Friday, July 29, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Aint that America- Mellencamp
If I knew how to save images from the internet onto this pc, I'd upload a pic.
I was never much in the mood to sport my nations flag, that is until Joe Rust and I became friends.
A couple weeks before I left campus, I found myself on Chauncey Hill in search of a bike lock. Figures I'd run into Rust, I feel like we randomly bump into eachother everywhere.
He was passing through town on his was to Michigan working for some big seed company doing something important. Rust is the coolest kid I know so naturally he and the friends he was with offered to go to Walmart.
This is where the search began. The search for Joe Rust's American Flag Swim Trunks. He had to have them. Most of us would sport such attire as a joke. Not Joe Rust. Kid is all american and he wants the world to know. He! Is! An American! (think Purdue football) Believe it or not, prior to July 4 Walmart did NOT have american flag trunks. He settled for a an american flag tee and swim trunks with a hawaiian print that came a few inches above his knees.
Joe: ''They're 10 dollars...should I get two????''
Me: ''No.''
My chucks are his trunks. I have to have them.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Rabiosa-Shakira
I’d like to just free write and hope all the seemingly unconnected thoughts intertwine for your entertainment.
If I were ever to live in Europe, I want to be in acquaintance with priceless art thieves like in Oceans 11 (or 12 or 13, I confuse them all). They really exist. People who have so much money and skill that they desire a greater challenge, personal possession of things that money cannot buy. As I wander through museums of Madrid with hand held speakers pressed to my ear, I hear ‘The sister piece’ or ‘The last of the four in this collection being held by a private collector.’ Or my favorite, ‘This piece was lost”. How do you lose a Manet? You don’t. Someone takes it.
Just like someone took some 12th century book from the Santiago Cathedral earlier this month. Only three people had keys to that room and someone just took it.
I bowed to pray over lunch on Sunday. I was told “We never pray.” I’ve never been to family meal where prayer wasn’t said. Ever. Dad prays when we leave for car rides that last longer than an hour. He prayed with us before bed. We had ‘church’ as a family on vacations, sometimes in the hotel but I always remember them under a tree or in a park, once sitting on a tombstone.
As I look back at these, I remember not connecting. Finding interest in bugs or shadows. But I remember them.
Over the weekend I met Carmen, Spanish born but living in London for two years waiting tables. I think its easy to be forgotten in a group whose language you don’t share. I often find myself spacing out, daydreaming in my own world as they interact in their own. Carmen and I spoke a lot, we are the same type. She told me of London, how she doesn’t feel like she belongs but there is something that keeps you there. And no one in London is English, she is friends with one English person. Hey boyfriend? Romanian. She has invited me to come see her London.
Lord willing I graduate in December. Dad, who came out of Purdue in a time when he “couldn’t buy a job,” encourages me to apply for all that I can.
All the friends who graduated on time have jobs. Actual incomes, and in the next couple years they will have houses and cars and kids. Real lives. Materials, possessions, equity, all very tempting in earnest.
Two years ago I met Michael Raith in a hostel in Rome. He was teaching English there and this morning I asked his advice. Having heard stories of girls with any 4 year degree teaching in Korea and coming home 1 or 2 years later with enough money to pay school debts or masters degrees, its always been an area of interest. I tumble around the websites he offered and bits of wisdom he gives, I imagine my life in Moscow, Tokyo, or Lima. It seems anywhere you would ever want to go needs English teachers. He says if you’re interested, do it.
I’m young and feel like the world is full of limitless possibilities.
Sorry dad, but Indiana Ag is not the current dream.
My greatest fear is that I should fall in love with something in Indiana that would keep me here. Family is forever and I fully intend on returning here to live someday because I will not live without them. But should I fall in love with teaching Agriculture? In Indiana? I’m scared it would keep me here and all my dreams of far off places will forever be day dreams. Regrets. Would shoulda couldas.
Ive always been a little on the boy side of crazy, but I have no apologies. On the contrary, I think the crazy is compensation for the fact that finding a boy worth my time is my greatest fear. He’d be the immigration officer keeping me from Ireland for the rest of my life.
12 female friends were engaged in the last 5 months. I wasn’t among those singles regretting graduate in their current state but I can’t say I didn’t think about it. There can be a fear in the hearts of young Ag Ed’s mostly because what are the chances of finding Mr. Right if you’re teaching Ag in a town of 800 people? Not as good as the 40,000 at Purdue, where boys still outnumber girls 6-4 AND you get the chance to talk to them every day.
In my mind life ends when you settle into routine and set anchor. Reality beings, job, car, house, significant other, responsibility. A completely fine life but if its going to happen no matter what, I would like to see and do all I possibly can before I come to the inevitable.
The PeaceCorp is the only thing I feel called to do. And the application has been completed for months, can’t bring myself to submit it.
Monday, July 25, 2011
God is Not A White Man- Grungor
This song is only good with the video linked to above. I found it funny and great.
On a completely unrelated topic. I'm tired of people taking pictures of ordinary things with a great camera and thinking they are creative. Thats not skill, thats an $800 lens. Fact. So stop taking close-ups of blueberries. We've all seen them.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Taboo- Don Omar
If I turn the volume up on MTV I can hear the English under the Spanish.
Today I watched Man U smash the Seattle Sounders. I didn’t know Seattle had a professional soccer team, which is why the score was 6-0 when I turned it off. They say that soccer is so unpopular in the States that the big European teams are playing with them in order to promote the sport and maybe there’s genius behind it because the Seattle seats were full.
I am of the Mia Hamm influenced generation. Admit it, the 1999 USA Womens soccer team was the only reason any of us played growing up.
Still, when talking soccer I think Daniel Tosh said it best.
Today Dani learned that American football and rugby were not the same.
This weekend I’ve the choice to go to camp on the beach with Iria and friends or ride 6 hours in the car to go to a party with Carlos, Cruz and Dani. Neither parties will speak English and as much as I want to see Avila (the later option) I want to see life that the kids my age live.
Iria said ‘Or you could go do something else!’ This roughly translates to, ‘If you want to go to Ireland, this is your chance.’ Its $600, pass.
Travel that isn’t study abroad will never be as cool as study abroad. I love my time here, this isn’t a hit at this experience. When we travel to Madrid, when we move Iria out of her apt in Santiago you see them. The young 20s, they’re on street corners, they sit in circles in the park laughing and playing guitars. How can you not want to be that? As I approach graduation, I find myself ready for it all to be over. I feel as though I could go the rest of my life without writing a research paper and be very very happy.
You will never make friends they way you make friends when you’re all stressing over the same assignment. You’re never going to see the country side they way you’d see it from a packed car of young Europeans blasting techno. And you will NEVER see ANYTHING like the the student bar during Ag Week ('Drag of Ag'...unforgettable).
Heres a good way of looking at it…PLEASE DON’T TAKE OFFENSE (I know I’ll never hear the end of this one…mom) Even when I’m in the States school is just more fun than home and you have such a short time to enjoy it as it is. Family is forever, school is not. School means new people, new discussion and doing things you’ve never done before. Family life is different from school life, family life seems to be the same no matter what country you’re in, and I’d argue the same for school.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
How He Loves Us- John Mark McMillan
I found a Baptist church here in Madrid but to be honest the effort of finding it, getting up early and Metro fare kept me in bed.
Everyone else has gone to an amusement park and I find myself in the apartment alone. I love rollercoasters but lets be honest they're kinda like zoo's, they're all the same and once you've seen a giraffe, you've seen a giraffe. And it was 30 euro. I've already run out of money, when we went to dinner they made me borrow 40 euro from 12 year old Alex.
Dinner. Tony Roma's, apparently its American, they say its from Florida. I think its the only place in Madrid to get ribs so the girls were hyped. After consuming plates of deep fried American food, the girls decide they want to go to Spain¡s hottest disco. We got into Tony Romas at eleven, out by midnight and then we looked for this disco for hours. Drinks in the gay district and back to searching for this club. We finally found it, three stories high, illuminated with different shades of cool blue lights and tons of well dressed young people looking the part.
Raqael, Lorena and Iría are all from Galicia. Galicia is to Madrid as Indiana is to NYC. Cruz´cooking is like my Gramma's meaning I'm two sizes bigger than comfortable and wearing a kelly green Target cardigan that is far from the european trends surrounding me. The dress was H&M but it was knee length, empire waist, covered in butterflies and I felt like my teacher attire had been sported a few weeks to soon.
We stood behind the velvet rope, Iria wide eyed and searching for answers. How do we get in? How are those people getting in? Is he famous? Dress code? How much is it? Do we belong here?
English speakers in front of us, so I was made to ask. They didnt know how much it was. Maybe 15, maybe 25, they werent in line, just smoking. Our mistake.
Velvet rope lifted and we bashfully sqeeze into a small rotunda of people buying tickets, we gaze at the mess happening inside, as if it were a movie shot with a blue filter.
Maybe my hesitancy showed on my face because Raquel offered to wait outside with me. Iria said she didnt know if this was our kind of place but that it was my call. I looked back through the doors. Strobe lights. Drink. Tempting. I turned back, 'I dont know, your call.' Iria said she didnt know. Meanwhile people swirled around us. They knew what they wanted, where they were going. I called it, we lifted the ropes, sqeezed through gate and group and into the first available cab.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Five More Minutes-OAR
My favorite? Hippomenes and Atalanta by Guido Reni. Atlanta had many suitors and said she would marry the one who could beat her in a race (the losers she would kill, ha!). Hippomenes loved her and during the race, he dropped golden apples which Atlanta stopped to pick up. He won! This may be my favorite peice of all time, beating out The Kiss by Klimt.
