I just got back from the National Conference on Undergraduate Research, which took place in charming Missoula, Montana.  Hendrix consistently has one of the largest groups of attendees, despite being a comparatively tiny school; this year there were 42 of us.  As I sat in on my fellow students' presentations and had awesome, intellectual conversations in the off-hours, I couldn't help but recall something I wrote three years ago:

The more upperclassmen I talk to, the more amazed I am. One spent his summer volunteering in rural Mexico. Others researched the vibrations from Hurricane Katrina. These are normal, average students: they stand behind you in the lunch line and sleep in the dorm room next door. The best part: within three years, each member of the class of 2010 will be saying, "I went to ___," or, "I researched ____."

When I wrote that, it was hard to imagine that it would come true some day.  But it really has!  I presented on my Odyssey research about Spanglish, which was also the topic of my International Relations and Global Studies thesis.  Two of the other girls in my hotel room had conducted interviews for their research during an Odyssey trip to Geneva.  Other people on the trip had gone to Rwanda and Ghana and Cambodia and Peru and, and, and....  What we keep saying is, Hendrix got us addicted to travel and learning, but after graduation we're going to have to pay to get our fix.

My roommate from last semester moved out to study abroad in Costa Rica, so I've taken the liberty of covering her empty bed with stacks of papers and piles of stuff.  Things always get messier before they get cleaner.

I sorted through my notes and papers from last semester, recycling everything I know I'll never look at again.  Books have been re-shelved, clothes sorted, drawers reorganized.  I have a whole bag full of stuff to take to the Couch Hall Free Box when school starts again in two weeks.  Then I ordered textbooks for next semester, did some research for an article I'm writing, backed up all the new files on my computer, uploaded some very old photos to Facebook, burned my friend Jordan a CD I said I'd send to him 14 months ago, changed the sheets on my bed, went to the gym ... you get the point.  I'm doing basically anything I can to procrastinate on working on my thesis.

The best procrastination technique, the most time-consuming of all, has been planning the road trip my housemate Ashley and I are going on for the rest of Winter Break.  We took Dr. Barth's Gender, Sexuality & American Politics class this past semester, and it changed our lives.  I had always considered myself a feminist, but the class made me consider for the first time what exactly "feminism" meant and which issues were most important to me.  Ashley and I started reading outside of class -- Reviving Ophelia, Full Frontal Feminism, Cunt, etc. -- and talking almost non-stop about what it means to be a young woman in the 21st century.  Living in a house with seven other women, we had plenty of discussion material and lots of other voices to involve in our conversation. 

The road trip plan crystallized when I went home for Thanksgiving break and read a book my sister had bought, Girldrive: Criss-Crossing America, Redefining Feminism.  After reading about what Nona Aronowitz and Emma Bernstein did, driving across the U.S. and speaking to more than 100 women, I told myself, I could do that.  And moreover -- I should do that.  I was inspired by their search to understand the female American experience.  In the introduction, Aronowitz describes their ethos like this:

“We had no idea what other women around the country were thinking, women who didn’t post on blogs or put themselves in the media’s spotlight. … We were dying to know: What do other twentysomething women care about?  What are their hopes, worries, and ambitions?  Have they heard of this nebulous idea of ‘feminism,’ and do they relate to it?” 

Reading that, I thought, That is exactly what I'm dying to know, too!  The book was a great consolation to me, because that very week my plans to go to India had gotten cancelled.  The trip my friend Caelan and I have been planning since freshman year, which got postponed last winter because of the attacks in Mumbai, was officially cancelled because of continuing security concerns and logistical roadblocks.  It was particularly a shame because Caelan and I received a grant from Hendrix (similar to an Odyssey grant, but different) to support our travel.  Thankfully, for some blessed reason, the College has been very flexible about how the grant may be used.  So I've gotten permission to put the funds toward the road trip instead.

The nitty-gritty planning is just now taking place.  One of the piles on my roommate’s bed is all the travel gear I expect to need – GPS, inflatable travel pillow, suitcase, etc.  The past three days has been a flurry of phone calls and Facebook messages, talking with Hendrix friends across the South about whether I could stay with them, speak to them, and meet their friends.  Everyone has been quite enthusiastic, so I've got plans in Lafayette and New Orleans, La.; Hattiesburg, Jackson, and potentially Columbus and Starkville, Miss.; Sulligent and Birmingham, Al.; Peachtree City and maybe Decatur, Ga.; and Nashville and Memphis, Tenn.  We've got two weeks to cover all that ground and speak to as many people as possible to try to answer the question, What is it like to be a young woman in the South?

I'm looking forward to the opportunity as a test of my reportorial skills.  I excel in one-on-one interviews, and I will consider it a professional success if I can convince reserved Southern young ladies to open up to me about their relationships, families, career goals, religious beliefs, political views and sex lives.  Most of all, though, I want to see what kind of common ground we share and how I can learn from the other women's experiences.  Realistically, I'd be better off academically if I stayed in Conway for the next two weeks and worked to prepare for the hellish semester that's ahead of me.  (Two theses? Four classes? Two jobs?)  But I can't say no to this plan.

I don't need to get Odyssey credit for the experience, since I already have more than enough credits to fulfill the requirements, but I am going to anyway so that it will show up on my Odyssey transcript and impress all my future employers or graduate schools.  I’m thinking that the title will be Ladylike: Searching for Feminism in the South.  The only hitch in the Odyssey credit plan was that I didn't have a project supervisor -- until I ran into Dr. Leitz at the WAC (the gym) yesterday afternoon.  Dr. Leitz will be teaching the Sociology of Gender and Family class I'm taking this spring, so after we chatted about the class for a little bit it occurred to me that -- duh! -- she'd be the perfect person to advise us.

The plan -- subject to the approval of Dr. Leitz and then the Odyssey office -- is to apply for Global Awareness credit.  My other GA credits have come from immersion experiences in England and Mexico, but the Odyssey handbook specifically mentions that you don’t have to leave the U.S. to experience a different culture.  Given that we’re doing several home-stays and talking to women specifically about their experiences in the South, I think the trip will be very immersive.  GAs also require a reflection component, so in our Odyssey proposal Ashley and I promise to keep daily journals, record some of the interviews, and give a presentation next semester.  I’ll be sure to post some of my journals entries here.

Here’s to a most enjoyable journey!

Now that I’m back home in St. Louis, I realize how deeply exhausted I must be. I just slept for 18 hours, and I think I might go back to bed once I finish writing this. But first, let me dwell on the horrors of finals. Thanks to innumerable cups of tea and several two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew, I powered through a 70-page journal, a 14-page paper on Afghan agriculture, three in-class essays, two take-home essays, and a chemistry test. My sleep schedule is ruined, and I am physically and emotionally drained. It was a nightmare, but -- as it is every semester -- a nightmare I kind of didn't want to end.

First of all, I always appreciate the challenge of completing a nearly impossible number of tasks within a short amount of time. It reminds me of high school, when I was even more of a workaholic than I am now. Finals week is a constant adrenaline rush, hurrying to memorize one last chemical formula before the test starts or to type one last paragraph before the midnight deadline. You know those people who procrastinate just in order to make a bigger challenge for themselves? Or who commit to too many things just to see how much they can handle? That is who I try not to be, but secretly am.

The other reason finals time was so pleasant was that I had a fantastic study buddy. My cool friend (the one who brought me gummy worms in the library) and I stepped it up a notch. We started bringing each other caffeinated beverages! (Whoa buddy! Gettin' serious!)  Toward the end of finals week, once he had finished and I still had a 12-to-15-page paper to write, he even brought me food and cough drops, since I’ve been low-grade sick for like three weeks now. It was totally sweet. And he has an even more messed up sleep schedule than I do, so I always knew he’d be awake to look over my work and tell me whether my sentences made sense.

This photo [which actually refused to upload, sorry!] was taken as I finished up work on my 14-page paper about poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, and it shows the utter chaos of finals week. Please note (from left to right): the 600-page book A History of Agriculture; my phone charger, which I brought to the library because I was never home long enough for my phone to charge; my nerdy pencil bag; two of the nearly 50 sources I cited in the 14-page paper; my friend’s copy of Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia; my beloved cell phone; the screen of my favorite computer in the computer lab, with fourteen Internet Explorer tabs and five Microsoft Office documents open; wrappers from the PowerBar and cough drops my study pal brought me; an apple core; and a cup of Lemon Lift tea.

It’s incredibly depressing to ponder my final finals time at Hendrix, which (God willing) will take place next spring. First of all, I’ll have to recruit a new friend to bring me food in the library, because my original study pal will be studying abroad in France. All sarcasm aside, he's one of the coolest and best people I've ever met. Saying goodbye to him (since he won't be back at Hendrix until after I've graduated) gave me an alarming look into the future.  Next semester, I’ll have to say goodbye to everyone. Forever. Of course, I have my best friends whom I’m sure I’ll go visit and stay in touch with. And Facebook will make that easier. But once finals end next semester, I will never ever regain the comfort of walking across the Hendrix campus and knowing almost everyone I see. Once you leave the Hendrix Bubble, the campus is never yours again.

I just keep thinking about swimming in the fountain and dancing in the gazebo and having camp-outs in the Brick Pit and even just using my key card to get into the Mills Building or M.C. Reynolds or the computer lab late at night. This campus is my campus, and I expect to have access to it; I take it for granted. But once I graduate, everything will be fundamentally changed.

On top of the usual post-finals readjustment (normalizing my sleep schedule, breaking out of my caffeine addiction, and remembering how to enjoy free time), I’ll have to somehow say goodbye to Hendrix: a place and a group of people and a lifestyle that have been so good to me. It will be a bumpy end to a great four-year ride.

What an insane week! After getting caught up on my rest over Thanksgiving break (read: sleeping 12 hours every day), my busy school life returned with a vengeance. Aside from my normal weekly dose of homework and classtime, I volunteered as an inerpreter at a health clinic, edited (and read aloud!) a story from my non-fiction class last semester, began researching my American Studies thesis, applied to present my Spanlgish research at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research, attended a meeting with President Cloyd, amd wrote an unexpectedly interesting 10-page paper on the Quivira Coalition for my American West history class.

Twenty percent of the class grade in American West is based on two group projects, and I had the luck to pick a fantastic group. Besides being great work partners -- turning in high quality work, on time -- they are also terrific people. One in particular, a sophomore guy named Kent, has become my cool new lunch buddy. I've also been hanging out with another awesomely fun and nerdy guy, whom I met in the library computer lab (my main social hangout spot). He does romantic things like bringing me candy gummy worms in the library and letting me read his politics essays. We even do Sporkle quizzes together -- I think it must be love, haha.

It's becoming bittersweet to keep meeting new, awesome people, since I know I'll be graduating so soon. I expect my next semester to be insanely busy, with four classes (inlcuding two 400-levels), my work-study job, a possible internship, immigration reform activism work, job and fellowship applications, and two theses to wrap up. Am I insane? I think so...  I'm worried I wpn't have time to enjoy the last months with my old friends, let alone the new ones.

I've had lots of time to reflect (and rest, thank goodness!) today, as I ride across country with a group of immigration reform activsts. We're in hour 15 of a drive to North Carolina for an activism training conference. It should be incredible, with speakers who have done community organizing with Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Barack Obama. One of my roommates from the Spanish House is in the car next to me, and we're accompanied by two Hispanic students from northwest Arkansas and two full-time activists from the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). It has been such a pleasure to ride with such interesting people, mixing Spanish and English to discuss issues of religion, racism, sexism, and heterosexism.

As important as this trip will be for me (and even though LULAC is covering the costs of transportation, lodging, and attendance at the conference), it was very difficult to decide to go. I'm missing two meetings, three classes, and a test, plus the annual campus-wide Elf Roast party and a host of other smaller parties and events. It's hard to know that I'm missing my last Elf Roast ever; I feel like I need to reap the ultimate benefit from Hendrix while I still can.

There are things I've realized I can never do at Hendrix, like acting in a play or taking a psychology or philosophy class. I don't think I'll ever get a Service to the World Odyssey credit, since I forgot to file the paperwork to get credit for my New Mexico mission trip last year. But yesterday I did stretch way outside of my comfort zone to take advantage of one of Hendrix's coolest activities: the bi-weekly Word Garden literary forum. I read a story I wrote last semester, about my dad nearly dying from a heart attack while I was a sophomore at Hendrix. I was nervous as soon as I walked into the room, because I consider myself more a journalist than a literary writer. Especially because my extremely talented friend Joseph was also reading.

The story, called "Cell/Biology", discusses the odd relationship I have with my cell phone and, by extension, my father. Halfway through reading the story, when I got to the lines "My Dad is dying", I choked up and my eyes teared up. I had to stop and ask someone in the front row of the audience to pass me a napkin.

When I got back to my seat afterwards, I was freezing; my hands were blue, and I was shaking from nervousness and cold. I felt slightly better as my friends and fellow students came up to me afterwards and said I'd done a good job. One of my good friends, whose grandfather has just been diagnosed with cancer, gave me a long hug, and I cried. And then I went to the library computer lab and did more homework, which is how all of my stories end these days. I went to bed at 5:30 a.m. and got up at 6:30 to get packed and ready for this road trip. Viva el road trip!

A rash of vaguely political web sites spouting semi-nonsense phrases have sprung up. They’re all variations on the same theme: (Name of candidate) ([complimentary] phrase). As in, “Hillary Clinton asked you out on Facebook”, written in large, purple Helvetica. Click and a new sentence is generated.

• Barack Obama shoveled the snow from your walkway
• Barack Obama checked under your bed for monsters
• Barack Obama danced with your mom at your sister's wedding
• When one of your vocalists came down with a nasty bronchitis bug, Barack Obama sang backup in your band 
• Barack Obama left a comment on your blog
• Barack Obama warmed up your car for you
• Barack Obama followed your directions even though he was pretty sure his way was faster 

• SOCO invited all your best friends to party with you.
• SOCO picked gold glittery wristbands just so they'd match your dress.
• SOCO just knew you'd want to dance to the YMCA.
• SOCO recognized you at the entrance and waved you right in.
• SOCO thought you'd like the confetti canon.
• SOCO loves to love you, baby.

I've noticed that more than 100 of you stop by every day to read this blog. So I wondered, who are you all? Do you come here often? Do you have my blog bookmarked, or are you subscribed to my feed? Or did you just wander across it on the Hendrix site? I'd really appreciate it if you -- yes, you -- could take a minute to tell me a little about yourself. For a long time the comments feature on this blog was broken, but it's all fixed. So take advantage of it! Feel free to ask me any questions you have about Hendrix or Conway or college life or being a twin or whatever else crosses your mind.

Thanks!
Katie

One thing I do know I have taken care of is my yearbook. I got my senior portrait taken two weeks ago by a supremely talented freshman named Mollie Long. I also picked my senior quotation, which is from a Kurt Vonnegut novel I admittedly have never read (although I do love his books). The following explanation of the quote is drawn from an A.V. Club article about the 15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will:

4. "There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind."

This line from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater comes as part of a baptismal speech the protagonist says he's planning for his neighbors' twins: "Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind." It's an odd speech to make over a couple of infants, but it's playful, sweet, yet keenly precise in its summation of everything a new addition to the planet should need to know. By narrowing down all his advice for the future down to a few simple words, Vonnegut emphasizes what's most important in life. At the same time, he lets his frustration with all the people who obviously don't get it leak through just a little.

I love the quote so much that I almost want it tattooed on my body. In fact, the more I think about it, the more appealing that idea is...

But perhaps I'm not quite attached enough to that sentence, because I almost picked a different one -- equally simple, equally moralistic -- that I read in a Frank Rich column titled, "In Defense of the 'Balloon Boy' Dad". I got chills as I read his column, which was an indictment of the 'infotainment' that the media sells as news.

“They put on a very good show for us, and we bought it,” the local sheriff, Jim Alderden, said last weekend, when he alleged that “balloon boy” was a hoax. His words could stand as the epitaph for an era.

The senior portrait I chose is below. I have to say, I'm not sure my hair has ever been better behaved than that. I also think it looks very polished and professional. When I write cover letters and prepare for interviews, I think of myself looking like that.

Allie is an art major, so she's supposed to do odd things.

Here's to Kevin Watford for the best club idea ever.

Last weekend, while I was gone in New York, Autumn came to Arkansas. All of a sudden, leaves of all shapes and sizes are scattered on the sidewalks. Carved pumpkins sit on front porches, and my friends are all hard at work on Halloween costumes. I swear the wind smells like hot chocolate and campfires.

The Hendrix campus is always beautiful, but this weekend was particularly glorious. After a rainy week, the ground had finally dried out, and half the student body was laying around outside on blankets. The leaves were yellow and drifting slowly down from the trees. And at least a dozen Conwegians, young and old, had gathered to walk around the campus and pose for photos. I sat outside on the steps of the Mills Building, reading about boosterism in the American West in the nineteenth century. But mostly I just people-watched.

A middle-aged woman was pushing her mother around in a wheelchair, to get her some fresh air and let her enjoy the view. A senior who lives off campus walked her dachshund near the library. A group of young children ran around the Pecan Court in the center of campus, jumping up and down and screaming as the famed Hendrix squirrels ran along the branches above them. It was a refreshing change from the homogeneity that often dominates college campuses, which are rarely home to children, pets, or elderly people.

I am appreciating this Fall in a way that most people stop doing after age six. October in Conway is a foreign concept to me at this point, having lived in other countries for the past two fall semesters. I learned how to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night and Dia de los Muertos, but I forgot how to conceive of a costume for Halloween. So I've been asking friends for ideas. Trista Greider, the internships coordinator, suggested I go as a Twister board. Several friends have offered me costumes they bought before coming up with better ideas. My options include a German beer-maid and an organ-harvesting doctor. Tough choice. Friday night is Ghost Roast, the raucous annual Halloween party, so my planning time is quite limited -- and further curtailed by the essay I have due on Friday, discussing the role of the Incas' agricultural system in the fall of their civilization. That's not the kind of fall I want to be thinking about right now.

The trip through Texas was the culmination of a semester’s worth of preparation for the Odyssey project “Spanglish: A Linguistic Exploration of the Texas-Mexico Border.”  My friend and fellow student Fatima drove with me all the way through Texas, to the very bottom tip.  During our time in San Antonio and Brownsville, Texas, we conducted “participant observation” surveys of the way locals mixed Spanish and English to communicate.  I loved it.  I think it’s beautiful to hear my two favorite languages mixed together in such interesting ways.  Fatima, on the other hand, hated it.  Every Spanglish sentence she heard drove her crazy.  When we would overhear a child start a sentence in Spanish and end using an English noun (e.g. Mama, pasame el fork.) I could sense her tensing up, wanting to lecture the mother to teach her son proper Spanish.  The two-week trip ended all too soon, and I returned to…

St. Louis. It was the usual: home for two weeks or so to rest, relax, see my family and friends, and shop at H&M (my favorite store, which unfortunately does not exist in Arkansas yet).  I turned 21 in June, so my twin sister and I celebrated by going out at midnight to one of the coolest new bars in St. Louis and feeling strikingly un-hip.  On the actual night of our birthday we stayed in and had a few friends over.  I didn’t drink at all, because I didn’t want to be hung over on my flight to ….

Hawaii.  I ended up there thanks to a sizeable grant from the Hays committee (similar to an Odyssey grant, but only certain students are eligible to apply for them), which you may remember was originally allotted to pay for a study trip to India that was canceled in the wake of the attacks in Mumbai.  My co-traveler and I then planned to use our grant to travel to Ireland this summer, but we couldn’t reconcile our schedules to find time to travel together.  We ended up splitting the grant 50-50 and each pursuing projects that were more personally meaningful.  I used mine to explore Hawaii and Alaska, the only two non-contiguous states. 

Several sources inspired me to pursue this project.  Having followed the presidential campaign closely, I was intrigued by the new importance the distant states played in national politics.  I had never heard Hawaii or Alaska mentioned on the national news before, and suddenly there were constant references.  Pundits’ remarks about Barack Obama’s “exotic” birthplace and Sarah Palin’s remarks about the “real America” caused me to reflect on the nature of American-ness.  I realized that, as a Missourian who has lived exclusively in the suburbs, my understanding of American culture has been limited to white, middle-class, suburban, mid-western cultural norms.  (Watching NYC Prep and The Real Housewives of New Jersey this summer -- and asking myself what planet those crazy people must live on -- hammered home that same point, albeit in a much less academic way.)  So I went to the edges of my country in a search to find a different America. 

I was also inspired by an 18-page research paper I wrote this spring for my U.S. Foreign Policy class, about the political relationship between the U.S. and Puerto Rico.  I read dozens of articles for and against the addition of Puerto Rico as the 51st state of the Union, and I wanted to assess the way the most recent states had adjusted to statehood.  Alaska’s 50th anniversary seemed like a great time to assess its achievements since statehood.

On a gut level, the most important effect the trip had to me was just to make these far-off states real to me.  My trip through Europe two years ago, before I studied abroad in London, had the same effect: it gave me some concrete images, some personal experiences to attach to these places.  It gave me a reason to remember where exactly the states are located -- do you really know how far away Hawaii is? and can you really conceive of how huge Alaska is? --  and to know what the capitals are and what their cultures are like. 

I prepared for these two trips the way I would for a trip to a foreign country.  I bought a guidebook for Hawaii, and two for Alaska.  I traveled for nearly 20 hours to get to and from each place.  I also had to re-calibrate my sense of price, especially in Alaska, because basics like fresh produce must be shipped looong distances and are therefore significantly more expensive in those states.  (In order to feel less bad about how much money I was spending on food, I would sometimes pretend I was spending in a less valuable currency.)  One of my most interesting experiences in Hawaii was spending an afternoon with a local in Honolulu, traveling around the city to find the best bargains on food. (The Don Quixote grocery has specials on meat, and you should never buy produce anywhere but Chinatown.) 

In Alaska, my prize memories all involve hitchhiking.  Believe me, I don’t have a death wish, but I did hitchhike in Alaska about 20 different times.  I was assured by many locals that it is a totally acceptable means of transportation, whether across town or for long distances.  I never waited more than three minutes for a ride.  It also turned out to be a great way to meet Alaskans and find out their life stories for a few minutes while we rode along together.  Interestingly, almost no one I met had been born in Alaska.  They were from Minnesota, Kansas, Washington, Texas, New York, Germany, Colombia, etc.  All had visited Alaska on vacation and felt called to stay there.  It turns out there is a particularly Alaskan kind of person: hardy, community-oriented, libertarian, dog-loving, outdoorsy.

And then, of course, I spent two months in Arkansas.  I spent lots of time working for the Communications office as usual, writing news releases and profiling cool Odyssey projects, like I did last summer.  I also designed my own pseudo-internship with several other administrative offices at the College, such as the alumni, advancement, and admissions offices.  I learned about the types of communications each department sends to its audience (e-mails, pamphlets, viewbooks, magazines, etc.), and studied the word choices the various departments used to describe the same topics (say, Odyssey) to different audiences (prospective students vs. alumni vs. foundations).

In my free time, I have been cooking up a storm.  Let’s take this week as an example.  Tonight I went to a bar-b-que at a friend’s house: beer and bratwursts.  Tonight is the bi-weekly meeting of Dinner Party Club, a group of summer student workers who get together to eat good food and drink a glass of good wine.  Tonight's theme is Asian food; last time we all cooked Eastern European fare.  Then on Friday I’m hosting a potluck with some friends.  On Saturday I’m making coconut lentil stew for myself and a freshman international student, who will be fresh off the plane from China that day.  I’m really enjoying all the food and fellowship, because when time gets tight during the semester, cooking is the first thing I scratch off my list.  (OK,  actually, working out is.  Which is why I’m also relishing my visits to the WAC this summer.)

I've also taken a spin around some of the fine drinking establishments of Conway, now that it's legal for me to do so.  There are a smattering of options, from is the incredibly classy rooftop bar at Michaelangelo's, to the dark, smoky VFW.  I'm a particular fan of Ruby Tuesdays, which offers $4 sangria and a ridiculously awesome salad bar.  Now that I'm entering my final year at Hendrix, I'm really working to get out into the community and visit all the shops and restaurants that I've neglected the past three years, when I was too busy having fun on campus to ever bother leaving.

I have been home in St. Louis for four days, and I am exhausted.  I’m breaking myself of a serious addiction to Mountain Dew.

I started guzzling two MDs a day in late April, when I pulled two all-nighters in a row.  The next week I essentially pulled one long all-nighter for five days in a row, with some naps here and there.  And then finals started.  This trend culminated last Monday, when I wrote an 18-page paper in twelve hours, with the help of a two-liter bottle of MD.  My hands are practically still shaking from the caffeine.

Basically, this was the hardest semester of my life. (…As evidenced by the lack of posts for the past few months.)  A few possible reasons:

• It was a very writing-intensive semester.  In my 200-level politics course, I wrote 34 pages.  In my 200-level English course, 21 pages.  In my 300-level history course, 30 pages.  And in Creative Writing, phew!  I must have written dozens of drafts of my four final essays over the course of the semester.  I hope you’re not jealous that I wrote so much for my professors and so little for you.
• It was a very emotionally taxing semester.  Between American Literature & the War on Terror; The Iraq War; and U.S. Foreign Policy, practically all I thought about was war and death and the way America has abused and squandered its international influence.  I hadn’t paid much (OK … any) attention to the Iraq War before this semester, and all of a sudden it consumed my life.  I started having nightmares, until I got too busy to sleep enough to dream.   I had thought that Creative Writing would provide some nice levity, but I was wrong.  I ended up writing about my two final essays about my dad’s life-threatening illness and my failed attempts to be Mexican, both of which were quite difficult to deal with.
• I got used to the Mexican lifestyle.  My semester in Mexico was far from easy—but only because I held myself to high standards.  My classes in the International Studies department were serious, but students rarely paid attention in class, let alone did the reading.  When the professors assigned out-of-class essays, they would urge the students not to hacer copy-paste (plagiarize).  This semester was a rough transition back to reality.

I spent most of the past four months in the computer lab of Bailey Library.  I thought about lobbying for showers and beds to be installed there for me and my fellow nerds.  In fact, on Tuesday night, after I had joyfully completed my last final exam but before I had moved out, I wandered back to the computer lab just to check my e-mail and play around on Facebook.  First of all, the wireless Internet at Huntington Apts. still sucks.  Plus, I just didn’t know what else to do with myself; it felt unnatural to sit at my apartment and relax.
 
Over the course of four months, I transformed from semi-calm, siesta-lovin’ gal to Mountain Dew addict.  I went from never having watched a war movie to having seen a five-hour documentary on the Iraq War.  I went from not knowing what the CIA was to knowing all about George Tenet and Curveball and the famous Sixteen Words, and Guantánamo, and …. 
 
I gave a public reading of one of my short stories, called “International Relations.”  I learned to cook with How To Cook Everything Vegetarian.  I went on my first Odyssey-funded trip and was granted funding for a second trip.  I served on my first Hendrix-Lilly Mission Trip.  I went to my first St. Peter’s Dinner and became a devotee of the free weekly meals there.  I didn’t watch a single minute of television.  I became friends with the international students and cried when they left.  And I hosted my third-annual, and definitely the most successful, Cinco de Mayo party.  And I got straight A’s!!

• areas of light and dark, and contrast
• human hands
• smoky, wispy textures and waving movements, and
• fruits and vegetables

Today confirmed my suspicions that: 1) old ladies are awesome, and 2) this conference was a great decision. After a thought-provoking keynote lecture by Nina Burleigh, a journalist and creative non-fiction writer, I attended three more breakout sessions: memoir writing, creative non-fiction, and “how to jump-start your publishing career.”

The first session, taught by Jeannie Ralston, the author of The Unlikely Lavender Queen: A Memoir of Unexpected Blossoming, was perhaps the most instructive. She encouraged each of the participants (about 15) to come up with a title and a one-sentence summary of our memoirs. Everyone else in the room had to be at least 50. One woman’s memoir focused on her experiences as a child of the Depression. Another wanted to write about her experience on the “Hippy Trail,”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie_trail) the overland route between Western Europe and Kathmandu.

Jeannie asked us to focus on a particular portion or theme of our lives, which would seem to be easier for a young person to accomplish than for someone with decades under her belt. But I feel like most of my stories don’t have a full story arc yet -- at least not one long enough for a book. I considered writing about living, learning and loving in Mexico, but I don’t know how the story ends, yet, and I don’t want to rush to conclusions. The idea I eventually shared with the class concerned the travels I took with my twin sister just before I started writing this blog. We visited a dozen cities in three weeks, living on as little money as we could. Sketchy hostels, days of living on PB&J, being too cheap to enter world-class museums: we played it rough. But we also bonded in a way we never had before. I couldn’t get my thoughts together enough to distill them into a one-sentence summary, but I’ll come to it. I’ll probably turn this into an essay for my Creative Writing Nonfiction class at Hendrix.

At lunch I was invited to sit with a group of smart, funky older ladies. The people at this conference really have been too sweet to me. Aside from the stories of their trials and tribulations with the written word, the women discussed their travels, their loves, and their divorces, trying to distill it into advice for me. First, most essential tip: don’t get married until you’re thirty. So far so good on that one.

After a moving closing talk by Terry Hill, a co-author of Two Guys Read Moby Dick (http://www.amazon.com/Guys-Read-Moby-Dick-Steve-Chandler/dp/1931741638), the conference came to an end. But I stuck around for an extra half-hour chatting (networking?) with several authors, and watching them network with each other. A fun but harried youngish author offered me a collaborative role in marketing her book, the Amazon #1 best-seller The Daughter-in-Law Rules: 101 Surefire Ways to Manage (and Make Friends with) Your Mother-in-Law! We’ll see what that amounts to.

I wish I had thought to print out business cards with my contact information, but I’ve been hand-writing my e-mail address and blog site, which seems to suffice. One woman even invited me to visit her in Montreal.

After a very informative conversation with a retired documentary filmmaker, I had the afternoon to myself. Today was some kind of Carnival festival, which the children of the town celebrated by thronging to the central plaza, the Jardin, and pelting each other with dyed, confetti-filled eggs. The younger ones ran wildly and shrieked, whereas the 10-14-year-olds hung in packs and stalked their targets.  (I have photos -- I'll post them when I'm back to the States.)

I sat down on a bench to watch the spectacle, quickly becoming a target myself. I received the first confetti egg as a flattering gift, an affirmation of my quasi-Mexicanness. A young girl broke the second egg, filled with glitter, gently on my head. I was flattered she’d waste her pesos on egging a gringo. The third and final egg, though, was crushed on my head by a boy about twelve years old, as I begged him not too. The flour-filled egg covered my hair and bonded with my pristine black sweater, which I brought to wear with almost every outfit. Annoyed as I was as I walked the fifteen minutes back to my hostel to change, I still felt that I had been anointed, not disgraced.

And then, in homage to my remaining Americanness, I went back to my hostel and did homework.

I arrived back in Mexico around midnight, and the lights of Mexico City twinkled like stars. Maybe all lights look this way from above, but I was surprised that they blinked on and off like a car’s turn signal when the light’s nearly burned out. Mountains rose up, a deep, matte black. I thought they were lakes until I noticed the houses nestled on their lower slopes. The plane touched down softly and bounced. Al fin llegué a la santa tierra de México.

My dear, tremendously gay Mexican friend Mikee picked me up at the airport about half an hour after I cleared customs. He was just late enough for me to wander the arrivals hall worriedly, wonder if he’d grown out his hair or put on weight, withdraw pesos from the Banorte ATM, buy some credit for my pay-as-you-go Mexican cell phone, search my two bags to find his number, and call him worriedly.

We headed straight from the airport to El Ansia, a famous but cozy Mexican gay club, where we danced until four a.m. We stumbled into Mikee’s house around 4:45, and I fell asleep so fast I may as well have fainted. It’s been a long week, this one: three nights in a row of bedtimes past 4 a.m. I’ve had more than my fair share of essays, tests, Odyssey grant proposals, and tons of readings, plus packing, planning and trying to get ahead on the homework I’ll miss this weekend. It’s a Saturday night, now, and I’m sitting sola in my hostel, grateful for the silence and solitude.

(I should mention, I’m actually here accompanied by my new HP Mini laptop, which I bought as a Valentine’s present to myself for use at this conference and in future travels. After lugging a bulky, heavy laptop around Europe and Mexico for the past two years, and having developed a love of travel, I decided I wanted/needed/deserved/could afford to splurge on a smaller one. I love it.)

After a tragic combination of slept-through alarms, misread bus schedules and snarly Mexico City traffic, and an unexpected stop in Querétaro, I arrived in San Miguel de Allende at 9 p.m., Friday, missing the first keynote speaker. Fortunately, it turns out that the speaker, author Erica Jong, was missing too. She called in sick at the last minute and rescheduled for March 5, well after I will have returned to Arkansas.

So today was my first day of the conference. I woke up at seven, dressed, and headed out on my way before anyone else awoke. The owner of the hostel drew me a remarkably detailed map of San Miguel last night, and the half-hour walk to the conference center at the Hotel Real de las Minas was straightforward and enjoyable, despite the slick slate sidewalks and bumpy cobblestone roads. The sun had risen, but not enough to dispel the morning chill from the air. The orange, red, and magenta buildings fluoresced in the sunlight.

At the conference I attended a keynote session on redefining literary success, workshops about writing book proposals and becoming a travel writer, a panel discussion on the future of publishing and the role of new media like Facebook in that future, a two-hour Open Mic session, a lecture from professor/author/activist Todd Gitlin, and another panel discussion on the meaning of the Obama election. (Apparently the ex-pats of San Miguel raised thousands and thousands of dollars for Mr. Obama, topped only by the donations of Americans in London and Paris.)  We're talking eleven hours of non-stop literary learning.

My biggest worry about the conference was that I wouldn’t fit in. I could tell from the pictures on the conference website it was mostly attended by older women. In fact, at lunch I dined with two 70-year-olds and an 80-year old. Fortunately, I think my youth gives me an edge. It’s an immediate conversation point. People will ask, “So what are you writing?” and I say, “Well, I’m a student, actually,” and the conversation blooms from there. I’ve given my e-mail address and blog link to several folks with nieces or grandchildren in the market for a great liberal arts school. Everyone seems very impressed that Hendrix funded my trip to San Miguel. I’ve also been asked a lot about Facebook and blogging, since I’m an aficionado of both.

In exchange for my technology “expertise,” I get to here fascinating stories from these older women. The 80-year-old from lunch was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas, moved to Tennessee, and then to Prince Edward Island, and now lives most of the year in Egypt with her Egyptian surgeon husband. I got the impression (although it was honestly hard to hear her) that she herself was a doctor or researcher of some sort, and had been a professor for a long time. Quite an illustrious career for a child of the 1920s! Another woman I met, an Australian, had lived for a long time in India, but then had moved to Costa Rica to live near her daughter. She’s now considering a move to San Miguel. Yet another, the one who led the travel writing breakout session, described how she spent her 20s and 30s traveling the world. It was an inspiration.

After meeting all those lovely women, I ended up spending the evening alone, wandering around the centro popping into artesania shops and jewelry stores. I dined at the Café Monet, a gringo-run, Italian-style restaurant I passed on my walk to the conference this morning. As I sipped my limeade and savored my eggplant parmesan, I tried to record all the day’s details in my journal. I must have been there for an hour and a half, following my meal with a latte. The owner of the restaurant, I guess presuming me to be Mexican, told my waitress loudly in English, “Give that lady a piece of this cake. She’s just sitting there so nicely.” She seemed startled when I responded with a warm “Thank you” in my Midwestern accent. The cake, a soggy sponge cake with warm raspberry topping, was delicious.

These first two have reminded me how much I missed and continue to love travel.  (Thus conveniently justifying, yet again, the purchase of this cute laptop.) In my other international travels -- my stays in Madrid, London, and Monterrey, as well as other travels throughout Europe -- I’ve found myself to be a bit of a basket case. I always cry. The combination of exhaustion, confusion, embarrassment, and homesickness brings out my weepy side. But this time I have not cried! I’m growing thicker skin in my old age!

I feel relieved to be speaking Spanish again, to find that the words and the accent are still locked in my brain somewhere. I had missed the tiny abarrotes grocery stores on every block, the buildings’ beautiful, painted walls, and the Virgen de Guadalupe. I missed the mariachis and the reggaeton. I missed people commenting on my green eyes. I missed tacos and aguacate and agua de jamaica and frijoles and … and … .

The owner of the hostel asked me last night how I had picked up such a Mexican accent. I told him about my time in Monterrey, and how I had now returned to the U.S. “Back again so soon?” he asked. “No pude vivir sin Mexico,” I told him. I just couldn’t live without Mexico.

Inexplicably, I had an awesome, awesome time at formal.  I wasn't drunk (honestly), I didn't have a date, and yet I'm going to declare that this was the best Formal ever!  I went with a big group of friends, danced like crazy, and enjoyed the heck out of my evening.  I think that my trip to Mexico was very helpful in this regard.  While abroad I finally:

• became less awkward in party-like social situations
• gained a sense of rhythm, and
• learned how to walk in high heels.

Those tricks came in handy again last Saturday at the Spanish Club's Salsa Night.  An awesome eight-piece Latin band from Chicago had made their way down here to play, so I knew I was morally obligated to attend and enjoy myself.  And yet I couldn't help imagining the potential awkwardness of standing around in the enormous Hulen Ballroom with a bunch of people (the men vastly outnumbered by women) who didn't know how to dance salsa.  I was so wrong!  I ended up dancing with six guys, most of whom indeed did not know how to dance.  But Hendrix folks are quick learners.  After some pointers about basic steps, they were on their way!

The joy of that night dissipated quickly Sunday morning, as I embarked on an interminable 137-page journey of UN resolutions with size 9 font -- my homework for The Iraq War class on Tuesday.  My other classes kept up their standard, medium-hard homework loads this week, and with the additional tasks of rewriting my résumé and writing an Odyssey funding request, I was quickly overwhelmed.  Monday through Wednesday, I lived in the library.  We're talking 8 a.m. to 3 a.m., with periodic breaks for class, food, and work-study.  Like, people will text message me and say, "hey hey heey! how's the library?"  Seriously.  This just happened, just now.

Today, though, I walked out of Dr. Berryman's classroom with a jubilant feeling of triumph.  As hard as his class can be -- long readings, lots of mandatory class participation, plus weekly two-page reaction papers -- that effort makes it all the more satisfying when I do finally complete the work.  Even though I still have a ton of reading for two other classes tomorrow, when I finished my Iraq War work for the week, I knew the battle was won.  I went home and took a nap.  I called my little brother.  I made some dinner.  I stared at a wall, just to not stare at a computer screen or a stack of papers. 

I also went to a panel discussion called "Developing Sexually/Developing Professionally: Lessons Learned from Living a Sometimes Confusing Overlap."  Five female professors discussed their experiences from college onward, trying to earn respect as professionals and intellectuals without negating their identities as sexual beings.  It's quite a balancing act, but as someone who can live in a library, walk in high heels, and write a blog that's cool enough for you to be reading it right now, I'm sure I can eventually master that trick, too.

I will be participating in the annual San Miguel de Allende Writer's Conference, learning about fiction writing in one of the Western hemisphere's most prominent writers' colonies (in a gorgeous colonial town that just happens to be a UNESCO World Heritage site). I'll come back to Hendrix with a bunch of tips and writing exercises, which I will use to develop several short stories that I will present on campus in late spring. That last part really kind of terrifies me, but giving a public presentation is a prerequisite for an Artistic Creativity Odyssey project.

 I say lunchtime because it's the busiest meal of the day.  Off-campus folks (i.e., the students living in the New Houses or any of the various Hendrix-owned apartments, or living outside the Hendrix housing system completely) usually only buy the 5- or 10-meal plans, so a weekday lunch is really the only time the diners' mean age surpasses 20.

 I'm one of those off-campusers now.  (I have a 5 meal plan. I'm learning to cook. Thanks for asking.)  After three glorious semesters in Couch Hall, I decided to stop trying to remain in the residence halls (a losing battle for sure).  The '07 and '08 freshman classes have been so large that even sophomores seem welcomed to live off campus.  Anecdotally, one of my neighbors in the Hendrix-owned Huntington Apartments is a freshman.  Apparently there was just no room for him in the Res Halls?

 Coming back to campus was easier after my study-abroad last year with Hendrix-in-London.  All of my good friends had remained at Hendrix, so when I returned they introduced me to some freshmen, updated me on any pertinent gossip, and warmly welcomed me back to the Hendrix Bubble.  This year, though, all but two or three of my good friends also spent the fall semester abroad.  We're all kind of wandering shocked around the campus.  "Are these new juice machines in the cafeteria?  We have to pay for refills in the Burrow now?  The lunch line really stretches all the way down that hall?!"

 There are new buildings, too.  The Student Life and Technology Center is all bricked-in and real-looking, and two buildings have risen from the dirt in the otherwise desolate Village lot – bringing an odd sense of reality to a project that's been in the works since before I was a Hendrix student.

 Some things, though, are refreshingly consistent with my memories.  The high-quality professors, for example.  There were many fantastic things about my experience in Mexico, but I missed the uber-small Hendrix class sizes, the personal interest teachers take in students, and the ability to find professors in their offices for outside help.  The low-key, comfortable party scene that thrives here (at least among my friends) is also a refreshing contrast to Mexican life which – at least in ultra-urban Monterrey – centers on going to clubs and downing lots of booze.  (The fact that I can remember that should indicate to you that I wasn't a full participant.)

 My five days in Conway have allowed me to establish a routine for my weekdays.  Every day begins around 7:30 with a semi-frantic scramble to clothe and feed myself and walk the 2.5 minutes from my apartment to my job at the Communications Office.  On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I start my academic day with U.S. Foreign Policy, followed by a noontime lunch, followed by American Literature and the War on Terror.  Later in the evening I have the P.E. course Muscles to Music, which is a torture device of its own.

 On Tuesdays and Thursdays I take Creative Writing: Non-Fiction and The Iraq War.  The latter is taught by the infamous Dr. Berryman – a history professor who has been known to make students cry.  A friend reported that Berryman once called a student's essay "vomit" and then – with the student still in his office, watching – sprayed a disinfectant cleaning solution on his desk where the essay had touched it.  He hasn't called any of my work vomit (or snot or any other bodily fluid) yet, but I haven't turned anything in yet.  I'll be sure to keep you posted.  So far, though, he seems like a much funnier and cooler guy than I expected.  My other two professors, Dr. Vernon (who teaches both of my English classes and also happens to be my adviser) and Dr. Whelan, come very well-recommended.  I'm thinking it will be a great semester!

 One other detail that has been resolved to my liking is a boy issue.  I had my first Hendrix dating experience last semester, which was cut short (in a nutshell) by my impending study-abroad plans.  He and I barely talked while I was in Mexico, so the first few days back on this very small campus I nervously waited for the inevitable run-in.  It happened … Tuesday?  In the Burrow.  Low-key.  Almost un-awkward enough to be pleasant – a rambling conversation about the past seven months of our lives.  Especially about the Obama phenomenon.  (I was always a Hilary fan, but we can move past that.) 

 It's an inconvenient truth about Hendrix that if you date someone terrible or hook up with someone you regret, you will see him around campus at least once a week for the rest of your (or his – whichever ends first) Hendrix career.  (Not that you were terrible, Unnamed-For-Your-Privacy's-Sake Boy. I'm talking hypothetical here.)  Fortunately, I think that's a fair trade for how supremely awesome Hendrix otherwise is.  It's good to be back.

(I should admit at this point that a large factor in my decision to come to Hendrix -- besides the Odyssey program and the low student-to-faculty ratio and all that other great stuff -- was that Conway, Ark., is generally much, much warmer than, say, Gambier, Ohio, or Grinnell, Iowa.)

But I'm here, and it's cold, and I'm trying to get over it.  It's been a slow process.

Step 1: Hibernation.  I spent the first week at home sleeping in my bed most of the day.  Waking hours were used to Skype and Facebook chat with my friends from Mexico.  (We actually mainly use MSN messenger, but that noun doesn't form itself into a verb quite as easily.)  I also began reading On Mexican Time by Tony Cohan.  It chronicles his move to San Miguel de Allende, the awesome colonial town I'll be visiting in February thanks to an Odyssey grant. 

The first week was also when I really got over any "Oh yeah, I guess they don't do that in America, do they?" culture shock.  Like greeting people by kissing them on the cheek.  I went back to my high school to visit some teachers, and the first few I visited received warm hugs and cheek kisses.  People don't really do that in America ... .  Oops.  I also transitioned back to "Huh?" instead of the Spanish "Mande?" and substituted my favorite exclamation, "Ay!", with some choice four-letter words.

Step 2: Get out of the house.  Preferably to visit Mexican restaurants, or places where people will be speaking Spanish.  I went to visit Indiana for a week to see my twin sister direct a play.  An Argentinian play, in Spanish.  And afterwards she, the cast and I went out for Mexican food.  That was Monday night.  The rest of the week, I slept.

Step 3: Re-bond with Hendrix people!  My favorite Hendrixians are out of school and/or back from their study-abroad programs now.  Thursday night I drove two hours west to Columbia, Mo., to see my friends in the Hendrix choir perform their Candlelight Carol service on tour.  Afterward, during the real, oh-my-gosh-it's-been-seven-months-since-I-saw-you reunion, I cried.  I am a crier.  Tonight my friend and soon-to-be roommate Sarah had a birthday party.  It was a joyful event that also involved my friend Emily, my former and future roommate.  Sarah, Emily and I will be living in one of the campus-owned apartments together this spring.  I've been spending lots of (OK -- too much of) my time on IKEA.com, trying to come to grips with the fact that I could be buying furniture now that I will be using for the rest of my life.  And do I really want to be bringing guys home when I'm 25 and inviting to sleep in that prissy white bed?  Or will I get totally bored of that green table in two days?  These are life decisions!

This step also involves very vivid dreams of being back in Mexico.  In fact, last night I was in Oaxaca -- a southern state I never even actually visited.  I was buying Christmas presents for people -- better presents than the ones I actually did bring back.  But the recipients don't need to know that.

I'm sure there will be more steps to come, but I haven't taken them yet.  I think trimming the Douglas Fir my family just bought and gift-wrapping Christmas presents is about all I'll be up to for the next few days.  I can't decide if I'm more relieved or upset that the deep, aching emptiness I felt as I flew away from Mexico has faded.  My last night in Mexico, I swore I was a changed person.  I thought about permanently inking the "Hecho en México" henna tattoo I had stamped on my hip in Acapulco.  I didn't, and the henna has faded now.  And from day-to-day interactions with me I guess you can't really tell that I've studied abroad.  But I know that the memories I made in Mexico -- the streets I walked, the friends I hugged, the salsa I danced, the Spanglish I heard and the chavo I quería  -- are strongly, deeply present with me.  And I guess I couldn't ask for more.

The hard goodbyes started last Saturday, Nov. 29.  I had already said farewells to my classmates and teachers, and to the routine I established throughout the semester.  The end was near, I knew. But when my nine best friends and I got together that morning, several still red-eyed from the teary farewells of the night before, it really hit home that everything was about to change.  And not in that good, Barack Obama kind of way. 

Standing in the kitchen of the Canadian girls’ house – where not so long ago we had planned our first group outing, where we toasted Sam’s birthday, and Jordan’s – I was overcome by the sense that I was losing my own family members.  I started to cry, and it was just the beginning of our 17-hour Last Day Together.  We started the day with a hearty homemade breakfast.  We ate our scrambled eggs on tortillas with refried beans. We sprinkled our pineapple chunks with chili powder.  We are part Mexican now.

Afterwards, we gathered in the living room for a long-awaited Secret Santa swap.  (I gifted a Juno soundtrack CD and received a turquoise sundress.  Thanks for asking.)  Gifts exchanged, we headed to a local flea market, where we ordered 10 matching T-shirts to be airbrushed, gangsta style.  Each says “MTY’08” on the front and is personalized like a jersey on the back.  Mine, number six, says “Arroz” on top – the Spanish word for my last name, Rice.

About half of our T-shirts still incomplete after hours of waiting, we gave up and headed to our last dinner (Last Supper, if you will).  Rick, the only European and by far the classiest among us, picked out an Asian fusion restaurant named Riviera. It’s funny – I had to come to Mexico to appreciate sushi.  In between courses, the nine and I (we call ourselves “The Originals”) took more group pictures than you’d imagine possible.  Our dinner, which started at 8, ended at 10:45, as we hurriedly paid and raced across the street – to a Starbuck’s that was about to close.  It was going to be a long night, and we needed to be fully caffeinated!

Back at the Canadians’ house we played a Spanish version of Twister (“pie derecho, rojo!”) for hours.  As late night turned to morning we headed to the park across the street, where back in August we played a very short-lived game of “Never Have I Ever …”.  The weather now frigid, we played a game we call “Guess Who?” until we were shaking with cold.  (One of my favorite things about my friends, both in Monterrey and at Hendrix, is that our party games don’t have to be drinking games.  Especially since we wanted to be sober enough to remember everything.)

Around 4 a.m. we headed inside again, we congregated in Sam and Natasha’s bedroom to officially recall our favorite moments of the semester.  I have them recorded on my trusty digital audio recorder.  Around 5, with poor 19-year-old Mario fully asleep and the rest of us elders wandering in a state of extreme confusion, we parted ways.  I bid adieu to Holly of Portland.  Seven hours later, after our last breakfast together in the school cafeteria, I said goodbye to Ronak (of Hong Kong), Jordan (of Seattle), and Jonathan (of Iowa), my best amigos from the dormitories.  Last night, after a 3-day stay in Acapulco, I said goodbye to Sam and Natasha (the Canadians) and my dearest friend, the Dutchman Rick.  He and I met on Orientation day and have been confidantes ever since.  I’ll likely miss him most.

So now, sitting alone in a tiny hostel room in Acapulco, my tears dried for now, I am prepping to return to Monterrey.  I have three days to say goodbye to everyone else in my life – my R.A. Otho, the girls from my dorm, my friends from the trip to Washington, and my Pollo (boyfriend) and his friends.  These will be some of my hardest goodbyes – although I am planning a trip to Monterrey in February.  For the next few days, though, I’ll be that sunburned gringa with mascara smeared down her cheeks, wincing every time someone hugs her too hard.

Yesterday evening I got together with all the Gringos I know here in Mexico -- and a guy from Hong Kong -- to celebrate Thanksgiving.  We had folks from Missouri, Arkansas, Washington, California, Oregon, New York, Utah, and Colorado gathered round the table together in harmony to stuff our faces with the classics.  It was the first Thanksgiving in years that I've had turkey along with my cranberry sauce and green beans, and I have to admit it was really nice.  Although it was difficult to transition back to omnivorousness after three years of vegetarianism, and I still can barely stand to eat anything that comes from a pig or cow, I think I really missed poultry.  I'm not quite sure whether I'll return to strict vegetarianism when I get back to the States.

When we first sat down around the table last night, a great silence swept the room as we dug into our mashed potatoes, corn, biscuits, salad, green bean casserole, fruit salad, cranberry-orange jello salad, and (of course) turkey.  As our plates cleared we started up a nice little conversation, which was quickly quashed by the arrival of three pumpkin pies, a cheesecake, an apple cake, and dozens of chocolate cupcakes decoated like little turkeys.  As the night progressed, though, several deep conversations developed: the legitimacy and purpose of religion, the solution to the financial crisis, etc.   For a group of white, middle-class Americans, we have pretty divergent political, religious and social views.  It's funny that I had to come to a different country to meet such a diverse group of Americans.  I value my experiences with them almost as much as I do my experience with the Mexican culture.  

I give thanks for that, and all the amazing experiences I've had here, and for the opportunity to study abroad again this semester, and for the two new opportunities that I wrote about yesterday.  I give thanks that, although it is now definitive that Caelan and I will not be going to India this winter, we will be allowed to use our grant money to pursue another project.  I give thanks that my family is alive and safe and well and happy.  I give thanks that I'm going home to see them soon.  I don't see them all that much, since I've been popping in and out of the country and spending most of the rest of my time in Arkansas, at Hendrix.  But, thankfully, they are just as thankful as I am that I chose to go to Hendrix.

Long story: I will be participating in the annual San Miguel de Allende Writer's Conference, learning about fiction writing in one of the Western hemisphere's most prominent writers' colonies (in a gorgeous colonial town that just happens to be a UNESCO World Heritage site).  I'll come back to Hendrix with a bunch of tips and writing exercises, which I will use to develop several short stories that I will present on campus in late spring.  That last part really kind of terrifies me, but giving a public presentation is a prerequisite for an Artistic Creativity Odyssey project.

I've spent the last few days trying to nail down the prices for flights.  As I planned, the trip will require a few hundred dollars of my own money, but Odyssey granted me the full $900 I requested.  I have officially accepted the grant and signed the release form, and I am working to get all the details together.  It's so exciting!  I've already earned at least five Odyssey credits, but I've never applied for Odyssey funding before.  I feel like I'm squeezing every opportunity I can out of my time at Hendrix, and it feels good.  By the time I graduate, I will have at least one Odyssey credit in each of the six categories.

So far I've gotten credit for:

• Taking part in National Novel Writing Month (first semester, Artistic Creativity)
• Interning at George's Employment Blawg (summer after freshman year, Professional and Leadership Development)
• Studying abroad through the Hendrix-in-London program (third semester, Global Awareness)
• Taking an "Odyssey through the Odysseys" by profiling Hendrix students and their Odyssey projects for the college's website (summer after sophomore year, Special Projects)
• Studying abroad through ISEP (fifth semester, Global Awareness)

My Odyssey trip in February will earn me another Artistic Creativity credit.  But wait -- there's more!  I was also just accepted to participate in a Hendrix-Lilly mission trip to Shiprock, New Mexico, for Spring Break.  That will provide me with an opportunity to serve the Navajo community, as well as with a Service to the World credit.

The only category I'm missing is Undergraduate Research -- a credit I was planning to earn this winter on a two-week research trip to India with my friend and fellow Hendrix student Caelan O'Sullivan.  My flight (Chicago to Mumbai, via Atlanta) is scheduled to leave in two weeks and two days, and the bulk of our journey was to be spent in Mumbai.  Those plans have been majorly called into question, though, by the massive terrorist attacks yesterday in Mumbai.  Tourist hotspots were particularly targeted, and I've read reports that Americans and Britons were singled out as hostages.  I think the biggest thing I can be thankful for today is that I am sitting safely here in Monterrey.  I'll keep you updated on our plans.  Until then, Happy Thanksgiving!

I've also been reading through my old blog posts to try to figure out where the time went.  It makes me laugh now to consider that I was already hyperventilating a month ago, when I still had seven weeks left.  My dear friend Harmony, made famous in my last post, asked me what I'm most looking forward to about going back home.  After hours of deliberation I came up with this complex list:

I AM TIRED OF:

• People walking into class 20 minutes late, laughing and talking and not at all ashamed. This is an everyday occurence, and classes are only 50 minutes long.
• People yelling, answering their phones, and interrupting the teacher in class.
• People begging the teacher for extra points, or to move the test back a few days, or to let class out early, or ... .
• My nice but incredibly loud and rather immature roommate, who spends EVERY NIGHT on the phone crying with her long-distance boyfriend.
• Calorie-laden Mexican food!
• People who think all American girls are like the Spring Breakers who think "What happens in Mexico stays in Mexico."
• Thinking people are saying my name all the time.  "¿Qué dijo/ dijiste/ dije?" ("What did he/you/I say?") sounds just like someone is saying "Katie."

I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO:

• Seeing my Hendrix friends!  We've had two semesters apart and only one together since freshman year.  I really look forward to our joyful reunion.
• Seeing my family!  This financial crisis hit our family hard, so I'll be coming home to a two-bedroom apartment instead of the four-bedroom house I left.  I don't even know my new address.  It's been hard to be so far away during these hard times.
• Taking serious, academic classes, where people usually sit quietly and respect the teacher.
• Living in an apartment -- I think.  First of all, I haven't officially been assigned housing anywhere at Hendrix.  Secondly, I'm really going to miss living in Couch Hall.  I guess this is what growing up feels like.
• Studying in MC Reynolds and the library study carrels. The library here closes at 11, and the study rooms in the dorms are really more like social rooms.  And my roommate, as I said, spends most nights in the room on the phone crying.  I'm looking forward to some peace and quiet.
• My classes next semester: The American Presidency, Creative Writing Non-Fiction, Iraq War, and Literature of the War on Terrorism. I think it's going to be rather a downer of a semester, spending so much time thinking about war and death, but a very worthwhile semester nonetheless.
• Writing papers in English!  It's so, so awesome to write in English, because while writing in Spanish has become a lot more natural to me now, it's still nothing like the ease of writing in English.  My vocabulary is just so, so much broader in English!
• Letting boys come into my room -- completely platonically, of course.  It's so weird to have a ton of guy friends who live in my dorm, but who (because of the university's strong Catholic background) are not allowed into the girls' side of the dorm, much less into my room.  There are guards and security cameras to make sure.  I miss hanging out in private, and I miss judging people by the posters on their walls or the color bedsheets they choose, or whether they make their beds.
• Being able to buy tampons.  Mexicans, in general, do not use tampons.  Grocery stores and pharmacies sell a billion brands and sizes and shapes of pads, but only one kind of tampons -- which comes in an eight pack.  Eight!  This experience has made me want to write my Global Studies senior thesis on feminine hygeine norms around the world.  We'll see.
• Going on a Hendrix-Lilly mission trip!  This fall was the third year I've applied and the first time I've been accepted.  I'll be going to Shiprock, New Mexico, for spring break to work on the Navajo reservation.

I AM REALLY GOING TO MISS:

• Authentic Mexican food!
• Speaking Spanish!  I am really worried I will forget everything I've learned here, although the Hendrix Today e-mail seems to indicate that the Students for Latin Culture club has initiated a lot of new projects that should help keep me in practice.  Spanish singing nights, salsa dancing, etc.
• People being obsessed with the color of my eyes, since they're not just brown.  Imagine a gorgeous Mexican guy staring deep into your eyes and telling you they're the most beautiful he's ever seen.  That happens at least once a week here, I'd say.  I will miss that!!
• My North American Studies and U.S. History professor!  He's really smart, has amazing connections, is hilariously sarcastic, and really encourages the students to think critically about how they can help build Mexico into a greater country.
• A LOT of student participation in class (whether or not the teacher wants to be interrupted). People just shout out questions in class to clarify, which is kind of rude but also a good way to stay engaged and make sure you're learning.
• My RF (Residente Formadora, basically an RA) Othoné, who has been the most fantastic, supportive, kind, involved person I've ever met!  She doesn't take on the policing role that Hendrix RA's usually play -- partly because the adult guards to the Residencias perform that job instead.  She sends weekly e-mails just wishing us a happy week, leaves happy notes and inspirational quotations on our doors, plans events all the time, and just in general tries to keep us happy and involved in the community.  It's really cool!
• The other exchange students:
  • dear, dear Dutch Rick, with his winning smile and fantastically cool boots
  • the ever-enthusiastic Canadian-American Jordan
  • the super down-to-earth and fun Canadian Sam(antha)
  • the Oregonian Holly, who reminds me of my grandmother in the best way possible
  • the more-American-than-I-am Ronak from Hong Kong.
  • Spanish whiz Jonathan of Iowa
  • and the super stylish, going-for-her-dreams Canadian Nathsha
• The Mexican students.  I've really made some really good local friends here -- Mario, Pollito Mio, Othone, Gabi, Gaby, Mara, Rebeka, Gonzalo, Mariana, Nancy, Sandra, Cehcy, Toy, Leo, Pika, Henry, Karen, Arrantza, Paola, and a billion more -- which is SO different from my semester in London!  I have friends from the dorm, friends from my trip to Washington, friends who are friends of friends, friends I met at Orientation, friends who work in the cafeteria, and -- of course -- friends from class.  Especially in my North American Studies class, people are super, duper friendly.  One girl last week brought me a woven bracelet.  I didn't even know her name.  She was just like, "I want you to have this, Katie!"  Another girl I met last week invited me to her house in Baja California, after knowing her for about 5 minutes.  Comparing that to the British is just laughable.
• Being able to go out and get a piña colada or a beer, and generally being old enough to do whatever I want.  I get more frustrated with the US drinking age with every day -- especially when being under 21 keeps me out of concerts or other events.  I am 20 years old!  I am a light drinker!  Let me enjoy a freaking beer!
• The amazing variety of clubs and bars in Monterrey.  I am a huge fan of the house party, and not a huge fan of getting dressed up to go out, so when I was in London I went out twice out of the whole four-month stay.  Here in Mexico I've notched it up to, say a dozen times?  I'm also really going to miss Mexican club music, both the bumpin' reggaeton and other Latin hits, and the irony of hearing the clubs play American oldies like the YMCA or songs from the Grease soundtrack.
• Having a bathroom and shower shower shared between 4 people instead of an entire hallway.  I am actually ambivalent about this.  I really like the sense of community inspired by seeing your hallmates in the bathroom every morning and evening, but the privacy is also a refreshing change of pace.
• My dorm room here, which is enormous and gorgeous.  And a cleaning lady comes once a week!  It's awkward, because I always feel guilty for letting someone else clean up my messes, but it's also AWESOME.
• Mexican social and dating life, where there seem to be well known and very respected ways of doing things, with no deviation.  I will miss that kind of clarity.
• A million other things that I'll think of day by day when they're no longer part of my life.  The crazy way the bus drivers speed around corners; the way stores are made of concrete and have their function painted on the outside in big letters ("ABARROTES" -- groceries -- is a common example); ridiculously cheap taxis; nice weather in November; having the walls of my room painted green; and, most of all, THE MOUNTAINS.

Pictured above is a typical necklace that Mexicans wear as good luck and religious protection.  This particular one has an embroiderd picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe on one side. The other side reads, "Virgen, please take good, good care of me."  Notice that instead of "por favor" the necklace uses the word "plis" -- a Spanglified spelling of "please."

---

I received a Facebook message today from one of my Mexican amigas, proposing a reunion dinner for all the students who went on the trip to Washington, D.C., last month.  The message began (italics mine): "Que onda people espero que esten bien, bueno ...."  ("What's up people.  I hope you're doing well.  OK, so ... .")

"Que onda people" ?!  I laughed upon reading that, but the truth is that I am surrounded by Spanglish.  Here's a round-up of phrases I heard in the past few days.  The following are really standard, heard all the time:

• "¡Bye! ¡Nos vemos!" ("Bye! See ya!"  This is the standard way to say goodbye.)
• "¡Qué cool!"
• "¡Qué random!"
• "¡Eres un nasty!" (You're nasty/dirty/perverted -- usually said  by a girl pretending to be shocked and offended by something a boy says.)
• "Sorry, guys." (People say "sorry" all the time!)
• "Oh my God."

I've heard the following snippits only once or twice, but was impressed by the inclusion of a rather odd or surprising English word or phrase in an otherwise Spanish conversation.

• "I work for food."
• "¡Ay, te vas a poner happy!" (Used to reference intoxication, in the context of a girl using spray paint indoors.)
• "No clue."
• "¡Mira su backhand slice!" (Heard while watching a televised tennis match)
• "Un senior trip" (People say "un trip" a lot instead of "un viaje". Like, "Vas a ir a un trip?"
• "Los has-beens"
• "Era nada más un bluff."
• "Hard work"
• "Un Harvard-educated man"
• "Una tienda ma'n'pa" (a mom'n'pop store)
• "Es un asunto very straightforward."
• "Un know-how muy importante"
• "Tenían que hacer un catch-up."
• "Queremos lo todo ahorita -- NOW."
• "Somos un elite."  (The speaker distinctly did not use the word élite, which does exist in Spanish and is pronounced quite differently.)
• "La corrupción es across-the-board en América Latina."

In particular, my U.S. history professor José Luis García tends to throw in some longer English phrases, since he did his doctorate at Johns Hopkins and speaks English quite well.  Today he told a student in my North American Studies class that he didn't have much hope for a strong, integrated Latin America.  "Not in my lifetime," he said. "Maybe in my lifetime," she snapped back, in English. "De tus nietos, tal vez," ("In your grandkids' lives, maybe.") he replied.  That conversation happened today, and it made my inner linguist all happy inside.

The profesor even sometimes accidentally Anglifies his Spanish.  Tuesday, for example, the whole class called him out for saying the non-word "igualizar" instead of "igualar," to mean "equalize."

Another Spanglish issue is that the fresa students (the really rich, snobby ones) tend to call their female teachers "Miss" (pronounced mees).  The professors, who have worked long and hard to get their doctorates or at least master's degrees, do not appreciate this disrespect whatsoever.  Teachers have been known to demand that students address them as maestra or profesora, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Another Anglicism: the word for a friend-with-benefits (a concept which most Mexican girls totally scorn) is "un free".  As in, "Él nada más quiere un free." (He [that slimeball] just wants a friend-with-benefits.)  There are tons of other Anglicisms I don't even notice, like saying "carro" to mean car.  I feel like my Spanish isn't as pure as it would be if I had studied in, say, Mexico City.  Nevertheless, it has been incredibly interesting to study in the border area, where the United States exerts a very strong influence.

UPDATE: Friday I heard the words el folder, el CD, el hot dog, los hotcakes, el shopping spree, el thanksgiving weekend, un free-for-all, human rights, present and voting, keep the change, and los headquarters.

UPDATE II: Mandar un mail (send an e-mail), checar (to check), and sexy are all very, very common Spanish phrases.

One of my best friends, fellow Hendrix student Harmony Hudson, is currently studying abroad in Ghana.  (If you are not Sarah Palin, you might know that that's a country in Africa.)  Every week or two, she sends out the spunkiest, funniest, most interesting and descriptive e-mails.  Every time I get one I feel bad for not describing my adventures to you the way she does.  So, here is my best effort at a Harmony-style travelogue:

This weekend I went on a trip to Real de Catorce, which is actually called Villa Real de Nuestra Señora de la Concepción de Guadalupe de los Alamos de los Catorce (phew!) -- a "picturesque, ruined silver mining town" according to my Rough Guide.  It's where the movie The Mexican was filed, incidentally, and I hear there's a shrine to Brad Pitt somewhere.  In the early- to mid-1900s, after all the silver got all mined out, Real became an all-but-ghost town with a few hundred residents.  Now that tourists have figured out how beautiful it is, it's been reinhabited and moderately renovated.  Apparently TONS of people come during Holy Week and during weekends in October, but on a temperate early November weekend the town was rather empty and very calm.

We left Monterrey really early (7 a.m.) Saturday morning and arrived to Real in early afternoon.  The majority of the trip was made by your average long-distance bus, but Real de Catorce can only be entered via a 2.3 km tunnel that is only wide enough for one vehicle at a time, and not tall enough for a standard bus. So outside the tunnel everyone had to unload from the first bus and pile into a smaller shuttle bus.  At times even the shorter, thinner bus only had a few inches of space on each side.  And there were people going through the tunnel on foot and by bicycle at the same time -- brave, brave people.
 
So we get to Real, hop off the shuttle, and start walking past a huge market (it was SO hard not to stop, but the guys wanted to get to the hotel and put their stuff down).  Almost immediately a 30-something guy walks up to us -- "us", by the way, was me, my friends Jonathan, Jordan and Ronak, my suitemate Gaby, and two other exchange students from the UDEM: an Austrian named Alex and a 28-year-old German named Percy -- and offers us a good price for a tour of the outskirts on horseback.  Percy, who turned out to be both incredibly stingy and incredibly good at bargaining, haggled him down to 100 pesos (like $8) per person for a 2-hour tour.  On horses!  The guide then helped us find a cheap hotel, and after Percy haggled for at least 15 mins with no real success, we agreed to pay 100 pesos each to stay the night there.  (I don't really understand the goal of haggling when the base price is 100 pesos, but Percy is very persistent.)  After a bunch of dawdling, we finally all put our stuff away in our rooms, locked up, and left the hotel. 
 
Our guide was super patient with us all weekend, in fact.  We took another tour with him the next day, Sunday, originally planning to leave at 9 a.m.  But Saturday night we ran into him again and pushed it back to 10 a.m.  At 10 Sunday, though, we were sitting on the porch of a cute cafe downtown, still waiting for our crêpes and omelettes to arrive.  The guide just happened to walk by, and we apologized and asked to move back til 11:15.  We actually left around 11:30.  We are definitely, definitely living on Mexican time now.

So: back to Saturday afternoon.  I was super excited, having not ridden a horse since I was about eight years old.  We hopped aboard our horses (mine was an unfittingly tall horse named Lucero, but we called him J-Lo because of his fantastically huge pompis) and headed off into the sunset -- literally.  When we arrived at the ruins of the mine after maybe a 30 minute ride, the sun was just sinking behind the mountains.  The light was fantastic, and I wanted to take a billion photos but I was afraid of dropping my camera and letting it get trampled by horses.  So.  The landscape was so cool!  I've actually been really happy to have taken the Plants and Human Affiars class, since it made me really notice and appreciate the huge aloe plants, the ENORMOUS asparagus-looking plants, and all the varieties of cactus we saw. 

The prickly pears were bearing fruit, and when we got to the ruins and got off our horses, our guide cut a few of the red, spiky fruit knobs (called tuna, oddly enough) off of the cactus, skinned them, and let us taste them.  The flesh was melon-like in texture, but raspberry red, with edible but thick seeds like blackberries have.  It tasted ... unmemorable, it seems, since I can't really remember.  The cactusy part of the cactus, called nopales, is also edible.  They serve it at the school cafeteria for breakfast, as a taco filling. Cut into bits and cooked, it tastes like asparagus but feels squeaky on your teeth like squash does.  You know?
 
After the horseride, which ended just as night fell, we toured the city and finally got to poke into some of the artesanía shops.  I think my favorite thing about Mexico is how darn cheap all the crafts are!  I have bought roughly 2.5 million earrings, which I tell myself I will give away as presents but will probably keep.  I'm also a big consumer of necklaces, bracelets, scarves, shawls, and purses.  And cajeta, haha, a liquidy caramel that they sell in plastic cups.  ¡Qué rico!  I have really surprised myself with my penchant for (compulsion to?) buying Mexican jewlery and crafts.  I am feeling very, very ambivalent (read: depressed) about the fact that I leave Mexico in less than a month, so I think I'm just trying to bring as much of the country as I can back home with me.
 
After a 3-hour-long spaghetti dinner that made me miss my momma, we walked back toward the hotel and were mobbed by about 20 drunken Mexican teenagers from the nearby city of San Luis Potosí.  The girls circled around Jordan, a blonde, and insisted on taking a picture with him.  The rest of the group split up and chatted up the rest of our group, frequently pausing mid-sentence to coagulate back into a blob for yet another group picture.  Mexicans love group pictures!
 
The next morning, as I said, we dawdled around, breakfasting and shopping until 11:30.  One of the shopkeepers I visited was ecstatic to see the Obama pin I had on my purse.  She talked to me at some length about how she and everyone she knew was so happy to see America elect a black leader with a softer edge on foreign policy.  (I'm paraphrasing.)  It was really cool.  I feel like the whole world automatically thinks more highly of America now, which is a much needed change!  Anyway, then we met up with the horses, and were off!
 
This time we headed for the hills southwest of the city.  The trip started off badly, as we passed a dead horse lying rigor mortised in the middle of the dirt road, its bloated organs hanging out and flies starting to gather around.  It was really terrible.  I realized that our culture values and respects horses almost as much as Hindus worship cows.  All our horses got spooked, so the guide had to help us pass one by one.  Rafael, another Austrian who actually slept through the Saturday morning bus ride and caught up with us in Real de Catorce on Saturday night, never got the instructions on how to handle his horse.  Breaking into a canter (or was it more of a gallop? Heck, I'm no rancher) he quickly took the lead.  My good ol' Lucero and Jordan's horse Payaso felt compelled to chase, and we (and a guide) broke well ahead of the rest of the group.  The scenery was surreal: rows and rows of thick prickly pear cactus with their bulbous, red fruit on top; fields of pale spring-green grasses; and more of those enormous asparagus.  I wear Transitions lenses, which totally obscured the green colors and made everything look weirdly purple.  When my horse slowed down periodically, I would tilt my glasses back to try to get a feel for the real colors of the landscape, which were somehow even weirder.
 
When we got to a viewing area near the top of a mountain (OK, maybe not tall enough to be a mountain? Heck, I'm no geographer) we dismounted.  My knees about buckled out from under me when I got down, and my butt was about as sore as you would expect after an hour of riding a fast horse on rocky, uneven terrain.  We took a big, long look around and waited for the rest to catch up.  Rafael, incidentally, had (unbeknownst to us) raced up to the tippy top of the mountain and was nowhere to be seen.  Somehow that didn't seem to worry our guide.  Percy had brought a six-pack of beer to share (for the minimal fee of 10 pesos per beer), so a few of us cracked open a chilly Tecate and toasted the moment.  I, being a ridiculous lightweight and desiring to survive the ride back down to the city without falling off my horse, abstained. 

We spent about 20 minutes there, soaking up the view and letting our legs and buttocks recover.  Then we were back on our horses, headed back toward the city.  We left Percy and Alex at the lookout point with one of the guides, haggling over the 20 peso (~$1.60) fee to ascend all the way to the top.  (Rafael actually had to pay extra, too, for having gone ahead to the top without permission.)  The trip down was even bumpier, as the horses hopped down rocks unconcernedly and we tried desperately to hold on.  As we reentered the city on horseback, we had to navigate between rows of parked cars and other moving vehicles, which was enjoyably anachronistic.
 
After a few hours in the city, using Percy's haggling tips to buy some more earrings and a really beautiful purple scarf and some commemoratory gifts for family members, I was back in the shuttle bus, back in the tunnel, back on my way to the "real world" of Monterrey.  Upon arrival into the city at midnight, seven of us shared two taxis back home.  Percy himself saved about 35 US cents by walking the 15 minutes home -- alone, in the dark.  At midnight!  I'm going to set up a charity for this guy, because he's the cheapest person I know!
 
I am currently sunburned (with a tan line from my darned glasses), blistered (from hanging on desperately to the horn of the saddle), bruised on my legs and incredibly sore all over.  But with each hobbled step I remember the magical ex-ghost town of Real de Catorce.  Check out the pictures (and some old ones, too) on the Facebook album.

We left Wednesday night at 9 p.m.  After two stopovers of varying lengths and one confusing time zone switch, we arrived in Batopilas, a tiny city at the bottom of the Copper Canyon, at 2 p.m. Friday afternoon.  We left Monterrey on a rather classy night bus, with fold-down leg rests and everything.  The second leg of our journey, from Chihuahua City to a town called Creel, was taken by a less comfortable but still totally legitimate passenger bus.  The third leg, a five-hour journey from the rim of the canyon down into the very base, was made by an twelve-person van with no seatbelts.  Scary!!

The travel time was totally worth it, though, for reasons including:

• the fantasically cute and cheap jewelry I found in Creel during our 18-hour stopover. I'm telling myself they're presents, but I probably won't part with them.  Sorry, guys.
• gorgeous vistas descending into the canyon
• the best tostadas I've ever had, in a restaurant on our way back to our guesthouse after a long, sweaty hike up the side of the canyon
• swimming in and sunbathing on the shore of a river -- in mid-October!
• getting to see an indigenous tribe, the Raramurí/Tarahumara, and how the "real" Mexicans interacted with them. It wasn't pretty.  For example: as I waited to check out at a tiny grocery store (more like a dry goods store you'd see in old Westerns), the shopkeeper banged on the counter to get a Raramurí woman's attention, addressed her as "tú" (the informal, disrepectful form of "you"), gruffly took her money and hustled her out of the store as quickly as possible. When I checked out right afterward, the shopkeeper was sweet as could be, using the formal "usted" form with me and waiting patiently as I fumbled for the right change.
• getting to use my travel Spanish.  My academic Spanish is good, and I am fully understanding the lectures my professors give, but I still sometimes struggle to find the right words to use in class discussions.  It was so nice to get back to phrases like, "Excuse me, could you tell me where the bathroom is?"  Three separate people commented on how good my Spanish was.

The guys I traveled with, two fantastic gentlemen from Iowa and Washington, are both super Christian.  I'm really not.  One of the most interesting cultural aspects of the trip was actually just spending a full week with the two of them, watching them pray before meals and read their Bibles before bed.  On our last day in the tiny town of Batopilas, one of the guys and I trekked out to a deserted mission church.  Inside a 15-year-old girl was waiting for us, holding a laminated letter stating that she was epileptic and needed money for the medicine she takes.  Upon scanning the letter, Jordan opened up his wallet, handed over a sizeable bill, and asked if he could pray with the girl.  Which he proceeded to do, out loud, with his hand on her shoulder, without hesitation or awkwardness.  I was so impressed.  It was honestly one of the most foreign moments of my study abroad experience, and one that has challenged most my ideas and assumptions.

For a fuller idea of my trip, check out the pictures at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031186&l=569b3&id=1299990023.

UPDATE: The New York Times just published a photo slideshow of the train ride through the Copper Canyon. We didn't actually take the train, but the slideshow shows the Casa Margarita, a sweet hostel where we stayed for $10 -- breakfast and dinner included.  Best deal EVER.

I've spent the past week taking tests and scrambling to make final arrangements for this trip, plus trying to visit with friends I hadn't seen in a week or more.  Friday night the core group of friends -- the exchange students I first befriended upon arrival in Monterrey -- went out to dinner downtown to celebrate Jordan's birthday.  We first encountered the restaurant, Feel Gr@w, on our first outing downtown, perhaps our second or third weekend in Mexico.  We were so sweaty and touristy looking, though, that we were too embarassed to eat there.  Friday we cleaned up real nice and spent four hours together on the upstairs terrace, which had a great view of the city.

I spent all day Saturday and Sunday working to finalize my application for the Hendrix-Lilly summer mission trips, which was due Monday.  I took a break Saturday night though to hang out with four of my new friends from the trip to Washington.  We went to UMA Bar, a club downtown, and stood in line (read: huddled in a massive crowd) outside the place for an hour, begging and cajoling the guard to let us in.  We finally got in and danced casually for awhile, until the lights suddenly went out.  After 10 or 15 minutes of standing around chatting in the near-dark, we decided to leave.  Problem: the guards had locked the doors to prevent people who hadn't paid their tabs from leaving.  The growing crowd near the door became increasingly insistent that they free us, which they quickly did realizing the relative value of keeping the peace.  Then we all went and got Fourth Meal, although the quesadillas with avacado that we ordered from an open-air taquería were way, way better than anything you can buy at Taco Bell.  I got home at 5 a.m. and crashed, not to wake up until 2 p.m.

With little time between homework, sleep, and various social engagements, I just yesterday finally got around to posting on Facebook the photos from the Washington trip: check them out!  For example, here I am in front of the Canadian embassy (or something) and the capitol building! 

I'm standing on the terrace on the top floor of the Newseum, a museum dedicated to journalism.  I spent six hours in there; it was like a pilgrimage for me.  The whole trip was just so moving.  I almost cried on the steps of the Supreme Court building.  Lame?  It's OK.  I'm an American Studies major.

Tip for Other Students Studying Abroad:  I wanted to show my dad my photos, but he is even less computer literate than John McCain, and he doesn't have Internet access at his house.  So I came up with the ingenious plan of using Walgreens.com to order copies of my digital photos, to be printed at my dad's local Walgreens for him to pick up.  Best daughter ever.  And the minor expenditure was more than covered by the amount of money I've saved by using Skype to call home for two cents a minute from my laptop. Nice.  I'm sure I'll have a host of stories and pictures to share with him, and you all, next Tuesday when I get back from my latest travels!  Until then, ¡cuídense!  (Take care.)

P.S.  Bill Clinton came to my old high school yesterday.  Remind me again why I left the country just in time for all the political excitement?  Reading about this stuff online just is not the same.  Alas.

Since the first day I arrived in Monterrey, I wanted to stay the whole year.  The mountains, the people, the food!  I love it all!  (OK, not all of the people, and not all of the food -- but the mountains! And the good people! And the good food!)  There have certainly been times when I've said to myself, "Well, glad I won't have to put up with (x) much longer."  At the top of the list: an awkward break-up, the infantile behavior of some of my classmates, and the strict gender separation in the dorms.  But, in general, I have a hard time imagining my future life without the amazing friends, fantastic vistas, and delicious tostadas that have characterized my stay so far.

I got a small taste of that future last week, when I returned to the United States on a six-day, school-sponsored fieldtrip to Washington, D.C.  I ate several hamburgers and milkshakes, and danced to hip-hop.  The signs were in English.  The statues memorialized people and historical events I was actually familiar with.  Oh, and I saw fellow Hendrixian Cache Carter!!  It was nice.  But it was far from a full re-immersion in the American culture, since I was traveling with 20 Mexicans and spent about three-quarters of my time speaking Spanish.

Here I am with my new friends Ale, Cehcy and Sandra in front of the Jefferson Memorial, which, incidentally, was really hard for us to find.  I guess the fact that the signs were in English didn't actually help me that much.

Before the trip, I wasn't friends with any of those 20 students.  Now half of them are my Facebook friends -- an impressive feat, since many Mexicans either don't trust or just don't like Facebook.  These new friends are intelligent, fun, and down-to-earth folks, and I can't wait to hang out with them in Monterrey.  But we only have seven weeks and one day to do it.  That's 50 days.  That's horrifying.

I have to fight the tendency to wonder whether it's really worth investing time and emotion in these inherently limited friendships, especially the ones I'm just now developing.  Can people who've only known each other for two months make a long-distance friendship work?  I didn't have this problem in London last fall because I honestly didn't make any British friends in London.  When my plane took off, the only friends I left behind were Big Ben and the pigeons.  Leaving the city was sad, but the things I really miss -- the Tube, the National Portrait Gallery, Strongbow cider, etc. -- will still be there whenever I go back.  In contrast, if I come back to Monterrey in five years, the city won't hold much for me.  My exchange student friends will be scattered back out across the globe, and most of the Mexican students will have returned to their cities of origin.  That's a hard reality, but I asked for it.  I came to Monterrey on an ISEP (International Student Exchange Programs) program precisely because I wanted a deeper experience than I had with the Hendrix-in-London program.

Of course, going to London as a sophomore was one of the best decisions I've ever made. During my time in Europe I traveled to twelve countries and developed a much broader sense of the world.  I learned how to walk as fast as the Londoners and to push my way onto the Tube like the Londoners.  Heck, I picked up a British accent for awhile.  But -- because of the enormity of the city and the fact that I took classes only with other Hendrix students -- I never actually made friends with a Londoner. 

I decided to study abroad again because I wanted to spend a semester speaking a different language, taking classes and spending time with "the natives."  In fact, my whole approach to studying abroad has changed this semester.  Rather than focusing on getting out of town and traveling on the weekends, as I did in London, I've been trying to go out with my Mexican friends see as much as I can of Monterrey itself.  I figure that, since I live just next door, I'll be able to travel around Mexico more in the coming years.  So rather than seeing as many sights as I can, I want to get as much valuable intercultural contact as I can.

I can tell my time in Mexico has changed me.  For example, my dating expectations have changed.  (Dating is not the only thing I think about or do here, but it's a common topic of conversation, and the girls I've talked to go on and on about it.)  In Mexico, people don't kiss on the first date.  Girls try not to hold hands on the first date, unless they really just can't resist.  They hold out on everything, until the boy officially asks the girl to be his girlfriend.  And then they still hold out on most everything. 

The rhetoric I hear girls espouse -- "Did you kiss him yet?  No?  OK, good. You have to really make him earn it. You  barely know him yet, and you don't want him to think you're that kind of girl." -- is considered antiquated and anti-feminist in the U.S., but I really kind of like it.  Ditto for the expectation that the guy holds doors open for the girl, and other gentlemanly niceties.  The respect that Mexican girls show for themselves, and that Mexican guys show toward their girlfriends and their girl friends, seems all too rare in the States.

Considering the things I'll miss most about Mexico, I guess Conway, Arkansas, is one of the best places I could come back to.  We've got a bunch mountains nearby, and more Mexican restaurants than you can shake a stick at.  Southern guys are also supposed to be the most gentlemanly in the Union.  And although the friends I've made in Mexico will be far away, available only through Facebook, Skype, and Windows Messenger, I'll be reunited with my absolutely amazing Hendrix friends.  Yeah.  I'll just try to keep reassuring myself with that for the next seven weeks.

In the early hours of September 16, 1810, Father Hidalgo, accompanied by several conspirators ... rang the bell of his little church, calling everyone to fight for liberty. This was the beginning of the Independence War, which lasted 10 years. And this is the moment that every September is re-enacted in every plaza or zócalo of Mexico, and commemorated by Mexicans all over the world. ... It is customary for our President to deliver the grito in Mexico City's zócalo. It is in this plaza ... that the original bell rung by Hidalgo is placed. ... The ceremony reaches the high point when the crowd joins in proudly shouting out the names of the heroes of our Independence, to end with the exciting VIVA MEXICO!

– John Steinbeck

A huge part of the stress of studying or traveling abroad is living with constant ambiguity – knowing you lack the cultural background and linguistic aptitude to completely understand what’s going on around you.  Now that one quarter of the semester has elapsed, I feel like I’m finally getting the hang of things here in Mexico.  At least a little.

I’m halfway through my first set of Partial Exams, of which there are four during the semester.  I have two left, and I’ve just received my grades from the two I took last week.  In my Política Mundial class – the one in which I almost cried (multiple times) out of pure frustration at my inability to comprehend the professor or the material – I got a 95 percent.  A 95!  I had been hoping for, but not betting on, a 70 percent.

At Hendrix, professors return tests at the end of a class period, so students are free to review the exam at their leisure, in private.  Here, the process was terrifying: you wait for the professor to call your name, and then you sit at the front of the class with him and discuss your answers, arguing for more points if you feel you were unjustly denied.  No matter how quietly you whisper, everyone can hear.  Stressful! 

When the professor first handed back my test, I was ecstatic to receive a 90.  But he had marked one of my responses, the one I was most confident in, as only worth half credit.  Dutifully, I argued – and won!  The prof also noted of my exam that “tú español es mejor que el de ellos ” (i.e., your [written] Spanish is better than your Mexican classmates’)!  I’m sure I was beaming.

Assessing the situation critically, the prof may have just wanted to boost my confidence.  I’ve really been struggling to participate in class, since it’s quite hard to shout out questions (let alone answers) in a foreign language when you’re already fighting just to understand the lecture and scribble some notes.  It’s even harder when you can’t quite remember how to pronounce the correct answer, or whether the key verb of your question is a stem-changer or not.  I’m sure I do have better spelling than some of my classmates, but my spoken Spanish is quaintly pocked with misconjugations and other grammar errors.

The professor’s comment led me to reflect on my Spanish progress so far, now that I’ve been in Mexico for exactly six weeks.  I’d say that, depending on whom I’m chatting with, I can hold a fairly sophisticated conversation in Spanish.  It’s easiest to speak with other foreigners, whose limited Spanish vocabulary matches my own.  It’s also best if the listener doesn’t speak much English, so I know that my choppy Spanish is still more intelligible to him or her than my fluent English would be.  Unfortunately most people here don’t fit those criteria.  I especially struggle to speak when I’m in the presence of gorgeous men, but that problem plagues my English conversations, too.

I also didn’t realize how much important vocabulary I was missing until I arrived.  I’m using Spanish in situations that challenge me even in English – getting a haircut, going to the doctor, flirting, etc.  Moments like these hinge on proper word choice, and on understanding the responses you’re dealt.  To be sure I got the haircut I wanted a few weeks ago, I brought my Columbian friend with me to translate.  So far I’ve been flirting successfully on my own, though.

Directing taxis, communicating via Facebook, and learning to dance salsa all require words I never picked up in Spanish classes.  Phew!  Honestly, for the first few weeks of classes I would need a major afternoon nap each day, just to recharge my brain after the effort of so much Spanish.  And then for the next two weeks I was napping all the time because I was sick.  It’s great to be moving out of the nap phase and into the actually-enjoying-Mexico phase!

I finally went to the doctor today. He told me that: 1) I'm sick, 2) I need antibiotics, and 3) I can get them delivered straight to the residence hall. In fact, the receptionist at the Res called the pharmacy for me, took my money, and will hold the drugs for me at the reception until I come pick them up. That makes me feel a little bit less bitter about the fact that there is a receptionist at all. I'm so used to the super laid-back atmosphere of Hendrix residence halls that the rules here are killing me. For example, I can only host one guest at a time, and they can only stay til 11 p.m.  And I have to sign in if I come back after midnight or fill out an Aviso de Ausencia form if I won't be staying the night at Res -- even if it's just because I'm pulling an all-nighter in the library. It's not terrible, but I resent it anyway.

I had to fill out an Absence Advisory this weekend, in fact, because I went on a two-day camping trip to Cuatro Ciénegas (Four Marshes) with about three dozen other international students. So fun! Check out the pictures! It was my first venture out of Monterrey, and I'm very glad I went. I knew very few of the other students on the trip, so I got to meet a bunch of new friends. Plus most of the attendees were French students with weak English skills, so I spoke almost exclusively Spanish for the whole two days. Phew!

It's really interesting to monitor my Spanish progress here. Some moments I can barely pull out a "Buenas días," and other times I just chatter away. In fact, one of the Frenchies and I had an extensive political conversation on the bus ride. It's highly variable. Sometimes I'm annoyed (offended?) when someone who speaks both Spanish and English chooses to address me in English. But almost as often I am frustrated when they do speak to me in Spanish. Sometimes I feel much more adept at aural comprehension than at sharing my own thoughts, but other times -- when I'm hanging out with a group of Mexicans together, or in my Política Mundial class -- I feel like I barely understand the language. It's definitely a learning process.

Adapting culturally has also been a minor challenge. Personal space bubbles are actually not much smaller than I'm used to, but I get overwhelmed by the tradition of greeting all acquaintances with cheek kisses. The hallways of the school are always packed -- there is really only one, huge academic building that all the thousands of students share -- and folks just stop in the middle to kiss hello and chat.  And people here. Walk. So. Slowly. Coming from a midwesterner, that means a lot; my German friends are driven crazy by the slower pace of life here.

The most surprising thing, though, is that the academic atmosphere is a lot like high school. Like, the most misbehaved classes in high school. Most students wait outside the door of the classroom until the bell rings, which I think is juvenile in and of itself, but others just saunter in a few (or more) minutes late with no apology. People interrupt the professor's lecture without raising their hands. Some answer their cell phones in class, many send text messages, and others even (reportedly -- as told to me by a friend) make calls during class.  !!??!?!?!?!!???!?!?!!!!! <-- words fail.

The tone of the class is determined mostly by the professor, and I've luckily landed in mostly quite serious classes. But not all.  Today, my midterm test for Global Journalism consisted of five short answer questions, five identifications, and about 25 matching questions.  Matching questions!!  I'm nominating it for easiest test of all time.

I'm not complaining about having that easy class, though. With much less reading than I have at Hendrix, I get hours of extra time to spend on Facebook, keeping in touch with my Hendrix friends across the globe. (Ghana, France, Norway ....) And to obsessively read the New York Times, to keep up with American politics. (I must have spent two hours today reading about Sarah Palin!) And ... to date Mexicans. (Remember that guy who hates America? He's developing a soft spot for it now.)

As a parting gift, I leave you with an album of photos of my life here in Mexico. Enjoy! I am!

As part of my Periodismo Mundial (Global Journalism) class, I am required to wake up before dawn, turn on the radio and transcribe the top story from the first broadcast of the day.  I e-mail that transcript to the big news monitor boss, who puts it up online with all the other top stories from the other news stations. And apparently people read our little news digest.

Supposedly, when I apply for a job in the field of journalism, my prospective boss will value the fact that I know how to be a news monitor.  Someone will value the fact that I record the 5:45 a.m. broadcast of La Red de Radio Red (AM 1540), listen to it piece by piece, guess the spelling of all the words I don’t know, and then look up those maybe-words in a dictionary to figure out whether they are actually words or if I’ve just misunderstood the announcer.  

Here's today's top story. (Summary: politicians are working to combat the rampant kidnapping occuring across the country.)

Hoy por la tarde a las 5 en el Salón Tesorería del Palacio Nacional se va a llevar a cabo la vigésimo tercera (23ª) sesión del Consejo Nacional de Seguridad Pública, pero nadie piensa que ésta va a ser una sesión normal. El Consejo Nacional de Seguridad Pública, presidido por el ingeniero Genaro García Luna, Secretario de Seguridad Pública del gobierno federal, va a preparar y presentar para su firma un acuerdo nacional para la lucha en contra de la inseguridad.
 
Se están planteando un serie de medidas para combatir el secuestro y otros crímenes. Entre estas medidas está planteando la posibilidad de construir reclusorios federales específicamente para secuestradores, también se está planteando la posibilidad de ofrecer recompensas a ellos que ofrecen información sobre los delincuentes. Se habla también de crear una cérula de identidad personal independiente o que se reemplace a la actual tarjeta credencial de elector que utilizamos los mexicanos para identificarnos. El acuerdo nacional de seguridad habría de ser firmado hoy.

Someone will eventually appreciate the half-hour (or more …) that it takes me to transcribe a minute-long news story for the greater benefit of the World Wide Web. Someday.

That person certainly won’t be my roommate, who has to deal with the fact that – even though it’s 6:30 a.m. and I don’t have class ‘til 10 – I can’t fall back to sleep once I’ve engaged in such hard work. Or my friends, who laugh at me for going to bed at 9:30 on a Wednesday, hours before they even leave to go clubbing.  So to all the newspaper and magazine editors in the world – make our suffering worthwhile!  Appreciate our sacrifices!  Hire me when I graduate!

The party was a mixer for the international students, and the question on everyone’s lips was, “So where are you from?”  Replying over and over again with “Los Estados Unidos” is a mouthful, and it also brings along a lot of political baggage.  For example, the guapo young Mexican man who accompanied me to the party has said several times that he wishes I weren’t from the U.S.  “Pick any other country in the world,” he told me later. “But I could never” (or was it “would never”?) “live in America with you.” 

Another friend, Dutch Rick, came to Monterrey through the Magellan program. He would have preferred to study in the U.S., he said, but the program’s American affiliate schools were in the South and Midwest – regions where, as a gay man, he didn’t believe he would be safe and/or accepted.

The shameful thing is, I don’t blame either of them for their beliefs about America. Plenty of Americans, myself included, bemoan our country’s loss of international prestige, a phenomenon often interconnected with or attributed to the supposed backwardness of the folks in the “fly-over country”, e.g. my family, neighbors, teachers and classmates.  We the flown-over support gun rights and loathe birth control; we don’t believe in evolution or global climate change; and we elected Bush 2 because we thought he’d be a nice guy to knock back a beer with.

We’re the kind of folks who end sentences in prepositions, if you know what I mean. (Which you do, as long as you didn’t go to a public school here.) We’re the ones who most hate Mexicans and gays.  Or aren’t we?

I like to think I’m a pretty typical Midwesterner; I was born and raised in Missouri’s suburbs just like the other suburban Missourians. I like to think the country’s heartland is full of people as addicted to the New York Times as I am – other folks desperate to get rid of Bush, other Human Rights Campaign donors, other ACLU members. And there are!  But maybe not many.

One of my new friends here, a guy from Washington state, told me yesterday that I’m the first liberal person he’s ever met from the Midwest.  Arkansas gets an even worse reputation.  This spring, my New Yorker sister-in-law “jokingly” told me not to marry anyone from Arkansas, because “if you stay there, your brother and I are not going to visit you.”

It’s hard to come from or live in a part of the country that others look down on, and it’s even harder to come from a country that has fallen so far in world opinion. (Liberty and justice for all?  Ha!)  Perhaps if I had stayed in the States for all four years of my education, I wouldn’t know what the rest of the world thought about us.  But I think the best thing I’ve done to enhance my American Studies major – and my International Relations major, and my life – is to study America from foreign contexts. It's a lesson in self-flagellation, but a worthy one.

Written Sunday night, while my internet was down and I couldn't post it:

As many of my fellow Hendrix upperclassmen get ready to lead Orientation programs for incoming freshmen, I have just been through an orientation of my own.  The “Gente UDEM” (People of the University of Monterrey) program was designed to get the freshmen and newcomers into the UDEM spirit.  In an enormous, temporary outdoor pavilion, we listened to two hours of talks about our potential to personify the university's catchphrase: “extraordinary professionals and extraordinary people.”

The students were seated together according to our majors, so I was accompanied by exchange students and freshmen majoring in Politics or International Studies. We went through an important UDEM tradition during that ceremony: putting on the UDEM t-shirt.  It was surprisingly stirring.  All at once, the students put on a special yellow t-shirt and officially become Gente UDEM.  Confetti shoots up from all sides, and the crowd becomes a sea of yellow.

At the end of the ceremony, the Yellow Sea parted into about 30 groups (again, divided by major) and played several infantile get-to-know-you games, including the Spanish version of the Hokey Pokey. There I met Ronak, a half-Indian and half-Mauritian guy from Hong Kong who studies in London. Phew. Ronak has since introduced me to Sam and Natasha, two Canadian girls, and to a Canadian guy named Jordan and a Hong Konger named Kin Keung (yes, like King Kong).  I have since introduced them to Rick, a remarkably candid Dutch guy who in turn introduced us to Mario, his Mexican roommate who went to high school in Texas.  And thus a friend group was born!

Three of the guys and I went to Wal-Mart Friday to pick up the numerous important things that I forgot to bring: a hairbrush, lotion, pens, scissors, etc.  Although Monterrey is a big city, its public transportation is nothing like London’s.  Instead of having a broad metro system, the carless largely rely on taxis, which are surprisingly cheap – especially when the cost is split among four.

We’ve become largely inseparable.  We went to downton Monterrey yesterday and to see Batman (with Spanish subtitles) last night.  Afterward, we sat around at the Canadian girls’ house, sipped a few beers, and played a game of Truth or Truth.  Dutch Rick’s questions were so unabashed and sexual that the Canadians cut the game short.  After a particularly dirty one, when one of the Canadian’s faces turned red and the other’s lost all color, Rick innocently asked, “Oh, was that too much?”  All was quickly forgiven, though, because Rick can’t help it; he’s Dutch.

Today, the boys – Rick, Jordan and Ronak – and I walked to a nearby taquería and then took a taxi to a local grocery store, where we bought fixins to cook together tonight.

The oddest thing about hanging out with the boys is, I have no idea what their rooms look like; I’m not allowed to go into the boys’ section of the residence halls. The gender separation makes hanging out a little difficult, although it puts us more in contact with the Mexican students.  There are several social rooms and lots of benches outside, but that doesn’t quite replace the intimacy of hanging out in someone’s room.

With the gender restrictions and the absolute prohibition of alcoholic beverages, combined with the buildings’ luxurious appearance and manicured gardens, the residence halls have the feeling of a high-class rehab clinic.  I sometimes expect to see nurses walking around.  Instead, there are just (just?) security guards patrolling.

Here's a shot of Monterrey from the third floor terrace. Built in 2006, the dorms are definitely high-class.

Although these dorms are undoubtedly cleaner, prettier and newer than Hendrix’s Couch Hall, I’m not sure that’s worth sacrificing Couch’s co-ed nature and relaxed, trusting atmosphere.

Although a lot of things are foreign here, I am very reassured to be attending a small(ish) liberal arts-type institution. For those who think Hendrix’s gen. ed. and Odyssey requirements are tough, come to UDEM.  Aside from fulfilling standard course requirements, the students must complete a huge number of service hours, a study-abroad experience, an internship experience, and a final project, plus achieve a high TOEFL score and pass several departmental tests. The kind of people who come here are (I can only assume) the kind of dedicated, interesting people I most enjoy being around.

Classes start tomorrow morning – Periodismo Mundial (Global Journalism) and Política Mundial (Global Politics).  I am so excited!

As I stepped out from customs with my baggage, I looked around confusedly at the mass of people holding signs.  “Estudiantes de Intercambio” one said, and I paused.  “Are you an exchange student?” the sign-holder asked me in Spanish.  “Yes, but I was expecting to take a taxi to the university …” I told her.  “Oh, no no. There is a bus that will take you.  Go stand with the group over there.  They are all exchange students.”

And so I went and stood over there.  I met a very nice Columbian girl named Catalina, who had just been to Hawaii and who was studying engineering.  A rather odd guy from Wisconsin asked to bum a cigarette and then gave me his e-mail address and a wink.  By the time the bus pulled up in front of the university, several potential friendships were budding.  But it was not to last.

I looked out the window at the residence halls.  A big sign announced “Beinvenidos al Tec de Monterrey!”  Welcome to Monterrey Tech.  My heart sank.  I was in a foreign country, in a huge city, at the wrong university. Shit.

I enlisted the help of one of the Tech students, who called me a cab and called my “I-Buddy” – the person the University of Monterrey assigned to help me – to let her know that I was alive and well and to get directions to her house.  I would have called her myself, except I was crying.  One of the tragedies of my temperament is that I cry at the drop of a hat.  Even when I know everything will be OK, if I am in a mess, I cry.  Often for hours.

Once I arrived at my buddy Ana’s house, I got some water and some food and stopped crying.  “Do you have siblings?” she asked.  I cried.  We watched a movie, Dances With Wolves, and I cried because my family used to watch it all the time when I was little.  Later, I took a nap and cried.  Honestly!

The funny thing is, compared to last summer I was actually quite relaxed this time.  I didn’t cry when I left my family, I didn’t cry in the airport, and I didn’t cry on the planes.  And since I arrived in Monterrey on Monday, I haven’t cried at all.  That’s already a big head start over last year, when I cried almost every day for two months.  (It speaks well of Hendrix’s Orientation program to note that I did not shed a single tear when I came to Hendrix.)

So, anyway, I stayed with Ana and her family for two days, until the dorms opened up.  And now I am here, in an enormous and beautiful room on the first floor of Residencia Uno.  I adore Couch Hall, where I have spent my three semesters on campus, but I didn’t even imagine that dorms could be as gorgeous or as clean as this one is.

Here's a picture of the dorms from the outside.  The whole campus has really cool architecture.  Also note the HUGE, amazing mountains in the background.

One of my favorite travel quotes is, “When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable.  It is designed to make its own people comfortable.”  I guess the Mexicans and I must have similar tastes.  Aside from the beautiful campus, I am in Mexican food heaven – quesadillas and salsas and avocados and taquitos and … everything!  It’s a far cry from my time in Europe, when I would have killed for a good burrito.

Even the Spanish speaking isn’t making me too uncomfortable.  I am steadily surpassing the level of awkward mumbling.  I’m sure I frequently misconjugate verbs and use the wrong indirect object pronoun, but I get my point across.  And increasingly, I understand other people, too.  (An important detail, since four of my five classes will be taught in Spanish.)

As it stands today, I wish I could stay here for a full year.  I know I can’t, because I need to finish up my American Studies major back at Hendrix, but it will be interesting to see if this infatuation with UDEM keeps growing.

I spent yesterday afternoon at a travel health clinic, getting vaccines for polio and typhoid.  And getting advice about everything from hard-core sunscreen to UV-powered water purification systems.  And just maybe getting a little overwhelmed.

The plan: I leave for Mexico bright and early on Monday morning.  I'll be there for four and a half months, then I'll come home to St. Louis for a week, and then I head off to India for two weeks.  That's about five months without drinking tap water -- and in countries famous for their spicy foods!  How do people do it?  Tips welcome.

Like them, and like so many incoming freshmen around the country, I will be enrolling in a new school this fall.  We'll be meeting new people, living in new rooms and adjusting to new cafeteria food.   The difference between the Hendrix freshmen and me is that they will get to see OK Go perform at Hendrix this fall and I won't!

OK Go will be the star act at this year's Welcome Week concert.  It's hard to describe my jealousy.  You might understand if you watch their music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI.  I mean, look at them go!  I've never looked that good on a treadmill in my life!

I have found out, however, that the International Club at the University of Monterrey will be hosting lots of events throughout the semester, including several parties and trips.  The most interesting: a "stoplight party," where you wear red if you're in a relationship, green if you're single, and yellow if you just want to hook up.  If only real life were that easy!  So I've been looking for the cutest green shirt I can find.

In other news: I made it back safely from Hendrix to St. Louis, and my little sub-compact Mitsubishi Mirage was absolutely packed to the gills with my stuff.  None of the windows were obscured, thank goodness, but my huge laundry hamper and several boxes were riding shotgun.  I've mostly unpacked, now, and I'm about halfway re-packed for Mexico. 

Something I apparently won't need to bring is condoms.  I somehow just realized that the school I'll be attending is a Catholic university.  That means that "intimidad sexual" is strictly prohibited in the dormitories, with the threat of expulsion from the university!  Which makes me wonder where all the girls in yellow shirts are planning to get down.  On that and so many other important issues, I'll keep you updated.

I'm currently trying to pack up or pass on the huge load of stuff I have accumulated at my apartment. I went a little crazy at the Free Box at the end of the year, picking up a free printer, phone, nightstand, mixer, and more. Now I have to fit all that, plus my TV, bookshelves, wardrobe, bedding, etc., into my sub-compact car.  So the bubbles, at least, will be bequeathed to my roommates.

Said roommates and I just spent the past hour outside, at the table behind our apartment, smoking hookah and/or blowing bubbles. Sometimes -- best of all -- blowing smoke into the bubbles!  When they finally popped on the grass, beautiful little puffs of smoke were emitted.  Awesome.

I'm pretty sure this article, called "Je Me Souviens: Senior makes memories of a lifetime in Quebec," is the best one I've written this summer. I try to model my work after the best features in the New York Times, especially the NYT magazine, which have a really confident tone to them. Rick Bragg and Michael Pollan -- ooh, and Natalie Angier -- are my personal idols.  (When I found out my brother's wife was pregnant with a girl, I suggested they name her "Natalie" in Angier's honor. This from the girl who wants to name her own hypothetical future daugter after the capital of Slovenia.  I digress.)  Using adjectives, adverbs and metaphors as freely and as astutely as those writers do requires an assurance that I am fully understanding and accurately portraying the story. Depending on the nature of the story, that's a lot of pressure.

DeCuir was a good subject to practice on, because her character is so very likeable. It's a lot easier on one's conscience to characterize someone as a bubbly Francophile than it is to insinuate that he or she is pompous, greedy or mean-spirited. I'd have a hard time as a politics reporter, I guess.

I am always proud of my stories after I finish them, but I think they have improved significantly since the beginning of the summer -- especially my leads.  (Headlines, maybe not so much.)  I haven't put the article up on the Hendrix site yet, since I just posted another one (Rwandan student makes quantum leap at Hendrix) earlier today. So here, just for you, is a taste of the new article:

Senior Rachel DeCuir has to grasp for English words, now.
 
"My metaphors have gone down the drain; I'm so sorry," she said a few days after her return from the French-speaking province of Quebec, Canada. "Oh dear, oh dear. And all my big words … oh, not big words – curse words? Swear words. They're coming out in French."
 
DeCuir's linguistic confusion is perfectly normal for someone who has just spent ten days in Quebec … after spending nine months in France. DeCuir, a French major, spent her junior year at the Université de Lille in northern France and returned to the U.S. in late June. After a week-long breather in her hometown of Lafayette, La., she returned to the French-speaking world for an Odyssey project.
 
Officially, it should be noted, Louisiana itself is part of the French-speaking world. The state's French roots go deep, given its long tenure as a colony of France. That shared history is what brought DeCuir to Quebec.
 
Her project, titled "Je me Souveins" ("I Remember"), is named after the provincial motto of Quebec. The province has been much more successful in "remembering" and maintaining its French heritage than Louisiana has, and DeCuir planned to interview as many French-speakers as she could while she was there. Her timing – early July, during the peak of Quebec City's enormous and world-famous 400th anniversary celebrations – would allow her to meet Francophone folks from around the globe.
 
"I really wanted to get a feel, via interviews and just being there, for the role that a language plays in someone's identity – specifically a Francophone identity," she said. "That was the original plan."
 
DeCuir deviated from her original proposal when she received the chance of a lifetime:

Oh! The suspense!  You'll just have to keep an eye on the Hendrix homepage to read the rest.

After a visit to Weather.com, I have just added "sunscreen" to my mental packing list.  I have two weeks to figure out what else needs to be on that list.  I know my poor, pale skin will not be prepared for Mexico.  I just hope the rest of me will. 

I have spent the weekend reading The Rough Guide to Mexico and Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish.  I've also been desperately attempting to finish Guns, Germs, and Steel, a non-fiction book that has been on my to-read list since -- literally -- sophomore year of high school.  Added to that list are the three books my older brother just sent: El Viejo y el mar by Hemingway, Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia by Rigoberta Menchú, and A Journey of One's Own: Uncommon Advice for the Independent Woman Traveler by Thalia Zepatos.

I'm also trying to prepare for a trip to India this winter, so I'm about to order another handful of books from Barnes and Noble.  That list -- like the other dozens of lists I've written in the past week -- is located in the little black notebook I bought for that purpose. 

A little story: while I stood in the stationery aisle at Wal-Mart a week or two ago, trying to decide which size notebook I should select, a mid-30s Mexican man stopped and asked me where he could find the magazine aisle.  After I pointed and explained, he paused. "You have beautiful eyes," he said. "Where are you from?"  And thus began a 30-minute conversation, half in Spanish, about everything from bicycles to divorces -- all in the middle of the stationery aisle.

All my other stories from the past few weeks run along that theme: nice little happenings set within the calm and friendly environment of this summer.  Yesterday, I made a fantastic spinach salad with mandarin oranges, almonds, dried cranberries, gorgonzola cheese, and a homemade vinaigrette, which I brought to a reunion dinner with several of my London companions.  Today I "ran" five miles on the elliptical -- the farthest I've ever run in my life, by far -- and I had a nice converation with the weight room supervisor.  I watched seven movies in the past week, in an attempt to become literate in American pop culture.  It's little things like these that have made my summer really charming, but boring to tell other people about.

It's been even more mundane to move through the to-do lists I've made.  "Make doctor's appointment; check if vaccinations are up-to-date; read up on safety in Mexico; FINISH THE BOOKS!"

One odd item was #9 on the list: "eat some meat."  I have it on good authority that it would be dumb, if not impossible, to live in Mexico for five months as a vegetarian.  Unfortunately, I've barely eaten meat in the past three years.  A recent foray with ground beef left me feeling quite ill.  So I've been taking it slowly, starting with a little chicken here and there.  Trying beef again will be on the to-do list soon.

Other upcoming list items:

• post pictures of my Spring Break trip,
• write another two or three stories for the website,
• pack up all my stuff and clean my apartment,
• say goodbye to Hendrix and go home to St. Louis, and
• try not to cry as much this time as I did last year.

There were weeks, at least three last semester, when I walked around like a hollow-eyed zombie, my fingernails chewed to nubs and my neck muscles intertwined into a permanent knot.  Those weeks are not these weeks!

Picking a fun, resume-building, $6.25-an-hour-paying summer job was one of the best decisions I've ever made.  I genuinely enjoy going to work, which is important because I spend one-third of my day there. I spend another full third of my day sleeping, which is deliciously awesome.

During that other third, when I am awake and totally free to do as I wish, I try to conserve my hard-earned dollars. Rather than dine out all the time, one of my roommates is teaching me how to cook. Rather than spending my free time shopping or driving aimlessly, I am finally reading all the books I've always wanted to read. That means I'll finally finish Guns, Germs, and Steel and return it to the guy who let me borrow it three years ago.

My roomies and I were too cheap to buy cable for the summer -- even though we have two TVs -- so whenever I need my CNN fix I have to trek over to the WAC and burn my buns on the elliptical while I watch.  Gas is ungodly expensive, so I walk to and from work. It's the win-winningest situation I've ever been in!  My backside hasn't looked this good since I lived on the fifth floor of a British apartment building with no elevator!

Although it's unfolding quite differently than I expected, this summer could well be my most enjoyable one yet. ¡Viva Conway! ¡Viva summer!

Emily happens to have been my roommate for the past two years, so I'd like to send her my personal congratulations for a life well done. Also: happy almost-birthday!  With no further ado: Peas and Prosperity: Junior helps homeless learn life skills through farming.

(Side note: I got most of my journalism skills from my three years of working for my high school newspaper, The Kirkwood Call.  They would never let me write pun-tastic headlines like that.  See, college is all about freedom.  Love it.)

I tossed on some clothes, brushed my teeth, and grabbed a yogurt and a nectarine. I was seated at my desk by 9 o'clock, and that includes the seven-minute walk it takes to get to work. My case of "the Mondays" was quickly cured.

Today I had the task of re-tooling one of the articles I wrote for the Hendrix site, personalizing it to send to a hometown newspaper. "German majors visit Holocaust sites" became "Showing Auschwitz as it is: Local student visits, photographs Holocaust sites."  I sent it to Lauren Bartshe's hometown newspapers, which also happen to be my hometown newspapers. That means that if my work gets published in, say, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, I will be able to make everyone I know read it.

I also sent out a hometown press release to a California paper, lauding the accomplishments of Lydia Nash.  The story on the Hendrix site, "Going Green: Sophomores volunteer for Irish organic farm," pretty convincingly proves that Lydia and her friend Amelia are hard core, butt-kicking, inspiring young women.  Which is exactly the kind of people I like to read and write about.

The most satisfying part of my job is noting how many visitors each story gets each day.  The number of hits understandably drops as the story lingers on the homepage.  But even the stories that are two weeks old are still getting 14 and 16 hits a day.  The Holocaust story, which was posted on Friday, received 55 visitors today.

As with my blog, I really don't know who these readers are.  My stories don't have my name on them, so I never get any feedback.  That is until today, when my friend Joe and I got to talking about our summer jobs on campus.

"You write those stories on the homepage?" he asked when I explained my job duties. "Did you write that one about Mallory in London? Man, I loved that one! And the one about the girls who went to Germany?  Oh, man, that one was great!"

I only wish I had had my trusty tape recorder on.  That's the kind of thing a girl could listen to over and over.  But even without feeling like a minor celebrity, my job is certifiably awesome.  I get to live vicariously through dozens of other people.  This also entails talking to dozens of kick-ass Hendrix girls who are making their way around the globe to volunteer, research, or just plain learn.

Less frequently, I am assigned to talk to some pretty cute young Hendrix men.  Unfortunately, because my main assignment is reporting on summer Odyssey projects, the boys are few and far between.

Only 12 of the 45 students who received Odyssey funding were guys.  Of those, more than half will be conducting their projects in late July and August, after I have packed my bags and moved to Mexico.  This is my official explanation and apology for the fact that the website is going to be very girl-centered for the next few weeks.  (Or maybe it's karma for the past 2000 years. Did I mention I'm reading the book cunt: a declaration of independence?  Great book!)

Coming up: stories about Hendrix ladies who ...

• attended photography seminars in preparation for opening a wedding photography business
• volunteered at an urban farm to help rehabilitate people with chemically dependencies and/or mentally illness
• trekked through New Zealand swamps to empty rat carcasses from traps, in an effort to save the local kiwi birds.

Keep an eye out!

The passport arrived mid-afternoon on June 28 -- less than 24 hours before my flight left for Madrid. I had called the hotline at least half a dozen times. Let me assure yout it is the world's least helpful hotline.

Here's an excerpt of my June 15, 2007 blog post:

On the passport website, I’ve checked the status of my application several times.  “Thank you for submitting your passport application! It is currently being processed,” the site cheerily announces.

The site also advises, “If you are traveling within 2 weeks and have not received your passport, please contact the National Passport Information Center with the above locator number. It will enable them to update you on the status of your application.”

So I called today.  I spent about an hour on hold at various points during the day, but I was eventually connected to a customer service representative.  We spoke for about two minutes, during which time he said, “Alright, your application is being processed.  That’s all I can tell you.”  No estimate of how much longer it might take.  No explanation of why I was told to call the number, if they could only give me the same information as the website.  One redeeming factor: the representative let me know that, if I hadn’t received my passport within three days of my departure date, I could call back.  Thank you, federal government.

Those were the days before I blogged for Hendrix. For four months, all of my witty sarcasm and fun anecdotes could be found at www.EuropeanOdyssey.wordpress.com.  It's actually a pretty good little blog, although the updates were fairly infrequent.  It has a bunch of great packing and travel tips on it, if I do say so, and would be a valuable little resource if you're planning to study abroad this year.

I get all nostalgic, looking back at it.  This year has been great and all, but 2007 was definitely life-changing.  It was when I solidified my best Hendrix friendships, then left them for six months, and found that they still liked me when I came back.  It was when I first learned what a blog was, and then started writing for one! 

It was when I learned I could read maps and navigate the Metro systems of dozens of different cities.  I got remarkably better at mental math and at striking up random conversations with new people.  I had Dutch gin and Portuguese ginginha, half a dozen types of cider, and even went for a Guinness once or twice (OK, only once -- and it was a half-pint).  And I made out with a guy from Cambridge!

I was miserable for a good portion of the time, especially during the summer, being cold and hungry in the way that only ridiculously frugal backpackers can be. And desperately homesick in a way that is utterly predictable when your first trip across the ocean lasts for half a year.

My favorite homesickness story: on a train ride through Belgium, I talked to a man from France. I pulled out my fold-out map of Europe and asked him to point to where he was from.  He was from Nancy.  That's my mom's name.  I started bawling.  Please don't judge me.

There is no Nancy, Mexico, though, thank goodness. Overall, I should be much happier in Mexico, just by dint of being so much more prepared. I have a great Rough Guides guidebook to Mexico, three Harry Potters in Spanish, a memoir called On Mexican Time and a book called Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish. Plus, my brother is sending me three more books to help me review my Spanish and prepare mentally for a new setting. The only problem will be finding the time to read them all, plus the other twelve books I have on my list, before I leave.  One month.  Twenty-plus books.  That's feasible, right?

The easiest, most comforting book I've been reading is called "It's a Dangerous Business ...".  It's the photo album I made as a Christmas gift last year, full of the pictures I took in Europe.  The title comes from the Lord of the Rings series, where Bilbo says, "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step into the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to."

The book, which is the most beautiful thing I've ever made, reminds me of all the fantastic times I had abroad and the adventures I have to look forward to.  Check it out.

The next morning, Kate Cook, her friend Dalton, and I drove down to Dallas for a Death Cab for Cutie concert.  Death Cab has a special place in my heart, because their music reminds me of my high school boyfriend. The first time I saw them play was the summer after graduation, at the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago, which I attended as a way to get out of my post-break up funk. (I highly recommend breaking off high school relationships before you go to college. But it's also terrible and heartbreaking.  So it goes.)

"Summer Skin" and "Photobooth" and "Tiny Vessels" are classic breakup songs. An excerpt from the latter:

This is the moment that you know
That you told her that you loved her but you don't.
You touch her skin and then you think
That she is beautiful but she don't mean a thing to me.

Putting that track on repeat would guarantee a nice little pity party. But the song that brings a lump to my throat every time I hear it is "Transatlanticism."  It describes the sudden creation of the Atlantic Ocean:

Those people were overjoyed; they took to their boats.
I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat.

Some personal background: after freshman year, both back in their hometown for the summer, the former couple joyfully reunites.  And then the girl goes to Europe for six months.  And the boy doesn't call.  Or write.  Or send carrier pigeons.  And the boy starts dating someone else named Katie.  Not that I'm bitter.  And not that I fell asleep to the song's chorus -- the words "I need you so much closer" repeated eight times -- every night for my first month abroad.

Long story short is that the Dallas concert passed in a flash.  Each song brought up old memories, and I got more lost in my thoughts than I ever did in all the foreign cities I visited.  The band's encore ended with a stunning, heart-wrenching rendition of "Transatlanticism."  All of the videos I can find on YouTube have annoying people screaming and singing along in the background.  That might have happened in Dallas.  I might have sung along, too.  But all I remember is being absolutely transfixed, remembering how alone I felt being across an ocean from my friends and family.

Am I really about to do that to myself again?  You bet.  This year I'll be on the same continent as my family, in Mexico.  I'll even be in the same time zone as both St. Louis and Conway.  It's just that most of my friends will be across the Atlantic -- in England, Spain, France, and even Ghana.  I'll get back to the United States in early December, and a week later I'll head off to India for two weeks.  I'll miss Christmas.

The tickets are all bought.  It's official.  I leave for Monterrey in a month and two days, which brings me frighteningly close to hyperventilating.  I don't know why I do this to myself, except that I know it's good for me to see new places and be put in new situations; it keeps me sharp.  And I know deep down that I will have a blast and meet amazing people.  But that doesn't stop me from worrying that I'll step off the plane and forget every word but "Hola." 

Which brings me to my favorite Death Cab song, "What Sarah Said."

And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time.

They didn't play that one at their concert, to my great disappointment.  But even without that song, and even though I spent half of the concert living in the past instead of relishing the present, I can't think of a better way to spend $40 or a Tuesday night than seeing a soulful concert with a great friend.

I bid you adieu with a link to the music video for the best song for the band's new album: Grapevine Fires.

We watched the plumes paint the sky gray
As she laughed and danced through the field of graves
And there I knew it would be alright
That everything would be alright ...

I do know that one reader is my friend Kate Cook's mom, a.k.a. Mrs. Cook, whom I will have the pleasure of meeting this evening.  "My mom is going to be really happy to meet you," Kate told me last night. "She's really into Hendrix.  She totally reads your blog."

Kate and I are driving to Dallas tomorrow for a Death Cab for Cutie concert.  Did you know: DCFC is classified as "adult alternative" music?  So I officially like adult music.  Add that to my list of embarassing characteristics.  Soon I'll be tuning my radio to smooth jazz, or soft rock.

You know, I'm really trusting you here.  I trust you not to make fun of me to my face about listening to old folks' music.  Or the fact that I wear cardigans, or that my leg swelled up for two days after I was stung by a bee.  Or the fact that I sometimes put favorite poems in my blog posts.  In a less Hendrix-tastic environment, I might not be able to open up like that.  I might have to hide my supreme dorkiness.  I might have to do something drastic, like -- gasp! -- join a sorority.

Not at Hendrix, my friends.

The drive was great for awhile, as I headed north on highway 40 watching the storm unfold before me.  Dark, imposing clouds.  Lightning snaking through the sky.  Very beautiful.  Until the storm hit us, that is.

Sheets of rain.  Eighteen-wheelers shooting past.  The whole works.  I was terribly relieved to have bought new windshield-wipers last week.  That moment of pride faded as my friend Harmony said, "So what happens if we lose control and start spinning?  Aren't you supposed to turn your wheel the way you're spinning?  Or is it the opposite way?"  All I could say was, "Umm ... I hope that doesn't become relevant."  It's not entirely my fault -- I never took Driver's Ed!  If you have any tips for driving in a massive storm, you might leave a comment and tell me.  It seems important.

The rain calmed and we made it back to Conway.  Or should I say Swampland.  Apparently the city of Conway was built on a drained swamp?  (A Little Rock native confirms that hearsay.)  So when it rains, it floods.  As we drove down an inundated Oak Street, there were times when I thought we wouldn't make it home.  I got to Harmony's house and parked safely.  And didn't leave.

Other two-word pairs from my weekend thus far:

• More articles!

It's been kind of hard to do my job of writing about the summer Odyssey projects, because most of them haven't happened yet. The summer is still young. But now that the first few have wrapped up, I finally have something to write about!  Here are the first two:

I also found out that another of my stories was republished, in full, in the Rockwall Herald-Banner and Conway's Log Cabin Democrat.  Basically, I'm slowly conquering the journalistic world.

• State Capitol

I'm at work on several more stories, including one about a freshman who has an internship with the state historian. So I got to drive to Little Rock and get the full tour of the capitol building. Just another step in my Arkans-ification.

• Bee sting

This afternoon, after confusedly waking up at Harmony's house, I went home.  Although there has been a wasp in the kitchen for the past few days, that is not where I got stung.  I went to the Hendrix beehives with my friend Kirby.  The Hendrix Beekeeping Club, established in 2005, owns a handful of hives on biology professor Dr. Haggard's land.  Several of my friends are members and I've never seen the hives, so when Kirby invited me I was excited to see what I've been missing.

I admit I've been missing some cool things.  I saw bees hanging onto each other in long, buzzing chains.  I saw bees stick their butts in the air and fan their pheromones into the air, to let the other bees know where "home" is.  Unfortunately, I also saw my leg swell up after a particularly disgruntled bee stung me on my right knee.  I haven't been stung since pre-school, and it's not something I've missed.

The top half of my body, including my head, was covered in a traditional white beekeeping suit.  The bottom half of my body was (apparently insufficiently) covered by a pair of jeans.  Although the protective measures were definitely necessary, since the bees have been pretty moody lately, the extra layers made it incredibly hot.  There's nothing like standing in a forest clearing, surrounded by bees, sweating like crazy, knee swollen, with the bee-tranquilizing smoke making your eyes water, to make you appreciate the hard work that beekeepers do. 

• Funky smelling

I was warned not to shower or wear perfume before attending to the bees, so I wouldn't attract them. After sweating so much, it is pretty much guaranteed that I am currently repelling anything with a sense of smell.  So now my two favorite words are: shower time!

College viewbooks always show the majesty of the school's grounds with full fall foliage. There are a few pictures, perhaps, of the serenity of the snow-covered campus in winter.  Hendrix, in particular, likes to boast about the azaleas that explode all over campus in mid-March and April.  But there are no pictures of the school with browning grass, or of Fourth of July fireworks bursting above the biology building, or of fireflies glowing in the trees.

It has therefore been a surprise and mostly a pleasure to watch the school go into summer mode.  The campus has emptied, and few of the non-science professors come around, as far as I can tell.  The residence halls are vacant.  The parking lots are practically bare.  I never have to wait for someone else to finish with the leg press machine in the WAC.

Thes students who are still staying on campus are mostly chemistry, physics and biology majors who have stayed on to help their professors with summer research. That introduces an interesting dynamic, since I haven't taken chemistry since sophomore year of high school.  That was, ahem, five years ago. So when I say things like, "Gosh, it seems like there used to be more fireflies around at this time last year," they say, "Fireflies are actually dying at alarming rates across the country.  So are frogs.  It has to do with the pollution of lakes and streams, caused by ... ."

As I typed that, my roommate Leeann just came in and wound up telling me about the history of the treatment of tuberculosis. As a history and chemistry double major, she is considering working either as an epidemiologist or an international patnent lawyer.  (You know you're a dork when a friend tells you she's considering going into patent law, and you get truly excited about it.  I digress.)

Although the azaleas are long-dead and some of our grass is indeed turning brown, the Hendrix campus is still so beautiful!  The Arkansas garden has come into its own, with thousands of flowers in bloom.  Even the prickly cactus (which was quite thoughtlessly planted about an inch away from the stone walkway that cuts through the garden) is in bloom.  My camera seems to have broken recently, but I have some old photos of the Turtle Pond, which is also in bloom.

There are no turtles in the Turtle Pond, but recently we've gotten several little Koi and quite a few teensy frogs.  One of those little frogs was temporarily captured today by a student from the Ridin' Dirty with Science summer camp held on campus.

The students were set free on campus and asked to bring back a cool natural feature of some sort, which they could observe up-close with a dissecting microscope.  Most picked some kind of leaf, rock, feather, or stick, but one group brought back a tiny frog in a petrie dish, with an equally diminutive lilly pad and a drizzle of water to keep him comfortable.

Soon the Ridin' Dirty campers, who are in grades 4-7, will be replaced by the 11th-grade Arkansas Governors School participants.  Watching other people live on my campus is probably the hardest thing about being here.  It's like being asked to share your favorite toy. 

I can only imagine coming back as an alumna and realizing I have permanently ceded my school to a bunch of youngins.  I'll pinch their cheeks and say, "Why, when I was your age, we had to walk five miles in the snow to get to the WAC -- uphill both ways!"

The birthday itself was just as domestic: my twin sister and I cooked a lovely (and vegan) dinner for our family.  It was a Friday night, so after clearing the table we sat on the couch and drank homemade mojitos.  Is this what adulthood is?  Responsbilitiy, moderation, and simple pleasures?  I guess that's not so bad.

The birthday in general wasn't as bad as I had feared.  There were moments of panic in the weeks leading up to The Big Day, because I'm not ready to be old yet.  But then I realized I'm pretty old already -- and have been old for a long time.  For example, much to the amusement of my friends, I pick out the next day's outfit each night before I go to bed.  My personal style has been characterized as "librarian-esque" -- by multiple people.  I enjoy brussels sprouts and cabbage.  I listen to NPR and read the newspaper religiously.  These are hard facts to confront, but I share them openly with you.

I even have a favorite poem about birthdays.  I don't feel as bad about aging as this poor guy did, I can barely remember turning ten.  God.  I am old.

On Turning Ten

by Billy Collins

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

Yes, that is about two feet of passing space.  It was a slasher film waiting to happen.  Poor Katie Rice goes to brush her teeth and – suddenly – from behind a stack of desks jumps the evil menace with his knife gleaming!  OK, so maybe I have an overactive imagination.  I guess that’s why I’m a writer.

Speaking of being a writer, my summer job is going well!  I’m working for the Communications Office, and I just had a story published on the Hendrix homepage.  Jerry Maldonado, who is also a rising junior, was just named an All-American high jumper, and I had the pleasure of interviewing him for 45 minutes as he drove home from Little Rock to Rockwall, Texas.  We were already acquaintances, thanks to seeing each other almost daily in Journeys and Explorations.  Although my experience with Journeys was really nothing to brag about, I can’t say it didn’t do me any good.  That class introduced me to some of the nicest people I know.

My main task this summer is to interview the recipients of summer Odyssey grants about their travels and experiences.  With the first voyagers recently returned from their adventures, that work is about to start in earnest.  In the mean time I’ve also been working to put together a list of the efforts Hendrix is making to be “green” and sustainable.  It’s surprisingly long, considering that Hendrix doesn’t (yet) promote itself as a particularly eco-friendly school.

One thing we did publicize was the recent removal of a beehive from the ceiling of the aptly named Green Chapel.  Rather than send in an exterminator, Hendrix put in the time and effort to “humanely save the hive, which involved dismantling part of the chapel’s roof, gently removing the honeycomb, and scooping the bees – one handful at a time – into a ‘swarm box.’ All of this was achieved from the top of a platform elevated 40 feet above the ground.”

The quote is drawn from a story that Mark Scott, the Director of Media Relations but better known as “my boss,” wrote and put up on the homepage.  Less well publicized are more important things, like the fact that all of the residence halls are equipped with geothermal heating systems.  Hendrix is also a leader in the field of green chemistry, which focuses on designing chemical reactions in a way that reduces or eliminates hazardous materials and wastes.

I’ll know more soon, after I conduct some more interviews.  Then you’ll know more, too.  I’m under the impression that the information I create will become part of a webpage on the Hendrix site, but it might equally well turn into a pamphlet of some sort.

The other news is that I have moved into my apartment on Front Street!  My roommates, Leeann and Katie, are nice as can be.  Katie is working in the Odyssey office and Leeann is actually conducting green chemistry research with chemistry professor Liz Gron.  I am very pleased with myself for how quickly my room became clean and organized – and how long it has stayed that way.  If responsible adulthood is correlated with waking up in time to eat breakfast and make my bed in the morning, I’m well on my way!

Aside from working and cleaning, I’ve found lots of time to read.  I haven’t yet cracked into any of the textbooks I kept, instead preferring to start the summer off light with Bridge to Terabithia and A Little Princess, both children’s books, and the steamy Henry and June.  I’ve now moved back into academia with the 400-page Guns, Germs and Steel.  A friend loaned it to me about two years ago, and now he finally wants it back.  Which means now I finally have to read it.

I also spend time with my friends who are still in Conway, which is what I’m about to go do.  I’m going home to St. Louis for the next week, which will include my birthday.  My friend Aaron and I are getting together tonight to bake a cake and take a celebratory dip in the fountain on campus, since we won’t be together on our actual birthdays -- June 5^th and 6^th, respectively. A birthday trip to the fountain is a famous Hendrix tradition, but it usually involves the birthday boy or girl getting thrown in.  With the weather as warm as it's been -- in the 80s and 90s --  I will go in willingly.

As I walk toward Couch Hall, the metal patio table out front is lonely.  No one is smoking a cigarette, talking on a cell phone, absentmindedly flicking ashes into the dirt.  As I approach the front door, no one bursts through unexpectedly, running to get to class on time.  I scan my ID card, pull open the front door, and enter Couch completely undisturbed. 

When I walk in, the TV in the lounge is off.  It surprises me every time, because during the school year the TV is always on.  Sometimes no one is watching, but the Couchies can never quite get the hang of turning the TV off.  It’s like whoever was watching just wandered off during a commercial break and forgot to come back.  But all the absentminded Couchies have gone home, now, and I have never seen Couch so spotless or so silent. 

The underclassmen left early last week, but campus was still pretty vibrant until last Saturday, when the seniors graduated and went home for good.  The vacated rooms have their doors open wide, reinforcing the fact that the building is almost totally empty.  It’s just me and Albine Miwemugeni.  She lives two doors down from me, so I don’t have the disconcerting feeling of knowing I am the only one on my floor, or – heaven forbid – the only person in the building.  But it’s still pretty weird.  When she moves out on the 19^th, I might not be able to sleep.

Couch is famous for being high-spirited and rather grungy.  Now, the floors shine.  There’s no hair in the shower stalls.  The toilets aren’t clogged.  The common room furniture is clean and properly aligned.  … I barely recognize the place.

I move out of Couch and into the college-owned Front Street Apartments on May 23^rd.  It should be better then, with more people around.  If there’s anything I’ve learned so far from my summer work at Hendrix, it is that I never want to be a recluse!

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I was understandably frightened, but the IT angels have fixed everything now.  Here is that post, belatedly.

***

A week ago I tried to write a post called "Utter Exhaustion."  I got about three words written, and then I just couldn't force my fingers to type anymore.  Instead, I closed down my computer and slept for ten hours.  After following that routine for the past seven days, I am now refreshed and ready to write.

First, let me explain my exhaustion.  Basically, I wanted to be on the Dean's List.  That means I wanted to make straight As.  That means I needed to make As on all my finals, which means that I needed to study.  A lot.  Luckily, my finals were pretty spread out: a presentation last Wednesday, a test on Thursday, a paper on Friday, and another test on Tuesday.

The last one, 20th Century East Asian-American Relations, was the kicker -- dozens of terms to memorize, lots of historical events to analyze, etc.  After studying all day on Sunday and Monday, I stayed up until 3 a.m. on Monday night and then woke up at 7 a.m. to start studying again.  By 10 a.m., the test was done.  By noon I was waking up from the deepest nap of my life.

It is here again appropriate to quote Longfellow, as I did last semester during finals:

"The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night."

The sleeplessness worked: I'm back on the Dean's List.  But since then I have been attaining no heights; I've just been sleeping.  Indeed, since finals ended I've mostly been at a loss as to what I should do with myself.  I sold a few books back to the bookstore, netting about $20 back from my original $400+ purchase.  Part of the reason I got so little money back was that selling books back is never really a good deal.  At best, you can get back 50% of your original costs.  The women who run the bookstore are very sweet, but they're still The Man.

The real reason I didn't get much money back is that I didn't sell very many of my books back.  I kept seven of them:

• Supercapitalism by Robert Reich
• Bad Samaritans by Ha-Joon Chang
• World on Fire by Amy Chua
• Coyotes by Ted Conover
• Embracing Defeat by John Dower
• Lyndon Johnson's War by Michael H. Hunt
• About Face James Mann

Don't tell Professor Zhao this, but the reason I kept many of his assigned texts was that I just couldn't get through the lengthy reading assignments each week.  Now that it's summer and I don't have three other classes' texts to read, I can take a more leisurely look into Asian history.

The reason I kept my Political Economy books is that I want to share them.  I can't think of another class that has so revolutionized my understanding of the way the world works.  I know now how the IMF, World Bank, and WTO work, and I could explain to you the various ways in which the policies they promote are antithetical to the ways in which the United States has became an advanced, industrialized nation.

Or I could talk to you about how embracing democracy and free market capitalism simultaneously – a decision the United States encourages throughout the developing world – can be the worst thing for a country.  In class we debated whether economies can grow forever and whether we should focus immediately on "powering down" and re-localizing our economies. We also talked about the "bottom billion" – those living on less than $2 per day.  We talked about the way industries' lobbyists have weakened the democratic process in America.  Although I have no plans to change my major to economics, I think the basic knowledge I gained is absolutely crucial to my understanding of the way the world works.

Ditto for East Asian Relations, and for Cultures of the US-Mexico Borderlands. Graduating and getting a job would eventually be nice, but the real goal of my Hendrix education has been to make me a more educated and informed citizen. This year has been the most effective one so far at bringing me closer to that goal.  Between the fantastic classes this spring and the amazing adventures last fall and summer, I feel dramatically smarter and more capable now than I did this time last year. 

That feeling of competence and understanding is a reassuring one as I come closer and closer to my twentieth birthday.  I can read the New York Times and, by and large, really understand what the articles are about.  I have context, background, understanding.  It feels good.  As I experience the joyous horror of knowing I've seen two decades pass, it at least feels good to think I've learned something from them.  Maybe next year I'll finally learn how to sleep and get good grades.  ... Nah.

So here's to you.  Now it's May 2.  It's a Friday.  Sit down, crack open a nice rootbeer, and watch twelve hours of That 70's Show.  You earned it.  This time next year, you'll be a sleep-deprived wreck yet again, studying for your spring finals.

Hendrix is getting ready for you, just so you know.  A big truck came a few days ago and dumped a fresh load of pecan shells in the Pecan Grove, so it's extra pretty and extra crunchy.  The construction at the new Student Life and Technology Center looks to be going well; they're pouring the foundation at this very moment.  Across the street, the streets of The Village are being poured.  It's an exciting time.

In about three and a half months you and your family will show up at Hendrix in your mom's minivan, with all the most important things in your life packed into boxes and stacked in the back seat.  You'll probably cry when they drives away, but you won't have time to be sad for long.  You'll inevitably have brought too much or too little, and unpacking becomes your first priority.  You'll have left your toothbrush on the bathroom counter, and you'll make your first Hendrix friend when you walk down the halls asking anyone if they have a car and a spare moment to drive you to Wal-Mart.

Ah, I miss those days.  I won't be here to personally welcome you to campus next semester, because I'm going abroad again.  But I do have a little present for you: my reflections from the first year of college.

• First Impressions of a Freshman 
• Lasting Impressions 
• The Hendrix Experience 

There are times I've been disappointed by Hendrix, but I really can't think of anywhere I've been so relaxed, so inspired, and so happy.  You've picked a good place.

We don't get paid for the hours we put in, but we do get points. At the end of each semester, we all get together for an auction and use our points to bid for things. In the past I've won coffee cups and gift certificates, but this was the best auction ever. My friend Jake and I are both staying in Conway over the summer to work for the College, so we pooled our money and bought summer-enhancing prizes: a beach towel, a game of Jenga, a badminton and horseshoes set, and an absolutely enormous bottle of "Fan Yang's Gazillion Bubbles."

I'll be working at the Office of Communications this summer, writing articles about the students doing Odyssey projects this summer. I genuinely enjoy working for the Comm office, and I'm really excited about the projects they have lined up for me, but I was also looking for a good reason not to go home. I love my parents and siblings, but it's hard to go back to Kirkwood and realize how much my high school friends have changed. After a remarkably lame winter break, when I realized all that my old friends like to do is get drunk and play Rock Band, I promised I wouldn't subject myself to more of that.

I'm also looking forward to interacting with Conway on a deeper level. As it is, I leave campus maybe once a week, to get dinner on Saturday nights or to buy some necessities at Target. Even after living here for a year and a half, I can count on my fingers the number of street names I know. I'm hoping at least to get to know enough to count on my toes.

Another exciting thing about Conway is that I recently discovered I have relatives here. She's something like a second cousin once-removed -- someone rather distantly related -- but she has a black lab named Harry Potter, so she must be cool. We have yet to meet.

In order to prepare for summer -- and to procrastinate on studying for finals -- I've been buying books.  I went out to Hastings book store yesterday and picked up a $5 copy of A Little Princess to add to my collection of cheap summer reads. It reminded me of my last Saturday in London, when I walked to the local bargain bookstore for the last time and bought the book I would read on the flight home. That time I chose A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, but I ended up reading only about 10 pages on the plane. So it goes.  (I finished all 600+ pages during winter break, while my friends played drinking games and Rock Band.)

Also on my list are The Red Passport by Katherine Shonk and The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen.  Each was on sale for $1 at the Hendrix bookstore.  They may be remarkably bad, but at least they were also remarkably cheap.  Perhaps when I finish these, I'll check out some from the Hendrix suggested reading list. Any other recommendations, anyone?

They actually ran in chronological order, which was surely unintentional on the editors’ part. "Berlin," page 10., was taken in the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, in early August. (I'm a very creative namer.)

“Brussels," page 34, was taken in Brussels, Belgium, in late August.  This gorgeously rusty door was on the very sketchy street where my hostel was located.

One I never gave a name ran on page 56.  It was taken in London, in front of Westminster Abbey, in late November.

The last one is probably my favorite picture I took in Europe.  It reminds me of the bag scene in the movie American Beauty – probably my favorite movie scene of all time. A teenage boy shows his girlfriend a video he took of a plastic bag blowing around in the wind.  His narration of the video, which he terms “the most beautiful thing I’ve ever filmed,” is:

It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing, and there’s this electricity in the air – you can almost hear it, right? And this bag was just dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes.  That’s the day I realized there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid, ever.

Video’s a poor excuse, I know, but it helps me remember.  I need to remember.  Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart is just going to cave in.

I love that, and I love that my photo reminds me of it.  Apparently Rita Henry, the judge of the 2008 Aonian Visual Art Competition in Photography, liked my photo too. She gave it first place in the competition. I was awarded a certificate yesterday at the Honors Day ceremony, and I got to talk about my photograph at the Aonian distribution reception.

When I got back to my room after the reception, I read the Aonian from cover to cover, starting with page 70 and working backwards, the way I like to read magazines.  It inspired in me a feeling I haven’t had in about six years: the desire to write a poem.  An almost burning desire to cut through the prosaic nature of day-to-day existence, to scorn sentences and reach for the shorter, truer form of poetry.

I didn’t do it, though.  I wrote an Anthropology essay instead.  So it goes.

My friend Katie called me around four that afternoon, wondering if I would like to take her spot at the Culinary Club dinner.  As someone who is not particularly adept at cooking anything more complicated than grilled cheese, I hesitated.  Cooking itself is scary enough, and cooking in front of other people -- especially the kind of people who would be motivated enough to join a culinary club -- sounded awful.

Of course, my stomach and my pocketbook got the best of me.  The cafeteria doesn't serve dinner on Saturday nights, so students are left to fend for themselves.  How could I turn down a free meal?  Using that same "let's save a few bucks" rationale, I roped my roommate Emily into joining me.

The club meets in the kitchen of the Hendrix cafeteria, which is reason enough in itself to show up to at least one meeting.  Freshman Kevin Watford runs the show, assigning pairs of students to work on the various dishes that will compose the meal.  Hendrix's certified executive chef Scott Pickens oversees the cooking, to make sure no one burns the building down. He also taste-tests the food at the end of the night and offers his commentary.  More on that later.

The menu for the evening included baked chicken, some special kind of broccoli, and a lima bean dish, with cinnamon fritters for dessert.  Since I'm a vegetarian, Emily and I were assigned to make the beans -- a task which is harder than you would imagine.  The recipe, which was published in Cooking Light magazine, calls for thirteen ingredients!  That makes it by far the most complicated dish I've ever even thought about making.

Emily and I boiled the beans, diced and sauteed ten cups of vegetables, and simmered sauces.  We improvised spice measurements, because the cafeteria makes all its dishes in such large amounts that they have no need for a tablespoon measure.  We even reassessed the recommended cooking time, cutting it almost in half.  The result was an impressively tasty, if not very beautiful, lima bean casserole.

When Scott came to try our dish, he paused.  He wafted the aroma toward his nose and complimented the fragrance -- a good start!  After he took a bite, he commented that the beans were very well cooked and that the sauce had a pleasing, sun-dried tomato taste to it.  Emily and I were happy not to burned the kitchen down, chopped any appendages off, or have burned or under-cooked or over-spiced or otherwise ruined our dish.  With the compliments, we were glowing.

The other dishes were equally well executed.  The chicken was golden brown, the broccoli was supple but not mushy, and the sugary fritters were worth eating as an appetizer (which I did).

After eating, we spent about half an hour cleaning up the various messes we had made.  I washed so many dishes that my back started to hurt, while other students sanitized counters, mopped floors, and put the clean dishes away.  From handing out the recipes to drying off the last dish, we spent about four hours in the kitchen.

This was the culinary club's last real meeting of the year, but they will continue on alternate Saturday nights throughout next year, and hopefully long into the future.

Blackmon himself never studied journalism in college, nor did he pursue a master's degree. Instead, he focused his efforts on on-the-job training.  Throughout his time at the WSJ, which is known for its in-depth analytical reporting, Blackmon repeatedly covered the complex issues of race in American society.  This work led to his new non-fiction book, Slavery by Another Name, which was just reviewed very favorably in the New York Times.  Here's an excerpt:

"...'Slavery by Another Name' becomes relentless and fascinating. It exposes what has been a mostly unexplored aspect of American history (though there have been dissertations and a few books from academic presses). It creates a broad racial, economic, cultural and political backdrop for events that have haunted Mr. Blackmon and will now haunt us all."

During his visit to campus, Blackmon stayed in the guest apartment in the Murphy House. That apartment, which is off-limits to students, intrigues me.  The Murphy House itself is so cozy and comfortable that I'm convinced the apartment must be luxurious and amazing.  It has become my life goal to grow up and be cool enough that Hendrix invites me back to campus and lets me stay in the Murphy apartment.  With alumni as impressive as Blackmon (and Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacobs, who visited a few weeks ago) setting such good examples, I'm convinced it can't be that hard.

A large percentage of Hendrix traditions have to do with the cafeteria.  For example, if you pick up one of the eight sparkly green Disco Trays left over from the '60s, you're guaranteed good luck for the day.  Plus, on your birthday the cafeteria ladies will bring you a cake and call out, "Hey, y'all!  Today is ______'s birthday!  Do you want to help us?"  They proceed to sing a special Hendrix birthday song, and all the students clap along.

One of my favorite cafeteria traditions, though, is the theme day.  There are about a dozen each year, but we've had two in the past week!  Last Thursday the cafeteria honored the retiring professors by serving their favorite foods during lunch.  Today was a more traditional theme day, the annual Rock 'n' Roll Special.

This awesome car was parked outside the entrance to the caf.  My friend Harmony and I couldn't help sitting down for the photo opportunity.  The cafeteria itself was also decked out, with paper music notes dangling from the ceiling.  The themed food included chili foot-longs, French fries, BBQ smokies, onion rings, cheddar cheese jalepeños, and more. The best part is that a live band played old rock favorites in the middle of the cafeteria.

Past theme days have included an Academy Awards luncheon, with extra-fancy food and free Oscar statues. Several of the cafeteria ladies walked around serving hors d'oeurves and fake champagne (sparkling grape juice). Other classics include the Jimmy Buffett lunch, Fall of the Wall day, the Valentine's Special, the Halloween Special, the Thanksgiving special, the Luau luncheon, and more. My personal favorite is the breakfast-for-dinner day that happens twice yearly, on the night before finals begin.  There's nothing like eating French toast and scrambled eggs when your brain is scrambled from studying French.

I will be studying in Mexico through ISEP -- the International Student Exchange Program.  I also applied to schools in Argentina and Chile, but UDEM was my first choice.  While taking ANTH 230 Cultures of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands this spring, I realized just how much I didn't know about our southern neighbor.  I'm especially excited to be studing in Mexico this fall, because I feel sure that immigration issues will play a large role in the 2008 election.

Through my anthro class, I've also become interested in the issue of crypto-Jews, especially the Sephardic (Spanish) Jews who were forced to convert to Catholocism but who secretly retained their Jewish traditions.  Many crypto-Jews fled the Spanish Inquisition by heading to colonize the New World, and Monterrey (as well as the wider state of Nuevo León) became home for many of them. 

In fact, according to the incredibly reliable (or maybe not ...) Wikipedia, "Monterrey was founded by Luis Carvajal y de la Cueva who although had converted to Roman Catholicism, in 1590 was accused by the Spanish Inquisition of heresy. It was officially found that members of his extended family had reverted to Judaism and he was exiled from the territory then known as New Spain. A large portion of his extended family, 121 people, was executed in Mexico City in 1596. They included most of the original settlers of Monterrey."

The ideas are just starting to come together for me, but I'm hoping to study Mexican crypto-Judaism as an Odyssey project while I'm abroad.  Let the research begin!

We were also graced by the presence of a special visitor, Dale Miller (a.k.a. Skirt Man).  Miller works as a computer technician at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock.  He also likes to wear women's clothing.  For more truly interesting facts about Miller, check out his website.  For example, he is an ordained minister.  He also "used to belong to a Southern Baptist Church, but they had a real problem with men in skirts."
 
Miss Hendrix
 
Saturday night it was time for Miss Hendrix, the finale of the Campus Kitty fundraising week.  Miss Hendrix is a traditional beauty pageant, with Hendrix students as contestants.  The participants answer questions, show off their curves in evening gowns, and perform a talent.  The only catch is that all the contestants are male.  The pageant is one of the most entertaining nights of the year, and no one thinks twice about spending $12 to see it.  (The money all goes to charity, too.)  Students stood in line for hours on Friday afternoon to get the best tickets.
 
The raunch-factor for the shows is often high.  The students create elaborate personas for their female selves, including innuendo-laden stage names.  My two favorites this year were Britney Spear-Me and Robot Girl v. 6.9.   Spear-Me's talent section included a medley of the best Britney Spears pop songs.  The highlight of her performance was when she ripped off her bouncy blond wig to reveal – gasp! – a shaved head.  The crowd was dying laughing.
 
Robot Girl's performance was equally amusing.  For example, during the Q&A section one of the emcees asked whether RG came pre-assembled.  RG's response was pre-recorded in a spot-on robot voice.  Throughout the pageant, RG maintained perfect robot posture and moved stiffly and jerkily.  Her talent portion also featured a choreographed dance to the song "Barbie Girl."
 
The following video will give a glimpse into the charmed world of the Miss Hendrix pageant.  The Campus Kitty theme this year was "I Dream of Kitty," so the dancers have Arabian-style costumes.  You can see the magic bottle in the background.  This clip is from when the Miss Hendrix contestants first make their appearance on stage.
 
Click here to see a YouTube video of Miss Hendrix.

After the competition finished, while the judges tabulated scores and picked a winner, the Campus Kitty chairperson came to announce the total amount of money that had been raised during the week.  It was more than $41,000! 

After the winners were announced -- Robot Girl garnered 2nd place, and a Miss Mandalay won 1st -- the crowd of students headed to the Hulen Ballroom on campus for the *free* afterparty.  After a week of shelling out a few dollars for each event we attended, it's nice to get back to being a college cheapskate.

My classes this semester are 20th Century East Asian-American Relations, Survey of Latin American Literature, Cultures of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, and Political Economy.  It's an amazing combination of classes, because what I'm learning in one class frequently enhances my work in another class.  Cultures of the Borderlands quite often relates to the Survey of Lat. Am. Lit. class.  It also relates heavily to Political Economy.  And to 20th Cent. East Asian-American Relations, which also relates to Political Economy.  You can see they're quite interconnected.

I make the most inter-class thought connections during these super-busy weeks, when I spend all my time reviewing all the materials for all of my classes.  It's an exhilerating and exhausting process.

On top of all that excitement, it's Campus Kitty week!  CK is our big fundraiser of the year, and we raise tens of thousands of dollars each year.  The premise is that each of the on-campus events that take place during CK week charges a small fee for entrance.  (The other 51 weeks of the year, Hendrix events are totally free.)  So I paid $3 to see the Vagina Monologues performed on Wendesday, and a measly $5 to see Of Montreal rock out on Friday night.  A host of other events will continue until the huge, capstone event on Saturday night: the Miss Hendrix Pageant.

For a mere $12, Hendrix students can see their fellow classmates take place in a traditional beauty queen pageant.  Contestants show off their moves during the talent portion, and then they show off their curves in the evening gown portion.  The trick?  The curves are all fake, because the contestants are all male.  It's a hit every year.

After Miss Hendrix is crowned, the campus regroups in the Hulen Ballroom for an afterparty.  We celebrate the end of CK week and the return of free fun.  For me, after such an arduous week, it will be more like a return to fun in general.  Here's to the craziest week of my life.

I have my share of criticisms of the College, especially the rather ungraceful way the size of our student body has recently increased.  On-campus housing has become more of a commodity, so more upperclassmen (and even sophomores) have begun to live off campus. 

This spring, for example, students returning from studying abroad (myself included) were not-so-subtly encouraged not to move back on campus.  I found a spot in Couch Hall, but many students were left trying to find an apartment while living 4000 miles away from Conway.  Not ideal.

Other recent lightning rods for student debate (and complaint) include the ideas to start a football program at Hendrix and to end the traditional Shirttails dance performance.  From what I've heard, students generally oppose both.

The Student Senate has been effective in addressing many of students' complaints and making students' voices heard, but it's generally slow progress.  Today, President Cloyd made it easier for students to get a pipeline to the top.  He met informally with students for two hours this afternoon.  The entire campus was invited to his "Fireplace Chat" to air their concerns and to listen to his rationale for various policies and decisions.

It became much more than that, though -- a kind of brainstorming session.  Students shared ideas about how to improve the advising process and which academic programs need strengthening.  I felt like I was really part of the idea machine that runs Hendrix.  Helen Plotkin, the Associate VP for Communications and Marketing, sat nearby and jotted down our thoughts as they poured out.

At times it became hard for us to hear each other, because the Burrow -- our student center -- can be a boisterous and busy place.  A group of students joked loudly in the far corner while another played piano.  The six or so of us who stayed longest ended up with our chairs scooted into a very small circle, just for acoustic reasons.

President Cloyd announced that he hoped to host another chat before the end of the year, and Ms. Plotkin sensibly suggested the quieter, more restrained Murphy House as a more suitable location.  The president insisted that the Burrow, with its more open and accessible location, encouraged passersby to stop and have a listen.  I fully agree.

Whenever the next chat occurs, I encourage current students to take the time to attend.  I hope enough of us show up that sitting in a circle doesn't fix the acoustic problem, because the diameter is too wide.  I'm sure Dr. Cloyd would be happy to plug in a microphone.

Hendrix had its first snow of the season this past Tuesday, March 4th.  About an inch fell early that morning, but by the afternoon it had all melted away.  Now it's back, with a vengeance!  We're expecting six to eight inches of snow by tomorrow morning.

This unseasonably wintry weather comes us we get ready to leave for Spring Break.  Tomorrow afternoon, we will all be liberated for a week -- hopefully off to warmer climes.  Personally, I'm taking a road trip through California with my brother.  Highs of 60+ every day, baby.

This weather is bringing back great memories, though.  Last spring we got about an inch of snow in Conway, and the whole school went crazy!  Students made makeshift sleds and fought nearly interminable snowball battles.  Snow angels like the one I made were scattered across campus.  To warm us up, one of my RA's baked dozens of chocolate chip cookies and mixed up a huge pot of hot chocolate, which she shared with all of the residents of Couch Hall.

The rarity of snow makes it a special blessing for Hendrix students.  But precisely because Arkansas gets snow so infrequently, the snow-removal infrastructure is pretty weak.  The next day, even though only about an inch of snow had accumulated, most classes were canceled.  A prospective student from Colorado was visiting that day, and she just laughed at us.  (She wasn't too put off, though.  She's a freshman now.)

I feel sure students across campus are crossing their fingers right now, hoping against hope that classes will be canceled tomorrow.  It's midterms week, so for many students, missing class will mean an extra week of study time.  I, on the other hand, have finished my tests and am hoping the snow doesn't stick too well.  I have a flight to catch!  I'll be back to blogging in a week, when I return to Conway.

Surprisingly, my friend Kent -- who had a test the next morning at 9 -- volunteered cheerfully.  But when Mandi's train got delayed and wasn't expected in until past 9, he had to back out.  And that is when a true Hendrix miracle began.  Two-thirds of the way through calling every single person in my cell phone's contact list, I dialed Rachel's number. 

Now, I didn't really know Rachel terribly well.  We had met in the Murphy House and become acquaintances through our habit of late-night Burrow snacking.  We had only exchanged phone numbers the night before.  But dear, dear Rachel answered my rather desperate phone call that Friday morning and said, "Sure.  Yeah, I can drive you to Little Rock."  (Choirs of angels spontaneously began to sing.)

This all could have been solved if Mandi had just come to Hendrix.  She's a sophomore at Earlham College (basically, a Quaker version of Hendrix set in Indiana) and she studies linguistics.  She's known she wanted to study linguistics since about our freshman year of high school.  And -- you guessed it -- Hendrix doesn't have a linguistics program.  (I tried to convince her to sacrifice her dreams to follow me everywhere I go, but somehow that wasn't very convincing.)

Now we're limited to phone calls, e-mails, and visits about once a semester if we're lucky.  But I wouldn't leave Hendrix and she wouldn't leave Earlham.  There are lots of parallels between the two colleges and their respective towns, Conway and Richmond. My cute local coffee shop is called Something Brewing; hers is Sacred Grounds.  I get my disgusting late-night meals at Waffle House; she does the same at Steak'n'Shake.  Conway has about 50,000 residents, whereas Richmond has about 40,000.  (That's just enough of a difference, by the way, for Conway to provide a Wal-Mart AND a Target.)

I'm sure I could have been happy at Earlham, and Mandi could have been happy here.  That's a truth of the college admissions process that is often overlooked: there are many different colleges at which you could prosper and be happy.  There can be several right answers, but often one feels the "rightest".  Here are the top reasons I figured I'd be happiest at Hendrix:

• An orientation program designed to help me meet lots of the other freshman, in a drug- and alcohol-free environment.
• Close enough to a major metropolis to have easy access to malls, cultural activities, and plane/bus/train transport.
• Far enough from a major metropolis to allow me to focus on my studies.
• Genuinely good cafeteria food, with lots of options.
• A student body drawn from across the country and the world.
• A low student-to-teacher ratio, and a small college size.
• A wet campus.  When I'm of legal drinking age, I'll want to be able to keep a bottle of wine in my fridge without breaking the college's rules.
• Scholarships and financial aid that made college affordable for my family.  (That was an especially important aspect, since I do have a twin sister also studying.)
• A residential campus with lots of (free!) activities going on throughout the day and in the evening.
• The amazing Hendrix-Murphy Foundation for language and literature, which provides internship stipends and travel grants, as well as bringing renowned authors and poets to campus.  As a writer, that program was essential in my decision to come to Hendrix.  The Marshall T. Steel Center for Religion and Philosophy, the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, and many other programs on campus offer opportunities of similar magnitude to other majors.
• And, of course, the Odyssey program!  I almost certainly wouldn't have written a novel or started blogging without the incentive of receiving Odyssey credit.  Now, both of those experiences (and my Hendrix-in-London participation) are recorded forever on an Odyssey experiential transcript that will be sent out along with my academic transcript.

Knowing what I do now, I'd also add:

• A fat endowment.
• Affiliation with the International Student Exchange Programs (ISEP), as well as coordinating many of its own study abroad programs.
• A plethora of student worker jobs, ranging from flipping burgers in the Burrow to assisting an admissions counselor.
• Lots of Mexican restaurants!
• Southern hospitality, and accent.  (I've started saying y'all and yes, ma'am -- it's very exciting.)
• People who are sweet enough to drive near-strangers to railroad stations 45 minutes away.

The only thing Hendrix is missing is my sister!  But she surely has a pro-Earlham list almost as long as this one.

Ben and his friend Clare are cross-dressing for tonight's dance.  Although not widely practiced, cross-dressing is widely accepted on the Hendrix campus, which is known for its openness and acceptance.

With that in mind, I'd like to share with you the story of a 15-year-old boy in California who was gunned down in his English class last Tuesday for dressing "effeminately," according to the Los Angeles Times.  The alleged killer was a 14-year-old, who is being held on $770,000 bond.

Here's an excerpt from a San Francisco Chronicle story:

Several classmates have said King would wear feminine attire, making him an unpopular figure with other boys at his campus.

King sometimes came to school wearing makeup and high heels, said eighth-grader Nicholas Cortez, 14.

Another eighth-grader, Michael Sweeney, said King's appearance was "freaking the guys out," the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

"He would come to school in high-heeled boots, makeup, jewelry and painted nails - the whole thing," Sweeney told the Times.

Have you heard this story?

The New York Times, which wrote multiple stories about the City Hall shooting in my town, has yet to mention the shocking California story.  I just thought I'd help get the word out.  For the best short summary, click here: Boy, 14, charged with murder, hate crime.  For the fullest coverage I've found, click here: Oxnard residents are deeply shaken by boy's fatal shooting.

Share it with your friends, talk about it with your parents, and -- for everyone's sake -- practice and preach tolerance.

The system has been in place all year, but it was first tested last Tuesday to warn students that a wave of strong thunderstorms would be passing through Conway.  Now, with the tragedy at Northern Illinois University, we are reminded of the importance of the system.

The Communications office, which is in charge of updating the college's emergency plan, sent out an e-mail this afternoon reminding any students who have not yet done so to register for the system.  Subscribing to the system is free and voluntary, but Hendrix hopes for 100 percent student participation.

You all may have heard of Kirkwood in the news recently.  It's a nice little suburban town outside St. Louis, population: 27,000.  The Kirkwood City Council meeting last Thursday was interrupted by a citizen with two guns, who proceeded to kill five attendees and injure two more.  The gunman's actions were based on a complex history of interactions with the Council.  That history is actually best explained on Wikipedia.

With my town in such pandemonium, it seemed like a good time to go home and see family, to try to understand what happened.  On Thursday night I bought a round-trip Amtrak ticket from Little Rock to St. Louis.  The times were inconvenient: leaving Little Rock at midnight Friday, getting back into Little Rock at 3:10 a.m. on Sunday.  Since I don't have my own car, I had to rely on my amazing friends Julia, Ashley, and Amanda to take time out of their partying/sleeping schedules to take me to and from the station.  In fact, the return train was two hours late, leaving Amanda and Ashley with about two and a half hours of sleep that night.  That's what Hendrix friends do for each other.  Wow. 

I also appreciate the people around campus who expressed concern for my town, including staff members.  Thanks, guys.

Tentacle-tastic, no?  It got pretty crispy on the outside, but inside it was fluffy and delicious.  I got to eat part of the tentacle on the right.  Mmm.  I'm also still a tad sick, coughing and stuff, so I wasn't allowed to help bake it.  That's my kind of cooking!

The octopus cake was a tasty end to a satisfying weekend.  A rundown:

Friday

• Group dinner at the Pasta House
• Girl talk time with some friends back in my room
• Extended coed conversation about bowel movements (it was a scientific conversation -- don't judge)
• Party in Martin Hall

Saturday

• Long shopping trip in Little Rock with two of my bestest friends.  I'm making a trip to New York in late February, so I needed something to wear to a nice dinner.  I swear, I tried on about fifty dresses.  End product: a classy, modest black satin dress that somehow makes me look tall.  Who knew that was possible?
• Dinner at Pei Wei in Little Rock
• *FREE* concert on campus.  James "Blood" Ulmer and his band played a rocking show.  His sound has been described as "the missing link between Jimi Hendrix and Wes Montgomery on one hand, between P-Funk and Mississippi Fred McDowell on the other."  We stayed around and got to meet the band afterwards.  My friend Julia's dad was DYING of jealousy.
• Stop by the Burrow to visit Deedee, one of my favorite cafeteria ladies.  When I got back to Hendrix, she was one of the people I was most excited to see.
• Watch 15 minutes of Saturday Night Live and complain about how bad it is.
• Watch The Godfather, Part II, with friends.

Sunday

• Homework time!
• Superbowl watching party in the Burrow

And, of course,

• Octopus cake

My weekend probably should have been spent doing a tad more homework, but a balance will be established soon.  But not today.  Today I'm watching the election coverage all night long.

For you to get a full idea of what goes on at Hendrix every day, I'm providing your with a portion of today's Hendrix Today.  This doesn't even include more informal events, such as the student-run Super Tuesday watch parties going on at the French House and in Hardin Hall.  Or the Mardi Gras celebrations going on around campus.

I'm including the full text describing each activity, so you know exactly what we get.  Don't bother reading all of it; this is for your skimming pleasure.

Tuesday Talks
Everyone is invited to Tuesday Talks.  A weekly luncheon sponsored by the Hendrix Lilly and Chaplains Office that takes place in Hulen Ballroom every Tuesday from noon – 1 p.m.  Each week a faculty or staff member (occasionally a special guest) will answer the question, “what is my calling or vocation and how do I know?”  All students, faculty, and staff are invited to the lunch.  It is for people with a meal plan.  If you do not have a meal plan, the cost is only $1.  Today’s speaker will be Jennifer Penner.
 
"Hendrix Psychology Major as Scientist-Practitioner: A Case Study"
Dr. Art Gillaspy, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Central Arkansas, will present this topic and also discuss the graduate program at UCA. Sponsored by the Hendrix Psychology Department and the Psychology Club. Today at 11:10 a.m. in DW Reynolds Room 8.
 
Habitat for Humanity Spring Break Trip
Still don't have Spring Break plans? Bring your friends and join Habitat for Humanity for a road trip to a nearby state to build a home for a family in need. It's cheap- probably $75 to $100 per person. There will be a quick meeting tonight at 8 p.m. in Mills 101 to sign up, vote on the location, and discuss important information for those who are interested. If you can't make it tonight and are still interested in going, email Heather at -----@hendrix.edu. It'll be a blast!
 
Foreign Film Series: Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)
Tonight at 7 p.m., Murphy Seminar Room. Das Leben der Anderen focuses on the horrifying and sometimes unintentionally funny system of observation in East Berlin in 1984. Captain Gerd Wiesler’s assignment to observe celebrated writer and actress couple, Georg Dreyman and Christa-Maria Sieland, appears simple until he gains further insight into their lives. Wiesler’s gradual disillusionment is traced as his fascination with the couple leads to further complications and plot twists. (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Germany, 2006, 137 min.) Refreshments will be served.
 
Pericles Super Tuesday Watch Party
Watch the results on a big screen at 8 p.m. tonight in the Burrow with friends and enjoy free pizza and drinks on behalf of Project Pericles.
 
Undergraduate Research Opportunity Meeting
If you are interested in getting involved in biological research this summer or the next academic year, please plan on attending this meeting today at 6 p.m. in DW Reynolds 10. At this meeting you will learn about on-campus and off-campus research opportunities.
 
To Learn or Not to Learn
‘To Learn or Not to Learn’ (You mean I’ve got a choice?)  Come discover and discuss your optimal ways of learning at this workshop sponsored by Academic Support Services!  Bring your curiosity and a pencil to DW Reynolds 10 today at 4:10 p.m.  If you have questions, call Julie Brown at 505.2954.
 
Bonhoeffer House Community Meal
Want to know more about the Bonhoeffer House? Interested in community-based Christian living? Join the Bonhoeffer House in a vegetarian meal tonight at 6 p.m. in Stella. They will discuss living in the Bonhoeffer House and answer any questions you may have about it. This is free and open to all.
 
Prospective Students on Campus Today
The Office of Admissions would like to invite anyone to join prospective students for lunch today to eat, chat, or just say hey in the cafeteria. They will be meeting at 12:30 p.m. and just in case you might know someone from the area, the students are: Monica Sitzer from Weiner, AR and Lauren Ricci from Needham, MA.
 
Communion
Today at 4:15 p.m. in the prayer room.  This event lasts 10 minutes and is open to everyone.  It is a non-denomination service.
 
Last Chance! Sign up for Favorite Poem Reading
Join other Hendrix students, faculty, and staff who will share their favorite poems that explore possible worlds and other worlds in a “Favorite Poem Reading” that will be held in the Murphy house at 6 p.m. on February 12. Please submit your name, the poem you’ve chosen, and a sentence or two about why it’s your favorite by 4 p.m. on Wednesday. Email your submissions or any questions to Morgan Ford, ------@hendrix.edu.
 
Orientation Peer Leader Applications Due Wednesday
It's your last chance to submit your application for Orientation 2008 Peer Leader. Applications are due this Wednesday. However, the Orientation (OR) Leader applications will be available beginning Monday, Feb. 11. Please go to http://www.hendrix.edu/orientation to get more information about these positions.
 

I'll also give a shout-out here to the bi-weekly Table Talk brochures that are available in the cafeteria.  A student produced publication, the Table Talk is an even cooler, funnier way to know what's going on around campus. There's way too much going on every day to do all of it, but these brochures at least let me know exactly what I'm missing.

I'll start with some background about my dedication to the Democratic party.  When I was in third grade, my dad wanted to take me to a Bob Dole rally. I put the foot down and insisted there was no way I wanted to see a Republican candidate's stupid speech. And from there, it's history.

My dedication to the Democrats still doesn't make it easy to make a choice in the primaries. As a native Missourian, I like the fact that Barack Obama is a senator from Illinois. I even read his autobiography, Dreams of My Father, when I was in high school. I really like the fact that he's uniting people and giving them hope.  But I'd like that a lot more if it were already 2016, and he wasn't a junior senator fresh from nowhere.

My original first choice was Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, who has a terrific resume and is particularly qualified, especially on immigration and foreign policy issues. Alas, poor Bill’s campaign never went much of anywhere. With Edwards and Kucinich officially out of the race, it looks like Hil is my gal.

I’m still no buff on her policy stances (as opposed to Mike Huckabee, about whom I know too much for my own comfort). So when a good friend told me this morning that he was headed to see Hillary speak about the economy in Little Rock, I saw it as an unmissable opportunity to hear about her platform from her own lips.

I liked what I heard. She had a lot of good things to say about her plans to improve access to higher education, especially in regard to student loan companies and governmental aid like Pell grants. I also liked her plan to universalize healthcare. I captured it on video and will upload it to YouTube, so the wider world could check it out.  (I'll let you know when it's up.)

Her speech today was immeasurably better than I’ve ever heard her speak before. (Her winner’s speech after the New Hampshire primary, on the other hand, was awful.) She was inspirational in a way I thought only Barack could be.

After she spoke about policy for an hour, she invited the audience down to talk one-on-one. My friends and I stayed until the bitter end; we watched her walk out the door. Before that we got to shake her hand, and she autographed our Hillary for President posters. Wow!

I’m inclined to say I’ll never wash my hand again, but that is patently untrue. I’m still sick and trying not to pick up any new bugs, so any trace of Hil is long gone by now. But the memory lingers on, and so do the photos.

Also: if you see in the news that Hillary develops an earache, sore throat, and runny nose ... it might be my fault.

I am sorry to report that I, too, am ill, despite my best efforts at hand-washing and orange juice-drinking.  However, I am only very mildly ill, and the flu shot I got today should help keep it that way.

Our thoughtful school nurse, having noticed the influx of sick kids, sent out an e-mail yesterday to warn us that the flu seems to be extra virulent this year and to remind us she has extra flu vaccines.  After class this morning, I walked to her office, took a few deep breaths, and requested the shot.  It costs twelve dollars, but what's that compared to a week of potential misery?

Even if I don't have the flu I'm still not looking too hot, so here's a picture to remember me by.  It's from the adorable dress-up dinner I went to the Saturday before last.  (I'm second from the left in the back row.)  Are we cute or what?

In contrast, I spent last Saturday evening in sweatpants, eating pizza from the Burrow and filling out study abroad forms.  Don't tell anyone, OK?  Our little secret.

P.S.  I applied to three schools via ISEP (International Student Exchange Programs) -- one in Monterrey, Mexico; one in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and one in Valparaiso, Chile.  I'll let you know how the application process goes!

I’ve just finished my first week of classes, and the workload is definitely going to be hefty.  But the fun-load, if you will, looks to be just as immense.  (Fun-load?  Did I just say that?  Whatever … just roll with it.)

My was filled with readings about the Ming dynasty and the necessity of growth in capitalist systems.  However, homework held no monopoly.  This past week I:

• Drove (well, I rode in my friend’s car) to Little Rock to see Atonement.
• Got together with eight friends to watch Project Runway, an old tradition.
• Watched Heima, a music film by Sigur Rós.
• Made a fantastic pasta dinner with a few friends – including a freshman whom I hosted during her visit to Hendrix last year!
• Watched Across the Universe for free in the Burrow.
• Went to an unofficial, off-campus theme party.
• Got dolled up in the dress I brought for Spring Formal and went out to dinner with six equally fancified friends, just for fun.
• Witnessed the glory of live band karaoke, as sung by Hendrix students in the Burrow.
• Ate at the famed Flying Burrito restaurant for the first time.
• Went to the Bath Junkie store (next door to the restaurant) for the first time!
• Met with prospective Hendrix students during an Admissions event at the Little Rock Arts Center.  I had the pleasure of telling them my most vivid Hendrix memory, which I’ll surely share with you in a future post.
• Thanked one of my former professors, Dr. McAinsh, for teaching his Contemporary Europe class so well last spring.  That class inspired me to spend the past six months studying in Europe, so I owed it to him to at least show him the pictures.  Thanks again, Dr. McAinsh!

In between all that, I even found time to do some of the more tedious things, like filling out the ISEP form for study abroad.  (I’m hoping/planning to go to Mexico or South America next fall.) 

I also declared my majors, finally.  I am officially an American Studies and International Relations and Global Studies (a.k.a. IRGS) double major!

Aside from the extremes of excitement and drudgery, I also found time to sleep.  Which is what I’m going to do now.  Goodnight!

I'm reflecting right now on a Hendrix admissions event I attended in St. Louis this winter, designed to help prospective students figure out if Hendrix is the right place for them.  The students I talked to expressed several of the concerns I had as a high school senior, especially about the location of the college.  Namely, it's in a fairly small town, in a dry county, in Arkansas.

I'll address the dry county issue first.  It almost isn't an issue, since Hendrix is a wet campus -- confusing, but true.  Living in a dry county is actually kind of nice, because the lack of bars in town keeps all the upperclassmen on campus, free to mingle with the younger folks like me!  As for getting a case of beer or a bottle of whiskey: it does indeed require a 40-minute drive to cross the county line.  It's silly, and it's tough on the 21+ kids and the environment.  But they carpool and bring their iPods and make an adventure out of it.

I'm not 21 yet, and I don't eat out much, so I'm really not sure about the details of buying a drink in Conway.  (Honestly.)  I do know there are restaurants that sell "memberships" and are only open to members, so that they technically become private clubs and are able to sell alcohol on their property.  So when you're a junior or senior, you will still be able to go out and have a glass of wine with dinner.  Phew.

As for the "fairly small town, in Arkansas" part, I'll say without reservation that I really enjoy Conway.  It has a Target, a Walgreens, and a smattering of good Mexican restaurants.  And that's about all I need from a town, especially when Hendrix provides so many awesome, *free* activities: musicians, guest professors and lecturers, comedians, movie showings, plays, and more.  Mostly I stay on campus, and I don't have an itching to leave.

That being said, Little Rock is easily accessible.  In fact, three of my friends and I made the half-hour trek there tonight to see Atonement.  Conway does have two movie theatres, but we usually make the extra effort and go to the megaplex Rave theatre, which has broader offerings.  Added bonus: we have the half-hour trek back to discuss the movie together.

For its part, Arkansas is absolutely beautiful.  When I drive down from Missouri, I'm always impressed by how pretty the fields and forests are.  It's a nice semi-southern state: it has Waffle House, and people talk with cute accents and call shopping carts "buggies."  After a year here, I occasionally say y'all, and the words "Thank you, ma'am" just bubble out of me without my consent.  It's kind of nice.

Come visit.  You'll like it.

I'm enrolled in Step Aerobics, taught by a very nice woman named Kerry Madden.  For one hour every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, Kerry and I will be in the zone, doing Right Basics and Rocking Horses and other nifty moves.  (Tidbit: did you know that in a Right Knee Lift, you actually lift your left knee?)  We aerobicize in the pristine Movement Studio of the gorgeous new Wellness and Athletic Center.  And by gorgeous, I mean awe-inspiring.  I feel healthier just being inside it.

Since I was abroad fall semester, I didn't get to witness students' reactions to the WAC firsthand.  However, I've detected a shift in attitude, at least among my friends: everyone exercises.  "Hey, do you want to go to the WAC tomorrow morning?  Amanda and I are going around 8:15," one asks.  "Nah, Emily and I already have plans to go before dinner," someone responds.

A friend of mine, a field hockey player, noticed the same thing last semester.  The field where her team practices has a view into the new weight room, and she said it was always a flurry of activity.  Working out has become -- as it should -- a habit of the masses, not just the school's athletes.

I'm not one for New Year's resolutions -- at least not good ones.  (This year's: floss more.)  I don't think I've ever resolved to start a diet or exercise program in January.  Even with the subtle peer pressure of all my friends working out together, I might not have gotten on the bandwagon.  But the desire to fulfill my PA credit (in other words, the desire to graduate) will lead me to the WAC on a regular basis.  For that I am grateful.  And sore.

The Crew

I got into Conway at 10 p.m. on a Friday night, the day after I got back into the States.  Two of my best friends were waiting for me in Couch lobby; they attacked me with hugs and then took my little suitcase up to their room.  Unbeknownst to me, about twenty of my other best friends -- the whole crew -- were inside waiting to surprise me!  Someone had even baked a cake!  Ever predictable, I cried.

While I was away, Facebook had made it easier to keep in touch.  I could see people's photos and write on their walls.  But it's still pretty much of a gamble to leave for seven months after only knowing your friends for seven months.  I don't play cards enough to make an extended gambling metaphor out of this, but I can say sincerely that I picked great friends.

The WAC

I'm probably the only Hendrix student who was out of the loop about the whole Wellness & Athletic Center building project.  I planned on remaining faithful to the old Mabee Center, since that's where the racquetball courts are.  But during my visit to Hendrix, my dear friend Emily toured me through the new WAC.  Did you know the roof above the swimming pool is retractable?  And the treadmills have TVs attached to them?!  Who needs an iPod, now?  (Convenient, since mine just broke.)

The Rest

As neat as it was to see the new things on campus -- the WAC and the labyrinth -- it was so nice to be back in my old haunts: MC Reynolds, Something's Brewing, El Acapulco, the Burrow.  It was even nice to visit the library -- especially since I was already done with finals.  It was nice to eat cafeteria food, nice to see the cafeteria ladies, nice to hope for one of the coveted disco trays.  Nice to visit the Eco House and walk past the organic garden.  Nice to be back.

The Opportunities

Although it was amazing to reunite with friends and be back to the familiar, I can't thank Hendrix enough for giving me the opportunity to go abroad.  I come from a Pell Grant family, and without Hendrix's generous financial aid, there's no way I could afford to go off gallivanting across Europe.  The Hendrix-in-Madrid program was heavily subsidized by the college, and the Hendrix-in-London program allows you to use your traditional scholarships and grants.  Plus, there are extra study abroad scholarships available through the Murphy program. 

With all that help, my family was able to use some of the money we'd saved to allow me to travel on my own for a month, in between the two programs.  Overall, while I was across the Atlantic I quintupled the number of countries I'd visited in my life, from three to fifteen!

I even bought a digital camera, to record all the good times.  I took a few dozen of those photos and made some photo books as Christmas presents for relatives.  Here's the link to an online copy of the book.  (It will take you away from the blog unless you right click.)  You may have to register with Snapfish.com in order to view them.  I also apologize in advance for the photos with "low resolution  not recommended" stamped across them.

The Blog

While I'm at it, I want to thank Beth Tyler and the Admissions folks for giving me the opportunity to blog.  I'm horrible at keeping a diary, so this gave me a reason to write about the adventures I was having.  I also want to thank you for reading this!  If you're a prospective student, I hope it gives you some insight into the fantastic adventures that you could have at Hendrix.  If you're not a prospective student, I hope you find it worth your time nonetheless.

I expect I'll mostly be on hiatus during winter break, but I'll be back again next semester with more stories, more pictures, and more adventure.  Until then, stay warm.

On the flight to St. Louis, I was struck by how long it had been since I had met someone who knew where St. Louis was.  What a shock, then, to be suddenly surrounded by dozens of people who not only knew where it was, but wanted to go there!

It was equally shocking to open my closet door this morning and see the beautiful, huge array of clothes!  I've been wearing the same five shirts, three pants, and one poor pair of shoes for the past six months.  Some had gotten so disgusting and worn that I didn't even bother bringing then back home.  At travel expert Rick Steves's suggestion, I didn't bring any sweatshirts to Europe -- they're too bulky, and don't stay warm when wet.  It's hard to decide whether I want to play dress-up with all my cute newly-discovered clothes, or if I'd rather just wear sweatshirts for the next month and a half.  Hmm ...

I'm headed back to Hendrix today to visit all my friends I've missed for so long.  In the airport last night, in front of my Dad, I accidentally referred to my trip to Hendrix as "going home".  Oops!

And now, I bid you adieu so I can go unpack.

Step 2: Get no sleep for the few days before writing.

Step 3: Go through your entire iTunes collection, re-ranking the songs.  Those songs you liked last year really don't deserve five stars anymore, you know?

Step 4: Now that your critical and analytical skills have been sharpened, it's time to practice grammar.  Visit www.apostropheabuse.com to see some of the best of the worst.

Step 5: You've been working so hard for so long!  It's time to take a break and do some Facebooking.  Your friends probably think you're dead, you've been working for so long!

Step 6: Realize your paper is due in an hour, minus the time it takes to print and run to class.

Step 7: Cry.

The Eye is the world's tallest observation tower, reaching 135 meters.  If I had to be stuck 135 meters in the air, I'd pick these guys to accompany me.  Aren't we cute?

We didn't spend the whole time posing for photos.  Here's one I snapped of Big Ben and Parliament.  I had never appreciated the full size of London before.  It stretched as far as I could see-- which is apparently about 40 km on a clear day.

As our little pod crested and started its descent downward, the atmosphere in the pod became quieter and more somber, and people started discussing their plans to come back to London for grad school.  I only have about 36 hours left in the city, and I still have to write that Shakespeare paper ... .

I spent last week writing another paper and trying to recover from the week before.  Oh, if only I had spent some of that week working on the work I have to do now!  Monday: 1500-word paper and final presentation.  Tuesday: 2500-word paper.  Wednesday: final paper of unassigned length.  Since it's Tuesday evening, I should be working on my last final paper, which is due tomorrow at 5 p.m.  (In drastic situations like these, it's essential to know exactly what time the paper is due, so you can make use of every last second.  I finished the paper I turned in today 15 minutes before I handed it in.)  However, I'm still trying to recouperate from last night's all-nighter.

It was an unconventional form of all-nighter, and one that was very effective.  Because London is pitch dark between 4:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m., it's possible to take a late nap and convince oneself that you've had a full night's sleep and it's early morning already.  My roommate and I pulled that trick today.  After a three-hour nap last night, we awoke at 2 a.m. and started working.  During the ensuing 11 hours, I crafted a well reasoned, well cited 14-page paper about the pros and cons of the license fee used to fund the BBC.  (If you have any questions about that topic, let me know.  I'm a veritable encyclopedia.)

Unfortunately, I only consumed a small bowl of cereal (ok ... and half a roll of ginger snaps ...) during that time.  So when the professor who had assigned the paper took us out for a celebratory end-of-term pint, my usual pint of cider went quite a bit farther than usual.  If you've taken an afternoon stroll around London while half-drunk,  famished, and exhausted, I highly recommend it.  The whole lot of us were a mess, all having procrastinated, all having stayed up all night, and all being equally knackered.

After a veggie burger and a delicious two-hour nap, I am largely recovered.  Convenient, because I'm about to do it all again, this time for my Shakespeare class.  Thankfully, I found a Longfellow quote to inspire me:

"The heights by great men reached and kept 

Were not attained by sudden flight, 

But they, while their companions slept,

Were toiling upward in the night."

Except ... I don't think any of my companions are getting any sleep either.

• For his trickery, I should have called him a suitably more forceful word than "jerk."  He said he'd "prefer a more cutting insult."  But I try to keep it PG for you folks, so I won't go with his suggestion.
• I forgot one of his most clever statements during posh-Dave mode.  He lamented the lack of history of his particular college, Downing; it's a baby at 210 years.  Immediately afterward, he inquired about the age of the United States, creating a brilliant juxtaposition.  Terribly sorry I forgot that one, Dave.  (I like to think my forgetfulness was symptomatic of the easygoing, forgiving nature of Americans.)
• I myself was tricky enough to get him back later.  On Thursday morning, I convinced him that in the drunken haze of the night before, he had grossly offended his too-sweet-for-words friend James.  Two points for America, my friends, bringing the score to a tie.
• If any stalker types want to trek to Cambridge and go everywhere I did, you'll want to make sure to walk through Kings, Clare, Downing, Queens, Corpus Christi, Pembrooke and past St. Katherines and Emanuel.
• "P.S. You can find loads of photos of Cambridge on the university website www.cam.ac.uk."

Thankfully Dave knows I'm just a dumb American, so he didn't hold any of my mistakes against me.  The English are so merciful!

I walked the infamous orange bargain bookstore, where three months ago I bought all the Shakespeare texts I'd need.  This time, I bought a book for the flight home.  I came in with an open mind, wandering around the shop, waiting for something to catch my fancy.  Bill Bryson's Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States was the first to.  Bill Bryson is always an informative, entertaining read -- not too technical, but not too shallow.  An audiobook copy of his Neither Here Nor There: Travels through Europe accompanied me on my trips this summer, and a paperback of Notes on a Big Country helped me pass the time on a flight to Belgium.  Another Bryson book seemed the perfect way to end my travels, and I hoped this one would help me fall back in love with my homeland. 

I had almost made it to the cash register before I had a look inside to make sure it was The One.  ... It wasn't.  The font was awful, the letters were tiny but too bold, and the line spacing was far too tight.  Perhaps I'd have bought it anyway, if it were for class or research.  But a pleasure book must be easily readable.  I put Made in America back down and picked up The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America.  After skimming the back cover, I deemed it too depressing and exchanged it for A Short History of Nearly Everything.  It was too expensive and too large, but the font and subject were better.  I bought it.

The new book and I made our way up Tottenham Court Road together and passed through the local Sainsbury's grocery store, perhaps for the last time.  (It was the first place in London I bought groceries.  ::Sniff::)  Now, I'm off to my last Saturday night dinner in London.  It's all much too soon.

To start, I got quite a skewed idea of the place.  My friend David met me at the train station, dressed as high class as he could manage without fear of being spontaneously attacked by townies.  He toured me round the city, speaking in an immensely posh voice, discussing ridiculously esoteric and intimidating subjects.  We walked past signs that implored me to keep off the grass -- it was so important that they published it in six languages! (Only the most important members of the college are allowed to tread on the grass; the world might end if tourists enjoyed the same privilege.) 

As we neared his dormitory, I was starting to feel quite out of place and overwhelmed. Just then his phone began to buzz, sounding an alarm he had set for himself half an hour earlier, just before he met me.  As soon as he had turned it off, he lifted up his sweater and unclipped the suspenders that had been holding his trousers above his navel.  He loosened his tie, rolled up the starched sleeves of his button-up. "Well, that's quite a bit better!" he proclaimed, and proceeded to explain that he'd only been acting like a rich snob so that I'd feel I'd had the true Cambridge experience.  As it turned out, he'd been planning the ruse for weeks!  He deserves to have the Shakespearean Insult Generator used on him, the paunchy bat-fowling imbossed carbunkle!

Immediately, the tension diminished -- although the English can never quite rid themselves of their awkwardness.  We found our way back to his room, got changed into formal dress, and proceeded to the dining hall of Clare College for Formal Hall, a particularly fancy dinner held several times a week.  Check out the robe I got to wear.  Am I Hermione or what?  The face is me trying to look fancy and not laugh.

The dining hall was covered in oak paneling, and there were more plates, forks, knives, and glasses at my place setting than I've seen in my life.  We stood as the professors filed into the room and took their seats at the high table.  Then, the evening prayer was read -- in Latin!  I reverted back into my "I'm just a middle-class American; I can't handle this!" state of mind, until I saw one of the Cambridge students drop a penny into another's full wine glass.  It's a sort of traditional drinking game, and the person who gets pennied has to chug his wine.  The northern Irish girl next to me had the charity to penny me, too, so I had the pleasure of knocking back a glass of rosé.  I was even more comforted later in the meal when I found out that soups and desserts were also targets of pennying, and in such a case, they must be consumed hands-free.  There’s nothing like seeing rich, brilliant Brits eat fruit salad sans silverware.

After the meal we changed back into street clothes and made our way round several colleges’ bars.  I was introduced to a series of the UK’s best and brightest, and I did my best to keep up with them.  I quoted Shakespeare, I discussed architecture, I made reference to the 53 Commonwealth nations.  In typical English manner, I peppered my conversation with sarcastic and self-deprecatory comments.  In short, I was impressive.  As my host so proudly put it, “If it weren’t for your unfortunate accent, you could be English!”

The next morning I toured the city in daylight, stopping by the Mathematical Bridge, the oldest quadrangle in Europe, and the beautiful Kings College chapel.  Have a look:

That last stop was particularly appropriate, because Hendrix has an annual Candlelight Carol concert based on the traditional Service of Lessons and Carols performed at the Kings College chapel.  Right now, I’m missing one of my best friends perform a solo at Hendrix’s performance. However, I got to watch roadies set up the Kings chapel for their concert.  It all comes full circle.

Indeed, my whole trip is about to come full circle.  As I headed back to London last night, I realized that in a mere week I would be arriving at St. Louis’s Lambert Airport. Hyperventilation ensued.  I have three final papers and a presentation, and I still need to see Wicked and visit the Natural History Museum and get more bagels from Brick Lane and go to more markets and drink more cider and ride the London Eye and … !  The consolation is that a week from today, I’ll be back on Hendrix campus, chillin’ with the friends I’ve been missing for seven months.  Maybe one of them can feign a British accent and give backhanded compliments, to help me feel at home.

P.S.  Before I left Cambridge, I went ice skating with some of my new friends.  Although I've never been terribly talented on ice, it was so nice to move at high speeds and have to avoid moving objects.  It's the nearest I've come to driving in the past five months, and it gives me hope that I'll still be able to drive fairly well when I get back.  I didn't even crash into anyone!  I might suggest, though, that all St. Louisans stay off the road the week of December 10-16.  And for God's sake, keep your children indoors.

Drinking legally, The Guardian, having amazing places within walking distance, having a kitchen in my flat, Indian food, Turkish food, Brick Lane and the Petticoat Lane market, the Tube system (when it's functional), Avenue Q, queuing, British understatement, the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, free museums, cheap Ryan Air flights to amazing places, being told to "Mind the Gap," dessert at the Marlborough Arms, fireworks over the Thames, and Strongbow cider.

Upon reflection, the ADORABLE accent should also be on the list, as should my amazing British professors.

And now, What I'm Missing Most About the U.S.:

Target, Imo's, Taco Bell, Mexican food in general, my adorable cat Carlos, my family!, Thanksgiving, Ghost Roast, SoCo 54 (which I missed last year, too!), people really celebrating Halloween, having a fireplace, my bestest friends, the cup rule, being in the same time zone as my family, walking to class in 2 minutes, free bread at restaurants, free refills at restaurants, free water at restaurants, free rice at restaurants, fortune cookies, Hendrix cafeteria food, all the free concerts, Safe Sex Bingo, Couch 216, the Brick Pit, MC Reynolds, the fountain.  And you!

There are only ten days 'til I come back to the States.  I've been gone for five months.  I'm both excited and completely unprepared.

Here are the American and his wife, all gussied up.

These owls are part of a French tradition I didn't mention.  (It might just be a big-city thing, but I've never been to a big American city around Christmas time, so I can't say.)  Anyway, the French department stores go WAY above and beyond in their window displays.  They're set up on the Friday after Thanksgiving, even though Thanksgiving isn't traditionally celebrated in France.  They have moving parts and special music to go with each scene.  The picture below is of a choir of owls singing together.  Awww!

I love France.  If I could say that in French, I would.

That's when I looked at my calendar and realized that, the upcoming week I had two presentations and two papers due.  ... Oops!  And that's on top of the regular, sizeable doses of homework.  So you'll forgive me if I haven't written in a few days.  Instead, I've been writing about the history and the funding system of the BBC, and Shakespeare's use of iambic pentameter in the prologue of Henry V.

After staying awake until 5 that morning, I spent Thanksgiving morning giving a presentation on British views of the American South, as exemplified by Nick Middleton's Ice Tea and Elvis: A Saunter through the Southern States.  Immediately afterward I caught a bus to the big bus station, where I took another bus to London Luton airport.  I flew to Paris, caught a bus into the city, and then took yet another bus to get to my sister's apartment.  (She's studying there for the semester in a program very similar to mine, through Earlham College.)  Phew!  After almost 11 hours of travel, I barely had time to thank anything before I passed out on the spare bed.

I spent the following days following my dear sister through Paris: through the Louvre, to Notre Dame, up the Champs-Élysées, around the Arc de Triomphe, through flea markets and metro stations.

Alas, I did not go up in the Eiffel Tower, but I have a very good excuse!  After a fair bit of sightseeing on Friday, Mandi and I returned to her apartment around 6 p.m. for a nap that ended up lasting until 7 a.m. the next morning.  At that time, we awoke, scurried to the train station, and met up with the other members of her group for a trip to the country!  I didn't quite get all the details, since most of the explanation was given in French, but apparently one of Mandi's professors is from a small village that has been celebrating Thanksgiving ever since an American man moved in 30 years ago.  So the professor brought the students (and me) to meet the villagers!

Each American student was in charge of preparing a traditional Thanksgiving dish, so once we arrived at the one-room town civic center, we spent the morning cooking.  The locals arrived around 1, with the American man dressed as a pilgrim and his French wife as a beautiful Native American.  Buckskin dress, feather earrings, shell necklaces, the whole bit.  What a trip! 

Although the luncheon was very traditional -- mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, stuffing, broccoli, turkey, cranberry sauce -- it was also very French.  We started off with an aperitif and ended with espresso a full four hours later.  I was the only non-French speaker in the room, so my role was to nod and smile and patiently wait for a translation from my sister.  But after the weekend, I now speak about as much French as I do German -- "thank you," "please," "good bye," etc.  However, my most impressive French phrase ("je suis fatiguee": I am tired) is nowhere near as useful as the German "ein kugel, bitte" (one scoop of ice cream, please).

Thanks to the Paris transportation employees who ended their strike yesterday, my trip home was a lot shorter than nine hours.  Now, I'm off to write another paper.  Will it ever end?

We dedicated two hours to the script last week, and we're due to spend at least another class period on the work.  Shakespeare scholar Winifred Nowottny once said, "Life is not long enough to thoroughly study King Lear."  If life itself isn't long enough, at least we'll be devoting a full five hours.  That's more enough time to discuss the major highlights of the four-hour production of it we saw this evening.  Sir Ian McKellen starred as mad King Lear.  Which means, to be blunt, that I saw Gandalf with his pants down.

Three-hour discussions and nude, 68-year old actors.  Oh, what a city.  What a city.

I'm sorry to admit I've left you with a mild crop, once I've taken out the basest toilet humor: naughty words graffitied on subway walls, the array of pictograms instructing dog owners to pick up their pups' leftovers, etc.  But here's a crop of humorous photos that will seem hilarious to you next time you pull an all-nighter.  (OK, the next time you get pull an all-nighter and enjoy the same type of humor I do.  Which may be never.)

This duck appeared in the window of a super-serious wig shop, next to a gaggle of uber-stylish mannequins.  Why?  I'll never know ....  (Bruges, Belgium.)

"Happy 1984," graffitied onto the Berlin Wall.  Classy.  (Berlin, Germany.)

Chocolate Wellness Flakes?  Sold in a German grocery store?  I wonder if the locals who favor that cereal understand enough English to recognize what a contradictory name it has. (Dresden, Germany.)

What a fantastic abbreviation for Chinese Restaurant.  (Amsterdam, Holland.)

Which came first, the sex shop or the rent-a-bike?  And why, oh, why are they run by the same company?  Only in Amsterdam.

That's a convenient thing to post to a pancake stand, now isn't it?  Everyone knows it's waffles that make people happy!  (London, England.)

More than being funny, this ad is just impressive.  Clever.  As The Simpsons often is.  (Madrid, Spain.)

My, what a dark belly button you have!  (Madrid, Spain.)

(Close-up of belly button.)  (Madrid, Spain.)

I always read these signs as "TOILET."  Which is really frustrating when you're looking for a public toilet, and these just tease you in your desperation.  (London, England.)

"The size of the pieces does too matter!"  OK, Ben.  Chill out, Jerry.  I believe you guys.  (Madrid, Spain.)

Well ... hopefully that elicited a laugh and didn't take too long to load.  'Til next time!

After some quick thinking, we headed a few blocks away and saw "Hairspray" instead -- a far cry from the mystery/drama I had been planning to see.  So much music!  So much dancing!  So much ... hair!  I loved it!

The four of us -- three girls, and one William -- emerged from the theatre with renewed self-confidence and optimism.  Our egos were boosted by positive messages about the non-relation between our waist size and our self-worth.  So we did what I'm sure you would do, too, in that situation: we got milkshakes.  And cheesecake.

Good ol' Ed's Easy Diner.  Although the shakes and malts aren't perfectly authentic -- they're a little too light and fluffy, not cold and dense -- they're a far sight better than the average European attempt.  Classmates have related horror stories of scoops of ice cream floating in glasses of milk.  But ours were pretty much the real deal: metal cups and everything.

(For Hendrix students who don't recognize the girls on the right, they go to UNC-Chapel Hill and Dominican University, respectively.)

The other respect in which our shakes differed from classic American fare is that they included Bailey's Irish Cream.  Ed's menu calls them "Alco-Shakes," which to me sounds more like a stage in detox.  But whatever.  The beauty of the principle still stands: you can drink while drinking milkshakes!  What a glorious country!

I'm very much enjoying the leisure of having a glass of wine with dinner, or going out for a pint, and I'll miss that when I go back home.  Exactly (to the day) a year and a half of sobriety awaits me back in the States.  In that respect, I'm quite glad Hendrix is in a dry county with no bar scene, since it doesn't split me up from the half of the student population that can drink legally.

Moreover, the fact that the closest alcohol retailer is across the county line, about a half-hour away, means that beer-runs teach the upperclassmen the value of planning and foresight.  (Or just the value of buying in bulk.)  Either way, those are the kind of practical skills that can be used throughout your life.

There are some American foods that are difficult or impossible to find in Europe. Marshmallows and marshmallow fluff, for example.  Pancake mix and maple syrup.  Tang.  Fruity Pebbles.  My roommate and I have not been lacking for these amenities, thanks to some generous care packages from home.  But Taco Bell, stuffing, and biscuits and gravy are still beyond our reach.

At this point in the program, with less than a month 'til we head home, most us are planning out the most mundane details of our first days back home.  I'm getting in to St. Louis's Lambert Airport at 8 p.m. on December 6th.  As soon as I pick up my baggage, I'm headed to Imo's Pizza and getting veggie pizza with pineapple.  If I'm not already crying from the reunion with my family, the joy of that delicious dish will certainly bring tears to my eyes.

But being back in the United States will bring its own set of difficulties.  As a vegetarian, I'll be extremely sad to leave the ease and comfort of British eateries.  All the menus I've encountered have icons to indicate which dishes are vegetarian.  My personal favorite are the restaurants that divide their menus into two sections: "vegetarian" and "non-vegetarian."  Ha!  The vegetarian frozen meals and soups at grocery stores also feature large, green "V" icons to indicate that they're meat-free.

Moreover, there's more than just salad to eat.  Last night, for example, I had tempura vegetables in a rich curry sauce with rice.  In comparison, I recall my last visit to Applebee's at home.  I asked the waitress if she had any vegetarian recommendations, since there didn't seem to be anything on the menu.  "Well, there's a BLT," she suggested.  "Doesn't the 'B' stand for bacon?" I asked.  She nodded, oblivious as to why that might cause a problem.  Yes, it will indeed be hard to go back to the U.S.

Hendrix, however, is a blessed exception.  There are always two vegetarian options in the home-style line, including a vegan option.  There's also a salad bar, a vegetable bar, and a stir fry station.  Vegetarian soup, plus veggie hamburgers, chicken patties, and hot dogs, round out the offerings.  And there's macaroni and cheese every Friday!  So maybe it won't be that hard!

I'll admit right now that I wouldn't be abroad if not for my sister.  She's a student at Earlham College, and last Thanksgiving she announced that she'd gotten a spot on one of their study abroad programs in Paris.  At that point, study abroad wasn't even on my radar, but a little "Oh yeah, I should do that" thought bubble appeared over my head.

So when I got a last-minute e-mail last spring asking if anyone was interested in the Hendrix-in-London program, I said yes immediately.  What better way to spend a semester than hanging out in Europe with your twin sister?  After dozens of forms and several meetings, the deal was sealed.  And now, many months later, we're finally living the dream.

She stayed for five full days, during which time we did far too many things to recount.  She accompanied the Hendrix-in-London group on an overnight trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, where we sat together in the front row for Henry V.  We drank cider in the famous Dirty Duck pub there and walked together through Shakespeare's birthplace.  On the way back to London, we climbed together up the dark spiral staircases in the battlements of Warwick Castle.

Back in London, we hit some of the big sights -- Big Ben, the Parliament, some bridges over the Thames.  We also stopped in the British Museum and the National Gallery.  But more importantly, we spent an hour together in the three-story Paperchase store near my flat, looking at Christmas cards and calligraphy pens and making plans for what crafts we'd like to make over winter break.  We also made a stop into Superdrug, where she helped me pick out the perfect shade of red lipstick.  That's what sisters are for!

On Saturday night, we watched Guy Fawkes fireworks, which made me feel better about having missed the annual Fourth of July festivities.  (I was in Madrid already by then.)

We got baklava, we ate pomegranate, we made lentils.  It's amazing how much fun stupid things can be when you're with old friends.  On Sunday, her last full day in town, we traipsed through the city, visiting local markets, pretending we had money to spend.  We took the Tube to get to the Tate Modern museum, but we were so tired by that time that we just sat for half an hour on a bench on the platform, trying to summon the energy for more sightseeing.  Even sitting around compaining about our feet was fun.

Long story short, I love my sissy and I'm glad she had the initiative to study abroad, which gave me the initiative to do so.  I'm heading across the Channel in a few weeks to celebrate Thanksgiving with her.  I'm sure I'll bring back incredible near-death-experience stories about Parisian drivers.  Until then, here are some swell pictures of my weekend!

At Warrick Castle: Katie and Mandi.  Or is it Mandi and Katie?  Guess!

This is a "fire drawing" of Guy Fawkes (as a skeleton), with a bomb in hand.  The drawing got hoisted up by a crane, and the bomb was "thrown" at a drawing of Big Ben.  Not your traditional effigy burning, but sufficient.

The Guy Fawkes extravaganza had some of the prettiest fireworks I've ever seen, and this is definitely one of the best pictures I've ever taken of fireworks.  (By the way: in the top picture, I'm on the right.)

One of my favorite memories from last year was Ghost Roast, Hendrix's annual Halloween bash.  I spent hours dressing up with my friends, until we all perfectly resembled librarians, Zorro, doctors, fairies, and whatever other guises we could come up with from Salvation Army clothes.  Then we partied all night long!

This year, by contrast, I live in a country that didn't know what Halloween was 10 years ago.  If you turn up this Wednesday evening on someone's doorstep and say "Trick or Treat!" you're as likely to get a confused look as a chocolate bar.  Thank goodness, my friend and former roommate Emily had the foresight to bring me along to this year's Ghost Roast. Check it out!  She's the spitting image.

Those of you who know me well will notice the characteristic teal shirt, brown sweater, and stylish necklace.  (Actually, Emily, can I borrow that necklace when I get back to Hendrix?)  It's a very convincing representation!  I wear teal so often that Crayola is preparing to phase out Robin's Egg Blue crayons in favor of Katie Rice Teal.  The brown sweater is identical to the one I wore just yesterday.  Even the glasses are similar! 

Also note my dear friend Julia's clever Starving (or is it Dying of Thirst?) Artist costume.  Another friend of mine went as a woodland fairy, another as an adorable dinosaur.  Oh, what a good holiday!

Long story short: my Hendrix friends and Halloween are awesome and I miss them both a lot.  The fact that "I" was at Ghost Roast this year almost makes up for the fact that I'm missing the Harry Potter-themed "A Very Harry Halloween" party.  Almost.  Someone save me some butterbeer, eh?

There's just something about Belgium that makes me incapable of getting to where I need to go.  Back in August when I needed to catch a flight from Brussels, I arrived at the airport a full three hours before my flight was scheduled to leave.  The only problem was, I went to the wrong airport.  Despite immediately taking the train back to central Brussels and then out to the other airport (Brussels South Charleroi Airport), I missed my flight.

Although I then had to pay some exorbitant amount of money to take the Eurostar across the English Channel, I didn't hold anything against Belgium in general.  In fact, I liked Belgium so much that I decided to go back last weekend -- my third visit in three months!  My friend Laura and I headed to Bruges and Brussels to partake of the fantastic Belgian french fries, waffles, chocolate and beer.

We left our apartment building at 3:15 p.m.  After a delay, our flight left at 8:35.  We got into Brussels around 10:30, local time.  Our bus, which was headed straight to Bruges, was set to leave at 11:30.  After a super-healthy dinner of paprika-flavored potato chips and Mars bars, we headed out to the bus stop and joined the long line of folks (presumably) waiting for the bus to begin loading.  We stood patiently next to the bus for fifteen minutes, until it pulled away without warning.  Not a single person had boarded!  As it turned out, everyone else in the line was just waiting for the bus to Brussels.

Since the bus we watched drive off was the last one headed to Bruges that night, Laura and I snuggled up with our backpacks and tried to get as comfortable as is possible on the metal wire airport chairs.  (Hint: it's not very comfortable.)  Throughout the night, I tried sleeping on my back, my side, the floor, and any number of other positions that still allowed me to keep a tight grip on my backpack.

The night encompassed several small naps, but no deep sleep.  I woke up at 3 and shared a second Mars bar with Laura -- the best Mars bar I've ever had in my life.  There's something about freezing cold airports that makes you appreciate the comfort of chocolate creme and caramel within a milk chocolate shell.

At 6 a.m., after several more brief naps, we finally boarded a bus to Bruges, and by 9 we were napping once more in the warm comfort of the super-friendly Snuffel Hostel.  There we met a baker from Vancouver Island, Canada, who told Laura and me all the things we could have done to keep ourselves warm and comfortable.  We also met up with my twin sister, who came to Belgium (from Paris) to visit, since we hadn't seen each other since mid-August.  The four of us went together to a local Chocolate Museum, where we learned really interesting things about my favorite sweet.

Here's a round-up of everything I learned this weekend:

• Always ask why no one has boarded the bus yet!
• Don't bother sleeping on the benches; the air circulates underneath and around you, keeping you cold all night.  If you huddle up on one spot of floor, preferably with some extra clothing underneath you for cushion and warmth, you're much more likely to be comfortable.
• I love my sister!  I miss her when she's far away!
• If you buy a little wooden box of cheese and put it in the oven or microwave until the cheese is all melty, it makes a great, easy fondue or cheese spread.
• A meal is always tastier if it costs less than three euros.
• Statues of Jesus sometimes appear to be statues of homeless men sleeping on the ground (perhaps in airports).  When that is the case, and the statue is in Brussels, it's good luck to touch the statue.
• Teenage boys are universally crude, no matter their national origins.

And last but not least, here's what I learned about chocolate.  They seemed a little suspect to me, coming from a museum whose gift shop was trying to unload some expensive boxes of gourmet chocolates:

• Belgian chocolate is "so good, with such a strong worldwide reputation" because the Belgians grind their chocolate to 20 microns, which is lower than the degree of sensitivity of the tongue.  Americans, on the other hand, grind to 30-35 microns.
• Chocolate prevents cavities!  Cocoa has three substances with "strong anti-cavity properties": tannins, fluoride, and phosphates.
• Chocolate does not make the eater become "liverish" (whatever that means).
• Chocolate does not make the eater fat unless he or she is fat to begin with.
• Chocolate fights cholesterol.

Here's a sweet picture of chocolate fighting cholesterol.  Jolly good show!

You'll be happy to know that, even after consuming a delicious apple beer and a tasty peach lambic beer, I was able to make it back to the Charleroi Airport and back to London.  I've finally got the hang of travel in Belgium!  Or at least the Jesus statue endowed me with good luck.  Too bad I'm not going back anytime soon.  They'll have changed the whole system by then!

It was actually refreshing to get back to pantomiming for food.  I had become fluent enough in German to read menus in Austria and ask whether the meals in question were vegetarian, or whether they were served warm.  (Granted, that only requires the knowledge of two words: vegetarische and warm.  But I pronounced them with conviction!)  But with Hungarian, Czech, and Polish, I was hopeless.  Pointing and gesturing became my second language, although English often sufficed quite well.

It's hard to look back and try to describe the trip without getting overwhelmed.  Here are some brief synopses:

Salzburg: Two days, two nights.  The first night, fresh off the plane from London, I went walking with two fellows from my hostel.  We wound up around a table with five restaurateurs, three Italian and two Croatian, drinking white wine and talking politics in broken English.  The next day, Will, Courtney and I took a half-day bike ride around the city, following the river that divides the old city from the new city.  It was the first time I'd ridden a bike in about a decade, and it was as exhilarating as it was intimidating.

Hallstatt: One and a half days, one night.  From the train station, we took a boat across a lake to get to the small town.  It was truly the most breathtakingly beautiful place I've ever been.  Misty, clouds hanging in the sky, the mountains reflecting starkly in the water.  Check out this Facebook photo album to see for yourself!  Our hostel was right next door to a waterfall, and the next day we hiked up a mountain!  After being surrounded by miles and miles of buildings in London, this was a delicious contrast.  The strudel was delicious, too.

Vienna: Two days, two nights.  We overdid ourselves on museums in Vienna.  The Kunst Haus Museum, the Kunst Haus Wien, the Albertina, the Upper Belvedere.  Klimt, Monet, Manet, Picasso, Van Gogh, Durer, Hundertwasser, Toulouse-Lautrec, and other favorites were all well-represented.  We also attended a 2€ ballet!  When's the last time you saw a ballet for $3?  Toward the end of our time in the city, we went to the beautiful Schonbrunn Palace and walked around the grounds, reminiscing about what foods we'd eat on our perfect Thanksgiving.  As a backpacker, there's no better way to pass the time than to think about what food you could eat if you had access to a refrigerator.

Budapest: Two days, two nights.  The best part of Budapest was probably the Great Market Hall, where we indulged in Hungarian's classic foods, like goulash.  Or perhaps it was the luxurious hot mineral baths.  Or Monument Park, where many of Hungary's communist statues are gathered together for display.  Or meeting Peter, Kata, and Szuszi, the friendly Hungarian relatives of my roommate at Hendrix.  It might have even been our hostel, which only housed 16 guests.  It was far more like sleeping in a friend's basement than being in a hotel.

Prague: One and a half days, one night.  By this time, we were exhausted.  From Budapest we had taken a night train to save time in our itinerary.  Turns out, our room had a broken window, so we arrived in Prague at 6 a.m. after a night of freezing winds whipping through our cabin.  After ditching our backpacks in the luggage room of our hostel, we headed into town to find some breakfast.  We settled in McDonalds around 7:30 a.m. and stayed for a few hours reading and keeping warm.  I can't say I've ever been happier to eat an Egg & Cheese McMuffin.  Later that day we bought some KFC, and after finishing my meal I took a nap on the table.  We went to a $4 opera that night and promptly fell asleep.  Other Prague highlights included shopping for an amber ring, drinking an original Budweiser beer, and visiting the Sex Machines Museum.

Wroclaw: One night.  We spent almost no time in Poland, which is something I now regret.  I realized too late, after hostels had been booked and itineraries set in stone, that Poland is the land of pirogi and potato pancakes, as well as some delicious pastries.  Another thing Wroclaw has is Copernicus Airport, which is the city's only site we visited.  We caught a flight back to London, where I promptly took a long, long nap.

London: Another month and a half.  It's nice to be back, but it also feels like I was here years ago, instead of mere days.  I adjusted back into the rockin' London lifestyle by attending an Ani Difranco concert.  I've loved her music for years, and this was the first time I've seen her live.  It was life-changing.  She's like Angelina Jolie, only hilarious and with an amazing voice.  She's my hero!

Without a clever way to end this, I'll tell you straight out: it's 2 a.m. and I'm going to bed.

But I can't do that, because I'm leaving on Thursday for Eastern Europe for 10 days, and I haven't prepared sufficiently.  Plus, I have a paper to write tonight.  So just trust me that all is still well.  If you don't hear from me until after Fall Break, I apologize.  Cheers!

It looms in the back of every exchange student's mind: the worry that while you're studying abroad, your special someone back home will start studying a broad or two himself.  My dearest darling did indeed, although I can't say I blame him.  Five months and 4,278 miles of separation aren't easy to bridge.

Rather than groaning "Woe is me, woe is me" into eternity, I'm trying to take the counsel offered in King Lear: "Pray you now, forget and forgive."  That advice went down much easier with a spoonful of sugar-laden Ben & Jerry's ice cream.  (Yes, they really have it here.  Thank God!)

Another healing touch has come from a surprising source: the Tate Britain museum.  As part of my British Art & Architecture class, I trekked out there this morning.  When we got there, the twelve students split into two groups -- six went with the teacher for a 35-minute mini-history of British painting, while the other half-dozen was given free reign of the museum.  (And then we switched, of course.)

Just as I started off on my wandering, I found a display of pamphlets offering special, themed self-guided tours.  The pamphlets offered tours tailored for first dates, rainy days, and hungover mornings.  Visitors who are particularly fond of yellow, animals, or odd faces also have their own tours.

After careful consideration, I opted for the "I've Just Split Up" collection.  ("Happily Depressed" was another appealing option, though.)  The five-painting mini-tour took me all across the museum, and it left me surprisingly cheery by the end.  The commentary inside the pamphlet doesn't say much about the paintings themselves, but instead justifies why the pieces fit within the tour's theme.

Consider the caption for the second work in the tour: "To put things in perspective, take a look at The Last Judgement by John Martin.  Now that is the end of the world.  Literally."  Ha ha ha.  He he he.  O, the unmatchéd British wit!

As I strolled giggling through the galleries, I hoped that some gorgeous, cultured British fellow might spy the pamphlet in my hand, read the words "I'VE JUST SPLIT UP" in bold across the cover, and ask me out for coffee.  No luck there.

Although it doesn't look like I'll be taking the First Date-themed gallery tour anytime soon, I'm far from anguished.  The way I see it, there's just not a moment to waste moping, since I have a limited time in such a great city!  That's quite an incentive for getting over my sorrows and on with my life.

Plus, when I feel particularly down, I always have my trusty Shakespearean Insult Generator.  It's helpful for saying things like, "How could you leave such an erudite woman, thou gleeking spur-galled wax-wench?"  Yeah. I said it.

(For those of you who've never had a crumpet -- which is presumably the majority of you -- I'm including a picture.  These are two toasted crumpets, with "lashings" of butter.  Pretty good, but I prefer English muffins.)

Post-crumpet, we headed up a hill to Dover Castle, our main stop of the day.  The entrance fee to the castle also allows you to visit a Roman lighthouse, an old Saxon church, and the secret tunnels under the castle.  The four miles of tunnels were largely built during the Napoleonic War, but were enlarged and utilized during the World Wars.  Since Dover is the part of England closest to mainland Europe, the tunnels housed important (and secret) military operations.  We walked through them.  It was awesome!

The propertyof the castle also includes the "admiralty lookout" -- a great place to get a good view the English Channel, as well as the classic white chalk cliffs of Dover.  Check it out!  I could even see France, although it's not visible in this picture.

(Several astute observers have noted that I "saw London" and "saw France" in one day, and they subsequently asked if I saw anyone's underpants.  I'm sorry to report that I did not.)

Of course, Dover Castle also featured a castle, originally built for Henry II.  Although Hitler's weapons on the coast of France were fully capable of obliterating Dover Castle across the 21 miles of the English Channel, not a single enemy bomb touched the castle during the war.  There's speculation that Hitler was planning to save the castle, which is one of England's greatest, for his own use.

Erin and I climbed to the tippy, tippiest top of the highest tower and stared.  We saw sheep dotting the idyllic green pastures.  We saw sweet little sailboats scattered across the Channel.  There are some things you just can't see in London, and those are some of them.

After about four hours of wandering through the castle's property, we headed down to the pebbly beach and watched the water -- one of my favorite pastimes.  We met a drenched, swimsuit-clad Briton who was training for a Channel swim.  (Drenched, half-nude Britons are another one of my favorite pastimes.) 

Gorgeous sea shells were found, as was a crab's claw and a water-carved piece of chalk that resembled a skull.  Deep breaths of sea air were taken.  Time was lost track of.

Eventually, we ambled back towards town and grabbed a bite to eat.  Then we wandered back to our bus station.  Indeed, as it turned out, we wandered too slowly and missed our bus.  But the kind driver of the next Dover-to-London bus, which arrived an hour later, let us ride even though our tickets were technically invalid.

And then we made it back to London and drank some delicious, fresh-from-the-farm, Dover-bought apple juice.  And all was happy in the world, even though no underpants were seen.  The End.

Although (or perhaps because) we've been taking trips all over London during class time, when class ends it's all too appealing to sit in my apartment and revel in the joys of European leisure.  That's no way to see a city, though!  With the help of Time Out, a weekly magazine guide to everything there is to do in Lonon, my Hendrix classmates and I are slowly learning how to fully reap the advantages of living in London.

Wednesday evening, eight of us decided on the spur of the moment that it was a good night for clubbing.  So we got dressed and walked down the street (about half a mile) to a club.  That's a bit different than life in Conway, Arkansas!

Concerts are also much more accessible here, and I'm scrounging up all of the "You only live once" rhetoric I can to justify the whooshing sound of my bank account emptying.  Manu Chao and Ani Difranco are worth it, though.  I saw Manu at Lollapalooza in 2006, and it was the most energetic performance I've ever experienced.  He's a short guy, and he spent at least two straight hours jumping up and down singing and thrashing his guitar, with nary a breath between songs. 

I've never seen Ani live, but I've listened to her music since ninth grade.  My sister and I like her songs so much that in we named our cat in her honor.  Lame?  OK, maybe.  I fully expect that seeing her perform live will be a life-changing experience.

In general, I can't overstate how nice it is to live in London, and Bloomsbury especially.  It's a safe, nice neighborhood near Soho and close to my classes.  But it's also a truly epic place to be.  The more I learn about the Bloomsbury group of artists and intellectuals, the more I respect them.  (Call me a leftist and an anti-Victorian, and I'll call you a mind-reader.)

Despite the many charms of London itself, it's great to get out of the city for awhile.  We have three-and-a-half day weekends every weekened, and they've been underutilized thus far.  This weekend, though, four Hendrixers have headed off to Dublin, and four more of us (myself included) are taking a day-trip to see the white cliffs of Dover.

That trip begins in approximately five hours, so I'm off to bed now.  I'll do my best to bring back good pictures!

British Art & Architecture

We took a fieldtrip to Sir John Soane's Museum, one of the cookiest and creepiest museums in London.  Created in the early 1800s by a rather eccentric architect, the museum is full of bits and pieces of history, all hung helter-skelter on the walls of Sir Soane’s old house.  Roman ruins, Grecian urns, and an Egyptian sarcophagus crowd the main room.  (For a great virtual reality tour of the room, click here.) 

The basement “crypt” of the house is dark and eerie, home to masses more artifacts, as well as the tombstones of his wife and son.  It's the perfect place to shoot an intellectual horror film.  From the staircase, you can see a skeleton hanging in an inaccessible room.  In fact, the skeleton is composed of the bones of various bodies, both male and female.  It was used by artists for sketching.

Because Soane conceived of the museum as a place to study classical art, rather than classical history, there are no descriptive labels on the items.  Everything is out of context.  The safe, sanitary, museum-y feel is also missing; it’s more like you just stumbled into the house of an eccentric old man.  And in a way, that’s exactly what we did do.  Thank God we made it out alive.

British Life & Culture

For the first time in three weeks, we had class in a classroom this week.  We talked about the British class system and how it has manifested itself in the education system.  We talked about George Orwell.  We talked about Virginia Woolf.  We talked about The Three Guineas.  We talked about war, peace, and imperialism.  We talked about feminism.  We talked about the Victorian ideal of marriage and compared it with serial monogamy and open marriages.  We even talked about the sex lives and dalliances among the Bloomsbury Group of writers and intellectuals.  (They were famed for “living in squares and loving in triangles.”)  At the end of class, the whiteboard was covered in words that seemed completely unrelated -- because they largely were.

It is absolutely remarkable how deep and broad a conversation can be had in three hours!  My entire understanding of British culture was revolutionized within one class period.  After class I visited the National Portrait Gallery, where I searched out portraits of and by members of the Bloomsbury group.  (I should mention now that I live in the Bloomsbury area of London, so the history of those intellectuals feels especially relevant.) Victoria Bell’s painting of her sister Virginia Woolf was much more meaningful than it had been before.    Likewise, looking at portraits of Lytton Strachey felt like looking at a friend, like being in on a secret.

Shakespeare

We took our second and final trip to the Globe Theatre, Tuesday.  Their production of Love’s Labor’s Lost was impressively enthusiastic, but the dialogue remained largely inaccessible because of the number of funny references that have since lost their meaning.  Would you understand jokes about prickets and sores and sorrels? I thought not.

Nevertheless, the actors were very enthusiastic – an impressive feat when you know your audience doesn’t understand most of what you’re saying.  One poor actor had broken his foot the week before, and he hopped around the stage with the assistance of “Elizabethan-era NHS-issued crutches.”  Ha!

The next day, during our actual class period, we analyzed the play and the production.  And then we spent an hour and a half on Macbeth!  Did you know that "weird" is a Scottish word for "fate"?  Did you know that Guy Fawkes's name was really Guido?  Did you know that British tobacconists sell fireworks during October?  Did you know that the celebration of Guy Fawkes Night (November 5th) is facing increasing competition from Halloween (October 31)?

In addition to being absolutely full of trivia, our professor, Gene, is brutally honest.  "Don't bother reading the scene where Heccat starts a song and dance," she told us yesterday.  "Shakespeare didn't write it, and no one performs it on stage, but they put it in all the books because it was in the First Folio."  Well, then.  You don't have to tell me twice!

By the end of most classes, I have a headache and pages full of notes.  Although this class format is not for the antsy or the easily distracted, the amount we accomplish in one class period is remarkable!  In comparison, Dr. Oudekerk's 105-minute Views of the U.S. class seems to whiz by.  I laugh to remember the days when Hendrix's 75-minute Tuesday-Thursday classes seemed interminably long.

My favorite part, though, was a rather small, plain, triangular field of grass, with one tree and one bench.  I cut across the grass to take a closer look at the tree, and -- I stopped.  What was this feeling under my feet?  It was so ... soft!  So cushiony.  So unlike pavement!  And that's when I realized that I haven't walked on grass since I got to London.  Sand and pebbles, yes.  (During a fieldtrip to the coast city of Brighton.)  Cobblestones, asphalt, and cement aplenty.  But not grass.

When I started to get really homesick for the simple, natural pleasures of the Hendrix campus -- the falling autumn leaves, the running water of the fountain, the park-like expanses of grass -- I wanted to be back in Arkansas.  Thankfully, at least one aspect of London culture could confine it to the Bible Belt.  The pubs close at 11.  I repeat, the pubs close at 11 p.m.!  The grocery stores stop selling alcohol at 11!  Lots of city life just ends at 11!  Oh, the misery!  Oh, the joy?  It's just like being in a dry county again.  Home, sweet, teetotaling home.

P.S.  Coincidentally, there is a London, Arkansas.  Population: 925.  It's rather near Conway.  Roadtrip, anyone?

But I digress.  I was shopping in one of the traditional touristy stores, full of London themed postcards, T-shirts, mugs, thongs, stickers, magnets, posters, movies, and *key chains*.  Having found the perfect one -- not too lewd, not too dorky, not too expensive -- I proceeded to the small checkout counter at the back of the store.  As I forked over my £1.50 ($3), the cashier asked me, "Are you French?"  I raised one eyebrow and said, "No, American."  To my most jubilant delight, he said, "Oh, you look European.  How long have you been here?" 

Our short conversation ended when the next customer came forward to purchase her own tacky souveneirs, but the pride of looking European stayed with me through my walk back to my apartment.  Dressed in black ballet flats; dark blue, boot-cut jeans; black sweater; turquoise pashmina; and silver earrings, I wanted to skip down the sidewalk and shout out in a sing-song voice, "I look Eur-o-pe-an!  I look Eur-o-pe-an!"  Moreover: I look French!  I could be an artist, a wine connoiseur, a pastry chef!

In general, looking natural and fitting in are laudable goals.  As they say, when in Rome, do as the Romans do.  But fitting in can also serve as camoflauge, in an era when the United States is increasingly seen as a backwards, "politically underdeveloped" nation.  Bush-bashing could compete with football for the title of  favorite European sport.  For those reasons, I was happy to learn that I didn't necessarily carry an aura of Americanness with me.

I fairly gloated all the way back home.  But as I put the key into the lock of the front door, it hit me.  Oh my gosh, was I not friendly enough?  Why wasn't I friendly enough for him to assume I was an American?  (As I'm learning in my Views of the U.S. class, Americans are famed for being generous -- if not genuine -- with their greetings, smiles, and small talk.)

My Americanness will definitely be a big topic to ponder over while I'm over here.  Before leaving the country, I very rarely thought about the values and habits my American culture had instilled in me, aside from a penchant for gobbling McDonald's.  I haven't come to any earth-shattering conclusions yet about what it means to be an American, but I'll let you know if I do.

Standing among thousands of Londoners, and probaby an equal number of foreigners, my friend Whitney and I watched the show with our mouths open.  The small child next to us probably took less interest than we did.  I have to say it's nice to be in a town where one of the world's most spectacular fireworks shows is just a walk down the road.

This picture doesn't capture the full glory of the event, but it does show one of London's famed double-decker busses passing by in front of us.  (That's the big streak at the bottom.  But don't worry: I picked a slow shutter speed; they don't actually drive that fast.)

Monday, for our British Art & Architecture class, we walked to the National Gallery, where we took turns explaining and critiquing the some of the most important European paintings in history.  Tuesday, for our British Life & Culture class, we visited to the Belgrave Police Station to meet local law enforcement officers and get their insight into British law and crime.  Wednesday, my Shakespeare class stood just feet from the stage at the Globe Theater production of The Merchant of Venice.  With all these fieldtrips, it's like elementary school again, but better!

On one hand, it's certainly nice just to get out of the classroom and into the London sunshine.  (Who even knew there was such a thing?  It hasn't rained a drop in the 18 days I've been here!)  But I'm also astounded at how much I'm learning. 

In particular, seeing The Merchant of Venice after reading the play really revolutionized the Shakespeare experience for me.  The live show was often rioutously funny and embarassingly bawdy, with the actors throwing in more than their fair share of hip thrusts and butt pinches.  Our professor, Gene, makes sure to point out in class the innuendo we might have missed in the readings.  (A far cry from my high school teachers' treatment of the issue.)  She also encourages us to see Shakespeare's works merely as scripts -- and fallible, imperfect scripts at that.

Here we don't blindly worship Shakespeare's work, and we don't put needless barriers between the professors and ourselves.  Lizzie, Susie, and Gene expect us to call them by their first names, which is suprising in the more status-conscious British world.  In fact, this London experience is a rather paradoxical one.  Although the city of London is a bustling one, and my walking speed has probably tripled since arriving here, there is a sense of European calm overtaking my life.  I have time for tea in the morning, and I get eight hours of sleep ... unless I've spent the wee hours of the night before discussing the meaning of life with my new friends.

At the same time, I'm doing more.  This weekend, I wrote a big blog post, watched a movie, took a daytrip to the town of Brighton, attended a political action group's annual meeting, and wandered around at the Thames River Festival.  I packed myself onto a rushour Tube compartment and I ate British apple pie.  I made pasta and I made friends.  And in between, I even found time for a nap.  This really is like kindergarten.  Only so much better.

For a sampling of pictures from the week (including some gorgeous ones from Brighton beach), click here.

It’s odd to feel so giddy, because I’ve been country-hopping for the last five weeks.  After a hot and helado-ful July studying with the Hendrix-in-Madrid program, I bought myself a rail pass and toured through seventeen cities in six countries.

To see an album of the best photos, click here.  (It’s small, I promise, and I made it just for you!)

I moved into my flat here a little over a week ago, on Saturday, and the first few days were dedicated to the sweet drudgery of buying groceries and unpacking.  I slowly adjusted to hearing English again, and to watching the cars drive on the wrong side of the road.

My one-room apartment is spacious (by student standards) and very near several nice parks.  It's in the literary/intellectual Bloomsbury district.  Bob Marley lived just south of my apartment, and Charles Darwin lived just north.  I like to think my fellow Hendrix-in-Londoners and I will continue the tradition of greatness.

Although it was great to unpack, the real fun started after everyone got settled in and adjusted to the time difference.  Tuesday morning we hit the nearby British Museum early for a two-hour visit before class started.  Since then I've visited three other museums and a photo exhibition, walked to the Thames River twice, seen a musical, and watched the U.S. rugby team get stomped by England.  This morning my classmates and I went to the enormous St. Paul's Cathedral for mass!

My classes are just as exciting.  I'm taking British Life and Culture, British Art and Architecture, Shakespeare, and Views of the U.S. in Anglo-European History, Literature, and Media.  (That was four classes, for those who had trouble counting.  The last one is a bit of a mouthful.) 

The first three are taught in three-hour blocks once a week, so that we can go on field trips!  Coming up this week: visits to the National Gallery, the Belgrave police station, the Globe theatre, and a day-trip to Brighton.  Whew!  I have to stop and remind myself that this is school!

Throughout the semester, I’ll be keeping you updated on my classes and social life here in London.  I’ll let you know, too, if I meet any cute Brits.  Til then, cheers!