aublog

Yoga

2011-07-12T13:04:00.001-07:00

With the summer yawning empty and largely jobless, I have been working out a good deal. Running in my funky toed vibrams, a monthly pass to a rock climbing gym, and yoga with an app on my phone. It is about this last I have long been nursing a small itch to write.

Yoga, while an excellent way to build strength and flexibility, draws on deep roots in Eastern spirituality. Even my Android app enjoined me, at the end of my practice, to "let your body assimilate the deep transformation". If one were to take a yoga class at Hosanna, one would find this element to be largely (and intentionally) ignored. Surely, we think, we can start at the trunk of this tree. Cut it off from its terrible pagan roots and just get a good workout.

As you may have guessed, I do not entirely hold with this viewpoint. Otherwise, I wouldn't be talking about it now. While I agree that we have to be careful to keep our focus on Jesus and not on our chakras or karma or whatever, I firmly believe that we are meant to live in our bodies. The Christian story has a lot to say about our physicality. Like the rest of us, our muscles and blood and skin are wondrously woven, though subsequently corrupted, and someday we will be restored to perfect health in new bodies. I have, from my Eastern Orthodox days, an image of Mary holding the baby Jesus. Though I don't pray to Mary, I love the image because it is a picture of the Incarnation and a reminder that we don't become spirit or transcend our flesh in order to be nearer to God. It is the other way around; He takes on a body to get closer to us.

I like yoga because it reminds me to inhabit my body well without denying that I am more than a body. My 'self' is more than synapses firing in a wad of brain trying to make sense of the tide of electrical impulses it receives. I am both body and spirit, and, as in dance, each informs the other.

Naturally, I have to make some modifications to the usual curriculum of a yoga class. While Eastern thought has a great understanding of some things, it still needs to be redeemed. So I play a game: translating yogaese into Theology. While I am supposed to be pondering "the balance of light and dark within myself", I contemplate the tension between the "old man" and the "new creation" within myself. When told to "allow my body to assimilate the deep transformation" at the end of class, I pray for God to help me live up to what I have already attained. With my deep breaths through my nose, I pray after the Orthodox fashion,

"Lord Jesus Christ,
Son of the living God
have mercy on me,
a sinner"

and pour contempt on all my pride

2011-02-01T09:20:00.000-08:00

We file through the aisles as the band floods the air with lapping soundwaves. I bow my head and try to feel reverent as I take a crumble of saltine and a dixie-chalice of grape juice at the holy buffet table. Suddenly, my fingers slip on the clear plastic. I jump back and my heart skips and the non-alcoholic blood is suddenly a sticky, staining substance that covers me. The mood was somewhat disrupted by the spilling of Blood.

The dancefloor--a love poem

2011-01-27T09:34:00.000-08:00

you are cold, my dear,
skinsense keening
you catch me, unfailing
as I'm flailing or falling

mostly I like to find myself
eyes looking out for once

I've been reading e.e. cummings; does it show?

2010-12-16T15:07:00.000-08:00

How to read poetry

Aloud while walking

/p/
/t/
/k/
Trip
on the tip
of the tongue
to snap underfoot

let them think me pretentious or mad
to read
aloud while walking

Family Portrait

2010-12-06T22:33:00.000-08:00

Branches

2010-10-12T11:35:00.001-07:00

I want to live to be 111, since on 01/01/01 I’ll be eleventy-one. I want to die full of grace, old and full of years. I want my husband to be there with me to the end; being part of me as much as my bones. I want people to sing hymns of praise to God at my funeral and to have held my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and have helped to raise them up to love God and sing to Him and serve Him and abide in Him. I want to be a thick, strong branch in a tree rooted in God and watered with life, blessed with a boring testimony. I want to surrender my legacy to my creator. I can’t think of anything more I have to give. I feel the potential in my belly for influence spanning on through history, my progeny infiltrating the Earth, each claiming some small corner for Christ.

Likewise, I look down and see the branches that support me – in places clean, smooth bark forking into innumerable branches, elsewhere sadly withered, ripe for the axe. and elsewhere still, a glorious patchwork of grafted branches bearing fruit and branching out still further until our canopy forms a banner proclaiming Christ and His truth and His love, His mercy and grace, inviting, beckoning, and soothing the scorched and battle-scarred Earth with His healing shade.

I was writing about sin and then suddenly I was writing about laundry.

2010-09-04T00:43:00.000-07:00

I feel the potential deep my atrophied heart for terrifying violence and cruelty; for apathy and rebellion, for broken windows and hurled insults, lashing out of my self-built cage of bitterness and secret grudges, for a wretched gnawing on bones, crouched in a dark corner. I have no trouble believing that I have a sin nature, that I got this stain when I was being woven and not from another red sock in the laundry. I have a harder time believing that I have been bleached in blood, because I keep acting like a stained and soiled sock and not a renewed, white one. I can't see myself in the mirror through this pigment of deceit that gets in my eyes. I am made new. I am soaked, scrubbed, wrung out and given a place on the clothesline of saints, a great cloud of witnesses, blood-bleached and billowing in the breeze.

not special.

2010-08-27T13:33:00.000-07:00

Slip a thought into my mind and it will circle the drain, tighter and faster, until it falls into the void of familiar territory. I try to write something new, but always I find I am just rewriting and expounding the same thought, adding to its gravitational pull. And so I continue to whine about how hard it is to be me.

I know that I am not special. Everyone has troubles, usually more troublesome than mine. Everyone feels alone and unloved at times. Everyone needs to be rescued from the inevitable and inescapable maelstrom of self. Everyone is at God's mercy. I am not the only one who lives on the periphery of others' lives, in some obscure corner of the unfathomably complex Venn diagram of social spheres. My inadequacies do not make me special.

Fortunately my days are beginning to fill up again, keeping me from wallowing and ultimately drowning in the unstructured hours, sucked down into the briny darkness of self-discovery. I can take shape only when I am not looking.

Musical Stylings

2010-08-15T18:29:00.000-07:00

So I guess I'm kind of in a band now. In December I met my pal Nathan, himself a friend of Kerry, while recording some cello on a song she'd written. A couple weeks ago he found himself in need of a cellist when a friend of his, Ria, brilliant singer and songwriter, asked him to join her playing some sort of festival gig in Yakima. So I became the second tier of friends-of-friends on this little trek. When we arrived, we met up with Roger (I don't know whose friend he was. Guess he's my friend now) and, being something of a musically-inclined fellow, agreed to join up with the rest of us and learn the djembe and mandolin for a few of the songs. I heard the songs for the first time Wednesday, and Friday saw me loading up the old cello into Nathan's little Geo for a journey, both topographical and musical, having recorded what amounted to a demo for most of the songs we would be playing, which in turn featured a whole mess of other friends-of-friends with various instruments in tow mixed expertly, albeit quickly, by Nathan. The poor kid can't have slept much.

In any event, this is all a thinly veiled plug for our free album, remixed in the week or two following the trip. You can get it here.

Morning

2010-07-25T10:23:00.001-07:00

Most of these summer mornings, for me, pass in an overblanketed blur, in those unfailingly strange dreams, interrupted by the moments of clarity brought on by the snooze button's lease expiring again or the sun's encroachment, advancing, bright legions marching over the kicked-off covers. And so I retreat, back underground. Eight, nine, ten, the hours pass in five-minute increments. Eventually I slither forth, shedding my skin and emerging, bleary-eyed, pink, and often late for the day's docket.

But.

Twice now I have set the alarm for the previously unthinkable hour of half-past six. And to my surprise, I found my eyes opening clear, free of the haze of sleep. I descended from my tall mattress, feet first, sitting becoming standing through a simple, effortless transfer of weight. And just like that, the day began.

The air shines crisp, clear and golden, striped with sunbeams. It tastes of cool water now, tinged with the promise of warmth later in the day. The light is almost liquid, and in it the world is softly bathed.

Bacon sizzles. Toast, coffee, clothes, shower. Amazing how necessity drapes itself in elegance when there is no rush, when the day stretches out ahead of me like miles of open road, potential adventures round every sloping curve.

And so I give in. I will be a morning person.

This Desolate Summer

2010-07-22T20:26:00.000-07:00

These stretched-out hours hang long and loose around the middle. Summer is a particularly desolate time to be alone, hands empty rather than holding his. I dream of lying in the grass next to him, together forming a layer in this cake of earth and grass and warm air, deciduous canopy and blue sky. Summer alone without anyone to casually brush with your fingers as move past him in a small room, flush with invading sunlight. A light touch, as if to say, oh, I'm just here behind you, don't step back or you'll trip and we'll find ourself falling to the floor, laughing and then I'll kiss your cheek, rough with the day's new growth, there sitting on the floor. Instead my fingers pop; cracking and shriveling I try to rehydrate them as I bite the white from my nails. The air is perfumed with blackberry and hot pitch sweating from the overdressed firs. The sun laps at my protruding bare arms. Inevitably, though, I find myself inside, hiding from summer and its inherent romance. I crave someone on whose shoulder I can lean as we sit in the living outdoor silence, books propped up on knees and steadied by the hands that are not occupied in embracing one another. I need someone who will kiss me in the long dusk as the air slowly cools. I want to roll down the windows and fuss with the radio as he drives us off on grand adventures. I earnestly hope I am not one of those Pauline people whom God has set aside for a lifetime of singleness, but I am afraid. I am afraid that this man will never find me, cloistered away here hiding from confronting my friendlessness.

I once began a story in the fairy-tale tradition, wherein a princess, having decided that there was none in the land worthy of her affections, locked herself in a tower away from the world. Eventually, however, she grew lonely and earnestly desired to be rescued from her self-imprisonment, and so staged her own kidnapping by oni (my childhood was rather culturally confused, European and Japanese stories shelved side-by-side in my mind). And of course she dressed as her own peasant handmaiden and guided the necessarily handsome knight to the oni's lair. Naturally over the course of their adventures, the two fight many obake, have some Taming of the Shrew moments wherin the Princess learns to generally get over herself, and ultimately fall in love. I don't know how I planned to finish the tale, but it never entered my mind to have it end other than happily, with a grand wedding celebrated throughout the land.

And so this summer, I once again find myself locked in a tower of my solitude so remote that even my exaggerated cries for help go largely unheard by any that would be qualified for the role of handsome knight. I have heard the advice countless times; get out there, hang out in places he's likely to haunt, make friends and don't worry about it so much. Apparently, though, I would rather sit alone in my room, wallowing in my solitude than go out and enjoy the sun this desolate summer.

Healing

2010-07-01T16:58:00.000-07:00

I had, until recently, a mole. Small, somewhat innocuous, and centered directly over my larynx. It is in nearly every picture of me and is, to me, as much a part of my face as my nose. Alas, one day, it stopped seeming so innocuous and grew dark and raised, doubtless preparing for a devastating conquest that would end in glorious victory for all things moley. The doctor pumped it full of liquid and snipped it off. As they whisked it off to the lab, I wished it a fond farewell, despite the fact that it could have bourne within it the seeds of my undoing. The scar is just now healed and my neck now cleanly spans the distance between head and shoulders. Still, the mole persists in my rare attempts at self-portraiture and in the picture of myself I carry in the wallet of my mind.

I was born with a cancer on my soul, a black fungus with tentacles and teeth that gnawed on my ego. Its grip was poisonous, but I grew used to the company. I welcomed the deadly and inescapable embrace and tried to believe it wasn't killing me. It is gone now, blasted away and burnt out of me. But who am I now that I have been freed? I sprout tentacles and cannibalize myself sooner than surrender to the Surgeon. I keep drawing the thing back in with thick lines of charcoal. I am no longer beholden to the beast, so why do I live as though I am?

I am a healed paralytic who will not walk, a restored leper who still covers her face. I want to welcome the remedy, forgetting that, beneath the bandages, I bear glorious, healed scars.

Moon

2010-07-01T15:39:00.000-07:00

I am caught in a deathly spiral, my face always turned to the world. Pockmarked and dusty, bearing no trace of life. Alone I turn, through darkness into darkness.But sometimes, I catch the light. I borrow beams too bright to be bourne, and light is cast into dark. In spite of myself I shine. But I feel all the more keenly that I have no light of my own and lack even the tenacity to reflect sunlight consistently. I yearn to hide my ugliness, the gouges in my skin. I bury my face in the world and fade into the black. And so I am again but a scarred stone swinging through space. I tug fruitlessly at the distant seas, trying to pull them over my head as I wait for the everlasting dawn when I will be overwhelmed with ubiquitous light, transcended and rendered obsolete as a means of luminescence. Surrendering my post, I will bask in endless Day.

(And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk.
Rev 21:23-24)

The Story So Far

2010-06-01T09:13:00.000-07:00

Behind the first door we have Bachelor Number One. Alone among the candidates, we started out as friends. In fact I didn't even know he was playing until it was too late. Unfortunately, he was patently inelegable because he didn't love Jesus. I told him so that night after he confessed his crush and never saw him again.

Bachelor Number Two was a mistake. So eager was I to be loved that I admitted him to the game without checking that I actually liked him. He broke his promises and by the time I sorted through the wreckage, he'd taken nine months of my life. He broke up with me over the phone, but we both know I pushed him to it. I haven't seen him since either.

Bachelor Number Three, a crowd favorite, appeared to have everything I could want, enough so to warrant trecking back and forth; enough so as to pledge my life to him. In my eyes it was all but official, just a matter of time. Apparently he disagreed. He murdered the bride-to-be he created and left me alone to bury her. After a week of seasick vascilation, he broke it up over the phone. He didn't even have the common decency to skype me.

Insecurity

2010-04-01T00:04:00.000-07:00

This may come as something of a surprise to those of you who know me more than some and less than most, but I am cripplingly beset with a certain madness, a gnawing voice curled up in my ear. From the comfort of its waxy warm home, the little terror loves to whisper half-truths of my folly. In my own voice I hear it; "I can't" and "I'm not". "I won't". "I don't". It pervades me and persuades me and grows fat on my failure. And so I have come to believe all manner of baseless claims: My skin is bad, my hair a mess, and my body disproportionate. My attempts at conversation are stinted and shallow, and anyone who I might claim as Friend would scarcely reciprocate. I can't cook or wear button-down shirts, and my life is crumbling to disorganized dust in my hands. Anything good I might achieve or obtain, I will doubtless ruin before long. My intelligence is less than it ought to be, besides some small skill with words, and what is that when nothing I have to say would be of any lasting worth? I fear the embraces of more caring souls than myself, for I feel I wear only a thin carapace of confidence and competence. It could crack at any second and my true nature would come spilling out like so much sand.

Insecurity, it's called. And it thrives on the likes of me because it hardly has to lie to be believed. I fully acknowledge that I am not what I should be, I don't work as I was designed to. Something in me is broken and no amount of polish can hide the fracture. Now I know the right way to answer to this voice: I am not as much as I could be, but I am chosen. I am crafted. I am loved. I have been made worthy of more than my component pieces would merit. And yet the voice remains, singing its sweet song of deprecation and setting a splinter in my soul to chafe. Even now, as I confront it, it whispers, "Wow, you must be some kind of sucker to fall pray to such an obvious ploy. What is wrong with you?" Heaven help me, for I cannot escape on my own.

Sun, shade and soil

2010-02-22T12:02:00.000-08:00

My future is stretched across the sky, changing color with every incremental movement of the sun. Beneath the canopy, blotches of light deface the solemn austerity of a field of tombstones and their long-decayed subterranean inhabitants. Reading from top to bottom, this is my life--sun, shade and soil. Already I feel too ripe to stay so high in the treetop. I grow heavy with juice and the branch bends beneath me. But, my love, if we put down roots side by side and live with branches entangled, I can face becoming something new.

Writers' Workshop

2010-02-20T23:01:00.000-08:00

Some of you may know that I am attending a writers' workshop here on the coast, so here I humbly offer a smattering of my handiwork this weekend to you, my loyal readers who have stuck with me through this rather extensive hiatus. The prompts have been edited to make it look as though I stuck to them more closely than may actually be the case, or else that I was more creative than I actually deserve credit for.

Assignment 1: What do you hope to accomplish this weekend?

In all honesty, I don't know why I'm here. I'm not sure that I want to be here. They told us we wouldn't have to share these responses with the group, so I'm not holdng back. I suppose the best reason I can give is that people who know me and love me anyway think I have a way of molding words into vessles, giving an attractive, sometimes alliterative shape to contain my meaning. To extend the metaphor, as is my tendancy, in catching a thought in a jar, the thought conforms to the shape of its container, sometimes flattening into a muddy puddle at the bottom, or, more rarely, taking on a new and more eloquent form.

I am good at words. I feel myself as a Creature with a directive to sub-create. I do this with my body in dance. I do this in a studio full of squirrelly eight-year-olds and putting them in rows and teaching them, in turn, to create lines and paint strokes in the canvas of the stage. I do this by taking a tangled ball of yarn and knitting it into a sweater (if I ever finish that beknighted thing). But I have an untapped medium beneath my fingertips. I feel its breath on my fingers, a living thing beneath the keyboard begging to be given a shape and a name. Language is a curious beast with its own peculiar diet. It eats ideas and spits out words, having ruminated them into something more conducive to its picky palate. I love the softly steaming pile of syntax it produces, but I lack sustenance on which to feed my beloved wordbeast.

Assignment 2: Smells

The air in the church in which I grew up was flavored with stale animal crackers and coffee-stained carafes with just a hint of the brittle glue holding down the horrid mauve carpet.

A hospital waiting room smells of anespetic and apprehension. The air hangs heavy with baited breath, soulless and bleached clean.

There are two kinds of public restroom; those that smell exactly like what goes on in their graffitied stalls and those that have tried to hide their scent by choking out the oxygen with pink deoderizer, discouraging visitors from breathing at all.

One reads of salt-smelling sea air, but what the literature often fails to mention is the seaweed and dead fish semi-preserved in the brine.

Assignment 3: Scene with at least 2 people, complex series of specific actions
Specific, concrete, but not just about action.

Back, side, together. Forward, side, together. For once, the dreadful choice between looking my partner in the eye or staring blankly over his shoulder was peacefully resolved as Kevin grinned at me from point-blank range. The hand on my shoulderblade twitched, gently signaling me to the right. One, two, three, and under the arch of our clasped hands I paraded, stately and elegant. One, two, three steps and my hand alighted on his shoulder and sighed contentedly to be back home as we finished the box step. "Very nice." he observed.
"Well, I just follow your lead, mister." It was true, but I said it to flatter and hopefully press him to laughter. And laugh he did. We lapsed once more into silence, watching the other pairings on the dance floor and repeating the simple one, two, three, one, two, three. The waltz began to croon itself out and he twirled me against the retardando. I curtseyed in mock-seriousness and he inclined his head like a prince obliged to dance with every girl at the ball. Some smokey-voiced singer took over and we listened intently for a moment, probing for a rhythm. "Ooh, a foxtrot."
"Well good. I know way more moves for the foxtrot." He extended his hand to take mine. "Shall we?" We folded back into closed position, his left hand engulfing my right in an embrace. Two steps back, side together. I could tell he was holding his longer stride in check to match mine. The firm twitching of his hand pulled me back toward him and we rocked in place, turning around the corner of the room. My shoes were too big and I had to curl my toes upward to hold them on, but I managed not to leave them behind as I moved with as much grace as I could muster. One, two, three and four. He winked at me as he signaled a promenade. "You're right," I said, " you do know more foxtrot. That's like two moves we've pulled off already." The plural 'we' buzzed on my tongue with both the spice and warm comfort of a homemade curry and I smiled what I hoped was cutely in a self-conscious attempt to inflect the mild jibe with some flirtation. We slipped back into the basic step, encircling the dance floor as we talked in the semi-darkness. The actual topics discussed flatten when retold, but I felt myself shine wittily in his arms, always armed with a clever response or something to make him laugh, when I wasn't laughing myself. Finally the song slowed and he twirled me in close. Too late I realized he was going for a dip and I was not ready for it. As the floor approached and Kevin's grasp on my waist slipped, I hung suspended for a moment, sinking into my own bubbling laughter.

Not an assignment: Undressing Words

I hereby define myself a poetess. No more contrived plotlines to write into the world. No more stilted attempts at composing dialogue between imaginary friends. Everything is like something else, and my job is only to tell you what a I see through my word-shaped lenses. Legions of glorious words already slink shining beneath my skin, just waiting to be prodded and poked into cooperation. The words themselves are characters in the stories they tell. I merely document their exploits. Love, for instance, is feminine in a baroque sort of way. She is squishy, or voluptuous if you prefer, always popular but rarely says anything of any substance. Beneath her powdered wig, however, lies a deep truth and a mirror-bright heart which absorbs nothing for itself, but turns all glory back outward. Lies, however, wears black. He is slender and pale, handsome but hollow, an ashen crust shaped out of shadows' skin. Then there are more exotic cousins; Fortuitous, Lollygaggery, Castigate, and Eczima. Magnanimous is a fat man with white spats and open palms, Inane has an trendy haircut and a constantly open mouth. Even nouns get in on the fun. Beartrap wears a coonskin cap, Tarot has a scarf in her hair and a neck weighed down with jewelry, Phrenology is grey-haired and large-headed. I'd better stop myself before I get carried away any further talking about my dear and varied friends who dwell in dictionaries occasionally venturing out into the wide world to play supporting roles in my great lexical drama.

More to come, in all likelihood. Signing off for now.

A self-deprecating sonnet I wrote

2009-12-28T21:05:00.000-08:00

House of Mirrors

A bare bulb flickers, swinging overhead

Outside its light the deep'ning darkness lurks

The floorboards creak and whisper words unsaid

And everywhere distorted mirrors smirk.

At every turn confronted with myself

I'm ugly, twisted, broken in these mirrors

I'm disassembled, lying on a shelf

I only hope I'm not as I appear.

I've built this house of mirrors to divine

My fatal flaws that must be overcome.

But there is no escape from such a shrine

Imprisoned in reflection, I succumb.

My eyes are always inward, self-obsessed

So selfish, it's no wonder I'm a mess.

Once again, the ability to fluidly rhyme eludes me and I devolve into browbeating pseudo-emo loserpants poetry. To summarize: I just get so frustrated by the way I am constantly thinking about myself. Every action I take is filtered through a lens of "will this make me look less like the loser I am?", and as a result, my interpersonal interactions are bogged down in this self-obsession. Ironically, on a meta- sort of level, getting so hung up about my gross self-absorption as to spend all morning writing a self-indulgent sonnet is one of the more self-absorbed things I end up doing over the course of a day. I just can't win. My ego will most likely implode and form a black hole at the center of my being any day now. (I offer this metaphor with apologies to any cosmologists among my readership who actually know how black holes are formed, unlike me.)

Basically I just need to get over myself, but you, dear readers, were probably already of that opinion.

Winter

2009-12-09T11:04:00.000-08:00

There is beauty in impermanence. The flower is all the more beautiful because it will not last. The emergence of the first bud and the falling of the last withered petal are just as worthy of contemplation and artistic attentions as the sweet-smelling bloom at its peak. Winter, likewise, has a limited lifespan allotted to her, from a brisk breeze heralding her approach in mid-October, through the frosty days of November, and on into the snowfalls and even blizzards of her prime. But she begins to fade as spring is born. She ends, gracefully melting, softening, and yielding her reign unto her sister.

The power of the witch was in this lie: you can continue. You can prolong your youth indefinitely. No more long slow decline. You can live forever. Winter forgot that she was reborn each year and began to covet first April, then August. In arrogance and fear, she refused to relinquish her hold, but she hadn't the strength to cheat death for long. And so it came to pass that Winter and the Witch struck a deal.

Aslan, upon his return, found Winter, little more than an icy shell who knew nothing but the fear of death, utterly beholden to the witch. In his warm breath she felt herself soften and found a small stirring of peace in her crystalline heart. Liquid water carved rivulets of tears down her face. After all, she would be raised again. What was there to fear? And so Winter surrendered blissfully to the ever-imminent arrival of Spring.

Further adventures on quadrille rule

2009-12-04T00:40:00.000-08:00

a fish, more lonely than hungry

2009-11-27T22:09:00.000-08:00

Now I'm not sure just how close you lovely people can zoom in on this thing, but it has some words in it if you look closely.

Lonely Squid

2009-11-19T23:36:00.000-08:00

Coming Soon

2009-11-15T08:09:00.000-08:00

So I have not written anything here for ages and ages. Lest you think I have been sitting in idleness, or, worse still, actually cracking down and getting some learnin' done, I will be putting up some of my latest odd creations for all y'alls to ogle. I like to make things, whether it be with yarn or pen or tip-typing. On occasion I'll even attempt to bust out a song, but I don't know if I'll put that up here since recording it is more work than I'm probably willing to put into it. The big project that you won't see up here anytime soon is a piece of choreography on which I'm collaborating for a friend's senior solo. Come to think of it, there are three other dances I'll be making for my students that'll be performed in May as well. Meanwhile there are hats and boots, pictures of fish and crocheted octopi to be shown and bragged on modestly. I just need to scan and photograph and post stuff.

In this flurry of creative productivity, one thing I have not accomplished; shaved my legs.

Stalkers!

2009-09-18T19:40:00.000-07:00

It has come to my attention that, celebrities aside, I am pretty much the most easily stalked person on the interweb. So to any stalkers or secret admirers or whatever you crazy kids are calling yourselves these days, I say; you don't have to be so shy. Come over to my house (you know where it is, I'm sure) and let's play parcheesi make some waffles or something some time. Stop skulking around my internet and be my friend. I'm just a little lonely is all.

If you're really a creeper, though, I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop going through my trash looking for hair from my hairbrushes for your weird voodoo potions. Thanks!

I'm not sure if I'll be more dissatisfied with this post's results if someone turns up with my door with a parcheesi board, a wide smile, and a bloody butcher knife... or if no one turns up at all.

Rebound

2009-08-12T13:13:00.000-07:00

Imaginary Boyfriend Jim and I are back together.

That frigging quiz

2009-07-21T20:56:00.000-07:00

All you stalkers out there probably remember that ridiculous facebook quiz I made a while back. I've had some complaints, and probably need to revise it, but I thought I might take the opportunity to talk about myself at length here. 'Cause, you know, I don't do that enough. So I present to you the director's cut of my quiz with commentary and three times the gratuitous CG dinosaur action! (technically true, as 3x0=0).

1) .....Eyes?

a) Green
b) Yes
c) Blue
d) Gray
e) Two

Okay, off to a bad start. While I marked only c) blue as a correct answer, b and e are obviously accurate as well. In addition, in some lights or when I wear certain colors, my eyes are basically gray. So I guess a) green is the only one that one couldn't justify as correct. Boo for a poorly constructed multiple-choice question.

2) .....Worst flaw? (my opinion, not yours)

a) Horrific sense of direction
b) Left eye slightly more round than right
c) Weird dancer feet
d) Social ineptitude
e) Stubby little fingers

Well, once again, these are all true statements about myself, though, as dancer feet go, mine are actually fairly pretty. Only a and d really bother me, though, unless I'm putting on mascara. Then my left eye always turns out better.

3) .....Least favorite item of clothing to wear?

a) Sweatshirts
b) Socks
c) Pants
d) Cheap flip-flops that hurt between my toes
e) Silly hats

Okay, upon further reflection, d really causes a lot more discomfort than the "correct" answer, b, but wearing socks without shoes is zero amount of fun when you're not intentionally sliding across a highly-polished floor, and I don't really wear flip-flops often enough to realize how uncomfortable they are. I'm always shocked whenever I slip into a pair to mince out to the mailbox or something.

4) .....If I were to get a tattoo, where would I put it?

a) Foot
b) Shoulder
c) Ankle
d) Neck
e) Tramp stamp!

Lots of people thought I'd put it on my ankle for some reason, but given the unlikely premise of tattoo-getting, I'd put it on the sole of my foot, right on my heel. I don't know what I'd get, though.

5) How long have I been dancing?

a) Nine years
b) Five years
c) Eleven years
d) Seven years
e) Thirteen years

For some reason pretty much everyone assumed I'd been dancing longer than seven years. Come on, guys, just because it subsequently completely took over my life doesn't mean I started when I was six.

6) .....Favorite author (of the moment)?

a) Jane Austin
b) CS Lewis
c) Robert Lewis Stevenson
d) Douglas Adams
e) Charles Dickens

I honestly don't remember which of these I picked for the correct answer. Either CS Lewis or Douglas Adams. I never actually got that into Austen for some reason, which is tantamount to treason for a 19-year-old girl to admit.

7) How hard did I try to make this quiz?

a) Pretty easy.
b) Middlin' easy.
c) Not really easy at all.
d) Kind of ridiculous.

Ah, the meta-quiz question. Self-referentialism at, if not its best, at least its... medium. Of course, if, like my mother, you breezed through all the preceding questions, then you would get this one wrong.

8) .....Favorite food?

a) Steak
b) Chocolate
c) Ginger
d) Oregano
e) Black licorice

Ginger is good! Candied, especially. Mmmm...

9) What is my second favorite author from that other question earlier?

a) Jane Austin
b) CS Lewis
c) Robert Lewis Stevenson
d) Douglas Adams
e) Charles Dickens

Again, Lewis or Adams. Not sure which. Oh, Mark Twain! I forgot about him. He definitely is one of my favorites. Naturally, any list of such favorites I compile varies widely by what I've been reading lately.

10) What is my second favorite color?

a) Dark Gray
b) Aquamarine
c) Teal
d) Orange
e) Cream

Green is my favorite, followed by dark gray, then orange, then purple. Although teal might have snuck in above orange since last I considered making such a list.

Well there you have it. All the mysteries revealed. The veil has lifted and you have seen all the cogs and machinery behind that ridiculous quiz. You whiners who got most of it wrong made me ruin the magic for the rest of everyone. I hope you're happy.

Perspective

2009-06-14T19:02:00.000-07:00

Every week when I clean out his bowl, my fish, Sashimi, thinks he's been abducted by aliens.

This is me not being productive during dead week

2009-06-05T00:44:00.000-07:00

So. I have a big old time-wasting challenge for you, dear readers. Get from here to here by clicking on ten links. Hint: zombies.

I will post more hints if you guys seem to give a crap about my challenge. Maybe there'll be a prize for the first one to come up with the answer or something. I don't know.

See, that's the trouble with wikipedia. I started out trying to actually do some research on gesture and next thing you know I'm reading up on the Vulcan death grip. That may not seem so strange, as this is a pretty obvious connecting link, but I took a more meandering route via the nazi salute. Go figure.

Anyway, that's a couple hours of my life I'll never get back. All I can do from the bottom of this pit of time-suckery is drag you down with me.

I post this hesitantly...

2009-05-20T21:08:00.000-07:00

I once ranted against love and ridiculed what fools it made of girls. I saw only the irrational pursuit of approval from the opposite sex and considered myself above such nonsense. I alone possessed impartiality, I alone saw through the games, I alone would be content alone forever. So I thought, and so I said to all who would listen, but those who listened were few. So I lived without loving, and told myself I was content, denying that I even had a heart, crushing it under the weight of the loneliness to which I had proudly condemned myself. I lay in the dark and watched the silent drama of shadows cast through the windowpane accompanied by the ticking of the clock. In the silence shining between each tick, my heart began to make itself known, growing heavy, wearied by its burden. A single selfish tear escaped under cover of darkness. And so I slept for years, suffocated by this exile I chose. Small wonder I felt unloved-I had made myself so unlovely that it took 18 years for an intrepid soul with a great living beast of a heart to catch a slight, living glimmer beneath the ice, made thin by the summer sun after a long winter alone. Slowly, he ventured close enough to melt the ice and set me free of myself. I love him. I am so deep in love that's all I can think. I wake up and I love him, climb out of bed and I love him, get dressed and I love him, eat breakfast, walk to class, sit down and I love him. My notebook is peppered with it- "Today is the ninth of February and I am in love", "Today is the tenth of February and I am in love". I even looked down and blushed to find that I had scrawled an unfamiliar signature in the margin- not my name, but his. Love has made such a beautiful fool of me, and I would have it no other way.

A Mundane, Newsy Post

2009-05-11T10:54:00.000-07:00

Recital week is always crazy. Don't ask why I chose now, of all times, to update this beknighted blog. Dodging work, that's what it is. I have 13 pdfs that need reading opened in other tabs, but, at this rate, opening them is likely as far as I'll get with them before I have to run off to class. I have decided that I'll be living at home again next year. Much as I like the girls here at Trinity, practically, I am only actually here a very very small percentage of my time; in fact, Wednesdays are the only day I don't have to drive over to the studio for a couple hours. Since I am planning on making myself available for Narnia in the fall, (no, I haven't been offered a role yet), it most likely won't be much different next year. Plus, the parentals have said that the cash will make an epic family Europe trip a definite possibility next summer. It'll be sweet. This summer promises to be pretty sweet, too, what with boyfriendery and associated friends with whom to drive around and do fun stuff, when I'm not working and getting cash money. I don't know when I'll be able to fit work in next year. At the mo, I'm working Saturdays, but with Narnia on the weekends, it's a worry. Plenty of time to work that out, though.

Now I'm going to go get me some toasted bagel and maybe start in on that first reading. Yay for productivity.

Flesh

2009-04-03T21:05:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else find it odd, living inside a beautifully functional bag of meat and bones and nerves and skin? Hands, fingernails, nostrils, molded by the hand of God. Long bones draped artfully with muscle and tendon, wrapped up tight under skin. This machine through which we experience these four dimensions is a wonderous contraption, whatever you may think of its outward form. For example, my body told me that it was dehydrated the other day by manipulating nerve endings, sending a message which manifested itself as a headache. I drank a couple bottles of water and hey, presto, the alarms stopped jangling and I felt fine. Yesterday I pushed it beyond what was safe, so today all sorts of alarm bells are blaring, discouraging me from taking any more risks while it repairs and reinforces the damaged areas. Working my way from the top down, we have four-inch diameter bruises (from improv) on both shoulders, sore glutes and quads (possibly from fencing), with an extra painful strand of muscle in my right-hand thigh. Sore calves, of course, plus a twisted (or sprained or tweaked or something) left ankle (from pirouettes in ballet). Nothing life-threatening, but not pleasant. On the other hand, the sophistication of this flesh boggles the mind, as I stretch it and tear it and bruise it and mistreat it and fill it with ice cream, train it and dress it, bathe it and ultimately, through all this, I take as my goal to use this wonderous gift for its Maker's glory.

Analyzing the Text

2009-03-07T20:59:00.000-08:00

For some reason, I find texting to be the ideal form of communication for my particular brand of social ineptitude roughly 90 percent of the time. It carries the immediacy of a phone call, a gentle prodding ring instantly in the recipient's pocket, and yet it is less demanding, allowing the aforementioned recipient to reply at their leisure. Plus, one can communicate effectively without the whole "conversation" nonsense that you have to go through before you can get to the meat of why you are bothering them in the first place.

A few notes on style: under no circumstances should a word be replaced with a number or intentionally misspelled. 160 characters is more than enough to communicate most ideas, though some creative editing may be necessary at times. The omission of some punctuation may be acceptable if the meaning can still be clearly ascertained. At times, shorter synonyms may have to be substituted and intensifiers dropped altogether, but all but the most complex ideas can easily be communicated in plain English (or whatever language you may be texting in) within the space limitations without stooping to the level of asinine acronyms and numeral abuse. These limitations demand that the author be concise, reducing their message to a haiku-like level of simplicity.

As always, when lacking tonal and gestural cues, great care must be taken when interpreting the intended emotion. Far better to grant a potentially sarcastic comment the benefit of the doubt and assume that its author bears you no ill will than to read too much into a statement and end up feeling insulted. Composing a text that is intended to be read as sarcastic is virtually the only time that the emoticon is an acceptable tool for communication, and even then, a simple :) will suffice, none of this other garglemesh you see around the less sophisticated corners of the internet.

Of course, there are occasions when a text message simply will not do. Things that require an immediate response, more complex cues as to the speaker's tone, and the rare occasions when communication becomes a desirable end in and of itself... these are better dealt with via a phone call.

Tantrum- an Exercise in Personification.

2009-02-25T19:13:00.001-08:00

The rain began to slow, the downpour becoming a mere trickle in the corner of the heavens' eye. The sky drew a breath, deep but jagged, as through a throat still constricted with the nearness of tears, and began to feel better. The trees shook in the resulting wind, dripping in imitation of the clouds above which had previously hung so heavy, the clouds whose aloof indifference to gravity's hunger had snapped in a torrential tantrum, beating the earth with soggy fists until the grass began to lose its tight grip on its beloved soil and the streets grew slick with mud. Bitter tears lay cooling, collecting in hollow places, filling uneven sidewalks until they were perfectly level. The more ambitious among them streaked along the pavement together, unmindful of traffic laws, producing rivulets with their own short-lived dreams of riverhood. The clouds were exhausted, with no more tears to sacrifice to the greedy earth, and the sky sulked like a child, having done as it was told, yet unwilling to concede defeat. Another gust of sobbing breath, carrying the threat of more tears, but this February tantrum had run its course. The sky began to collect its solemn gray dignity, breathing deeply, still obstinately unwilling to allow the sun to begin the work of drying up the mess. Frankly, the whole affair was a little embarrassing.

A Valentine's Post of a Different Stripe.

2009-02-10T10:12:00.000-08:00

I have not posted much of late. Yes, I am aware. The reason? My literary efforts have lately been directed very specifically toward one particular area of my life, and, pages and pages later, I have concluded that language is insufficient, regardless of any skill I may usually have at wielding even unwieldy words. Even given the lexicon of three languages, no word that I can find carries the appropriate connotations. "Love", perhaps, was once created to describe this...whatever it is, but that word is used up, ground down and worn smooth from the trampling of many feet. Whatever you may call it, I am in it, drowning in it in fact. It is every bit as absurd, irrational, mysterious, and strange as it appears from the outside, but what you don't see is that is uncontrollable, beautiful, selfless, vital and alive. Oh, but how quickly this post falls into platitudes, as I refrain from saying that I feel incomplete without him, missing him as an amputee might miss a limb. Truly was Eve taken from Adam's rib, as I have found my home in his arms and at his side.

The veil is lifted and I see the world anew, the faded attempts of poets more skilled than I painted fresh and bright. Among these, I see the tattered words, "God is love". God loves me? All I've heard before takes on new meaning-God wants me at his side, to join his Church and be his Bride, to love me, not counting my faults, to know me and hear my voice? My God. I am so unworthy.

Beauty Tip

2009-02-01T08:05:00.001-08:00

Never look at yourself in the mirror from less than two feet away. Anyone who wants to get closer than that probably already thinks you're beautiful.

Another pretentiously phrased post.

2009-01-13T19:07:00.000-08:00

Behind the counter stood a girl not entirely present. Chewing on the blunt stub of her thumbnail, she stole a sentence at a time from the book discretely tucked between the registers. A lone sojourner emerged from the aisles laden with the spoils of their journeys amongst the florescent-lit jungles where trees hang low, branches bowed with the weight of pencils, sheet protectors, post its. The sudden movement caught the eye of the girl, who snapped back into the present, where she hurriedly tucked the book still further into the shadows and engaged an easy smile she kept near at hand for the benefit of those who came from the depths, bearing bar codes by the armload for her to liberate, transforming them from mere merchandise to items to use and own and eventually settle in to their places on a desk, shedding their soft glow of newness and becoming what they were along-a stapler, a printer, a paper clip. Grasping the laser gun, finger on the trigger, she smiled graciously as she stepped aside and let the robot, programmed through repetition, take charge of her hands and words, with strict instructions to wake her should she be needed. With that she retreated back into the fantastic realms of daydreams, and an instant later, the store faded into the background as new images rose out of the haze of reality to take its place.

Imagination of a Watermelon

2009-01-07T18:46:00.000-08:00

1. Put your music on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.

1) IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
I Won't Stay Long

2) WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
I Crush Everything

3) WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Sure Shot

4) HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Ertöt' Uns Durch Dein' Güte, BWV 22

5) WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE??
I Write Sins, Not Tragedies

6) WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Holy Is The Lord

7) WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Shuffle Your Feet

8) WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Track 8

9) WHAT IS 2+2?
Breakdown

10) WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Man Of Constant Sorrow (Instrumental)

11) WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Tom Cruise Crazy

12) WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Health and Wealth

13) WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Devastation and Reform

14) WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Hallelujah

15) WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
When the World Ends

16) WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
I Belong to Ya (Midnight Mix)

17) WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven

18) WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Jury Duty

19) WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Nightingale

20) WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Boomin'/Opera Trip

21) WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
Always Look On the Bright Side Of Life

22) HOW WILL YOU DIE?
Adagio (off of my ballet barre music. That's a true one)

23) WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Track 5

24) WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
Gibberish

25) WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Louder Than the Mob

26) WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
Perseverance of the Saints

27) WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
Horrible Theme

28) DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Sadie Hawkins Dance

29) IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
A Conversation

30) WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Na Na

31) WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Imagination of a Watermelon

Yeah, Kerry tagged me with this thing, but I did it because it sounded fun, not because I'm a conformist who does whatever the internet tells me. And to prove it, I'm not going to tag anyone else. So there, internet. Take that.

Sneh

2008-12-17T08:38:00.000-08:00

Tento týžden, snežilo okolo 6 centimetrov v Eugene. Ak nepamätáte, moje mesto je v doline a more nie je take dáleko, tak tu nemame veľa sneh. Skoli su zatvorene pretože nikto nevie šoferovať dobre na ľad. Moja výsoka škola je už na prestavku, tak teraz pracujem lebo potrabujem peniaze na knihi pre druhý poľrokny triedý. Minulý týžden, sme mali posledný písomky, a mislím že som písala celcom v pohode, ale úvidíme v piatok, ked moje známky prídu. Sa nebojim... teda, sa nebojim taký veľa.

No, tak, som to pisala po slovenský lebo rozmislím veľa o minúlom rokom. Asi, je to lebo sneži. Nemýslela som že budem to hovorit, ale chýbam slovensku, a som bola trošku nepríjemna od minulí január do okolo maj. Ak som mohla este raz robiť z nova, všekto budem robiť ine. Chcem hovoriť "prepačte" do všeci kto boli príjemne do mna a som nebola príjemna spät. Viem že moju slovenčinu je strasne teraz, ale dufam že rozumiete. Dakujem pre krásny rok.

For my non-Slovak speaking readers, I offer a recap:

It's been snowing here.
I'm on break.
I'm working to pay for books for next term (although the only word i know for term is literally "half of year". I hope it still applies to a school that runs on quarters).
Finals were last week, and I think I did okay, but we won't know for sure until Friday.
I've been thinking about Slovakia a lot.
I never thought I'd say it, but I miss Slovakia.
I was not very pleasant from last January to around May.
If I were to do it again, I'd do a lot of things differently.
I'd like to apologize to everyone that was nice to me, but I wasn't nice back.
My Slovak is terrible these days.
Thank you for a great year.

Flashback- 26 October 2006

2008-11-18T10:39:00.000-08:00

I am firmly of the opinion that girls are silly and somewhat boring. There's no explaining how their brains work. The obsession with boys is unfathomable to me, which might explain my total inability to flirt. I didn't even know I wasn't allowed to date until I was 16 until I was 16 and a half. Not that it matters. I'm not bitter about my eternal singleness, but I'm definitely bewildered by the concept. I don't know. I'd always kind of assumed one day something would happen in that area of my life, but it resoundingly hasn't. It's still better to be single forever than do something stupid, which I think is blindingly obvious, but apparently, most girls don't know that. I don't get it. Girls are silly. Oh wait...

Cliche

2008-11-12T17:07:00.000-08:00

My most recent deep thought: Sometimes, being fearless doesn't mean being willing to be different. Sometimes, it means rushing headlong into the face of cliche and embracing the fact that you, like so many before you, have found something alive and wonderful beneath the worn-out surface. While this is all amazing and true when applied to God and Christianity and all that awesome stuff, on a more personal note, sitting on the couch watching Star Wars with JT's arm around my shoulder and my hand in his was more real and more fantastic than Hollywood would have ever lead me to believe. Let's see if I'm brave enough to put that sentance up on my blog for the world to see.

I think I am.

The Breakup

2008-11-07T14:06:00.000-08:00

Dear Jim,

I'm sorry, but I've fallen for someone else. Someone less imaginary. We've had some great times, and I hope we can still be friends.

Sincerely,
Aubrianne

For Kerry

2008-11-02T17:26:00.000-08:00

On 13th and University

2008-10-24T12:43:00.000-07:00

Thick black Bible in hand, he stood in the middle of the crowd and shouted. Students bustled by, some on skateboards, some on bicycles, others weaving between their wheeled fellows in an intricate dance that always seemed to border on a collision. No one looked at the man with the Bible, even as he thundered about the remission of sins that Christ had provided for all of their sorry souls in words painfully familiar, words that had lost their unearthly glow from overuse. Never mind that no one was listening, never mind that not even those who agreed with his theology would stop to talk shop, he would stay and shout (or, as he likely thought of it, proclaim) the truth unto the sinful masses until his lungs gave out or Christ returned, whichever came first. This man was ministering.

The sign read "Free Hugs". Scrawled in thick black marker, it leaned against the hug-giver's leg, as his arms were too busy following up on his offer. As students rushed by on their way to class, they took a moment to receive a quick squeeze from the easy-smiling stranger. Never mind that he didn't claim to represent anything save a simple affirmation and a grin, never mind that he likely had little in common with those he hugged save a momentary intersection in place and a time, this man was sharing love unconditionally, one sinful soul at a time. This man was ministering.

That's so sketch

2008-10-09T00:14:00.000-07:00

My frumjuous sister. I guess I should have waited for her birthday or something before l put this up, huh?

Adventures in College

2008-10-07T23:07:00.000-07:00

"Hey, Jude," I sang. I wasn't singing for anyone's benefit, really. As a matter of fact, I rather hoped no one came into the bathroom for the next 20 minutes or so, as I had turned the Beatles up really, really loud to compensate for the sound of the shower in which I was immersed. It occurred to me mid-soak that most people for whom the shaving of shins is an issue do not, I'd imagine, bring the shin in question up so near their face as I, even when the narrowness of the shower does not allow any other obvious means of keeping the carefully cultivated suds out of the spray's reach. How the other 40 or so girls manage to keep their shins smooth is beyond me.

To recap: me = very flexible.

"Bože môj," I muttered, further obscuring my vision in the process. "Nič nevidím." Stopped at a red light, I opened the clear plastic front of my helmet to let some of the cold night air lap away at the fog my breath had formed on the surface. Added to the light sprinkle of raindrops, visibility was poor, to say the least. The light turned green and I twisted the throttle. Better to take the risk of something flying into my eye than risk flying blind.

To recap: Vera = freaking awesome anyway.

"Ch," I said to myself. "Ch. Tsh. Tshill. Chill." Poring over my linguistics textbook, I was taking a valiant stab at internalizing a chart of consonant sounds, my tongue (in close cooperation with my alveo-palatal ridge, apparantly) playing a vital roll in the struggle between me and the densely insightful page 81, as peppered, to switch metaphors, with indecipherable symbols as (switching again) a fruitcake is with not-terribly-fruitlike fruit, like raisins or something.

To recap: IPA = raisins.

A Sequence of Unrelated Thoughts

2008-09-13T23:06:00.000-07:00

This is the fifth opening sentence with which I have attempted to prime the pump of words. As I have nothing better with which to begin, I will allow it to stand.

Work is fine. I finished reading an excellent book (Language in Thought and Action by S.I. Hayakawa, in case any of you want to look it up). My room is unbearably disorderly. My new students, all 15 of them, promise to be a great group. I went out and bought an exfoliater for my face skin the other day. I move in to Trinity House in roughly a week. I don't have any idea what I'm going to do for my recital piece. Office Max finally got me two girl-sized polos so I don't have to wear that mens' medium one pinned in at the back anymore. Mom took me shopping for my new room and spent an absurd amount of money on me. I seem to have snuffed my closest friendship into embers. I lost Jim's pen somewhere in my room. I have to clean the whole house tomorrow. I have three social emails to which I have yet to respond. I worked for ten hours today. Some people apparantly consider me to be a good writer, but then I put out a post like this every so often just to prove them wrong. I want cake. I am going to listen to Chopin and eat some chocolate stare at the ceiling until I fall asleep now.

Retail Therapy

2008-08-25T01:22:00.000-07:00

A Conversation. February.

Haley from Florida: Hey, how are you doing?
Depressed Aubrianne: Well, um... I guess I'm alright.

...

Haley: This is the part where you are supposed to ask me how I'm doing.
Aubrianne: Oh. Um... so... how are you doing?
Haley: Fine.

Another Conversation. Still in February.

Haley from Florida: Hi! What's up?
Aubrianne: Not a lot.
Haley from Florida: How are you doing?
Aubrianne: I'm fine.
(a beat. Haley gestures in such a manner as to indicate that I should continue)
Aubrianne: How are you?

A Third, More Recent Conversation

Aubrianne wearing a nametag: Hello.
Random OfficeMax Customer: Hi.
Aubrianne wearing a nametag: How are you doing today?

Look what I drew!

2008-08-12T23:54:00.001-07:00

Ok, so I sorta traced, with Jim's help, one of Tanner and my baby pictures, circa 1995. (Tanner's and mine? Little grammatical help?) Whatever. It looks cool and styley and artsome; Junoesque, l'd like to think, but that is praise too high to give oneself. Shoutouts to Jeff and his fellow Harris family peeps for the sweet softwares! Let me know what you think, but only if what you think is that it's good.

What's what

2008-08-11T11:17:00.000-07:00

Just a quickly quickly update on my life for anyone who might be interested. First off, this week will see me teaching a more advanced class that ever I've taught before. I'm maybe a little worried, mostly because my students for the week have been my classmates in the past. More excitingly, I just got a call from Office Supply Store saying that they want me to work for them, so as soon as I come in and pass the criminal background check and the drug screening, I will be a bona fide member of the work force. Technically, I've been employed since I was 14, but it was all dance teaching, which, despite paying $15 an hour now that I'm all experienced and grown up, was a) too much fun to feel like work and b) only a couple hours a week. So this is my first for real job. I figure I've spent enough money on pencils and notebooks over the years that I might as well start getting some of that back. School starts at the end of September, at which time I move in to Trinity house and start sharing a room half the size of my current room with a stranger from Corvallis. That's about all I can think of just now.

Jim

2008-08-06T00:55:00.001-07:00

Jim and l are very happy together.

Whether he is named after my imaginary boyfriend Jim or else is said boyfriend, I leave for you to decide for yourself, dear readers. Take into consideration, however, that Jim is my new tablet-style laptop.

Also, this is my hundred and first post. I've been at this for a while now.

l am currently getting ready for fall, applying for a job at Office Max hawking notepads and pencils and the like to pay for Jim and my expensive (despite the scholarship) education and trying to get my schedule in order in time to register for classes in the morning. Adultish-hood is not all fun and games, it seems.

l am very much looking forward to fall. lt's strange, but Jim, via his handwriting recognition software, made it known that he feels the previous sentence could be better phrased," l am very much looking forward total!"

Oh, Jim. You crack me up.

These days

2008-07-16T00:26:00.000-07:00

For those of you hasslin' me about this nigh-on-a-month-long hiatus, I offer you a) my sincerest appologies and b) the following excuses: I am crazy busy just now. I have been taking this Tchaikovsky dance camp with good ol' JKD, so that fills up my life from 9:30 to 1:00, after which I take a bus or otherwise get myself to the U of O for this amazing Linguistics class about different varieties of English. So that takes us up through about 5 pm, after which I have to get all the homeworks in order and fit in all the screwing around and goofing off I couldn't do earlier. Besides, now we have a pool and a hot tub, so that takes time, too. Oh, and these days I have friends with whom I actually hang out, which is new and exciting for little old homebody me. In case that's not enough reason, consider that now I'm back, I can't rely on being exotic and foreign to buy me readers. These days, I actually have to come up with some content.

To some slight degree, I feel bad about being so happy with my life back home. After all, the long gray winter can never compare to the living green of summer, and foreign lands can never hold the same place in my heart as home. Home! How I dwelt on the word until it seemed to have a meaning beyond what any dictionary would tell you.

All that is to say, Rotary, you were totally wrong about "reentry" being a challenge. How much of this is my fault for not making Slovakia a kind of home? If I'd been a better exchange student, might I miss Slovakia? I do miss some of my friends (not Slovaks so much as Americans and moja mila Australcanka), but frankly, I'm having too good a time being back here to devote much thought to it. Sorry, guys. As good an experience this year was, I didn't engage and, as a result, I didn't really get much out of it. I am glad it's over, but simultaneously guilty for being glad, if that makes any sense. I spent all year whining about it, which probably didn't help me get past it.

Answer me one thing, though; I made it through the whole year, thus qualifying my time as a "successful" exchange. How can it be successful if I personally failed so miserably?

Anyway, to bring it back around, my life is friggin' sweet these days, with kind of the vibe of a mellow acoustic guitar accompanied melody in D major being played under a tree in the park while passing around a jar of lemonade on a pleasantly warm day in mid-July. Close your eyes and picture it. There. Just thought I'd bring that back up here at the end and end this puppy on an "up" kind of note.

Acknowledgments

2008-06-23T01:01:00.000-07:00

Acknowledgment #1: It has been a long time since my last blog post
Acknowledgment #2: I ought to have posted something here at least saying I made it home.

...

I'm home!

Holy Carp

2008-06-09T07:12:00.000-07:00

One week from now, I'll be on an airplane.

Slovanglish

2008-05-31T09:46:00.000-07:00

All the exchange students, including myself, developed a strange little jazyk all our own. Dubbed "Slovanglish" or "slovangičtina", depending on who you're talking to, it's basically angličtina, but about half the slovos come out po slovensky, which could be a maly communication problem when I get back home. The nouns are the worst, besides those funky little words that you just toss out into the sentence. I'm going to be saying "No" a lot, but what I'll mean by "no" is generally "yes". I read that it takes at least two weeks to stop saying "yes" and "no" in your adopted language, but that seems a little kratky to me. You should have heard us all spolu. It was a little scary. If you'd stranded us all on a desert island somewhere, it would only have taken about a rok and we would have had ourselves a full-fledged jazyk all our own. I have here appended a maly glossary for you in case any of you want to študovať up a bit before I get there in case you find me yelling for you to "podˇkaj a second" or asking you to pomôc with my počitač. I'm sure it doesn’t even begin to cover the immense confusion we'll have, but sometimes a little confusion is fun too. Add to the mix the fact that I've been chilling with my Australčanka with all her fun australsky words, and my vocabulary becomes a very very zauimave place.

Bez	Without
Podˇkaj	Wait
Trošku	A little bit
Spolu	together
Dˇakujem	Thank you
Diki	Thanks
Australčanka	Australian chick, more specifically, Ellie.
Autobus	Bus
Pozor	Watch out, pay attention
Angličtina	English
Australsky	Australian
Americky	American (adjective)
Laska	Love
No	Yes
Hej	Yeah
Daj mi	Give me
Však	Something along the lines of "eh?"
Viem	I know
Zauimave	interesting
Čaj	Tea
Muž	Man
Počitač	computer
Mobil	Cell phone
Pomôc	help
Maly	Little
Vlasy	Hair
Domov/doma	Home
Nie	No
Notebook	laptop
Strašne	Horrible, horribly
kratky	Short
stači	enough
Kufor	Suitcase
Potraviny	Convenience store
Pivo	Beer
Pes	Dog
Po Slovensky	In Slovak
Po Anglicky	In English
Jesť	Eat
študovať	study
Jazyk	Language, tongue
Slovo	Word
Môže byť	May be
Rok	year

Journal Entry May 12 2008

2008-05-27T06:32:00.000-07:00

35 days to go. It's such a strange thought-- that I will be home in 5 weeks. 5 more Mondays will see me on an airplane leaving for home, where my family will be waiting at the airport to take me back to my house. I smelled a campfire two nights ago and my mind jumped to Blair Lake in August. "It will be so good to be home," I thought. I have spent the whole year, or very nearly, elsewhere. Not physically, obviously, but as this flesh and blood and bone and skin sat in class, my mind was wandering the strange paths of dreams, either losing itself in someone else's preprinted fiction or constructing its own reality on, or perhaps in, which it could dwell. This construction sometimes bore the label of HOME, but whether the reality of home will compare to these idealized versions is one of my chief worries at the moment. I have changed. I can't quantify it, hem my differences into a tidy little box, a list of updates for the perusal of any interested party. They said tat the start of this that "reentry", as they termed it, presented a very real challenge, rivaling that of the year itself. On the other hand, it wouldn't be the first time they'd been totally wrong. Still, I'm anxious. Over the course of the year, I have forgotten somewhat how to engage people. I have been floating along in my bubble, watching myself fall into the old familiar trap of ME. I have a long, hard struggle ahead of me to get out, but I don't want to use my acquaintances here as the social lifelines on which I lean to pull myself out of the comfortable pit I have fallen into, as I do not want to form attachments to these people whom, in all probability, I will never see again. Why start making "goodbye" harder to say now? It's too late. The monkey wrench in my logic is that I said the same thing in September. A year, it seems, is not sufficient return on my investment to warrant the risk inherent in putting myself forward. I recognize this thought for what it is-- a horrid, unhealthy view of my fellow humans and a pathetic excuse to justify my insecurities. However it's taken such a deep hold on my heart… a creeping, insidious vine slowly choking the life out of me, a fungus on my soul, a deadly cancer growing in my thoughts, it's hard to see how deep we'll need to cut to get it all. My greatest fears are human interaction and loneliness, others and myself. I know what I need to do, but it's so hard to kill that needy beast in my chest that wants nothing but to sit in a corner and gnaw at bones, whispering the lie, "I am enough." There is so much more. I have tasted it.

I know what must be done.

No School

2008-05-08T07:24:00.000-07:00

I'm not exactly sure why, but there was no school today. Thus, seeing as I'd been up 'til 2 last night teaching myself to sew, I slept until noon, rolled out of bed (literally), ate spaghetti for lunch, and went into town for a dance class. I was almost ten minutes late, but it proved moot as the doors were locked and no one seemed to be there. Thinking maybe it was supposed to be at 2:30 rather than 1:30, I wandered into town, where some sort of a cycling race seemed to be going on. Two scoops of ice cream and an hour later (green tea and strawberry, incidentally), I wandered back to the still-locked-up building, then went back to the house. (I don't call it home because it's not. I haven't done that all year, so no disrespect to this family.) I ate some yogurt and pretzels, then plugged in my lappy, cracked my knuckles, and started typing. Later, I'll probably meet Ellie for some vodna fajka, since we all got our allowances Monday and all that money's just sitting in my wallet.

Further Pointless Pontifications

2008-04-29T02:52:00.000-07:00

So I got back from Barcelona last night around 1 am, and thus, slept until about 10:30 this morning. Having made toast with tomatoes and eaten it along with a thingie of yogurt, I wandered into the office-area place to maybe do some wandering about the internet only to see a giant blank space on the desk where the host parents' laptop wasn't. Undaunted, I used the opportunity to try out a little experiment I'd been wondering about. I fetched hither yon lappy and plugged yon lappy into their internet and lo and behold, the internets came flowing into yon lappy like sweet summer rain. Having visited some, but not all, of my regularly frequented corners of the boundless ocean of internet that I have so often of late found closed to me, I decided that it had been too too long since I had contributed an extensive, eloquent, and ultimately pointless tributary stream of consciousness to the digital waters I imbibe like it's going out of style. Take this paragraph, now. Without even trying, I just created an extended metaphor! See what happens when I have my own keyboard under my fingers and sweet digeridoo music I bought from some street musician guys in Barcelona? Given the right circumstances, I'm a friggin' fount of eloquence.

So. Now that I've established what exactly I'm doing, it's time for me to actually do it.

Okay, so I lied. I went and took a shower (stinging my sunburn, it should be mentioned), turned my ripped-up jeans into ripped-up shorts, put them on along with a shirt, sat down and pondered topics on which this post could continue. So now, here we goes!

I am wicked excited for the summer. Already, the weather and blooming of trees and the like are having an inexplicably significant impact on my mood. This summer, upon my return home, I have planned and been promised any number of amusing diversions which, for the sake of the heck of it, I will list here in the old standby, bullet-point format:

Learning to drive a stick-shift
Learning to solve a Rubiks' cube
Epic midnight pancake parties
Berry-picking and subsequent cobbler-making
Tree-climbing
Bicycle-riding
Music-making
Out-hanging in the park
Dancing!
Dance-teaching (maybe)
Slovak-speaking with Livia and Lea & Alesh (maybe)
Staying up all night with my electric-kettle and wifi access
Breaking up with Jim, my imaginary boyfriend
Toast-eating
Movie-watching
Ikea-going
Room-furnishing
Car-driving with windows down and music blaring
Hot tub sitting
Game buying
Game playing (both at home and with friends)

Them's all I can think of at the moment. In any event, this promises to be an awesome summer. I'm going to get some more food, then maybe continue this jaunty little post afterward.

Or maybe not. I'm out of things to say at the moment. Have a good week, everypeoples!

Barcelona, man!

2008-04-26T09:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, so Barcelona is the most amazing place ever. While Rome and Athens were also cool, but overall, the impression I was left with was "Well, now I can say I´ve been here." This town, though... I´m already thinking about when I´ll get to come back. Athens and Rome both had this old thing going for them, but they didn´t feel so much like anything was going on now except for the tourism for the old stuff. Granted, I was pretty much only in the touristy parts, but Barcelona has this whole modern art thing going for it too, which I dig. It´s also fun to be hanging out with my fellow exchange students, on which subject, I will here patch in an anectdote which I forgot to put in the entry on Athens.

Four of us were wandering down this road looking at all the little touristy shops, and, figuring that it may be more advantageous to be Slovak tourists than American, we took turns not being able to speak English, with the others speaking in heavy accents with the vendors and translating to eachother. It was friggin' hilarious.

Much as I´d like to elaborate, I have to go now. Darn. I got peoples waiting on me to go to some park or something.

Oh, and so far, I´ve made it on roughly 5 euros per meal. No small feat. I´m pretty proud.

Back from Athens

2008-04-15T09:05:00.000-07:00

As the title of this post cunningly foreshadows, I am, indeed, back from Athens. It was a pretty sweet time, but oddly enough, I'm having trouble finding things to say about it. While the sights were very cool, the overall impression they left on me was something along the lines of "Well, now I can say I've been here". Mostly, the food was really good. One night a whole bunch of us got together and ended up eating real live Greek food at some tiny little restaurant, and then the next night we went and had gyros (whose pronunciation we had many a heated discussion concerning- eventually coming to some sort of concencis in the neighborhood of "Gheeeu-roes.") Mostly, we had a bunch of free time, which we mostly spent wandering around and getting lost. The last night, we had another wicked hookah party at the little tea house next to the hotel. The old stuff was cool too-- there was the acropolis, of course, and some amphitheater that was cool and old and stuff, and... a bunch of other stuff. Overall, it was pretty sweet. I only have a couple minutes to go on this benighted paid-for internet, so I'll just throw on a picture or two and call it quits. Oh, yeah. And we went swimming in the ocean, too. That wasn't a rotary-organized thing, but everyone went anyway. Everyone else was being sissy and whining that it was too cold (in April. For pete's sake.), but I just jumped in anyway. Really, it was warmer than most of the lakes in which I've swam. Those pansies. Good times, though.

The Taming of Raketa

2008-04-07T03:58:00.000-07:00

So. Ski Week. I can now say with confidence that I know how to ski. From a week ago Sunday to this previous Sunday, I was out and about at the Rotary Ski week. Which was awesome. Both Sundays were basically devoted to traveling, four of the remaining days were just skiing pretty much all day, and Wednesday we went out and did some other stuff.

Ok, I somehow have accumulated 66 emails over the past almost-two weeks. That's a new record. If this entry is somewhat disjointed, just know that it's because I'm in the middle of about six different things and squeezing every moment of internet use out of this three-hour session I'm paying money for here at the cajovna.

Of these 66 emails, only 19 were not Facebook clogging up my inbox with crap I'll read about when I get around to logging in there.

Anyway, now I'm really pretty good at skiing and stuff and it's really a bummer that I won't be skiing again for a good long while since I'll be a poor college student and all.

I got Tomas totally addicted to Firefly. After a long day's skiing, we'd cloister ourselves away and watch three or four of the nine episodes I have with me. Lauren joined us for Out of Gas and the movie, which we watched immediately thereafter. That makes three browncoat converts this year. Pity that's about all I've ever converted anyone to. Heh.

Wednesday was a sweet day. We started out going to this cave, then went to a spa waterpark place with healthily minerally murky water, which was fun, even though I forgot my swimsuit and had to borrow one which was way way too small and wear a tank top over it just to keep everything almost close to covered. After that craziness, we had free time in the township of Liptovsky Mikulas, where several awesome people and I found their cajovna and lay around smoking hookah for around four hours. 'Twas sweet indeed.

I have to go potty, but it'll have to wait until some time that I'm not paying for.

Um... that's about all, I guess. Leaving for Athens Friday, though! Yay!

It's been too long...

2008-03-23T08:25:00.000-07:00

My new host family has no internet.

I've never lived without internet. How is it possible?

Thus, I must be brief. Rome was awesome. I have about 500 pictures, no joke, no exaggeration, and frankly, I'm too lazy to sort through them and find the ones that are worthy of precious borrowed or paid for bandwidth, so I don't have any for you just now. Anyway, the highlight was probably seeing the pope. That was pretty sweet. Anyway, a bunch of the kids were foolish and went out drinking, so some or all of the foolish kiddies might be going home. It's not a pretty sight. The biggest bummer, though, was probably that, upon our arrival at Bratislava airport, Haley found that she hadn't brought her passport. While the rest of us were boarding the plane, she was working her long, sad way back to Banska Bystrica.

In later news, packing was a nightmare. I managed to fit almost everything in the original suitcases... and my big Ikea laundry bag... and my little backpack... and my big orange purse. In my own defence, let me just say that the Ikea laundry bag was full of stuff that I'll be passing on to other folks before I leave. My new host family just moved to their current house last week, so while they were showing me around, they kept saying stuff like, "Here's the dishwasher. We never had a dishwasher before, so we're still figuring out how to work it." or "This is the living room. The TV antenna isn't up yet, so there's not very good signal, and we don't really have a couch yet." Largely due to the lack of seating upstairs, I spent the last two days hanging out in my room listening to the audiobook of the Lord of the Rings which showed up on my zune when it came and crocheting. Yesterday, I made a beret for Christina, since she said she'd pay me for it. Oh, and Peter, my new host brother, took me rock climbing. I'm so weak it's not even funny. He's pretty cool. He'd fit right in in Eugene-- long hair, vegetarian, brown corderoys, recycling, even tie-dye, man. How cool is that? I'll have a 15-year old host sister, too, but she's in Belgium right now for some inadequetely explained reason. In any event, I'll be leaving for ski week on Sunday, and Athens the weekend thereafter, I think. I'll have to check my handy-dandy color-coded calendar when I get back. Another random thought: I really ought to get a wall charger for my zune. Now that I can watch movies on it, the only reason I've booted up the ol' lappy the past week or so is to charge it up again. Anyway. That's all I have to say just now. I'd better get back to squeezing every bit of internet I can from my limited span here.

I lied. I really really am unhappy with the quality of the dancing here. Almost every week, I have a big melt down in ballet, a) because my personal level of ability has sunk to roughly that of a sea cucumber, crushing my hopes of auditioning for the role of the White Witch and/or college-level modern classes at the U of O next year, and b) their choreography sucks. With a capital Sucks. The choreographer for the pointe piece has never even studied ballet, and they're actually choreographing in bad technique. This last week, I ran off to cry in the bathroom (not the nearest bathroom, since I knew they'd look for me there, so I went upstairs to some other bathroom. They found me anyway), and for the first time this year, I found myself saying "I can't stay here. I have to go home. I can't do this. I've played along for seven months and I can't do it anymore. I have to go home. Rotary lied to me. Everything was supposed to get better after Christmas, but it's just gotten worse. I have to go home. I'll already be packing everything up. I've got to go home" Not to say that I'd never had most of those sentiments before, but it was the first time I actually wanted to get on a plane and leave early.

Well, I hate to end on such a depressing note, so here's something that made me laugh to cheer you all up. I know that most of you aren't as lame as me, so you might not laugh quite as hard. Still, gotta give me credit for trying.

Unedited Notebook excerpts- 28 Feb-9 Mar

2008-03-10T08:58:00.000-07:00

28 Feb 2008
Yesterday was the best day ever. And I was thinking that before my package came. So I want to write it down so I don’t forget. After the third class, Ellie and I went upstairs for Art, but mysteriously, none of our classmates ever showed up, so we sat around and talked for two hours, after which I started wandering townward. Before I’d even made it out of sight of the school, Ellie called to say her Slovak lesson was canceled, so we went to town together and got some ice cream with hot raspberries and tiramisu, then went off to the čajovňa for tea and a vodna fajka. Around 2:45, Ellie went home and I went to see Ratatatouille dubbed into Slovak. I understood 90% of it—well, actually, I understood all of it, but of what I heard rather than remembered, I got 90%. I was amazed. Anyway, a couple more things about the dubbing—it was funny how the headlines and book titles and were all in French, which I guess makes more sense. Second, at the part where Linguini says, (in English), “If you’re going to name a food, you should name it something that sounds delicious. Ratatouille doesn’t sound delicious. It sounds like ‘rat’ and ‘patootie’. Rat patootie. Which does not sound delicious.” They translated it something like “If you’re going to name a food, you should name it something that sounds delicious. Ratatouille doesn’t sound delicious. It sounds like ‘rat’. ‘Rat,’ which means ‘rat’ in English.” Except the second “rat” in that last sentence was in Slovak, but you probably figured that out. Well, I guess that’s the best way to make it work. But I understood enough to figure it out!
The moral of the story: If you want to have a good day, go out and spend money.
Anyway, when I got home (walking), Ana told me Lukaš had gone to pick up a package for me. Michael sent me a pink pony! He definitely wins a t-shirt. Mommy sent me the jewelry I requested and the best Valentines’ Day card ever, not to mention two boxes of tea nad one of emergen-c! Daddy, though, sent me a zune! So now I’m listening to a new David Crowder Band album. Oh, and a dvd of Narnia, and three of Firefly. I’m so happy! I love the Juno soundtrack. I could gush on and on. I’ll save that for a blog post or a thankful email.

Walking ‘round in February
Pretending like it’s June
Sitting down in the park
Trying to write a simple tune

Not wearing my winter coat
Since in my mind it’s June
Walking in the chilly air
The weather’ll catch up soon

I close my eyes and I’m back
In a park at home in June
Sitting talking with a friend
‘til the sun turns to the moon

Eating ice cream in the rain...

29 February 2008
Day 199
I don’t want to be here today. Don’t really know why. I just don’t. Don’t know where I want to be instead, just not here. Actually, I want to be home, but I’m not really homesick. Listless, more like. I feel listless. Which is weird considering how much I hate making lists (har har). Really, though, the lack of pressure is driving me nuts. Yesterday I left school an hour early for no reason whatsoever and just walked home. I’m finding myself looking for reasons to stay at school, rather than justifying skipping, and for the most part, I can’t find any except, “well, what else is there to do?” I’m probably the worst exchange student ever. I don’t do anything. Not that I did at home either, but I just feel like I’m doing even less since I’m not even doing anything productive. At least I accomplished stuff back home, even if I didn’t have a social life. I feel dead. I don’t do anything, I don’t feel anything but non-feelings like apathy and listnessness and boredom. I’m not even learning anything much anymore. The bright spot in all this depression is having my new fauxPod. I love it to pieces. The only thing is the battery doesn’t last forever. I about ran it out yesterday. That’s the last time I’m watching videos in school. New rule for me. I really believe my dead old fauxPod is sorta a God thing, since I wouldn’t have ever learned Slovak if I constantly listened to it, plus I would have seemed even more unapproachable. And it’s a little conveniently inconvenient that the other one only worked while I was walking or cross country skiing. No music in school, let alone movies or other distractions. Distractions?! From what? The maybe-dozen time’s I’ve been addressed in class? Anyway, I’m going to be in Rome in less’n two weeks, so I guess I’ll just wait it out. Ugh. I have PE today, but I don’t want to.

Včera bola veľmi lahký den. V pondelok, chodim do školz o 9:45, tak spala som do 8:00 a išla pešo. Bola som na hodine dejepis v 3B a potom na hodine fyzike v septima A dva krat. O 12:20, išla som domov pešo. Doma, poyerala som film na mojom nokebooku a hačkovala rukavice, ale niečo sa zdalo a nie su dobre, tak musim skusiť znova. Škoda. Minúly tyžden, prišel balik od mojej rodiny, tak temaz mam novú mptrojkú, ktorá funguje. Ja sa tešim! Teraz, ked čakam na autobus, môžem pozerať filmy alebo americkz serialy ktoré poslal môj otec. Nebojťe sa, pani učitelka, nebudem pozerať v škole. O 5:00, išla som do Rotary klub, ako musim každý tyžden. Rozpravala som sa s Ellie a Haley po anglickz, ale klub bol strašný nudný. Nevadi. Buduci vikend, budeme variť pie (ako sa povie pie? Neviem.) Lebo Ellie nepozná, a čo je americkejšie ako jabulkový pie?

Day 204 Wed 5 Mar 2008
Leaving for Rome in a little less’n a week. Wednesday is among the more bearable school days, despite starting earlier than I feel’s strictly necessary. Tomorrow’s my Daddy’s birthday. I’ll have to call him. In any event, I’m looking forward to making pie with Haley and Ellie. We’ll see how it goes down. I’m working on a hat for Ellie’s birthday present. She picked out this crazy rainbow yarn, and I was working with half double crochet stitches, but that way, each color only gets you one stitch, which makes it looks like some gnarly rag rug, so I think I’ll start over with singles, or even slip stitches. Should look much better. Watched the first twenty minutes of O Brother Where Art Thou before class this morning. That’s a good movie.

An apt analogy:
The lack of pressure in my life at the moment is to my mind as the lack of pressure in outer space would be to my body.
Day 205. Dad’s Birthday. Pie day. Leaving for Rome in 1 week. Only 16 pages left in this notebook. (Editor’s note: I know there are only 10 pages accounted for here- the other six had no text, only drawings.) Then I’ll have to get a new one. Maybe with quadrille lines. I also need to call Dad at some point. Well, not just any point. Between 4 pm and 5 am. I slept hard last night. I crashed on my little couch listening to my daddy talk about the bible, but then I got up maybe 45 minutes to an hour later, washed my face, and read 10 chapters of psalms. That one psalm was crazy long. Anyway, the weather still continues charming. I grabbed my coat on the way out the door, but have since regretted it. Now I’ll have to carry it around all day. Not that it’s not a tad chilly. It’s probably good that I changed out of the skirt, but still.
I want Burrito Boy. Maybe the Chicken Boy. I don’t care. I want Café Yumm. The Baby Yumm, or maybe the edamame one with nori (editor’s note: I wrote nori in Japanese). That’s the first Japanese word I’ve thrown in in… 59 pages. It breaks my heart to think I’m forgetting it. I no longer feel the need to go home so urgently, but by no stretch of the imagination would I say that I don’t want to. It occurs to me that they don’t have the kids who don’t find the year to be the best of their lives come and tell us to come—we only ever heard from the few weirdos who have no life back home to miss. If I were to time travel back to a year ago November, I would tell myself not to go on this exchange. That’s an interesting revelation. That I wish I’d never embarked on this madness in the first place. The cool parts—which are basically just Haley and Ellie, learning the language, and starting to wash my face and read my bible consistently—are far outweighed by the things I’m missing out on back home. Family, friends, (which I was just starting to have,) studio, Narnia, and later recital, Tanner’s first year of high school, playing cello with Adam, having Ryan teach me to drive a stick shift, starting college, hot tub, college-level modern, and who knows else. Hanging out with Ashley, playing sausage with Tanner and friends…
When I listen to the recordings of Institute, I pretend I’m curling up in my daddy’s lap and saying, “Daddy, tell me about the Bible”.

I hate volleyball. My playing basically consists of trying not to give the impression that I’m going to go for the ball, since then no one who actually has a chance of being helpful with get it. I figure the best thing I can do for the team is stay out of the way and look apologetic that they got stuck with me. I hate volleyball, I hate volleyball, I HATE VOLLEYBALL!!!
I realize that lots of people enjoy volleyball for God only knows what reason, but I don’t have to. Likewise, just because I loathe it so doesn’t mean I expect all you freaks to hate it too. Why can’t you just return the favor?

I only have a few more pages in this notebook, so today I went out and bought another one. I’m kinda trying to finish this one out as soon as possible so I can use the next one. I’ll have to copy my calendar and school schedule into the new one. Today started out really crappy, but since I got out in the sunshine, I’ve felt way better. Of course, this can also be attributed to the nice men handing out flowers in the square, listening to the Hosanna recital 2006 soundtrack and spending money on office supplies. I’m supposed to meet Ellie here by the fountain, but she’s not here, so I’m just sitting here in the sun. Today is day 206. Forgot to mention that. Oh, I need to remember to have Dad tell me how to fix my virus software. Er, anti-virus. Apparently it expired or somesuch. Anywho. I wish I had a departure date so I could count down rather than counting up. I think it’d be more encouraging. I said back at the beginning of the year that I didn’t think I’d much care about percentages by the time it got close enough for my approximations to start showing their inaccuracy. That is not probing true. I thought I was already past 2/3, but in reality that’s not until the 18th. (Editor’s note: that’s not right either. The actual 2/3 date is around the 14th.) Dang, my foot’s asleep. Oh, I went out and bought a black permanent marker for CDs and the cover of my notebook. The new one, that is. It’s a good thing I’m not buying anything clothing-related now. I’d be more broke than I am. Some homeless dude just asked me for 2 crowns for a rožok. I figured, how much drugs or alcohol could he buy with 2 crowns? So I gave him his 2 sk, and he asked me for2 more so he could have 2 rožok. I don’t know how long this’d have gone on, so I told him I needed everything else I had and he wandered off muttering.

To summarize the day: crappy, awesome, crappy, tipsy and thus awesome.
The rest of day 206:
I’m mostly writing this to see if I remember it in the morning. After I met Ellie, we went and had ice cream, then I walked her to her bus stop. From there I went to dance, where I had a nervous breakdown during developes since I felt like such a big fat slug. My arabesque hardly reaches 90. Not even that, really. It’s pathetic. Anyway, Terka was amazingly nice. I like her. She might be my best Slovak friend. After that, I met up with the other exchange students who were in town and we went to this dark underground bar place where I drank 2½ glasses of crappy wine. “So I’ve never been drunk,“ I remember saying, “but I feel sorta dizzy when I turn my head. What does that mean?” I was told that I was “tipsy”. That’s cool, I guess . I can work with tipsy. Anyway, then I followed the remaining students who didn’t have to catch a train back home at like 7:30 to the café where Haley always gets mojitos and had a cup of coffee. It was funny. Everything seemed really quiet, and they told me I was talking really loud, so I don’t know if that came from the tipsy or what. Anyway, Haley told me right at the beginning that I absolutely couldn’t get drunk, since we have no idea what would happen, and she didn’t want to have to take care of me—but she would if it came to that. I thought that mighty nice of her to have my back that way. Anyway, I had a long discussion with Tomaš over my wine. I somehow developed strong political opinions over the course of the conversation. Weird. That’s not normal for me. Once I made it home on the 35, I told Jan that I’d drank some wine and was feeling a little woo-ooh. He just laughed and said I didn’t have practice. Which is true. This is the most drunk I’ve ever, ever been, and it can stay that way as far as I care. Not that I won’t drink as much ever again, but definitely no more. I’m good. This whole experience is very odd. It’s like being in a dream. You know, all sorta floaty… like nothing’s really real. It’s weird. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and realize I was a total idiot.

Day 207
So I still remember everything I wrote down. I’m not sure how it looked from everyone else’s perspective, but I was probably really weird and giggle. I felt weird and giigly. Anyways. I went out skiing this morning. I made friends with a five-year-old named Katka—cutest little thing. She was a better skier than I. Came home three hours later—okay, I was going to skip this part and pretend it never happened, but it’ll be funny in retrospect. I tried to go down the not-bunny slope. No sooner had I gone over the brink than I a) realized this was a big mistake, and b)fell and slid literally halfway down the mountain before the guy wearing a first aid kit stepped out and stopped me. I stood up, thanked him, pulled myself together, and set off again. Ten seconds later I lost control and wobbled for a ways, then fell and tumbled and slid. This time I lost both skis and a pole. Some nice man uphill of me brought them to me, with the advice “go slower”. Gee, thanks. Good tip. Pity the gravity’s so strong here that I slide down on my butt at 9.82 meters per second. Anyway, I got to the bottom, shaking like mad, only to discover that my kiddy-lift ticket wouldn’t let me on the grown-up lift to get back out of the pit of hell. The nice guy running it let me on anyway, though. So that was a disaster. After that I stuck to the kiddy run and hung out with five-year-olds. Back home, Iounged about and copied the calendars to the new notebook. Around 6, Terka sms’d me and asked if I wanted to go to a movie. Jumper. Good concept, but poor plot construction. Not to mention that Hayden Christianson’s uglier than a raccoon with a butter knife stuck up its nose. Anyway, I’m home now. Not really much to do now but sleep after I read bible and wash my face. Starting Proverbs tonight. Not such a fan of psalms or proverbs. Not such fun reading for me. But hey. Whatever.

The last two pages. The end of an era.
I’ve wanted to cobble together something with all the quotes I’ve related to lately—quotes about home, thing out of them—but that’s more trouble than it’s worth.
Holy crap, though, I’ll be in Rome Thursday. I’m surprisingly unexcited for it. I mean, I’m consciously excited but not relaly emotionally. I must be really emoationally disengaged right now. I don’t feel a lot—when I’m not crying my eyes out. Not just plakam, rozplakam. Literally crying all over the place.
In a lot of placed my handwriting looks a lot like my dad’s. The phrase at the top “of an era”, for instance, and the word “dad” right above here. Plus must of this here paragraph. I still bite my nails. I’m sorta giving up for now. I figure I need the emotional release this year.
I had a very strange dream last night. Very vivid, but I only remember bits and pieces. It seemed very sad. I mostly saw it in third person, but realized different characters to be “myself” throughout. The whole thing mostly took place in a hotel with a giant pool, both of which were, as I put it in my dream, an oasis in the middle of a dark sea. Overall atmosphere was dark, but brightly lit inside as if to compensate, but the darkness outside was impenetrable.
There was a baby crocodile we (some strange man through whom I perceived much of the dream and me, a wealthy society chick—quite skinny) adopted. He grew up into a boy, who didn’t want to swim. He was in swim lessons and all the kids had to race to knock this baseball off a pole. Somehow the man won, and the boy was all smiles and impressed. For some reason this made the man angry that he wasn’t trying hard enough and they got into a fight. The boy hit the man with a plank and turned back into a crocodile and swam away.
I remember I sat on a swing outside with the man sitting on the balcony. I swung higher and higher, until the hotel looked small and distant. It was at this point I commented on it being an oasis in an ocean of darkness. “I wish I could jump off and dive into the sea, down to the very bottom,” I continued, “and not die.”
“And not die”, repeated the man pensively.
Later a Chinese guy came for some reason, and since it was my crazy brain making the dream up, I could pick up Slovak and Japanese words in the “Chinese”. This isn’t uncommon in my dreams. Later still I found myself in a museum with Haley, who had recently been somehow bereaved, so I was comforting her as we walked through an exhibit on the history of England.

Som Raketa!

2008-02-21T10:58:00.001-08:00

Eeyup, it's been a while. Just thought I'd acknowledge that. This past week (well, I call it a week, but it was really more like five days), I was at some mountain-type place for the church's ski trip. Sunday was mostly taken up with arriving and introductions and the like, and today, being the last day, was mostly taken up with packing up and leaving, so that makes three days of substance. On the first day, I skiied so much, and so badly, that my knees, which have always been weak, were not only black and blue from the incredible number of times I fell, but also felt as though someone had taken my shin in one hand and my thigh in the other and just twisted away at the knee in between. For those of you unfamiliar with human anatomy, just know that your knees are not meant to twist, just bend. Thus, I sat the second day out and mostly spent the time playing through Monkey Island 1 and 2, the first two Pajama Sam games, and a prodigious amount of solitaire. Also prodigious was the 3-hour nap I took. Good times. Anyway, that means that the increasingly inaccurately titled "ski week" actually consisted of a mere two days of skiing. (Aside: See that there? I stole the phrase "increasingly inaccurately titled" from the back of the copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where it states that it is the "first in the increasingly inaccurately titled Hitchhiker's Trilogy" or somesuch nonsense. This is why I could never write a book. I would get the pants sued off me for plaigerism. And there again, where I stole "Get the pants sued off of" from Sam and Max. Max responds, "but you don't wear any pants." The cycle never ends. Well, that grew unusually tangential unreasonably quickly. End Aside.) Furthermore, I was one of maybe two of the 14 there who were actually skiing. All the others were far too cool to ski and thus, snowboarded. In case you are one of the few people who haven't heard me expostulate on the topic yet, my two most spectacular falls both involved me getting to the end of the run with too much momentum and not enough skill to stop in time. In the first instance, I sailed off the ski run, was airborne for a moment, and faceplanted in the dirt, as the only snow there was manmade. In the second instance, I skiied through (and partially over) the line of people waiting for the lift. The other funny, I honestly can't be bothered to relate again, so I'll just copy it out from where I told my mama about it. Yes, I am lazy. Som leniva.

Aubrianne hovorí:
i somehow got a new nickname this week
La Chel Carson hovorí:
yes
Aubrianne hovorí:
apparantly i go really fast skiing, and some czech tourists commented
Aubrianne hovorí:
and called me "raketa"
Aubrianne hovorí:
which means rocket
Aubrianne hovorí:
and some of the guys heard that and were so taken with the word that they just said it all the time
Aubrianne hovorí:
so now i'm raketa.
Aubrianne hovorí:
i guess
La Chel Carson hovorí:
that is so funny!!!!!
Aubrianne hovorí:
i thought so
La Chel Carson hovorí:
it suits you to a T
Aubrianne hovorí:
hee hee
Aubrianne hovorí:
it's weird, since they kept saying "raketa! raketa!" in that way that people say a word when they just like the sound of it
Aubrianne hovorí:
and i didn't know what it meant or what they meant by it
Aubrianne hovorí:
until kelly told me
Aubrianne hovorí:
i only go fast since it's harder to slow down
La Chel Carson hovorí:
that actually makes it a little funnier!
Aubrianne hovorí:
i know!
La Chel Carson hovorí:
you have always only had one speed!
Aubrianne hovorí:
well, by the last day i was good enough at least to stop
Aubrianne hovorí:
if not slow down much

So yeah. That's about how that went down. Oh, and "hovorí" means "says". The messenger here is all in slovak. The last fun bit that I can think of concerning the trip is that there were two American girls there who somehow spoke less Slovak than me, despite having lived here at least as long (in one case) and considerably longer (in the other). Oh, and the Slovak girl to whom I did most of my talking said that I "don't have any accent". She went on to ask if it was correct to say "don't have any", and whether it constituted a double negative. We told her it was fine. When she later went on to ask about phrasal verbs or somesuch hoo-ha, however, we told her we didn't have a clue what the heck she was talking about.

Journal Excerpt

2008-02-12T05:45:00.000-08:00

Day 182. 58%. A little over 4 months to go.

The weather's been fantastic lately. Cold, but sunny. Yesterday I explained to Ellie (the new Australian girl) that the lack of cloud cover, in fact, contributes to the cold because there is nothing to hold the heat in. Wit hthe weather has come a coorosponding warming of mood. It seems unlikely that, at this point, it's going to be cold and rainy and snowy again before summer. In the words of the acanonically named Stumpy, "This is no thaw. This is spring!" Four months doesn't seem so long, especially considering I've already made it six. Well, almost. The official six month anniversary is on the 15th. Doubt not that it will be met with much rejoicing. As of today, I am optimistic. Next week I will be off skiing with church people, and in one month tomorrow I will be headed off to rome! While I'm not nearly so anxious to leave when the sun is shining, i'm still not in love with this place. Seriously, I can think of maybe a day or two worth of fun to be had here. Anyway, I do not want to live here or even stay longer than I am planning. Really ,as soon as the farewell weekend is over, I am out of here. I think I'll wear my black pants and ballet flats on the plane, probably with my switchfoot shirt. Confy and easy to get shoes on and off, and probably would look halfway decent after beingslept in. I'm worried about the packing- fitting everything in the suitcases will be a challenge. I might give Ellie my big coat, as she has another winter to get through here. I don't really want it, and it definently won't fit in my suitcase. We'll see. I'll probablky have to give away lots of my stuff. I don't really know what, exactly, though. Probably my crappy jeans that I bought here. Actually, nobody would really want those, they're so beat up. Dang, though, I have a lot of books. that might be a problem. I don't know. W'll find out when I move to my last host family.

Putting the "Erf" in Performance

2008-02-03T06:11:00.000-08:00

I realize that I haven't blogged recently, but that's only because it seems that nothing much has happened. Life in Slovakia goes on much as it has this past age, full of its own comings and goings. Worth mentioning, though apparantly not worth going out of my way to post about, are my two performances. The first: playing that Vivaldi cello duet thingie which was, I guess, close on two weeks ago, and which, unbeknownst to me, was some sort of concert for the Italian Embassy folks. That's right, the folks who brought you Vivaldi. The other cellist messed up in that one part that goes "doo, da da da da dum dum doo, dum da da da da da doo, da da dum di da da doo, da di dum dum da da doo doo doo doo da da da da dum da da da dum da da da doo", which doesn't matter so much, since, admittedly, it is a hard part, and it just made me look better in comparison. Better still, when they announced us, they said something along the lines of "And we'd like to thank the Conservatory for the use of their talented solist". Then, this last week I had this other dance thingie for študio tanca's modern class. I didn't much care for the choreography or the music, but that's okay. The younger students were sort of fun to watch- kids, the youngest of whom were perhaps five, who had clearly had no training other than modern, albeit their funky not-so-technique-based brand of modern, but still, interesting to see. The music that my class danced to was, I swear, about pedophilia. Not that I blame the teacher, since there's no reason she should know what this English song was about. Still, it was rather odd. In any event, in neither event did I fall down and make more of a fool of myself than you, dear readers, already know me to be.

Good day.

2008-01-15T06:37:00.000-08:00

Today is shaping up to be an awesome day. I'm sitting at the cajovna at the moment, which is enough to qualify any day as good, sipping tea and paying 15 SK for half an hour's wifi use. Yesterday saw the dawn of a new reason to be extraordinarily happy, as I now have access to a non-crap cello! Granted, I can't take it home, and it lives at a music school a few minutes' walk from town, which is, in turn, maybe 15 minutes' walk from school, which is, in turn, about 50 minutes from my house. Town is only about 40 minutes away. Think of it as a less-than-perfect iscosoles triangle. Technically scaline, I suppose. Anyway, I went there straight from school and worked on getting that one Vivaldi cello duet thingie back into shape in anticipation of the performance I'll be playing in rather than giving a speech in Art History class, a gig which got me the cello in the first place. On the way, I stopped at a bookstore and picked up a copy of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe from the shelf marked "English Books", since I'd been craving some Douglas Adams and, shortsightedly, I didn't bring any with me. I'm typing with one hand, as I'm holding a sweet tea cup in the other. I'll be headed off to dance in about twenty minutes, so I'm going to stop typing now and go and squeeze every bit of internet I can from the remaining time. The end.

Happy Post

2008-01-07T07:20:00.000-08:00

I have had a lot of people tell me that my depressing posts are depressing them, and, what's more, that they all are convinced that I'm miserable all the time. The truth-- I only blog when I'm miserable, really. When I'm happy, I'm out catching rainbows and playing with puppy dogs and bunnies and stuff. So. Without further ado, here are some happy things for all y'alls. With bullet points! Gotta love bullet points.

It snowed about a foot yesterday. We shoveled snow from the driveway and then strapped on skis and tramped out a flat spot where Lukas and Jan will build an ice rink.
I have a giant bruise on my knee and another one on my arm. From cross-country skiing. When I fell down. Well, one of the times I fell down. Not sure which one. Why exactly bruises are a good thing is one of the many unsolved mysteries my psyche holds.
I finally made it to a rank of 100 in Psychonauts and got to see the bonus scene. Ok, so I googled "Psychonauts Figment Help" to find the last three, but still. I'm awesome.
Oh, and I had a birthday! So now I'm old.
I love my hankie. I got it in Japan, and whenever I cry on it, it makes me feel better. Way better than tissues. This particular hankie is not for boogers.
My birthday package came the day after my birthday, full of much awesome and spiffiness.
My host parents got me glasses with clear lenses for my birthday. I told them that, since I can't really speak intelligently, I might as well look šikovna, or even mudra.
Tanner's Narnia greetings DVD was the best thing I've ever seen. I thought it'd make me cry, so I got my hankie all ready, but I laughed and laughed.
On New Year's Eve, Lukas and his girlfriend had some friends over and we walked up on a nearby hilltop and watched the fireworks over the city while we passed around a bottle of champagne, which was, after midnight, legal for me to imbibe.
I decided some time ago, but don't think I mentioned to many of you, that my favorite word is "cataclysmic". I don't know why, but all the 'k' sounds appeal to me.
School and dance start up again tomorrow, so I won't feel bad about skulking about the house anymore.
This morning, I wasn't sure if school started today or tomorrow, so rather than call one of my acquaintances from school, I walked all the way there and back, reasoning that it's not like I had much else to do, and the exercise would do me good. So I took a two-hour walk in the snow this morning.
Shoveling snow, to return to a previous point, reminds me something little imaginary people living on a cake would do when you shake powdered sugar over them.
I got an amazon gift certificate from Kyler for Christmas, so that's pretty sweet.
My old headphones broke, but now I have new ones! Blue ones! Shine your shoe ones! (Sorry, doctor seuss moment)
I'm trying to read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in Slovak, since I got it for Christmas. I don't know about half the words, but it doesn't really matter since I basically have the English version memorized, it turns out.
I'm not out of Burts' Bees yet!
I haven't shaved my legs in almost a month, but it's not like anyone will see, considering that they'll shoot you if you don't wear socks and boots.
I've got a sweet new type of over-the-shoulder roll to teach to all my dancing friendlets back home. It goes side to side. Did I already mention that at some point?
I'm not wearing socks or slippers at the moment. Ha ha ha ha.
My new year's resolution this year: To spend the whole of 2008 without buying any clothing for myself. It's good to walk through a store and say "No, you know what, I have everything I need." Which, in turn, reminds me that I could be living under a bridge and still have everything I need, since God loves me and all. Sorry to be Captain Preachy Good Christian Girl, but it's true.
While I'm on the topic of being Captain Preachy Good Christian Girl, I finished reading through the bible the week before Christmas, and now, on the second time through, I'm about halfway through Deuteronomy.
I got a sweet switchfoot tshirt in my birthday box. Which is sweet.
I found the one truly disgusting Slovak... dare I call it food? It's sort of a beverage, but basically it tastes like you're drinking slightly runny expired sour cream with a tinge of bile. And you all know that I'll eat anything, so if I say it's disgusting, it must be completely unfit for human consumption. "Gnarly" is perhaps the most apt term here.
A day of two before the new year, I went out and filled the biggest gaps in my wardrobe in anticipation of my no-more-buying-new-clothes resolution. So now I have a black zippy uppy hoody sweatery thing and some black ballet flats, both of which I can wear with my skinny black pants and pretend I'm Audrey Hepburn. Not that they'll let me wear ballet flats out of the house in January, but still.
Speaking of Audrey Hepburn, I'll be going to Rome in just a few months. Yay!
I saw Heros for the first time, albeit in Czech, but I still understood the Japanese dude. Plus, little miss stick-her-hand-in-the-garbage-disposal didn't really need a whole lot of translation.
Look at all these happy things! That's a lot of happy. This makes 28. Let's see if I can come up with two more and make it a nice round 30, 'cause I'm just OCD like that.
My face stopped being a breaky-outy spaz just in time for me to reenter society, which is always good.
I wear perfume now. The ol' host parents got me some for Christmas. Not sure if they're trying to tell me something.

Are you happy now?

The Christmas Non-Post

2007-12-30T08:29:00.000-08:00

I should write about Christmas, but I don't feel like it.

I should write about the quaint Christmas meal with its quaint little traditions. Throwing walnuts over the shoulder for luck, eating little wafery things with honey for some antiquated, superstitious reason, that sort of thing.

But I'm not in the mood.

I ought to thank all y'alls for your brown paper packages tied up with string, and maybe skip over the part where 1:30 in the AM saw me sitting on the bathroom floor sobbing.

While you might be interested in the family visits that took up all the 25th and 26th, I'm sure you don't want to hear about how the constant peopleness of those days left me all aspburgersy, so much so that I've spent the past week crocheting until my fingers bled.

Were I were to write about that, I would probably brag about the matching hat, scarf, and gloves that I've made without a pattern since then.

But I'm not in the mood for blogging.

So I won't.

But one thing I would do

If I were going to blog--

I would make every sentence a new paragraph.

'Cause it makes every

Indented

Isolated

Statement

seem more significant than it actually is.

Clever like a radio.

2007-12-15T11:22:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's been a while. Sorry about that. I guess I'll pick up from last weekend-the Rotary Bratislava trip. A very bare-bones summary would be that all of the events were pretty pathetic and poorly organized, but we exchange students had a fantastic time anyway just being together and speaking lots and lots of English. To make a short story long, the whole thing started when Jan (host dad) drove Haley and I to Bratislava, where we stopped at Ikea to get some Swedish Meatballs for lunch. We ran through Ikea real quick like, stopping to get my secret santa gift, which I, in typical me fashion, had completely spaced about until that morning. One awesome stuffed rat later, we were back in the car headed for the bus station, where we met up with everyone else and left for the hotel. We went up to our assigned rooms, crammed into itty-bitty elevators, and dumped our stuff on the beds before putting on our silly rotary blazers and going to some bank place, which apparantly is one of the tallest buildings in the whole, entire country, which would have been a more impressive boast if they hadn't been simultaneously boasting that, on a clear day, you could see two other countries from the top. Before they let us head up to the top, though, they had us sit and listen to some bank guy talking about the euro in slovakia- or at least that's what we think he was talking about. I felt sort of bad for wasting his time. Anyway, we went up and took pictures, then went back down again. We then loaded back on the bus and went to the old city, which was all decked out for christmas. Chelsea and I made it our aim to get lost early enough that we had enough time to find our way back. We succeeded, then hung out at this bar place which was gorgeously decorated with glowy colorful lighted walls and giant black and white pictures of beautiful people on the remaining walls. I could be confusing this with another day, but I think we then went to this pub place which we totally took over to give our secret santa presents and play pool, at which I lost magnificently, which is how I do everything. It was Whitney's birthday, too, so we had cake and sang "happy birthday," first in English, then Slovak, then the Mexicans sang in Spanish, and the Brazilians sang in Portugese. It took a while. Anyway, afterward, we went back to the hotel and hung out. I taught a roomful of exchange students how to play Ruckus in Slovak, since View is Thai and doesn't really speak much English. So that was sweet. It should also be noted that every three rooms shared a bathroom and toilet, and that my roommates and I were unyieldingly sarcastic to one another, making up for nearly four months of a) being polite and b) speaking Slovak. It was awesome. The next morning, we all got up and breakfasted on tea, rolls and hot dogs, which is, unfortunately, pretty typical Slovak breakfast fare, then set off on a whirlwind sightseeing adventure. The bus dropped us at Bratislava castle, where we were left to wander around and take pictures of ourselves for maybe three hours, before the bus failed to make its rendezvous, so we walked around by some church for about another hour waiting for the bus to come. When it finally did, it took us to the tv broadcasting tower for another view of the city and adjacent countries and lunch in the fancy restaurant at the top. Afterward, another bus ride brought us to a little red tourist train. Those of us lucky enough to sit in the back car with no adult supervision had a grand old time not seeing the sights of Bratislava. We eventually started randomly waving at strangers and pretending to take their picture and generally pretending to be stupid tourists. How fitting, then, when our little red tourist train was ambushed by a crowd of randomly waving and picture taking Japanese tourists. The little red tourist train drove all through the old city, ("hey, we were lost here!" said Chelsea) and took us- why not?- back to Bratislava Castle. The intercom voice lady then pointed out several bridges over the Danube, mentioning that the smallest one was damaged by Americans in the second world war. We all looked at our shoes. I muttered, "sorry". When we loaded back on the little red tourist train, we in the back car were joined, surprisingly, by some random Irish tourists. "We haven't paid- we're just hopping a ride," they said as the train pulled away, "Where are we going?". When we explained that we were with an organization and had no idea where they'd take us next, they jumped. Off the little red tourist train. Yeah, it was nuts. Anyway, we then walked across the bridge to the biggest mall in Slovakia, for what it's worth. I bought a pair of skinny black pants, then spent the rest of the night in a state of nervous breakdown over them. Never did I think I would own a pair of skinny black pants. Anyway, after a mere three hours shopping, we all gathered and went back to the hotel, where we got ready for the club that night. I spend most of the getting ready time wandering around, panicked, in my new skinny black pants trying to borrow a shirt that would make me feel less like I was wearing tight black pants. The disco itself, despite being "the biggest club in Slovakia" was sort of a letdown. Basically just a smoke-filled room full of people who thought they were cooler than they probably were. There were two slutty dancers (and I use the term "dancer" loosely) on the stage, even. Eventually, the girl who was kicked off of Slovak Superstar the previous week came out on the stage and sang, and that was kind of it. We went back to the hotel around midnight. The next morning was the dreaded test, which I still maintain was poorly designed. I don't really want to talk about it, then after breakfast, we went home. Jan came and picked us up, and I slept most of the way back to Banska Bystrica. And that's about all.

Living with Strangers- Again.

2007-12-01T02:39:00.000-08:00

Thursday night saw me trying to cram all my worldly possessions into the two suitcases they all came here in. Strangely, they seemed to have multiplied to the point that they barely fit. How can it be that I have so much crap and still I feel like I have nothing to wear? After that escapade, I resolved to stop buying clothes for the rest of the year (I use the word "resolved" loosely, meaning that I probably will anyway), and use the money for vodna fajkas. Gotta love the hookah. I just wish I knew exactly it is I'm smoking, but I have been assured that it's neither tobacco nor drugs, nor indeed anything harmful to my health. Anyway, yesterday my stuffed-to-the-gills-or-would-have-been-if-they-were-fish suitcases and I moved to the Rapcan residence, which is a gorgeous old house perhaps 45 minutes' walk from town, which is a significant improvement over the hour and a half it took took to walk from the Velky's house in Kremnička. My new host family consists of a mom, Anna, a dad, Jan, and a 20-year-old hockey playing older brother type, Lukaš. They are all extraordinarily nice, and Lukaš speaks flawless English. He said he liked the way I spoke English, with my "wery nice accent", which is something a west-coast girl like me doesn't hear all that often. Anna has been studying English for the past three years, and is eager to pick up more words, but they all speak Slovak to me, since I asked them to. I've learned that, however much the other party wants to speak English, if you consistantly respond in Slovak, they'll eventually give up and speak Slovak to you. The house is fantastically old-style, even by Slovak standards, so think pre-communist era. The upstairs, where the three bedrooms are, has doors only on the bathrooms, making the whole place really open. My room is just sort of... there, once you pass the bathrooms. The bed is in a little alcove, and the closet is plenty big enough to get dressed in, so no worries on the count of privacy. Oh, and they have a sauna in the bathroom. Which is awesome. In the parts where they've updated the house somewhat, they have heated floors, which is also awesome. The internet, though, is like than molasses going uphill in January- with crutches (bonus points for you if you caught the reference before you read the next sentence). Speaking of which, I said a sad little farewell to my carefully accumulated savegames when I uninstalled Psychonauts from the Velkys' desktop. Anyway, that's about everything I have to say at the moment. I'll leave you with my address so that when the Christmas and birthday presents start pouring in, they'll end up at the right house. Just don't send too much stuff that I'll have to fit into my suitcases! What I really want- ok, this sounds silly, but go with it- is a pair of spiffy glasses with clear lenses, so I can feel like I look smart even when I don't actually feel smart. I still have to get the stuff I've bought for my family home, and finish my Christmas shopping. Oh, well. Ok, so that address:

Skubínska
Cesta 96, 974 01
Banska Bystrica, Slovakia

Skiing and the Spazzy Internets

2007-11-19T05:22:00.000-08:00

Ok, so the internet is being a spaz and whisked away this beautifully composed post to never-never land, never to be seen again, so I'll do a quick recap for those of you who weren't...um... me, sitting here writing it.

Skiing is cool. I fell down a lot, as predicted. The Velkys have a little apartment place, where we spent the night. I fell down less the second day. I went real fast, since it's hard to slow down and stop once you get a certain amount of momentum going, so they all think I'm this crazy speed demon. A good time was had by all.

I wrote out for your enjoyment the little chart I made of dates and their cooresponding percentages through the year, but frankly I can't be bothered to re-write the whole thing. Suffice it to say that I reach the 1/3 mark on the 23rd, and plan to celebrate with some zmrzlina or a trip to my favorite little čajovňa for some tea and a vodna fajčie, despite the controversy it stirred up among my readers. A good time will probably be had by all.

Posts still to come:
•Excerpts from my journals- wacky stuff I wrote while bored in school
•Crappy poetry that I've written over the years
•More mundane details than you or your grandmother can handle
•Whatever other random flotsam I dredge up from my murky mudpuddle of a mind of to regale you, dear readers.

Anyways, please take a minute to comment with questions or stuff that you want me to write about. Comments=Love, to a blogger.

Weather and Other Mundanities

2007-11-11T11:36:00.000-08:00

Warning: stream of consciousness ahead. Strap on your life jackets and keep your hands and feet inside the raft.

It seems that, despite my frequent protestations to the contrary, folks seem to think that, merely because of my current location, my life couldn't possibly become routine, boring, or anything other than exciting and exotic. I repeat: this is not the case. My phone is now relentlessly and absurdly throughly programmed to beep when I reach significant percentages through the year, in addition to the weekly update and the monthly update. For those of you keeping score at home, I arrived on August 15, almost three months ago, and my calculations are based on spending 300 days here, which puts my departure somewhere in June. Makes the math easier, anyways. It's started to snow in earnest, I think. On Monday, it snowed more than we ever get in a year back home in Eugene, then it all melted and rained on Tuesday. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday... more rain. Rain depresses me here. It's too much like home. Today, though, the snow started again. Every time I look out the window at the couple of inches of snow covering everything, I get all giddy and gleeful and start to dance around like a crazier person than I am. We're going skiing next weekend. That is to say, my host family will ski and I'll probably fall on my face a lot. I'm friggin' excited. The Christmas-themed commercials have started... but despite the snow, it simply doesn't feel like the "holiday season". They don't celebrate Halloween here... or Thanksgiving... so that might have something to do with it. My host mom's constant, slightly passive-aggressive worrying about me being cold are beginning to look more legitimate, what with the snowing and freezing of mudpuddles and all. Therefore, I succumbed and meekly accepted her offer of a proper winter coat today, for which I need to pay her back. Note to self. Anyways, my current to-do list has, maybe, two things on the horizon: the Rotary slovak test in December and a presentation for Fyzika (physics) on the sources of energy in my area shortly thereafter. Mostly hydroelectric, as far as I know. I'll have to do some googling for that. I went to an Irish pub with Haley on Friday. Tried my first sip of beer ever, and didn't like it. Also tried a sip of some bright blue drink that, I swear, tasted exactly like mouthwash, and a sip of some mysterious clear substance that tasted exactly like rubbing alchohol. Not that I've ever drank rubbing alchohol. Some girls in school asked me what an adverb was, and I sat there for five minutes humming through all the school house rock songs I could think of before I could answer them. It was pathetic. All these questions about tenses and parts of speech leave me wondering what 12 years of education taught me after all. The other day, some emo kid asked me to look over some crappy song lyrics he'd written in English and make corrections, which I did. They were mostly nonsensical, with a bunch of disjointed, rhyming lines that made just enough sense that I couldn't really correct them for anything in particular, but just little enough that it was obvious that the kid didn't really speak English. I suppose, since I have nothing more to say, I should stop typing now. 3/10 of the way done with the year! See you all in 7 months!

So, yeah.

2007-11-04T04:59:00.000-08:00

Just letting everyone know I'm still alive. This week was some sort of Autumn holiday thing, so we had no school Wednesday on through the rest of the week. Which was nice. There is no such thing as Halloween here, though. I never would have thought I'd miss it so much. On the plus side, though, my host family and I went to this waterpark/spa place three times, with three different groups of other friend-type families. On the minus side, Psychonauts doesn't work on my lappy. Back on the plus side, though, it does work on my host family's desktop computer, so I get to play it there. Honestly, that's a lot of why I haven't been so much in communication with all y'alls this past week or so. Two Fridays ago, I went to this fantastic čajovna (that's teahouse) with some girls from school and some friends of theirs, and last Friday, I went again with one of Barbora's friends who I sort of inherited, and some of her friends. I had Japanese tea, which for some reason I always think I like, but then it turns out that I don't really. Tastes like fish. That doesn't stop me from drinking it, though. Anyways, they also had these spiffy voda fajčie things (literally, 'water smoking'). Basically, you inhale flavored smoke from a hookah (which is the thing the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland smokes. Don't know why I know that word.) They assured me that it was not bad for you, just sweet flavor. I sure hope so, 'cause I sure liked it. Three or so of us shared an apple-flavored one on my second trip, and it complimented my Japanese tea quite nicely, making it much more palatable. Yesterday, I went and spent all my money for the month, including the cash from a card in my package, my rotary allowance, and then some extra from my debit account to make up the difference, on a pair of warm boots for winter. About 3200 crowns. I have intentionally not done the math on how much real money that is, since I'm afraid of cringing so badly that I'll cause permanent damage to myself. It's supposed to snow Monday, and my host mom keeps on worryin' at me about whether I'm cold. For the ridiculous amount they cost, I intend to wear the silly boots until they are so worn out that they no longer qualify as viable footwear.

I have now exhausted everything I can think of to say. I'll probably be online next weekend for an undetermined length of time at an undetermined hour for when I have something more to say. I do, however, want to give a quick shout-out to my hype/hope buddies. Miss you all buckets, and don't forget to send me a copy of Narnia this year. Not a DVD, either, all of you have to come here, 'kay?

Dance-o-rama

2007-10-17T04:21:00.001-07:00

Last week was frigging amazing. Forget every bit of whining about a lack of modern dance in this town. My two-monthish absense from my primary means of self-expression was certainly made up for, if only by sheer quantity. There was this four days of dance festival thing, with roughly six hours of workshops in the morning and afternoon, followed by some sort of performance in the evening. Every day, mind you. The workshops varied from "cool" to "amazing" to "oh my, I seem to dislocated my shoulder". Over the shoulder rolls, it turns out, are only one of the many ways you can roll around and injure yourself using your shoulders. I had no idea. As for the performances, they varied rather more in quality. Most of the teachers for the workshop were there to perform, and we often learned sections of their choreography. The best piece was by a group of dancers from Poland, who took the workshop with us, asking questions and recieving answers in English, since they didn't speak Slovak. My least favorite piece was very, very strange indeed. I have no idea what it was about, but there were a couple of girls wearing these knee-length sort of Quaker-looking dress things with hoods, and they ran around making sheep noises while some other guy wearing white tails without a shirt read some Slovak about the Tatras, pausing to strangle one of the quaker-sheep-girls, much to her amusement and prolongued bleating. The first night, there was a piece with many other strange things, including a girl eating a lemon, peel and all, while announcing "I do not need to eat chocolate to be happy", blowing up balloons while singing, tuning a guitar, a girl dancing around in her undies, only to put on pantyhose, a dress, and high heels, sit down, and eat a sausage that she pulled out of her purse. Quite surreal, but very entertaining. There was even a dance where the lady wore nothing at all. Not so much as a pair of shorts or a loincloth or anything. Bupkis. The lighting was low, so you could mostly just make out her sillouette, but you could see enough to know that you could see too much, if you catch my drift. So, yeah. I have many bruises, marley burns, gouges, scrapes, bumps, and scars, both mental and physical, to show for last week. All my arts school friends, the ones with whom I take ballet and folk dance, think I'm this amazing modern dancer, and I just let them keep thinking that.

By the way, this is my seventy-fifth post. Woo hoo. If I had one of those little party horn thingies that unroll when you blow them, I'd be blowing it now. Since I don't, I'll just have to sit here going "toot, toot".

Toot.

Details, details...

2007-10-09T05:25:00.000-07:00

I have not had a huge amount of culture shock since I've been here, but there are things that, every time I see them, make me think about how they are different than at home. None of them really have much significance, but all of them together ensure that I feel that I'm in a foreign country now. And now, ladies and gentlemen, let's have a big hand for your favorite format and mine: the bullet points!

Doorknobs. There are no round doorknobs anywhere in this country. They're all the kind that are shaped like the letter L, with the short end in the door and the long end parallel to the floor.
Lightswitches. Rather than the neat white rectangles of my youth, these are all square.
Chalkboards. There's nary a whiteboard to be found anywhere, but the chalkboards slice, dice, make julienne fries, and even sort your socks. The board is comprised of a rectangular piece with two folding wings, which open or close to allow the teacher to write on both sides of them, provinding a surface area three times that of the original rectangle. They slide up and down about six inches, too, the better to write at both the tippy top and way down at the bottom.
Notebooks and other school supplies. Rather than aisled upon aisles of notebooks, binders, and the like, students here have only about three rather hideous styles of little staple-bound booklets of lined, plain, or quadrille paper, in addition to the three styles of more expensive spiral bound notebooks.
Radiators. The big old-timey ones. There's one in every room. No central heating here!
Very, very narrow streets. Coupled with the ridiculous speed at which these people drive, their utter disregard of seatbelts, and pedestrians' habit of jaywalking, it's a wonder I'm still alive.
Yellow lights. They come on both sides of the red light. The cycle goes green, yellow, red, red and yellow, and back to green. Pretty good idea, actually.
One last rant about socks, and then I promise I'll shut up about it. What the crap is wrong with not wearing socks? Seriously, these people are obsessed. And it's not just socks. If you're going to wear a skirt or even a pair of capris or something, you'd better be wearing nylons or tights (unless you're a guy. But if you're wearing shorts in the winter, apparantly that means you're on drugs). Otherwise you will be accosted by everyone you meet, even total strangers on the bus, with the thrice-accursed phrase: "Nie si zima?" ("Aren't you cold?")
Shoes. There's some sort of rule about "inside" shoes and "outside" shoes, less strict than in Japan, but I still haven't figured this out. I think you're supposed to change shoes when you get to school, and we wear old, worn-out birkenstock knock-offs around the house. But some kids wear similar shoes around school (with socks, naturally), so I have no idea what that's about.
Lunch. The school lunch system is complicated. The day before, one must register their choice of meal by stamping bot hhalves of a perforated ticket and depositing one of them in a little box. Then, the next day, you hand the lunchlady the remaining half, in exchange for which they provide you with a steaming plate of... food. The problem: 1. I can't read the menu, and therefore, my choice of meal is utterly random, and 2. I didn't get any more tickets for October. I'm working on that.
Dubbing. Roughly half the TV shows one sees here are dubbed into Slovak from some other language- usually, but not always, English. I've seen episodes of Friends, CSI, Monk, NCIS, some random German show about a crime fighting dog, and any number of Spanish soap operas, in addition to the local programming- sitcoms, reality shows, soap operas, and the like, all in Slovak.
It's funny to read the back of the shampoo bottle and see four languages, none of which are English. Often, you get Slovak, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, and sometimes German.
Public buildings, including my school, are all in such bad condition that, were they in America, they would long since have been condemned and torn down. Cracked linoleum, broken windows, graffiti all over the desks- there's even a mural of the Simpsons on the back wall of one classroom. That and the bars on many windows and doors gives the place a very strange vibe, like a converted prison or insane asylum or something
The oldest building in Eugene is on campus and dates back to the 1870s. The oldest buildings in Slovakia date back to the 12th or 13th centuries. Note, for instance, this conversation that took place when the language camp kids went to see a castle:

"There was a fire here recently, and this ceiling was the only wooden thing to survive." "So all the other wood is a reproduction?"

"Oh yes. We replaced it shortly after the fire."

"When was this fire?"

"Oh, 1800."

Every name has a special day, which the bearers of that name celebrate much like a birthday. The upshot of this is that there are only a couple hundred names for the entire population. I know two Martins, about four Barboras, four Ivetas, two Dominikas, and countless Sashas.
The bathtubs here have a little seat built into them and a showerhead. Lots of families don't have a shower, so they shower in the tub. They never fill it up and take a bath, they just shower sitting down. Which is actually kind of nice, especially for leg-shaving.
Everyone uses umbrellas in the rain. If you don't have one, then friendly strangers walking your way will often offfer to share, which is kind of nice.
Gym class is wild. There are usually about three classes having PE at once, in the same little gym. Seventh graders duch under the volleyball net as they run laps, a crowd of 11th grade girls ignore their male counterparts' football game as it weaves through their volleyball game, and against the far wall, sixth graders do situps- the kind that were condemned as "bad for the back" years ago in America. It's beautiful and dynamic to watch, if loud.

The Moment Before Reason

2007-10-01T04:17:00.000-07:00

For a moment, I thought I saw you yesterday. But it was just a particular shade in a stranger's hair, a tilt of the head or the angle of a smile on an unknown face. It seems you are refracted-my images of you, fractured, playing across a million foreign faces like glimmering rainbows cast by the prism of distance, intangible, insubstantial. I would not have thought I knew you well enough to see you where you are not, in the glint of a man's glasses on the bus or even the feet of a fellow dancer. The way a nose wrinkles in a smile, the shape of a slender finger, a neck's particular slope as it becomes shoulder- you are all around me, silent strangers reminding me of your absence. In the moment before reason, there is just time enough for an inhalation and the flash of your name across my mind like lightning across the sky and then you are gone, swallowed alive by harsh reality, and I realize, having had to say goodbye again, how very much I miss you. We are separated by thick walls of time and space, penetrated only by a feverish imagination starved of you. I did not think I missed you until my heart leapt at the sight of you, only to be cut down by reason, shouting its truel truths- that you aren't here, that you can't be here- and i realized just how much I wished you were.

I write this to you, my friends, so you will know, as I now do, that I miss you more than words can say, more than reason can explain or even describe. This is my love letter and my lament, for though neither of us is irrevocably removed from this fallen earth, the distance winding between us, literally oceans away, feels as impassable as the gap 'twixt life and death. We stand on the edges of the chasm and shout, scream until we have no breath, and ultimately, we turn away and live our lives apart. Living, simply being, causes our characters to change, grow, evolve, When I return, dear friend, who will you be? Will I recognize you in the flesh? Perhaps more frightening still- who will I be?

When such thoughts cloud my mind and precipitate into tears, your wise words, spoken in a quiet, tearful moment, decend about my shoulders like a warm arm-

"It's only for a year."

Note to readers: I wrote this in a very blue moment. Rereading it now, it seems extraordinarily overdramatic, but that's what makes it fun to write. It's not always this bad. Some of the occurances of the word "you" in this post are plural, some are not. You're smart. You can figure it out. But hey- it's got imagery, analogies, metaphores out the wazzoo, just a dash of alliteration, heck, even death. By gum, It's a bona fide piece of literature!

New comic! Fun times!

2007-09-23T23:14:00.000-07:00

And for those die-hard fans out there, here's the very fancy, digitally remastered version of the first comic thingie!

I miss my Xbox

2007-09-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

I wrote this in class and then put "Blog this" at the top of the page. So I guess I will.

I'm such a long way from home, yet the distance bothers me less than the simple fact that I'm not there, if that makes any sense. It doesn't feel as if I'm a couple thousand miles away, it only feels like I have paused my life there and time and space have conspired to change my surroundings. As if, in the middle of a game, I saved, quit, and played something else. The problem is that the game's still going on without me. But you sit in the same chair. You use the same controller and watch the same screen. Sure, the buttons have different effects and so must be used differently, but you still, at least, push buttons. I'm living a different life here, analougous to playing a new game, but I see it through the same set of eyes. The new world has the same sky, the same sun and clouds and rain. The pavement under my feet may be different, but I stand on the same two feet, in the same pare of cream leather converse that I got at Buffalo Exchange for $16.00.

I think I'm almost through the tutorial. It's taking for-freaking-ever.

Fruits of Idleness

2007-09-12T11:43:00.000-07:00

See what happens when I don't have internet access in the wee hours of the night? For some reason, blogger won't let me make this nice and legibly big for all y'alls, so you'll just have to figure it out. Sorry.

*note* Emo's quote is some of a poem I wrote one day some months ago when I was feeling particularly down, so it's not to be taken as a reflection on my current state of mind. *ahem* Dad.

Miss you!

Jarmok

2007-09-08T13:55:00.000-07:00

So this weekend is Jarmok, a nation-wide festival sort of thing, complete with booths and people running around in native costume doing traditional things and selling traditional, hand crafted wares. The most bizarre element of the whole thing is that, according to tradition, the boys give girls smart whacks to the bum with traditional wooden spoons. Not even kidding you. (Michael Eckerdt, this is your chance.) There's also a bunch of the obligatory festival-type portable rides of questionable safety and/or legality. So that's what I did this weekend.

This was my first week at school. I'm taking a bunch of classes, presented here in handy-dandy list format:

French. This seems like a good idea, but they are all way better than me, and half the time, I don't even know what language the teacher is speaking.
PE. I suck at Volajbol. And at basketbol. And futbol. Oh well. At least I don't have to talk much.
Chemistry. This class is probably the one where I understand the most, as far as Slovak goes. I mean, it's not hard to tell that "etán" means "ethane". Unfortunately, I don't remember much of the content.
Remedial Slovak. Private lessons. Yay!
Math. Same deal as Chemistry.
A bunch of other classes. It's horrible, I know, but I don't understand them at all, so I sit quietly and draw pictures. The other day, and I know my readers will be either appalled or proud of me, I wrote out every bit of diologue from the first ten minutes of Serenity. I checked later, and I only made 27 mistakes. Not bad, I think. Try it some time. We'll compare scores.

So, that's about all for now. I've been quite busy. I've been learning to ride šelda, sasha's horse, and I start dance classes on Thursday. Dance will be three days a week, ballet once, (I think) modern once, and folk dance once. I'm excited!

I miss you all incredibly much.

First day

2007-09-03T11:15:00.000-07:00

So today was my first day at school. After being shuffled from office to office, following my host father around, I went to my first class, which seemed to be sort of a homeroom sort of thing, where the teacher announced their schedule, pausing to tell me that mine would be different and that I'd get it tomorrow. After class, some girls nervously approached me and asked in broken English if I wanted to go into town with them. I said yes, not knowing if they meant after school, sometime next week, or skipping the rest of the day and going now. In any event, I then followed the teacher to an office, where I met the headmistress/principal/director of the school, who welcomed me graciously (via the best efforts at interpretation my teacher's limited English could furnish), and shuffled me off to yet another teacher, this one with a more functional knowledge of English. She informed me that she is basically in charge of exchange students, and that I would be taking various subjects with various other classes while my class took English, which makes sense. When she finished, the girls who had approached me earlier came in, and I followed them, much to my bewilderment, out of the school and a couple of miles away, through the mall, through the old city center, to a sort of outdoor bar kind of place, where we drank kofola (one girl smoked) and played fooseball, at which I continue to suck. Seeing as it was about nine or ten in the morning, and we were gone for more than a good hour, I was understandably confused and freaked out. However, my fears were allayed when we met up with my host mom at a cafe in the mall on the way back, after several phone calls. Turns out that we weren't delinquent hoodlums sneaking out of school to smoke and drink (only kofola, but still). The best I can tell is that today was just an orientation sort of day and that's all there was to it. Oh well.

Oh, and I had my first rotary meeting today. I was asked to introduce my self (in Slovak, of course), which I did. "Your Slovak is perfect," said one high-up looking sort of guy. Then I sat, legs crossed at the ankles and back straight as could be, for about an hour, pretending to understand. I perfected the art of looking from one face to another, following the conversation without understanding a word. Well, I understood words. About halfway through, I started a drinking game with my mineral water- every time I understood a word, I'd take a sip. I made it through the whole bottle, even. Yay for me! Afterward, I met my counselor's girlfriend, who plays the violin and teaches English to little kiddies. She offered to take me to concerts and the like, and asked me if I would come to her class every so often so they could hear a native speaker.

I don't have a snappy way to sum up this blog, so I'll just have to let it die here. Sorry, folks.

Language camp debriefing

2007-08-28T10:24:00.000-07:00

Just got back from language camp. Overall, I would say that it was a good, productive, and fun experience. However, it seems that every roommate-type person I have ever had, both here and at SEP, has to have some sort of life crisis while staying in the same tiny room as me. Oh well.

One of the first things they told us about at the orientation meeting was "inbound syndrome". Exchange students huddle together in their panic and don't experience anything. The essence of what they said was "don't make friends with the people with whom you will be spending every moment of your waking, and even sleeping, hours for the next two weeks". We failed.

The classes were extraordinarily long, but chock-full of good information. If you look at my notebook, however, you can see a steady trend downward, from the organized, labeled, and color-coded pages upon pages of notes of the first couple of days, to the couple of jotted down phrases and fantastic pieces of artwork drawn toward the end.

The activities were sort of a mixed bag. The highlights were:

The "walk" that turned into a five mile hike- the second half running back frantically toward the school where we were staying through pelting rain and steadily nearing lightning and thunder.
The castles. We visited two- the first was a generic, though fantastic, tourist trap. The second required a half-hour hike and was merely ruins, but was the better of the two. It was awesome to imagine it back in the day.
The waterpark. Really, it was more of a spa-type place. We walked in and were greeted by gently steaming pools full of murky brown, mineral-filled water, which is supposedly extremely good for the skin. It must have been, because my sunburn went away after only a couple of days.
One day, they brought about five horses to the school. A gaggle of young kids lead us around in circles, talking to eachother about how they didn't know how to say "the horse's name is Dusty". Somewhere along the way, one of them decided that I was competent enough to keep my seat myself. Which I could. Steering remains a problem, though.

I'll think of more eventually.

I had my first bout of homesickness while I was there. Coupled with being surrounded by people 24/7, I wandered off to a deserted corner of the school one night and sobbed for a good half hour. Tanner, I took the scarf you bought me and wrapped it around my shoulders and imagined that it was one of your famous violent, yet cuddly, hugs. It helped a little, but I miss you so much. Geez, I'm crying all over again. I miss you all so very much. Mom, thanks for the cards. They helped a lot. I don't know how I'll make it through a whole year. I have been listening to the Superchic[k] song "I belong to you" a lot. It pretty much sums me up at the moment.

One more language camp-related thought: lunch and dinner were virtually always some variation on pork and rice with all the rolls you could eat and/or sneak to your room and eat later with nutella. Good times.

I miss you.

So far...

2007-08-18T10:40:00.000-07:00

Wow, it took me about thirty seconds of staring at the blinking cursor to remember how to speak English. I just have a few minutes before we leave to go to the disco (!), so here come my experiences so far in easy-to-swallow morsels. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you... the bullet points!

My first day, Barbora (my host sister) and Ivena (her friend) took me shopping at Europa shopping center (pronounced "eh-oo-ro-pah"). We stopped for blended drinks, non-alchoholic, of course, and headed down to the city center, which was awesome and old and stuff. We met up with Peter, who will be my host brother in my third host family. He spent a year in Nebraska, so he speaks flawless English. We all walked down to the holocaust museum, stayed there about two minutes, then went and got ice cream. I had grapefruit flavor, which was fantastic.
The next day, Brano (my host father) took me to all the places to get my visa and stuff, which was sort of a hassle, but okay. We ran into another rotary kid, Haley, and her host mom at the police station. Haley does not speak a word of slovak. Literally. She didn't even seem to be trying to make herself understood. I myself have eschewed every part of my English grammar and most of my vocabulary in an attempt to communicate, and it seems to be working pretty well. Anyway, that night, we went to a kid's birthday party, which was at Donovaly. There was a folk band that played all these slovak folk tunes, which was really spiffy. There was a baby boy that belonged to one of the women at the party (which, for some reason, had no other children present). A middle-aged woman introduced him to me as her "son in law", but somehow I thought she was mistaken.
Today, Ivetka (my host mother), Barbora and I went to the mall to find some luggage for Barbora's trip to America. This afternoon, Barbora, Ivena, several random men, and I piled into a car to go to a football game. Not soccer, mind, football. I am so in Europe. Our team won, and I discovered one of my new favorite drinks: Kofola. They explained it as "Slovak Cola", but it has this licoricey sort of bite to it. Fantastic. After the game, we rode back in the bus with the team, who all flirted with me, despite the prodigious language barrier. Barbora translated what she could, but it was still hilarious. We went to what I think was a sort of post-game barbecue, except with goulash instead of hot dogs. Then we went home and watched Top Gun in Czech. Which made me laugh.

Also worthy of note:

Almost everyone smokes almost everywhere.
Driving is dangerous.
Seat belts are optional.

Safe and sound!

2007-08-15T15:54:00.000-07:00

Just letting everyone know that I have arrived safely. My host family seems fantastic, and the flights went smoothly. It is funny that the longer the wait, the fewer words it takes to tell how long it is. Such is the case concerning my six hour layover in Detroit and my seven hour layover in Prague. Much sitting, sleeping, and eating took place.

Departure

2007-08-08T00:05:00.000-07:00

The Plan:

August 14th, I will get on an airplane in Portland in the wee hours of the morning, then fly to Detroit, sit around the airport for a good long while, then fly to Amsterdam. From there, it's off to Prague, where I have another really pretty long layover before flying to Sliac, which is just outside Banska Bystrica.

If I don't post again before I leave, know that I will try to pass on whatever tidbits I may have for you, be they mere impressions of my surroundings, the deep philosophical insights and witty saying that we at the aublog strive to provide for all y'alls, or the whining and ranting that we inevitably fall into anyway. However, depending on the availability of internet access, these posts may be infrequent and/or inconsistent.

Pray for me, please!

Goodbye

2007-07-26T21:36:00.001-07:00

This goes out to my 12 years at YG. As you listen, keep in mind that a) this is a very, very rough cut and b) I couldn't hear myself when I was recording the harmony. Listen mercifully.

Wisdom

2007-07-13T21:10:00.001-07:00

This morning I was anesthetized while some folks poked around in my mouth and pulled out two teeth I didn't know I had.

The good news is that now, twelve hours later, I can finally feel my face and even move the left hand side of my upper lip. Plus I get ice cream.

The bad news is that, while I can move my previously incapacitated facial muscles, the feeling that has returned is not at all a pleasant one. Not only can I now feel my tongue, but I can feel the waves of nauseating pain emanating from the gaping holes in my gums where, I'm told, a couple of teeth were lurking, biding their time, waiting to erupt and wreak havok, causing incalculable pain and damage to my mouth on their way to take over the world in the name of all things toothy. Well, we sure showed them.

My face hurts. Whether that has anything to do with my preference for words both rather larger and more plentiful than I generally would thrust upon my innocent readers is up for debate.

So here I sit, typing with one hand while the other holds a bag of frozen peas, specially purchased for the purpose, to my cheek.

Augh.

(PS. The title of this post, while somewhat nonspecific, was specifically chosen to not break the now six-post long streak of one word titles. It is my solemn vow that, until now, this was entirely unintentional. Thank you.)

Linkfest!

2007-07-03T20:05:00.000-07:00

Just a pointless quickie note to buy me a few more days before people start asking about my next post.

I am so tempted to blow all my graduation money on this dress, but won't. I have next summer's end-of-the-year trip to save up for. Travel around Europe vs. really cool but expensive dress... the travel wins out. Oh well.

In other news, I like all the music on this site. I put almost all of it on my fauxPod and listen to it alls the time. I still don't approve of the name, though. I bookmarked it as "Spiffy Music" instead.

As long as I'm linking to stuff, I might as well refer any and all of you who may not have read it to xkcd. I went back and read all the archives and felt really smart and laughed really hard when I actually got some of them.

In other news, cramps suck. I wanted to curl up and die all morning. If you are male, count your blessings, or at least add that to the preexisting list.

Lackadaisicality

2007-06-29T23:22:00.000-07:00

I have not blogged in a very long time. Mostly, life as a graduate is not that different so far. I'm teaching ballet, trying to learn some Slovak, babysitting fairly regularly, being roped back into DTO (they're paying me this time!) and taking whatever dance classes I can fanagle into my schedule (Including some ballroom stuff! With a real boy! If you read this, thanks for being such a good sport, Ryan.) In addition to all this stuff, since I don't have a "real job", I've basically been put in charge of all the grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, tapestries, and draperies for the household, under the threat of being charged rent. However, despite all of these demands on my time, I can often stay in my pajamas until nigh on 6:00 and delay showering for several days at a time, besides wasting my "sleeping" hours on my lappy. It's hard to get motivated when I know I'll only be around for another month and a half.

Anyway, the thing I've laughed hardest at in all this time can be found here. If you haven't played Monkey Island, you probably won't laugh at all, and if you actually speak German, you might not laugh as much as I did. Oh well. If nothing else, this will provide you with some insight into my strange mind.

In actual news, I'll be getting my wisdom teeth out soon. We'll see how that goes. If I later learn that any photographs of me with a puffed up face-full of cotton exist, I will personally make sure that they are destroyed by any means necessary. I'm just that vain and/or insecure. But we already knew that.

Lonely.

2007-06-15T22:37:00.000-07:00

Tonight marks the second time in my life that I have felt lonely. The feeling that there is nobody here, and that this span of time could be better spent in the company of others, is somewhat overwhelming. As with the first time I was lonely, I am at a place in my life where there are actually people with whom I could be having fun, which is not a state to which I am accustomed.

Yesterday, Ryan, Bobby, and I (whom you may remember from a previous episode) went to Detroit lake, where we hiked about five miles and met a group of exhausted elderly-ish people at the top of a mountain, then meandered down to the lake itself, where we swam- that is to say, the boys changed into swim trunks in a nearby port-a-potty, then we all stood around, knee deep in the murky water, watching Bobby shiver. Later, we rented a paddle boat, and peddled our way hither and yon around the lake. That is to say, Ryan and I peddled while Bobby sat in the back and tried (unsuccessfully) to catch something with his newly-purchased fishing pole. We ate some pasta salad left over from my graduation party, and some leftover sandwiches from Ryan's graduation party. Two of the three of us ended up with pretty wicked sunburns. Around 4:00, we discovered that there really isn't that much to do in Detroit, and started for home. I nodded off for about 45 minutes on the way home, thanks to the sunburn, which always makes me sleepy. We all came back to my house, where we all hopped into the pool and ate some barbecued chicken and veggies. (Aside: we recently purchased a new barbecue. Now, our food choices largely revolve around what we can cook thereupon. Never before had it occured to me that pizza could be barbecued. In Ryan's words: "the same thing happens when you get a deep-fryer. Suddenly you want to deep fry everything." End aside.) Dad then invited them to play a shoot-em-up-type-man-game on the 360. I sort of spoiled the fun, however, by chainsawing them all to death with the Lancer. They exacted their revenge, however, by subjecting me to a racing-type game, where I made an utter fool of myself by running into walls and driving better in reverse than I would have otherwise. All in all, June 14 was among the most fun days I've had in a very long time.

So today I'm lonely. The moral of the story: people need people- in much the same way that smokers need their cigarettes. The first time you try it, it makes you cough and gag, but when you get used to it, you can't not have it. Or so I've been told. At the moment, I'm going through friend withdrawals, which is really all that loneliness is.

Graduation

2007-06-11T18:25:00.001-07:00

Graduation was Saturday. Theoretically, I am now an adult. The world feels no different, it's just that every day now feels like a Saturday for now. I 'knew' that I would cry at some point, but the forecast eye-showers never materialized. I came close when I said goodbye to Patrick-sensei, Japanese teacher of six years, but I ended up just sort of welling up. The all night party was fantastic. Though I didn't walk out of there with any mini-fridges or toaster ovens, I had a fabulous time playing craps, on the verge of breaking out into "Luck Be a Lady Tonight" from Guys and Dolls the whole time. Around 3:30, they gathered us all up to pass out whatever prizes we may have won. Unfathomably enough, someone (probably The Man. It's always The Man.) decided that, rather than any reasonable order, they would call the names totally randomly. Twice. On the positive side, I left at 4:30, $50 richer than I was when I arrived.

Humility

2007-06-01T20:49:00.000-07:00

I'm all the time thinking I'm so much cooler than everyone around me, and I have to let them no it by being the smartest, strongest, and funniest thing since Calvin Coolidge, put together. Recently, however, I've become aware that I am fundamentally insecure, and I'm all freaked out about making sure nobody knows about the ugliness I see inside. That's where the pride comes from. I try and hide my many faults, end up overcompensating, and come off as prideful and arrogant, which I recognize and add to my list of things wrong with me as a person.

While my self-image may be somewhat skewed by my history as a really mean kid, which I deplore about myself, there is a lot of truth to be found in my insecurity. Theologically, it's all about the depravity of man. I am, as a human being, naturally inclined to evil. I am flawed. I am a hopeless case of selfishness. And, in a way, it's good that I recognize that about myself. Amazing grace saved a wretch like me, not a basically good person like me. Paul was all vibin' on that.

The epiphany I had the other day was that I am insecure, but not humble. I still have to learn that it's okay that i'm scumm and that I don't need to hide behind my own puffed-up coolty.

(The word SCUMM in the last paragraph, by the bye, is a very, very oblique reference to the Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion, with which most of my game collection was made. Adventure games forever!)

So, yes. I looked up and saw that it was a blue moon, and since I write a deep post about once in every one of those, I figured it was time to plumb the slimy depths of my tattered soul and dreg up something for all y'alls enjoyment.

Incidentally, senioritis is running rampant at the moment. Only three days of compulsory schooling left... ever!

Melancholy Post #54

2007-05-28T01:08:00.000-07:00

My room is rank with the stench of dying flowers from last weekend's recital. It's quite depressing, really. My last recital is over. Forever.

For the few people who I have not yet regaled with this tale, I'll tell it again, briefly. At dress rehearsal, I slipped and fell in the middle of Swan Lake. At the first show (which, of course, was the one that was videotaped), my left pointe shoe slipped off my heel, which is pretty terrifying. As the piece went on, the entire shoe slipped off my foot and hung from my ankle like a ball and chain. I finished out the piece as best I could, cranking up the smile more and more as the thrice-accursed shoe slipped further and further off my foot. For the rest of the weekend, I was completely paranoid and continually and compulsively adjusted my shoe.

Sunday night, at the last curtain call, I did something I'd always thought would be fantastic. I strutted out there wearing the white swan lake tutu from Ballet IV, walking gracefully in my pointe shoes- and the bright orange top from my Modern IV costume. It seemed to me that the applause doubled in volume when I came out.

After the show, clutching my flowers, I retreated to the shop behind the stage, which, every year, dancers have been running through to get to stage right in time for their entrances. I burst into tears. I cried for the better part of a half-hour. Sobbed, in fact. I was joined, before long, by other seniors and some hangers-on who wanted to comfort us.

I really ought to get rid of these rotting flowers, but it feels like they're the last remnant of my time at Hosanna.

I keep forgetting that I still have until August.

Graduation announcement

2007-05-19T23:09:00.000-07:00

This is the exact text that will be on the announcements/invitations that I need to send out soon. Just for fun, since it's recital weekend, and I really am not able to engage my brain long enough to come up with anything insightful at the moment. So I'll settle for something preexisting that is somewhat clever. Here it goes:

Edit: The party's actually off. Never mind the content, just enjoy the verse. Here it goes:

Eleven years of toil spent in school
Now finished! And, to celebrate the day,
Iambic greetings send we to our friends
To say, “Come, revel on the tenth of June,
‘Twixt the hours of two o’clock and six!”

The Honors I have earned may yet serve well,
As ought North Scholar. All in but three years!
‘Tis but the dawn of life’s first journeys forth
Into a wider world–Slovakia,
Where I will be soon dwelling for a year.

In this last couplet, I entreat thee, come
And with me celebrate what I’ve become.

Pass the Ketchup, 'Cause I'm Eating My Words

2007-05-13T23:12:00.000-07:00

I went to prom last night.

I had a lot of fun.

I realize now that high school doesn't totally blow, it's just that I didn't try to make it fun.

Friday, I called to make a reservation at Ambrosia, to which my parents had a gift certificate which they donated to us. I asked for a 6:00 reservation.
"Well, we don't actually have a 6:00 slot open."
"Oh."
"But we give you a 20-minute grace period before we give away your table, which gets you to 5:50, and then if you called and said you were running a few minutes late, then we'd definitely hold your table until 6:00."

So on Saturday, Ryan showed up at my house in his Jetta and a tux. We got in the car, which, mysteriously and suddenly, refused to start. Half an hour later, I was pulling my parents' new hybrid out of the garage.
"I love your parents," said Ryan.

We went and picked up classmate Bobby, who, despite being a cool dude, inexplicably didn't have a date and would be coming with us for dinner. I tried to make the car tell us which way the restaurant was, since none of us had any idea, but for some reason she thought that another restaurant called Ambrosia in Seattle would be a better place for us to eat and was desperately trying to get us on the freeway. We ultimately found the place, no thanks to the car's navigation chick, but I had to call them again and say we would be even later than I had already said we would be. The restaurant was full of other high schoolers headed to prom a couple of blocks away.
"Hey, how'd you get two dates?" one girl asked jokingly.
"Well, the others couldn't make it," I answered, smiling dazzlingly. Well, at least it felt dazzling. Wit and makeup make me feel dazzling when combined properly.

Ultimately, we walked to the MacDonald Theatre, dropping off our leftovers in the trunk on the way. A number of students were already waiting for the doors to open. One girl had already taken her shoes off.

The dance, though it contained relatively little true dancing, was really strangely fun. The three of us largely stayed together the whole time. After four hours of moshing in high heels (try it sometime. It's no picnic), we hit the coat check and then went to get some milkshakes at Shari's. We dropped Bobby off and went home to see about Ryan's car, which they subsequently managed to jump start.

I'm really still just surprised that I didn't end up sitting in a corner alone the whole time.

Rotary District Conference- Part "the rest"

2007-05-10T23:06:00.000-07:00

So I decided it was too much work to give you the play-by-play of my weekend. So here are the highlights in handy bullet-point format.

Saturday

Sat around all day.
Talent showed. Ostensibly supposed to begin at 8:30, the award thingie preceding us went long. Very long. By the time we started, the buses were waiting to take us to...
Back to the house. Primped to go to...
The "dance". Which was actually in a bowling alley. The plan was for us to stay there all night, partying. However, I and several of my cronies raised Cain, saying that we had AP test this week, and we could possibly stay up all night, thank you very much. So around 2:30, the most praiseworthy Giff rescued us whiners and took us to...
Their house in Sunriver, where, upon entering, he informed us we could avail ourselves of the hot tub if we chose. So, for all my moaning about staying up all night, I found myself at three thirty AM in a hot tub with three guys, only one of whom had thought to pack some swim trunks. The scene was thus: Me, in my 'kini, which was all I had thought to pack, that kid Gary, bound for Sweden next year, in his undies, Victor, who's going to Chile, wearing a pair of trunks, and Albin, from Sweden, also in his undies. Yep. It was a good time.
Next morning-slept all the way home.

Now, I'd just like to say that I probably didn't represent this event fairly. I exaggerated some elements for dramatic effect and probably totally forgot about others. Don't hate Rotary just because they locked me in a dungeon all weekend. Don't be a hater in general.

Now, for something completely different, I will relate a tale related to me, in turn, by my dear sister, Tanner.

Apparently, Kerry came up to her in dance and said "Can you say I'm the coolest thing since sliced bread? "Tanner, in her infinite wisdom, recalled a statement I had made recently, and responded, "No. Aubrianne is the coolest thing since sliced bread."
"Oh." Kerry said morosely. "Well, can you say I'm the coolest thing since Aubrianne?"

Yay for Kerry. That was exactly the best answer possible. You will receive your free t-shirt in the mail within 6-8 months.

On a similarly random note, I am going to Prom on Saturday.

Rotary District Conference- Part Two

2007-05-08T12:33:00.000-07:00

For part one, see yesterday, for parts three through ___, see tomorrow.

Friday, we woke up and, for a time, the house echoed with the sounds of girls showering, blow drying, make-uping, eating, and whining about the polos we were expected to wear- some of which came down to the knees of their unfortunate wearers. Finally, we piled into the car and drove back to the conference center, where we sat in the dungeon until called forth into the meeting. We were paraded across the stage with the flags of our respective countries, then sat through several hours of Rotarians telling other Rotarians how great Rotary is. We were finally released back into the dungeon for an hour or so before lunch.

"One student to a table," they said. I found a table to myself near the corner just in time for the doors to open and the room to flood with hungry Rotarians. I ended up between a man from India and some guy named Bill. Throughout the meal, Bill would occasionally go on a tirade about the political party he was planning to set up to revolutionize the world, using Rotary both to promote his system and as a model for the way things would be run. Since I was being paid, essentially, to make a good impression, I sat and listened politely, nodding and making listening noises occasionally. Since I felt as though I had done noting but eat all weekend (even though it was only Friday,) I only ate about 2/3 of the food offered. During desert, some terribly important guy from Thailand came up and spoke for a very long time. All the while, the remaining 1/3 of my cake was sitting on the table (on a plate, obviously. They were at least that classy) tempting me.

After lunch, we were permitted to go back into the dungeon and change back into real-people clothes before setting off for a nearby bowling alley, where I played a couple of frames, getting steadily worse as the afternoon wore on. We eventually returned to the conference for "talent show rehearsal". In other words, we sat around in the dungeon for a very long time.

We finally were driven back to the house, where we ate a nice meal and sat around talking about different countries' attitude toward nudity, which lead to several embarrassing stories. Before you ask, I have no idea how the topic came up. Ultimately, after some ice cream, we slept.

Rotary District Conference- Part One

2007-05-08T00:18:00.000-07:00

Thursday, I went to school for a couple of hours, having spent much of the previous night packing. (I was very proud of having fit EVERYTHING into one bag, including sleeping bag and pillow.) I hopped into the car with my parents, drove across town, picked up a bunch of other kids, including inbounds from Germany and Belgium, and drove for about three hours, stopping only once for a visit to the world's most vomit-inducingly unsanitary rest stop, and finally arrived at this nice, new conference center. We all disembarked, said goodbye, and lugged our luggage inside, where, near both a prodigious fireplace and a waterfall that spanned two floors, we received nametags and packets full of junk inexplicably advertising this conference we were already attending. My nametag, unfortunately, was misspelled "Aubrienne", so I spent a good quarter-hour trying to get it fixed by a particularly loquacious registrar-type guy. Finally, with my slightly smeared, but correctly spelled nametag in tow, we were ushered downstairs, past the silent auction and behind a curtain into a very odd space indeed. The walls were lined with empty cardboard boxes with "Office Furniture" stamped on them, and a large section of the floor was covered in neat rows of these boxes, perhaps two hundred in all. The floor was cold, plain concrete, but at least someone had thought to use one of the mysterious boxes as a table for some store-brand granola bars. Throughout the course of the weekend, whenever we were not needed, we were herded down here into what I will affectionately refer to as "the dungeon".

Shortly after our arrival, we outbounds were pulled aside to be given our official Rotary blazers, complete with an embroidered Rotary Youth Exchange logo, a unisex (aka elephant-sized) white polo with the same logo, and a name badge in the shape of Oregon. Interestingly, my name was spelled "Aubriann" on the badge. We were told that we were to wear these all the next day, along with the khaki pants we had brought and the "rotary smile" that we were expected to be able to muster up, despite looking like four-year-olds playing dress up with their dad's old clothes that went way out of style a decade ago ("Mommy, look! I'm a pilot!").

In all fairness, these people are paying thousands of dollars to send me and my comrades all over the world. The basic point of the weekend was not that we have a good time, but that we be paraded out on stage to show these people who their money's going to.

We were then given several hours of "free time", where we sat around the dungeon, sometimes sneaking out into the silent auction to nab some of the chocolate, popcorn, coffee or tea that had been set out for the Rotarians. Over the course of the weekend, I managed to make off with six teabags of assorted flavors. Eventually, we were told to come upstairs to meet with the families that would be hosting us for the weekend. One by one, my fellows were picked up by strangers, until finally there were only fourteen girls left. We were told that we would all be staying in a rental house that Rotary had managed to acquire for the weekend, since they couldn't get enough host families. We arrived, unloaded our suitcases, and left to get dinner at the Mongolian Grill.

This particular establishment provided relatively decent foodstuffs, but as I poured my sixth ladle-full of lemon sauce on the stack of noodles I had pieced together, my converse slipped and stuck in the remains of others' Mongolian endeavors. Leftovers in tow, we trooped back into the cars and set off for the house, where we were offered yet more food, mostly desert-like. Eventually, we settled in to sleep in various bedrooms around the house.

To be continued...

Not feelin' so hot....

2007-04-28T14:09:00.000-07:00

Well, unfortunately, several of the shiny things that I blogged ebulliently about last week are pretty well dead.

The AP Japanese test? Sorry, no. The dude at Churchill called and told me that they couldn't give the Japanese test after all, and no other school in the state that is giving the test can admit an extra student. So, barring a miracle and a school in Washington somewhere having someone drop out from taking the test, my 12 years of Japanese will all be for naught. Well, not naught, but not college credit.

The Vivaldi? Guess when the concert is. That's right. The night of dress rehearsal for the recital. Before then, I need to invent a time machine so I can be in two places at once. All I have to do is find a way to travel at right angles to reality, and I should be set.

Unfortunately, I have 5/3 of a chapter of history and a 1000+ word essay due Monday, so the time machine will have to wait until next weekend.

Just kidding. Next weekend is some Rotary district meeting thing, including a talent show. For reasons I cannot fathom, "weekend" in this sense includes both Thursday and Friday.

And it's only gonna get busier. I have to get a job this summer.

I'm $10,000 a year short of Whitworth.

For these and other reasons, I burst into tears the other night in ballet and then came home and literally cried myself to sleep.

The good news:

Jeff Harris gave me a CD by E.S. Posthumous, which is awesome.

I somehow found someone to go to prom with me.

I watched Stranger than Fiction last night. Excellent film. I'll post my family's discussion of it some other time.

Mom made bread pudding for breakfast this morning. Nothing like carbs, sugar and fat all in one convenient, delicious food.

Shiny news!

2007-04-19T23:35:00.000-07:00

One big piece of news and four small ones.

In Japanese, Patrick Sensei pulled aside the smart kids (e.g. me and all the kids with Japanese parents) and said that we were going to learn the 450ish kanji required for the AP Japanese test. Now, I am the only one taking the test, and I would have had to learn them anyway, but now I have specially sanctioned classtime to do it in rather than wasting my precious sleeping time on it. Huzzah!
Orchestra. Johnny (the second most qualified cellist) and I have been working on Vivaldi Concerto in G minor for 2 Celli for the past few months with the intention of playing it at the end of the year concert. Wednesday, the rest of the orchestra got their parts for the piece, so I will be playing with a whole orchestra accompaniment. I need to practice before I can get too excited, though. Huzzah anyway!
Japanese again. At the start of class, Patrick sort of pulled me aside and told me (in Japanese, of course) that he had nominated me for some award for foreign language students. "You'll probably get it," he said. Actually, he said, 「たぶん、もらえる。」 but I knew what he meant. Huzzah!
Report cards came. I had been anticipating an unprecedented two B's, one in AP English and one in AP History, but when the envelope was opened, low and behold, I had three A's and two A-'s. Not half bad. Huzzah!
Ok, here's the big one. I received an email that informed me of my fate for the next year. I will be staying in the city of Banska Bystrica in Slovakia. Yay for mountains! It's about the same size as Eugene, and even has a university. It was also the center of anti-Nazi activism during WWII. What with the political activism and all, it sounds an awful lot like Eugene, but about 700 years older and a lot snowier. Just in time to tell all those lovely Rotary folks at this weekend's meeting. Super Huzzah!

Ok, before bed, a random, humorous literary quote for your edification:

"Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail."

-Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.

Don't ask why I was reading it in April...