales from Florida

We went swimming in the ocean. My dad got in first, as I ran to get into my swimsuit. When I came back out, my dad was drifting out in the intercoastal.

"Dad?" I called.

"Yeah?"

"How are we going to get back out?"

He turned for that, looking over at the dock, some feet above the water at mid-tide. Then he slumped back down onto the raft. "We'll figure it out."

We did. He tried to leap from the raft to the dock, fell halfway and hit his knee on the razor sharp barnacles that grow on every wooden piling and rope here. He hissed as the water turned red around him.

We ended up going over towards the seawall, where we found an area with fewer barnacles and shallower water, and were able to clamber out without further injury. My dad's knee looked terrible, with three deep curved cuts that bled profusely for some minutes.

But his biggest concern was getting the bleeding to stop in time to walk to the beach for sunset. My mom, laughing at the three of us on foot, drove past in the armada. As we had expected, she never made it to the beach. She had been unable to find parking, and returned home, the joke on her.

We walked instead, and it wasn't a bad walk. That time of day, even crossing the road wasn't too bad. Sunsets here are nothing short of incredible. There were hermit crabs scuttling across the beach. Melissa found a coconut and declared that she would bring it home, giving me flashbacks to the coconut that Tom, Prompong, and I had cut open back in Laws. She gave up halfway and 'accidentally dropped it'.

Every Sunday in our neighborhood there is a floating raft party. It seems to center around our dock, although we may never take part in it. (Melissa and Mom have sworn never to enter the ocean water) Some people have their dogs out there on the rafts with them - and not all small dogs, either! I saw a golden retriever relaxing, his paws hanging out over the edge of his sagging raft.

My appetite here continues to swing. Some days I feel as if I could go for hours and hours without eating, other days I can't get enough. I can't explain this.

Yesterday was Father's Day and my dad bought a new grill, and used it for the first time. :)

The night before we celebrated Melissa's 17th birthday on a dinner cruise, the Calypso. There was a buffet and dancing during a sunset in the bay. Melissa dances better than anyone, especially my own little sister, has a right to. I took quick shutter pictures of it for what will soon be an amusing facebook album. The sunset too was breathtaking! As a special request, I asked the DJ to play Dancing Queen. (Young and Sweet, only 17!) She was the star of the dance floor.

The best part was Cotton Eyed Joe, the last song before we disembarked. It's such a good old fashioned Country Song, and here we were, some Hillbilly refugees from the far off land of Missouri. We all knew the song, and Dad started doing the fake banjo thing, and my mom was dancing too, and Melissa was doing a bona fide 'Cotton Eyed Joe', kicking her legs up so high that people were turning and staring, wide eyed. A few other high school girls got behind her and tried to imitate her - their version was mediocre, at best, and they soon tired.

We are starting to meet a few people. There is a very nice lady in the neighborhood named Debbie, who has taken an especial interest in Melissa, and has introduced her to several kids, as well as the Indian Rocks Baptist Church, where I think we will all be going, at least for the summer. We went to the first service on Sunday, and I have to admit, I was impressed by the sermon. It was engaging, practical, and well rooted not only in the Bible, but in an unusual part of the Bible. It's a mega church, complete with a gift shop, but it would be wrong merely to judge it for it's size, right?

Travel Blog Ideas

I have been thinking more about my travel blog, and how to organize it. There are some different options:

1.) Blog about each trip as it happens, or immediately following
Pros: Very organized, seems more professional, will work well when I am studying abroad
Cons: I don't travel enough, or regularly enough - I would have to backdate extensively to make this work, it would feel weird to write too much about any one trip, etc.

2.) Blog about whatever I want, whenever I want
Pros: This is the easiest and most fun for me, the blog will be updated very regularly, it makes it look like I've been more places because of the random juxtapositions.
Cons: Very disorganized

3.) Pick a way to organize the blog (by trip, by theme, etc), or even one or two ways and have different 'features'.
Pros: Organized enough
Cons: Hardest for me


I'm leaning towards number three, but having a hard time figuring out what sorts of organization methods I should employ. Should I do it in the form of articles, like, "A Day at Suomenlinna", or "The Cloud Forest of Costa Rica"? Should I have random features like "Picture of the Week" with a story behind it? And should I interrupt all of this when I am actually traveling, in order to talk about the here and now?

Any advice would be appreciated! :D (This means you, Stephanie and Uni...)

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.

Present Becomes Past

On my debit card statement, the last figures from West County begin to fade.

Failed Star

Why is the term “failed star” synonymous with brown dwarfs? On the one hand, brown dwarfs lack the mass to sustain nuclear fusion in their cores. On the other hand, who said brown dwarfs were trying to be stars? Who ever said that becoming a star was the pinnacle of stellar living? Perhaps brown dwarfs are perfectly happy the way they are. In a world of equality and political correctness, brown dwarfs could be viewed as “over-achieving Jupiters”, or gas supergiants.

--Astroengine.com

Update on My New Floridian Life

We moved out of the hotel and into the new home. Dad returned from Paris. The house is full of our furniture and the number of boxes obstructing our passage is quickly diminishing. The music and several T.V.s are up and running, and the large black dachshunds next door have discovered Tidbit and vice versa, so it's goodbye to the quiet we had before!

The dock is very different from the one we have at Lake of the Ozarks - it's on piles, instead of floating, so it doesn't go up and down with the tides, and doesn't rock in the wake of boats or dolphins. When the tide is low it's several feet under the dock, and reveals a mass of white-grey-green barnacle/shellfish-stuff encrusting the wooden pilings. I need to catch up on my vocabulary to describe such things - I've just spent too much of my life far from the sea. I am nearly as surprised as Tidbit by the salty taste of the water.

Yesterday we worked. I pulled the tape off of so many boxes that the tips of my fingers ached and felt carpet burned. I also set up the home computer and everything, and it's all running very well now! The house begins to feel a bit like a home. Our furniture is all here and some rooms, such as the Master Bedroom, are even respectably nice. Both bathrooms and the kitchen, however, are still miserable - probably will be until we make some fundamental changes to the house. But ah well. The big piles of book boxes from my room and the office are gone, as are most of the random boxes in the family/dining room and my parents' closet.

Last night while we were trying to set up the home gym, the weight machine fell over on me. It only fell about forty five degrees, and while it hurt, I knew right away I wasn't seriously injured. Took a while to convince my parents of that, though, and they ran over and started patting me everywhere and asking what hurt. I was more worried about my laptop, which was also involved in the accident - it has a good scratch in the screen, almost penetrating. But it doesn't affect how it works at all, so I'm grateful for that.

Immediately following this incident Teddy and Maxine arrived. They are, or Teddy is, if you want to be specific, our only blood relatives in Florida. Teddy is my grandmother's brother, and Maxine is his wife. We visited them in Florida once growing up, and of course we've seen them at numerous family functions across the States (okay, so overwhelmingly in Missouri), so they are a slice of home, family, normality, if those can be associated.

They are very Floridian. Maxine is from Tennessee and speaks and cooks with a decidedly southern style. I volunteered to help her cook for Thanksgiving, as we'll be spending this Thanksgiving with them, and I've heard she makes cornbread stuffing and sometimes deep-fries the turkey. Teddy has such a strong something accent that he can be difficult to understand at times. He is bald and almost a caricature of himself, but very nice, underneath the bravado ;), and a 'hoot', as my mom puts it. He goes freshwater fishing on a fast motorboat in gator infested, inland waters.

We went out with them to a restaurant in John's Pass called Gators. I had this massive appetite, I dunno where from. I helped with the peel and eat shrimp and gator appetizers, and then ate every bite of my blackened Mahi Mahi with yellow rice, and then got a dessert - Key Lime Pie - to split with my sister. It was all good, especially the Key Lime Pie. What's very strange is that I never, ever order dessert - I'm usually so full that I bring half my entree home and still feel abused. And afterward I was contented, but not so full as I usually am - I could have helped out with another few desserts, or another round of appetizers, had there been more to come!

The sunset was unbearably lovely. Pictures later, I'm planning to post a few from the move.

My 'room' consists of a bookshelf filled with books, two crates with clothes, one crate of debris, one crate labeled sentimental, an alarm clock, and an air bed, all in the home gym. It's cozy. No, really. Well, there's nowhere to sit down on, or anything to eat. (/tolkienfandom) Tidbit and I slept there last night and it worked out pretty well. This house is wired really poorly, and all the light switches and knobs are on the outsides of the rooms they belong to, meaning that I have to decide whether I want my light on or off /before/ I go into my room and shut the door. Luckily my closet has it's own light, and a pretty nice one, which I have been reading by.

Today I woke up when Tidbit wanted to go outside. It was about half an hour earlier than I would have liked. She went out and hunted for geckos and I got out Liebe Total and read about five pages, underlining, but not looking up, the words I didn't know. I can never decide whether it is better to read, ignoring or figuring out from context the words I don't know, or go through making a notice of them, maybe looking them up if I have the computer handy, and that's it, or to go through and study every new word. It's hard to say, so I sort of play it by ear each day. Liebe Total is pretty easy, and from the subject matter I think it's written for teenagers, which would explain that. German prose, such as in a newspaper, can be very difficult - making it one of the few languages that I'm almost as confident listening in as reading it! But Liebe Total (actually, Immer Cool Bleiben, the first novel of two in the book) is very reasonable.

Then we did a bit more work, and then I went to the grocery store, Winn Dixie. At first I worried because they didn't seem to have anything I sought. Organic 1% milk, for example. I found the ordinary milk, a small enough section, and beside it saw several organic varieties. There were three kinds each of organic whole, and skim milk, and two kinds of organic 2%, and one kind of organic 1% chocolate milk! Finally I asked someone and it turns out they keep it in a different area of the store. ?? Similar thing happened with the feta cheese, all the flavoured and low fat kinds are at one end, and the ordinary varieties at the other.

I've been attempting to cook with the new kitchen and sometimes it has me pining for my 'kitchen' in the dorm. The drawers don't pull out well, the stove and oven are old and hardly trustworthy, we have no microwave, etc... but we brought the knives and pans, etc, from home, and they are quite nice. :D I can cut through onion and garlic like butter! Right now the smell of Greek chicken and jasmine rice are permeating the room.

My main complaint here is the sun. It takes me down. I was sensitive enough to the heat in St. Louis, but I dunno... here it's a drier heat, which most people prefer, but not me, for some reason. A wet heat exhausts, sure, and may even feel hotter in the mouth and nose, but this dry heat makes my skin burn and itch. Or maybe it's that the sun's rays are so much stronger closer to the equator? It's thoroughly unpleasant and I can't even describe it in a way that does it justice. I realize suddenly that before this I never really went to Florida in summer, usually in Winter, and found it balmy enough then! I'm just not built to survive this climate, or this latitude, or somethign!

Blogging

On Facebook today Koko tagged me in a picture she had taken, with her host family here in America, of some Cream Cheese Clouds she had made from my recipe! :D So proud! Anyway, it made the 999th picture I have been tagged in on Facebook, mostly thanks to the 100 or so Stephanie put up the other day. :P And I just realized that I'm only ten away (counting this one) from having 999 posts in this blog!

That's the product of both a relatively high number of average posts per month, and a lot of months! I think I have been getting a bit better, more regular, etc, at blogging since I decided to go into Journalism. It's practice, in a way.

This blog is still pretty random and all over the place, however. Technically I have four blogs:

I Naur Celedril (Main Blog)
The Gourmet Chef (Cooking in a Dorm Room Blog)
Life in the Faroes (w/ Uni, about the Faroe Islands)
Tree and Root (Writing Blog, Inactive)

The Gourmet Chef will be active again once school is back in session. Life in the Faroes I just help with, and Tree and Root is inactive for now, since I hardly write anything! However, I think I'm going to make another blog (that's right, a fifth blog) about travelling. It will not be connected to my current blogger account, although I may continue to use blogger, because I'm rather fond ot it! It will be much more focused than this one, and be mostly journal style entrees about my travels, with pictures. I'll post a link here when I get it up and running.

Question Time with Miranda

Uni and I have decided to start a new feature on Life in the Faroes (Uni's blog, which I help him with). It is called Question Time with Miranda, and it is a series of interviews between the two of us, where I pretend to not know anything about the Faroes and he pretends to know everything (thanks, Wikipedia!). We are going to start off really basic, like I will think the Faroe Islands are in Egypt, and work our way up to more specific topics such as houses in the Faroe Islands, or traditional music, or whatever, really.

You can see the first one here:

http://roskur.blogspot.com/2009/06/question-time-with-miranda-issue-one.html

Right now we are working on making an icon for the feature, and on the translation to Faroese.

The Education of the Swedes

Hei alle sammen!

Jeg håper at dere liker dere her i Florida! For en søt familie dere er! :)

Jeg tenkte bare at dere ville kanskje vite at her tar vi av bordet etter frokost.

Ha det kjempefint!


It didn't take us long to notice the Swedes. When you stay in a hotel for more than a week, and particularly when you attend the breakfast every morning, you begin to become acquainted in a distant, 'stalkerish' way with several of the more interesting families who are following the same patterns.

The most interesting, most obvious family this week has been a family of Swedes. Loud father, quiet mother, two singing blonde children with bright blue eyes. They dominate the room with their loudness, their foreignness, the singsong quality of their speech... the way they never clear their table after they eat, leaving the busboys, who are only supposed to replenish food and empty trash cans, a mountain of china and rubbish.

So I played a little trick, or taught them a little something, or did the busboys a bit of a favour, depending on how you want to look at it. I wrote them a note, last night, and stuck it under their door. You can see the note in it's original above - the translation would be,

Hello everyone!
I hope you like it here in Florida! What a sweet/cute family you are!
I just thought you might want to know that here we clear the table after breakfast.
Have a great time!

This morning, inconspicuous as always, we watched. And if they didn't clear the table, every bit, admirably so! We were a safe distance off, but could hardly contain our giggles as mamma and pappa walked to the trash cans again and again with the piles of dishes.

Moving, Touching, Romantic Chapterbook

The other day I went to the little bookstore near our Winn Dixie and found a book in Finnish! I bought it on the spot, hardly caring what it was about. Well, I've started in on it. It's slow going because I need to look up many words, and with Finnish you don't just 'look up a word' as you can in Spanish... it often takes a bit of time to deconstruct the word into various smaller words, or at least separate the ending, sometimes reconstruct the altered original stem, etc. But ah, the feeling when it goes well, and you have an actual sentence in front of you!

Right. So, how much have I read?

Erm... the front and back cover? XD I've only had a bit of time after breakfast! I'll summarize, but please don't get mad for bad translations. XD

The Title is: Tyttö ja kartanonherra
My Translation: The girl and the lord of the estate

The author is Catherine Cookson. I was pretty sure the book was translated, which is a bit sad but oh well. I checked the publication page and it says, Englanninkielen alkuteos The Dwelling Place ilmestyi 1971 Suomentanut Eva Siikarla. Right, definitely translated, and older, too.

I started in on the back cover.

Cissie Brodin, köyhän maatyöläisen kymmenpäisen sisaruparven vanhin, menettää molemmat vanhempansa. Cissie päättää pitää perheen koossa hinnalla millä hyvänsä. Hän sijoittaa pesueensa nummelle kallioluolaan ja aloittaa taistelun jokapäiväisestä leivästä. Juuri kun elämä alkaa sujua, mahtavan aateliskartanon nuoriherra raiskaa Cissien - ja pian tyttö huomaa odottavansa lasta.

Cissie Brodin, the oldest of ten siblings in a poor serf family, loses both parents. Cissie decides to keep the family together at whatever cost. She relocates the brood to a craggy den on the moors and begins the full time struggle to eat (lit. for bread). Just when life begins to flow(?), the lord of a great noble estate rapes Cissie - and soon the girl discovers that she is pregnant.


Notes:

1.) I love Finnish. Some words are just so beautiful! Like sujua for flow, luola for cave. And raiskaa is dreadful and perfect. Then again, where does it get words like tyttö for girl? :S

2.) Nummi = Moors.... seriously? I haven't read a book set on the moors since Secret Garden, and now suddenly I'm reading both this and Wuthering Heights. :S

3.) The little grab line is: Koskettava, romanttinen lukuromaani! This seems to mean "Moving (or touching), romantic chapter-novel!"

Somehow, with the subject matter, I don't think this is a children's book, but the grab line is trying to convince me otherwise. XD

Pirat Partiet

http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/english

I think this is fascinating. The party has some very controversial and radical ideas, but also, I think, a lot of good ideas. But just the fact that it won a reasonable amount of the vote... Impressive, I think.

Florida - First Impressions

We are staying at a beach hotel, overlooking the gentle surf of the Gulf of Mexico and listening to the sound of the gulls. Those who have lived their whole lives by the sea, I know, regard them as pests, but they are still something marvelous for us - part of a vacation. We are still vacationing, in a way, since we're staying in the hotel instead of our new home. It's a fixer upper. We knew that, but we didn't really understand it until we arrived. The yard is smaller than we thought, the colour schemes uglier, the kitchen thirty years old. We've decided we must gut the house, and not only eventually but soon. It was supposed to be clean when we got here, but instead the whole thing is filthy. My mom's losing it. Well, part of that is just what you get for putting something, anything, on a pedestal.

We got up early today for the movers, but both the car mover and the furniture movers have delayed until tomorrow, so the only reason for waiting was the cable hookup. The hours dragged by. Melissa and I took a short trip to Winn Dixie, the southern grocery store. It's the closest one to our new house, so we familiarized ourselves a bit. They were very nice and we got a loyalty card. Quite near Winn Dixie is a little used and new bookstore and a library - the only one on the island, I think. We have to go to the mainland for Wal-Mart but it looks as though most of our other basic needs can be taken care of here.

I snuck a quick visit to the little bookstore. They had all the major categories, although even the new books (what few there were) looked used. They have a rare book section. The signage is bad so it took me a while and a lucky angle to find the foreign language section, but I was in for a nice surprise there. They had a reasonable collection of Swedish and Norwegian instruction books, the Norwegian ones predictably and unfortunately below my level, and most of the moderately sized shelf was German. In this part of the world I would have expected something more like the Borders back home - two shelves of Spanish, a handful of books in French, and, if you are lucky, one or two in German or Italian. As I was scanning the shelves, aware that I needed to get back home, I found a book in Finnish. Imagine! I bought it right away, even though it's a romance of some sort and I probably won't like it. Finnish! And for 3$! I spoke to the lady and she says if I come back later this week she'll give/sell me a stack of Norwegian magazines that her Norwegian friend gave her. If I'm incredibly lucky, I figure there's even a chance I'll run into one of her Norwegian friends. Wouldn't that be marvellous?

Yesterday at Wal-Mart I picked up a three dollar copy of Wuthering Heights. I'm enjoying it so far - reading about the wild, rugged, dark moors from the comfort of our little wooden dock. My skin is starting to colour already, although I try to keep in the shade. It's not burnt yet, but already glowing, and I can't allow it to get a bit worse. I'll be the strange northern girl who hides her lily white skin inside with her books if I have to be. For the moment, though, I notice the tides coming in. We have tides! The water was a foot or two under the dock when I looked out this morning, and it's near noon now and there are little waves and the waters almost up to the bottom of the sea wall. I see glinting in the water - little silvery fish are darting to and fro.

I could live here - just relax, live simply. Not worry about the ages old dirt under the stove. Cook in my rice cooker, sit on the floor, even, if I didn't have any proper furniture. Amazing how far some snacks, a few good books, and a computer will take you. And the location, if I needed more than that! But that's my age speaking, I guess. Tidbit snoozes on the sunbaked wood at my feet. My mother hollers and I go in to see what's bothered her.

We see something strange. While trying to clean out the refrigerator shelf in the sink, it collapsed and broke - the glass shattered. Little fragments cover the counters and the basin of the sink, falling down into the disposal. A giant mess. But what's really odd is that the glass continues to crack, splinter, fall apart. For long minutes it continues to crackle - a fragment of glass, lying in the sink, suddenly develops a long hairline crack along the middle, and then snaps along that line with a sharp sound. The sink full of glass crackles and glistens.

Tidbit loves to hunt geckos. They are her new squirrels and she doesn't yet know whether or not they are possible to catch. She catches them sunning themselves on the walks and runs at them. They remain still until the last moment, and then dart away, quick as lightening, into the lattice or bushes or lime trees. One evening she goes at one with such vehemence that the force of her impact throws her onto her back. For a moment she looks like a ladybug flipped over, running her little feet ineffectually in the air.

I've enjoyed almost all the food I've had on the island, and I'm eager to explore all the nooks and crannies, the variety of restaurants. Besides all the marvellous seafood there is more Thai food than I've ever seen before, and there seem to be a thousand places selling fresh fruit. Other surprises - a mariachi band beside one of these fruit stands, in a sort of alley on the way to Wal Mart, singing and playing for all they were worth, and hardly anyone to listen... a European Grocery next to the post office - I went in, and was a bit disappointed to find mostly Slavic products which I couldn't read and had no special attachment to. I did buy Nutella and have gotten my sister hooked on the stuff.

I've ordered a library card. On Wednesday they have a writer's group. I think I'll attend, for the few weeks I'm here. I'm hoping it'll be a casual sort of thing I can pop into on breaks.

Reading

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

- Mark Twain

For me this is one of those quotes that hits me every time I read it - it just seems to fit so well with how I see the world. Right now I'm applying it towards reading, serious reading, and all those English class accompaniments to serious reading. I mean I've been annotating, without being obliged to annotate.

I've always read a bit, for pleasure. In Elementary School I actually read quite a bit, but I was in Elementary School after all, and a bit confused about what I should read. The school's recommendations were beneath me - I needed big words and small print to be satisfied - and yet I couldn't branch into the world of adult reading thanks to foul language, mature content, and themes beyond my youthful understanding. My dad tried his best to help me, feeding me carefully selected novels from his collection of fantasy and science fiction. I devoured a lot of trash, and even a few classics, such as the Lord of the Rings and Ender's Game, but I never thought a bit about them.

But who wants to be told that there is something above their understanding? What child understands 'patience, you aren't ready, it won't mean what it should to you'? I have always felt fully capable, in possession of all my faculties, awake. And yet, looking back, I was in a mist. I read things and maybe understood the words but none of the meaning.

In Middle School I read what I wanted, and I read voraciously. Still, the depths of meaning inside of many of my books eluded me. By High School I was beginning to understand, but at the same time I found myself losing my taste for fiction. It seemed more useful to read nonfiction, to devour delicious facts and figures instead of adding more soul-searching, brain-twisting classic fiction to the top of my school pile.

Yes, I read for school. And I made fun of taking notes and such because I was obliged to do it. Emerging from high school I rejoiced! English class was over! It didn't bring the same sort of deep seated relief as being done with Math class brought, but the annotation and test routine had grown old. For a year, I read nothing of any real literary merit.

A stack of nonfiction. My textbooks. Colloquial Japanese, Teach Yourself Finnish, a Guide to Faroese. A handful of memoirs, which were nice enough. Mio Min Mio. Brødrene Løvehjerte. Animal Dreams.

And that was it.

And then I came home with just a few books, knowing my mind needed rest but not recognizing the growing hunger in my soul. I began to read, and read... and I found myself responding to the books in a thousand different ways. Then it happened. A dramatic shift, occurring almost unnoticed - I began to annotate.

Changes

I cut my hair. I love long hair but I cut mine. I wanted to be beautiful, mysterious, Elven, something like that. But wearing my hair long didn't change the rest of me into someone long hair looks good on. It's time to get real. And while I'm at it, make some compromises. There is a time for choosing between two extremes, and a time for making a middle road, and I am not an archetype, but rather my own only shot at happiness.

My hair is much shorter now. The ends are soft and renewed. The cut frames my face and brings light to my smile, adds an inch to my height. Alone after a bath, I hardly recognize myself in the mirror. I feel sexy, powerful. Does that seem strange? It does to me.

But listen, it's time to get real. I paint and powder my face, run a black pencil underneath my eyes. Not a lot. I'm getting better at shopping, too. I wear a cute top and a little skirt. Maybe even heels. I look, I feel like a little doll. It's not entirely positive. I prefer the natural light and my own living skin, and anyway we short people don't feel nearly as short without all these things made for ordinary people - clothes, for example.

You know, when I am by myself, I feel normal. The only natural size. I hug my knees to my chest and feel warm and whole and complete. I can't imagine another foot, even another inch, just as you probably can't imagine a third leg or wings shooting from your back. Dressing up in the little skirts I feel consigned to a role, presented, a curiosity, cute as a botton, a little doll. I blame no one, and everyone, for this. I'm frightened, conflicted.

I have always rebelled, either with apathy for the process or by rejecting reality. It's not fair. It's superficial, all surface. It's reality. It does no good to pretend. Sometimes we play roles.

They called me brave last summer. Rohkea. But that sort of bravery is my element. The trip was pure self indulgence. This summer it is different. I am going beyond my comfort zone. Not only that, but I am going to try to bend with it. I am more than a little bit frightened. In the midst of profound changes, I am venturing into a culture that is the opposite of my old self. The culture of Tatemae and Honne.

Am I over-thinking, seeing faces in the branches of trees? Does it seem to no one else that things were meant to fall this way? I am more than a little bit frightened. It's time to get real, learn a lesson all the others learned long ago - to wear a mask without losing myself.

Duck Drama

We see a lot of ducks in the neighborhood these days - both mallards and the brown females. They waddle around in the street, seem oblivious to cars until the last moment, fight and sometimes fly, huddle close to the tiny pools of water created by imperfect drainage systems. And one little brown duck decided to nest right outside of our laundry room door, in a little bit of green. I'm sure she thought she had her back against the wall, and she really was well nestled in, but when we opened the door we scared her and then she scared us as she bolted in a burst of feathers and wingbeats. From a safe distance, we peered in at her nest. Almost a dozen long white eggs, chicken-like and yet different, lay inside.

She came back not long afterwards, but we messed up and walked past again, and again she bolted. This time she was gone for a long time. Night fell, a storm rose. We thought for sure that she had abandoned the nest. I wondered how much a duck can feel, how complex and how deep it's emotions. Imagine waiting until the last minute to leave the nest, then flying away, frightened... not knowing what is taking place behind you, in the nest you thought you had hidden well. Do you dare to return, not knowing what you will find? Were your eggs taken, eaten, crushed? Did the enemy still lay in wait? Then perhaps she was caught in the storm. Did she think of her nest? Did she fear? Did she worry?

She was back the next day, and we were ready for her. We put post it notes on the door leading to the nest, requesting that it not be disturbed. "Do Not Use: Ducks!" one read. And the other: "Favor de no usar esta puerta. Hay Patos!" Every once in a while we peered at her through the blinds. She was cautious, watchful, moved at the slightest sound. The day after that she was gone for a while and we saw one broken egg on the sidewalk.

We left that afternoon and didn't see her before we leave. We came home to find the nest full of egg fragments. My dad says they hatched. I wish I could believe that.

Either way, that's the end.

Entelechies

"Intangible Things Becoming Tangible"

entelechies

Business and Bad Omens

Every day from now to the move is full of appointments. Today I have to see the dermatologist, then go off to school for attempt #2 at a surprise attack, then pedicure, then haircut, then babysitting.

I'm not sure I'll even try to do anything for Japan until I'm in Florida. It's just too hectic here. That said, I'm calling Laura on Sunday to ask her what she's done, and I'll probably go ahead and order my rail pass. I think I'll send everything to her house because it's more permanent, and just in case things get lost in the mail or whatever we're there until the end, so we have the most chance of receiving it.


The days leading up to the move have seen some bad omens:


Bees in the Birdnest:

We tried to take down the birdhouse for Mrs. Maniscalco, because she said she wanted it. I walked across the mulch barefoot towards it, looked down to see no fewer than three spiders, none of them poisonous. I swallowed and kept walking until I had my hands around the long wooden stem of the birdhouse. I heard a fantastic hissing noise and quickly backed up, not knowing whether I had hallucinated or what. My sister tried next and heard the same thing. Bees! She said. And, sure enough, a bee flew out of the hole. My dad went out next and grabbed it, running upstairs with it. We thought there was just the one bee, and eventually it flew off. Then suddenly a whole swarm flew out. My dad finally had to powerwash the inside of the birdhouse with the hose, and afterwards kill up to 20 bees by stomping on them. A bit sad, really, but what could we do? The honeycomb itself, with the honey in it, came out too.

Yesterday I went to that spot and found scores of homeless bees, wandering aimlessly or else sucking the honey from their squashed honeycomb, pieces scattered amoung the dead and blackening bodies of the rest of their family.


The Dead Snake:

In our front yard we have some bricks that line the garden. A snake managed to wedge itself between two of these, and we can only assume that it became stuck there and so died. It was a green-grey snake, and a reasonably sized on. We went over to see it and found that it had been dead a long time. It split open at the gentle poking of a stick, and it was crawling with maggots from tail up.

Dieses Leben

Burgundy

Burgundy.

In these last few days that is what I have begun to call it, as if it is some grand estate with a name that flutters in the mouth, a dream, a memory of youth.

But it does seem to grow, as the day we shall leave it approaches.

The front lawn is familiar and modest, but green up to the terraces, with are lined with fiery red volcanic stone and full of pine bushes and coreopsis. On the walk to the driveway, one thing or another is in flower any time of year, accompanied by the buzzing and swarming of bees.

Upstairs, along with the lesser office and the bedrooms and bathroom belonging to my sister and me, there is my parents large room, with the walk in closet and the magnificent bath - all large and grey with big glass blocks letting light stream in, and a view of the little valley.

On the main floor there is the foyer, with shiny black marble floor. Then my dad's office with it's large mahogany desk and bookshelves and soundproof doors, the dining room with the table passed down from my great great aunt, the family room with the well loved red-brick fireplace and the silver moon set on the hearth - our marble topped hutch, antique cabinet, elegant wheat coloured sofas - the giant television that dominates a full corner of the room. The eating area that overlooks the yard through three giant windows - the kitchen itself, with dark marble countertops swirling with green and flecked with gold when the light hits them, the skylight through which one can see clouds rushing past, or the tops of the pine trees that stand in the yard.

The basement is filled by the warm little den, with the oldest furniture, the billiards room, the guest suite, the workout room, the music center... and it leads out onto the back porch,, covered a dry, with the jacuzzi, the party lights, the bar, the white swing, the table. The pool deck is beyond, with the water glowing with it's gentle blue in spring and summer and fall. The hill falls steeply beyond that, and is covered with ivy. And above, winding towards the top of the house, are the gardens - the bench, the birdhouse and bath, the periwinkle, the pines, the bradford pears which have such lovely white flowers in early spring, the screen porch with the hammock, and the deck, above all, where we set off fireworks on the fourth.

And it is, all of it, filled with the ghosts of eleven years. Not just any eleven years, either - eleven years that took me from an odd eight year old to my nineteen year old self. I can almost hear the clicking of two dachshund's nails as they run across the foyer and leap into the family room to wrestle, see the Barbie Hogwarts set up under the pool table, smell barbecue, roast, and stew cooking in the kitchen, feel the emotion of the countless dramas I've partaken in on the home computer, taste the salt of sweat and tears in my own bedroom.

But a house is just a house.

... Goodbye

Overpowering Heat

"The heat had become overpowering... Old men could not remember any heat to match this, and the grass curled up like wood shavings on the sod roofs while the tarred walls wept black tears, the windows all stood gaping, and oldsters and sick people that hadn't been seen for years came out into the daylight with squinting eyes and with strangely distant smiles.

It was not a pleasant heat. The word went round that one could get sunstroke from it. Many therefore cautiously stayed in the shade, but even here the heat was persistent. The sweat poured forth as soon as one undertook the slightest thing, and if one sat still, one became sleepy and fell into an unhealthy doze...

It was boiling hot in the sun, and the big thermometer in the yard of the Rømerske Handel showed 65°F."

- Faroese Short Stories

Shopping for Short People

It's hard. It really is. People think it's cute that I'm so small, but they haven't /really/ thought about it.

Take shorts, for example. Shorts make my legs look even shorter than they already are... and if your legs are too short, they can't really look slender. Now, mine don't look fat or thick or anything, but I would need more length for them to actually look slender. The shorter the shorts, the less of an effect this has, but I'm still not a fan of shorts.

Once I have the shorts on, the real fun begins. Most shirts are long on me. I have broad enough shoulders, so I can wear even up to a medium shirt size, depending on the design, but shirts invariably go over the top of my jeans and sometimes several inches below that. Which is fine, when I'm wearing jeans.

When I'm wearing shorts, it looks like I'm not wearing pants.


Finding shorts in size 0 is really easy for some reason, since society wants us to have pencil legs - and even if shorts are 'long' shorts, I still don't have to walk on them like I walk on most pants.

But shoes are fun again. When I tell them size 5, most stores send me to the kids section. And guess what? I've grown out of Barbie and Hannah Montana, even if my feet haven't.

The End of Endless Possibilities

This is what happens:

We move on from the brilliant light show of our hopes and dreams, endless possibilities...

We make a choice, move on...

To something more earthbound and concrete. But it is real, and ours, we have earned it.

I don't know which I like better.

Moving

Did I think that things would be nice and easy once finals ended? Ha!

Finals turned into packing the dorm room, turned into organizing the lake house, turned into emptying St. Louis and yard sales and real estate and God knows what else. It's funny to realize how much more housework I do when I'm home than when I'm living by myself... you'd think it would even out since I have to do all of my own things in Columbia, and am only doing random things here... but I lived to avoid housework 'back home'... used as few dishes as possible, wore as few clothes... and my family doesn't do that, and I'm doing it less here too - simply because we are not as directly responsible for our own messes as I was back in Columbia.

I'm getting more sleep here but otherwise I'm just as busy, with less computer time, even stressful need-to-be-doing-something computer time. Which means less blogging. Which is sad because there are a lot of events and feelings, some of which I can even blog about - or could, if I had time.

Some highlights:

- I have eight days left in my childhood home. We're moving out about 11 days from now but we're going to spend some of them with family due to a wedding and graduation. I have no days left on my childhood bed - I came home to find it already in the drive way for the yardsale.

- Stephanie and I spent a nice day together (with Tidbit XD) at Castlewood, going up the bluffs and walking along the river. Later I taught her to use a ricecooker. She got me a really cool book: "Faroese Short Stories". How she found /that/ I don't know.

- I'm so distanced already from Mizzou life that I sometimes forget about it - next week I need to do a few things for Japan (namely, look into the phone situation and buy my railpass)... and I can't forget to do that just because I no longer see Mayumi, Mitsuki, Mimi, Tomomi, Laura, or any of my other reminders of that nature anymore! :P

No Tears

Laura left today and no tears - I'll see her in about two months, after all, and they'll be busy two months... no time to waste away in longing. I cry easily but with a reason - leaving people in foreign countries who I may never meet again, graduating with my best friend since 3rd grade and knowing things would never be the same again... not to say goodbye to (even good) friends who I'll see again in just a few short months.

I won't cry for Tabi either - same reason, although it will be three months in her case. This is the last night that we'll share a wall, though, which is an interesting thought...

It's depressing that I'm one of the last ones to leave, because I have to watch everyone else leave. But really it's just vaguely depressing, not sad. I'm ready to go home for the summer, and for a number of complex and various reasons I'm not going to weep buckets even about any of the foreigners who are leaving, although I probably won't see them again.

Will there be those I think about fondly from time to time? Sure. Am I happy that I'll see a certain five of them in Japan this summer, and say a better goodbye then? Sure. But even the two who I've developed the (erm... most complex?) relationships with, Mayumi and Jorge, aren't going to make my cry, and with most of the others I've only had surface relationships. Jorge and I had our fun, but he's been super awkward ever since and I'm ready to not have to look at him anymore. Mayumi has been a great roommate, but I'll see her in Japan this summer, and afterall we've never really been close friends.

I WILL miss Ju and Prite, who may or may not be back next fall, and will certainly leave by next winter. They've suddenly become my closest foreign friends, and I will really and truly miss them.

But you know what? It's okay that there are only two, because I have enough people to miss from back home already. :)

Minne Katosi Päivät?

Minne Katosi Päivät?
Where Have the Days Gone?