Look what I drew!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slovanglish

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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...

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

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!

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

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

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.

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

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?