Moving

Terrible Modern is now moving. Because I no longer use my Milo in Maine e-mail address, which is what I write my blog under, it just makes sense to move my blog to my Gmail.

Unfortunately, Blogger will not let me do this unless I make a new blog at a different location. But don't worry, all of the posts I've written will move with me!

My new blog address is: www.terriblemodern.blogspot.com.

Kansas

Our trip to Kansas was certainly sad, but it also included a lot of fun moments and all four of us were so glad we could go. It was the first time my mom had been back in about 10 years, which I'm sure was very interesting for her. We started off the trip by arriving at the Kansas City airport and stopping in Lawrence on our way to Topeka to visit some historic houses:

My mom and dad's first apartment.




My mom's first apartment.




The house where my mom was born was in between these two houses.




Mom, Dad, and Isaac examine the GPS in the rental car.




The house where my dad was born.




In Topeka, we spent a lot of time with my grandmother, Tracy, Bill, and Jena (and of course Grandma's dog Sammy.) We attended the (very nice) service for my grandfather. We also looked through many, many wonderful old photos:


My grandmother as a girl:






Her mom and some aunts (check out their outfits!):




I stayed in this room:





My dad and Tracy:




Jena and me:



And... on the very last night... a double rainbow ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE SKY!

A little update on the next few days

Max left yesterday, and many tears were shed. He will come back in early December after WWOOFing in Spain on a Buddhist retreat center and then possibly in Patagonia. Now I'm waiting to hear from him and hoping that he has not gotten permanently lost on the Spanish bus system...

Other than that: I was hired yesterday at a fast food chain. I will be working 37 hours a week, which is obviously great, but the idea of having a job that I know I will learn nothing from is really scary. I really don't want to go back today to fill out paperwork, even. I am trying to think of ways to bring academia into my life.

My grandfather (my dad's dad) died yesterday. It was expected, but still really, really sad. My parents, Isaac and I are going to Kansas tomorrow for the funeral, coming back Tuesday or so.

All in all, it's been a rough couple of days and I am comforting myself with things like Mad Men, a DQ blizzard and the movie of A Streetcar Named Desire. I know I have a lot I want to accomplish before December, but first I think I just need distractions.

Independence Day

"History is a protective armor against being misled." -- Howard Zinn

I will spend this Fourth of July feeling disappointed in myself for letting another year go by without finishing this book.

Working

WWOOF Germany just re-did their website and it looks great. I am tempted to buy a one-way ticket there (which would pretty much completely deplete my bank account) and stay until they kick me out of the country. That was my plan this morning, until I remembered that I probably will find a job eventually, and until then I can babysit, and probably India will end up working out. The job search is just frustrating me at this point. I really hate applying at a bunch of crappy places and then having them not hire me.

Maybe eventually a place that's not crappy will hire me, though, after the college kids leave. I asked the nice guy at Arabica about employment and his advice was, "Just keeping hanging around! That's what I did -- and then eventually, I ended up behind the counter!"

In the meantime, I am enjoying Scrabble Sundays with David M. and my mom. We had a nice afternoon downtown at Bard, including some free scones from Standard Baking and MY VICTORY. (Maybe my first win against David M., an expert Scrabble player, EVER!!) I spelled "vibrate" for 80-something points. Too bad I didn't get a picture of that special moment. I think that means I have regained fluency in English. Then we visited the travel store down on Commercial Street, where I realized that they make quick-dry bras and water bottles with filters in them.

I am going to hold out for India.

Climbing

In preparation from my upcoming Katahdin trip (about which I'm getting increasingly nervous,) Max, my dad and I climbed Pleasant Mountain yesterday morning.







It was, well, pleasant -- not an extremely strenuous hike, but challenging (for me) towards the end. I am trying to build my endurance as a relatively out of shape city girl. I know I should just go for it, but Katahdin feels very intimidating.

The prom

The prom was awesome. I really didn't want to go at first. I resisted for a long time, and then just a few days before, Max and I decided we might as well just go.

I made Max an edible boutonnière out of lemon thyme and mint.







He actually did finish eating it entirely by the end of the night.



Our parents took tons of pictures of us. I wore a dress that I bought in 9th grade, a Gunne Sax from the 70s, which I thought didn't fit anymore but magically did.



We both wore flip-flops.



Us looking prom-y.





Some of my class.



We took some great pictures of Max, his brother Oliver and me, with us posing as the charming prom couple and him as the suspicious stranger in the background:





The prom was on a boat, which to me sounded like it could either be really nice or really claustrophobic. It was, in fact, quite pleasant, and I'm truly glad I ended up going despite the banality of prom.

Model UN

For some reason, I was convinced I wouldn't have fun at Model UN. Social situations scare me. I worried I wouldn't do well. It turns out that not doing well is pretty difficult to do as long as you talk. I didn't say anything profound throughout the entire conference, but I talked a lot and as a result I felt really good about myself. I was a good Afghanistan, I think.

My friends laughed at me when I told them I had fun after all. They have a running joke about how I hate fun. Maggie said, "I TOLD you you would! This is exactly your idea of fun, because you hate fun!!" It's true that pretending to be the UN for five 3-4 hour sessions is pretty awesome. You get to sit in a room with a white tablecloth and a white placard in front of you and be talked to very seriously.

Yogurt

Since I've come back from Germany and been quite un-vegan, I've been enjoying yogurt. My favorite breakfast is Greek yogurt with walnuts, oats, and maybe some dried cranberries in it. Today I started thinking about this yogurt, which I used to eat in Germany sometimes:

It's yogurt that comes in big glass jars and all kinds of obscure flavors, like mango and cookies and cream. When I live in Germany, I will buy it a lot.

That's all. Three AP exams down, one to go!!

WWOOF

Something crazy happened to me this week: I got the NSLI. This is a full scholarship to study Hindi in India for a year. Last year only six people in America received it; I'm not sure what the numbers are this year, but in any case, it's pretty competitive. Here's the thing: I'm about to turn it down.

When I first got the letter, the thought that ran through my head was: How can I turn an opportunity like this down? This is amazing, learning a language like Hindi is perfect for me, and it's an award, affiliated with the State Department, where I (forgive me, I guess I'm "the man") may want to work someday. But I have thought about it a lot, and I think that working for a few months and WWOOFing in India from January to June is going to work better for me. I am no longer sure the exchange experience is the right thing for me to do right now, for my gap year, and I am so excited to travel somewhere as an adult, learn about farming, see everything I want to, etc. It's simply a different kind of experience, but I kind of feel I've done the exchange in Germany and I'd like to try something new -- being a worker, not a student, and an adult tourist, not a child. The other piece of this plan is that I'm going to go with Max. He has wanted to go to India for a long time as well, appreciates a good dosa, and knows an incredible amount about farming. I think we will travel together well, and without meaning to sound at all anti-feminist, I feel better knowing that I'll be traveling with a male person. I've heard that this diminishes the harassment that western women often experience in India significantly. We are beginning to plan things out a bit.

It's Sunday, my least favorite day of the week, but tomorrow there's no homework due (other than many IR readings) and I'm having lunch with my English teacher, who I love, so things are good. Also, tonight=pomegranate-ginger cupcakes. I will let you know how they turn out.

i came by myself to a very crowded place

Yet another month has gone by without a single blog update. When I find my camera cord/organize my life, there will yet again be pictures.

Tomorrow is the first day back at school after a long April break. I have a lot coming up before school ends in a VERY FINITE AMOUNT OF TIME. I've procrastinated on my USM class again, and AP exams are imminent. Leonard Cohen helps. I like this first line because it makes me think about feeling lonely in places where there are lots of people around, like today. I appreciate his poetry a lot.

The "school drama" that has emerged recently seems to be mostly caused by the prospect of being totally done at the shack in a few short weeks. I feel bad about how detached from this I feel. I am really happy and excited to be done with school. I want Charlotte to come home and I want summer to happen. I am dreading having to say goodbye to people I care about (Max, Charlotte, Lilly, etc) but I feel very finished with school and ready to move on. I probably will not cry at graduation, which makes me wonder if I have no heart.

Also, GERMANY. Germany is like a piece missing from my soul. Forgive my melodrama, but there is a piece of me that I left there. I want to go recover it. And somehow also fit in the fabulous WWOOFing plan that I have constructed from January-June. I have a strong impulse to travel, stronger than I can ever remember having, and I wish there wasn't anything (i.e. money) holding me back.

Die deutsche Sprache fehlt mir. Ich habe jeden Tag Angst, dass ich sie total vergesse. Ich versuche Bücher zu lesen, Deutsche Welle zu hören, und so weiter, aber es ist einfach so, dass mein Deutsch nur schlecht wird, weil ich einfach in den USA bist, und kann nicht mehr regelmässig sprechen. So ist es.

barnard

Today is a BEAUTIFUL DAY. For multiple reasons. Number one is, of course, that I was accepted to Barnard College today, my absolute-first-choice school. I will be living in New York for four years. At Barnard. This idea is kind of incredibly wonderful.

I feel very prepared for things in general. I am always a little afraid of optimism, as if it is some kind of jinx, but I am so much looking forward to tomorrow and next week and the months to come. I know I have some tough decisions to make in terms of my gap year, because while I still really, really want to defer and go to India next year, I am having second thoughts about my initial plan and I'm working on another plan for how to get there. I'm considering work for six months and then farming. And maybe a stop in Thailand somewhere in there??

The fact that everything will be so different so soon is scary, but I'm working on just being excited about it instead of worrying about change. I think I'm doing a decent job.

my favorite emily dickinson poem ever

As a general rule, I do not like poetry. I am not easily charmed by it. Therefore, it is remarkable that for the past two or three days, I simply cannot stop thinking about this poem. I first heard it in December in the car on the way to North Carolina with Mana and Pop; we listened to four hours of lectures about Emily Dickinson. I find it eerie. It is striking.

It was not Death, for I stood up,
And all the Dead, lie down --
It was not Night, for all the Bells
Put out their Tongues, for Noon.

It was not Frost, for on my Flesh
I felt Siroccos -- crawl --
Nor Fire -- for just my Marble feet
Could keep a Chancel, cool --

And yet, it tasted, like them all,
The Figures I have seen
Set orderly, for Burial,
Reminded me, of mine --

As if my life were shaven,
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key,
And 'twas like Midnight, some -

When everything that ticked -- has stopped --
And Space stares all around --
Or Grisly frosts -- first Autumn morns,
Repeal the Beating Ground --

But, most, like Chaos - Stopless -- cool --
Without a Chance, or Spar --
Or even a Report of Land --
To justify -- Despair.

weather

We have had crazy 55-degree weather the past two days round here. I don't usually concern myself with the weather (either thinking about it or talking about it), but I have seriously enjoyed being outside in the warm sun and sweating while walking up the hill to Congress in my thin green spring jacket. Yesterday I went to the beach, and I actually took off my shoes and walked around in the sand and it wasn't cold. Stepping in water was pleasant, not icy. I was there with my friend Max, and afterward we went to Red's and got ice cream, and then we came back home and made coffee and played backgammon and scrabble and it was a practically perfect day.

Today, I walked downtown with my dear mother, visited some vintage shops, and met Enoch at Arabica. We also observed a man simultaneously riding a stunt bike and playing an electric guitar. Maybe a toy one, but still a guitar. I love my town.

Tonight we're having some people over for the Oscars. I'm disappointed that I never got to see Avatar, because I think it will win. When I saw the trailer for Avatar, I was violently opposed to it because there are blue people and the font used is PAPYRUS (!!!!), but since then a lot of people whose opinions about movies I trust have recommended it to me, so I'm keeping an open mind. Tomorrow I get my IR midterm back. My first midterm ever. I predict a B-C+.

microfinance, madness

I'm in the midst of finishing up a project I've been working on since January on microfinance. Although I won't have my culminating presentation to the freshmen until next week, tomorrow I have my "dress rehearsal," which I'm actually being graded on; procrastinating now by updating my blog, of course.

Today I watched the movie Paprika for the third time with my friend. Its various plotlines are hilarious, but the visuals are amazing. More than anything, it reminded me how much I really love and appreciate the absurd. (Remember that re-occuring parade with the refrigerators, frogs, dolls, Buddhas, umbrellas, etc?) It was nice to remember that in the midst of all this madness and stuff on my mind.

there are power lines in our bloodlines

I've decided I'd like to slowly ease back into regularly updating this blog. It's ridiculous to me that so much time has gone by. I'd like to somehow sum up the time between me coming back from Germany and now, but how can one accurately sum up seven and a half months? So much has changed.

It hasn't hit me yet that this my last year of high school. In a lot of ways, I still feel like a 10th grader. However, in some ways I'm packing my junior and senior years into one, so I've ended up with eight classes, including three APs and an International Relations course at USM. Because of this, I have a lot less time for "hobbies" than I'd like. Other than spending time with friends and occasionally working towards my New Year's resolution of watching the entire Criterion Collection (not going to happen by 2011), I don't do much outside of school.

BUT, while I have felt a bit of "senioritis" and I'm ready for my senior expedition to end, school isn't so bad. I've definitely learned a lot this year (both in and outside of school), mainly about American history, classic literature, microfinance, ethics, social skills, sociology, America, living the creative life, and poetry, to name a few things. I'd like to belatedly say that if you haven't read A People's History of the United States, GO READ IT RIGHT NOW because not only is it an "important" book for Americans to read, it's interesting and entertaining and absurdly well-written.

That's enough for now. I should get back to APES work. APES as in AP Environmental Science. Goodnight.