It's been awhile. But I'm not going to apologize. I feel like every time I write I need to apologize for how long it has been since I've written. Well, this blog is a luxury, not an obligation, so I will not apologize.

I was in poverty this weekend. For my Family: A Global Perspective class I had to do a poverty simulation through Mission Waco. So from Friday night to Sunday afternoon I lived like I was in poverty. That's all I can tell you about it. Part of the learning comes from not knowing what is going to happen, so I can't tell you what happened for fear that someone out there reading this will someday go through it and know all about it. Maybe I'll tell you if you ask me in person.

People keep asking me how it made me "feel" and I still just don't know. Last night Rachael asked me how I felt and I told her I had a headache. I don't think that's what she was looking for. I just didn't know what else to say. I'm debriefing still. I have a reflection paper about it due on Friday so hopefully I will know by then. I'll let you know.

I also took out my nose ring. We had to remove all jewelry for the poverty sim and so I took it out for the first time since last October. I had some trouble getting it back in yesterday, so i just decided to leave it out. I had it for over a year. It ran its course. No one has really even noticed, not even my roommates, so it obviously wasn't that big of a deal.

And then a nice boy came down from Dallas and made me a yummy pasta/lasagna dish for dinner.

I have a test tonight and one tomorrow morning, and as I was poor all weekend, I couldn't study for them. So I skipped my classes this morning to study. Now I'm just going to chill until my 5:45 test. I feel okay about it and just want to get it over with.

So those are some quick updates. I'm kind of tired right now and it's kind of dreary outside and I feel like that is showing up in how I'm writing today.

Here is a picture of me cutting the aforementioned boy's hair a few weekends ago. You can see my nose ring (may she rest in peace).

And now I will heat up some of his leftover pasta/lasagna dish.

I have been eating a lot healthier since I've been in college. My veggie-loving roommates have been a good influence on me. Before, I didn't even like lettuce, let alone things like tomatoes and mushrooms, but now I love most vegetables. And thanks to the World Hunger Farm I now know and love all sorts of veggies that I'd never heard of before--like swiss chard, liana beans, and kale.

All that to say that my stomach has gotten used to healthy foods. Today for lunch I went to Vitex with Rob and John and I got their famous "gut pack." My stomach is kind of mad it me for that now. It is not used such large quantities of barbecue sauce and fritos. I appreciated the Waco experience, but it's nothing something I will be eating everyday.

Vitex also has Dublin Dr. Pepper, which is amazing.

Performing at Common Grounds last night was really fun. Elise and I had good rapport on stage and charmed the audience with our banter and musical prowess. Be looking for our names on a marquee near you!

I have a headache :/ Maybe because too much Dublin DP and not enough water.

Tonight I and my roommate Elise will be performing at Common Ground's open mic night. She has a djembe and I have a guitar and tonight they will make sweet music together. Or sad music. Or angry music. Or funny music. Depending on the song. We are going to leave in like seven minutes.

The funny thing is that my voice is still not all the way back (see last post) so I'm all sexy and raspy (which reminds me of an episode of Friends. Anyone?).

It'll be good. I've done open mic there before (we get thirty whole minutes all to ourselves!) and it'll be nice to have someone else up there with me. Next time, Linh will hopefully join us, who plays piano.

Ok, gonna pack up.

I'm cold. And my lungs hurt. But here's another picture from Long Island. It's our shadows at the beach. I'm the one with my leg sticking out.

Questions? Comments? How ya feelin?

Long Island was a good time. Lots of museums and driving and gravesites and art and autumn. For example.

(a detail of a painting by Lee Krasner)

(a mustache cup in the Whaling Museum of the town of Sag Harbor)

(and we got to dip our toes in the sand a.k.a. my only picture of the whole group)




Interesting things were learned and I'm glad I went. I was ready to come back though, because it wasn't exactly restful.

Now I have a paper due next week and one this week and I'm off running.

Ok, here are some hair cutting picks, most taken by Rachael [see last post for the story]:

Now for the hair . . .





Not a bad job, huh?

Today is Canada's Thanksgiving, according to my Mom's blog. Good for them. Way to be, Canada.

My hair is now about three inches shorter, falling to about my chin or a little lower than my chin (depending on the humidity). I cut it yesterday afternoon, and by that I mean that I myself cut my hair in my bathroom with my scissors. It was very exciting and spontaneous. Ryan helped, and I have some pictures that I'll post later ( I'm in the library right now). I like it though. I'm pretty proud of myself. I saved about twenty dollars and had fun doing it. I was encouraged by both India Arie and Regina Spektor. India says, "I am not my hair, I am not this skin, I am not your expectations-no. I am not my hair. I am not this skin. I am the soul that lives within," and Regina tells me "Maybe you should cut your own hair, cause that can be so funny. It doesn't cost any money and it always grows back (hair grows even after you're dead . . ." Thanks ladies. And thanks Ryan.

And so it is Monday.
And so I didn't go to my first class and studied instead for a test tomorrow (and wrote in my blog).
And so I need to leave now to go to my Philosophy class.

And I leave Wednesday for Long Island.

I'm at work right now and I have nothing to do. It's a pretty frustrating situation. I'm here, I showed up, there's nothing on my desk to do, and my professor isn't around to tell me anything to do. The professor I TA for is probably at lunch and the only thing I can do now is wait around for him to come back to see if he has anything for me to do. Until then here I am, writing on my blog. Thankfully I work in a cubicle so no on can see me doing this. To everyone else in the Audio Visual Resource Center in which I work, I just sound like I'm working, typing away on the computer.

I also take attendance for another professor's class. Her TA is in class, so I took her attendance taking job. The class has almost 200 students, and I walk up and down the rows, marking on my paper who is absent. It is quite a fun place of power, walking with my clipboard. When I walk by students hide their cell phones on which they are sending text messages and click out of the window on their computer on which they are playing Solitaire or looking at pictures on Facebook. I couldn't care less what they are doing, but it's fun that they think that I do care

My Mom came and surprised me in Waco today. We sat on campus and chatted and are going to get dinner together this evening. That's a fun surprise.

I'm writing a paper on Thomas Moran. He is a 19th century American landscape painter. It is largely because of his sketches and watercolors of Yellowstone that the area was set aside as our first national park. Such as

I think that's pretty interesting.

I know that's kind of belated, but I haven't written since it has been October. I feel a well wishing should be said
I haven't written much in my paper journal either, so don't feel too neglected. Instead I've been writing papers for class, journals for philosophy, notes for American Art. That sort of thing.
I've found that the first half of my week is usually pretty stressful and I frantically fly about, trying to accomplish everything. But by Wednesday, I either stop caring or I have less to do and then the rest of my week is pretty chill. That is how it has been pretty much every week.
It's so nice right now to write something I'm not going to be graded on. Not in a quantitative sense anyway. I'm sure you're still all grading and judging what I'm writing, deciding how and if you want to respond
My first round of tests is still not over. I have Contemporary Art and Philosophy and the Arts next week.

I'm wearing a ring today that I forgot I owned. It's a glass ring that I bought in Venice. Venice is famous for its glass products, and I chose a blue ring to remind me of the waters of Venice. There are also slight waves in the surface of the ring and gold flecks amidst the blue to signify waves.

Thar she is. The gold rings next to it are birthday gifts from Allison.
I should write blurbs for jewelry catalogs or something, huh?

Enough about rings; how are you?

I'll take a brief break from studying to share with you for a sec. A tombstone we studied in my American Art class had a poem on it that I like. I don't mean this to be morbid, I'm just studying for that class at this moment and . .I don't know . . I just like it. Deal with it. Sometimes I'm morbid.

"Adieu, my friend forever ever gone,
Her happy soul has put full glory on.
The tendrest ties could never her detain
But O our loss is her most happy gain.
Gentle her manners were, her tastes refined
Her speech sincere and open as her heart
Her conversation did delight impart.
Though young she listened to the voice of truth
And trod a savior’s steps in early youth.
Calm and serene she yielded up her breath
And even triumphed at the approach of death.

Sacred to the memory of Miss Mercy Jones
Who died April 7, 1805
Aged 20 years & 6 months"

And one more thing--Friday I went to an Ani Difranco concert with two of my favorite males in my life (Will and Ryan, brother and boyfriend, respectively). I have never smiled so much at a concert in my life. It is so fun to watch Ani rock out.

Rock on.

Okay. I guess I'll make another blog post. I haven't really felt like doing these lately. I think it's just because I've been busy doing other things. Like reading for my Philosophy class, which is really what I should be doing now. I'm at Common Grounds and I just can't concentrate on it. I couldn't at home either. I guess it's not my environment. I guess it's just me.

That sounds depressing but it's really not. I really just can't concentrate.

There are a bunch of high school girls here and they are ridiculous. They are leaving now. They wrote all over themselves with sharpies. Typical.

22 is a long way away from high school.

Ok, let's say something new and interesting. I've gotten a lot better at talking on the phone. That's not really interesting, but it's new. And I don't think I want to go to Thailand anymore. I just wanted a plan, any sort of plan, and so I latched on to that one for a week or so. But I don't want to be in Thailand for a year. I refuse to freak out about post-grad plans though. I don't want to waste my senior freaking out. I keep waiting for something to just fall out of the sky and knock me in the head and feel like the exact right thing to do. Oh yeah, I forgot I had an epiphany today. My epiphany was--of course I don't know what I want to do. Outside of school, I haven't really experienced much. How can I know what I want to do if I haven't done anything? So in my epiphany I told myself to just do something. Just try something. Unless the prefect thing happens to fall out of the sky, I'll just try other things until it feels right.

Back to Philosophy

Yes, this is my second post in one day.

My good friend Bailey once alerted me to the fact that I frequently have typos in my blog posts. I acted offended at the time, but I'm sure she is right. I even re-read my posts about three times but typos continue to sneak through. The reason I'm saying this now is I just re-read an email I sent to my Philosophy teacher earlier today:

"I have changed my mind concerning my paper topic. I was reading an article in Art News about "shock art" and now would like my paper to be trying to answer whether or now a specific piece of "shock art" is actually art, and use one more of the theories we talk about in class to define it. How does that sounds? And would the work of art I choose be the primary source?"

There are three blaring typos! And perhaps more. That's frustrating.

So I apologize for future mishaps.

I really enjoy wearing hats, but don't always have the guts to wear them. I decided today to get over it. And I'm wearing a hat. A bright red hat that I bought in Florence and wore frequently throughout Europe. I'm wearing it and you can't stop me. I'm wearing it instead of washing my hair.

I'm at the SUB, moments away from my first class of the week. I didn't read for it, which isn't a big deal, and I didn't read for the class after that, which is kind of a big deal, and I'm pretty ok with that. I had a mini freak out yesterday over everything I had to do and so decided just not to do some of it. It wouldn't be the end of the world. I felt instantly better. School isn't who I am. It's an important part of my life right now, but it doesn't have to make or break it. You know?

I've been looking more into this Thailand thing. I've gotten Elise and Claire intrigued too. That would be so fun to have one or both of them there with me, if I were to go there.

I was really excited about my Philosophy and the Arts class, but now I feel more ambivalent towards the subject. Even throughout one class, I go back and forth from thinking that what we are discussing (namely, the question of how to define art) is really interesting and valuable, to thinking it is a pretentious waste of time. There is no answer. What is art? is a question that can't be successfully answered. And we talk on and on about it just to hear ourselves talk.

It is important to know what is art though, I think, so that we can know how to respond to an object. If you know you are looking at an artwork, you scrutinize it, search for its meaning, measure its beauty, which is different then say, if you were merely look at a chair. You just sit in the chair.

And I'm tired of reading about this.

Marcel Duchamp's Fountain. Duchamp bought a urinal, signed it "R.Mutt" and then put in a gallery, calling it art. It's valuable in that it forced everyone to rethink their definition of art. Is art art because the artist intends it to be? It is so because of its context within the "art world"? (Don't even get me started on the so-called "art world." I think the art world should be the whole world . . .) So it's interesting, it's just talked about a lot so I'm tired of it.

I really do enjoy the class, I'm just venting. I think mainly I'm frustrated with Philosophy students who like to hear themselves talk and who throw around names like Nietzche and Aristotle like they're candy. And then I have no idea what they are talking about.

It also feels good to complain, because then you get to feel above all the people you complain about. Which is probably why Jesus tells us to "Do everything without complaining or arguing . . ."

Speaking of me wanting the whole world to be the art world, recently I've been throwing the idea around in my mind of maybe someday teaching art in a high school setting. You know, spreading the good news of art. Art therapy is also intriguing, though I know nothing about it. Maybe that could be before or after teaching English in a Thai setting . . .?

Wow. This past week has felt like three. I've enjoyed it, but it has been long. And I'm excited for this three day weekend.

Here's me in my cubicle

I'm really important. I have a cubicle. I like the word cubicle. It's like the word cuticle, but rounder.

I enjoy having lots of time in the morning. When my alarm goes off I may not think it's a good idea, but I do as I then get to leisurely eat breakfast, get ready, perhaps write on my blog . . .?

Leisurely is a tricky word to spell. That sure doesn't look like a word.

For about ten minutes yesterday I decided that after graduation I would move to Thailand and teach English. (The head of the Gender Studies department is also really connected with Thailand and has arranged it so Baylor graduates can go over there for a year--May to March--to teach English. She is best buds with the Thai royal family.) For about ten minutes the day before I decided I would do Teach For America (Claire was talking about it). Who knows what I will decide to do today. Or next May for that matter.

My coffee is cold but I keep drinking it.

That is all.

(Hm. That could be the name of a band or song or book or something--Cold Coffee. Or this blog post. It has a nice rhythm.)

So I have had two days of classes. I find all of my classes interesting, so that is a major plus. As a reminder, I am taking

Family: A Global Prospective
Philosophy and the Arts
Contemporary Art
American Art
Intro to Gender Studies

Va bene. And I am working as a TA for an Art History professor. I started that job today, which mainly consisted of making copies and typing up attendance sheets. I wasted a lot of paper in trying to figure out the monster copy machine and wasted a lot of time trying to figure out Excel. It's cool though. I have my own cubicle with my own iMac next to Melissa's own cubicle and own iMac, and she is a pro and so I ask her important questions like how to turn my computer on. (When I was being shown my cubicle by one of the faculty members I was like "Sure! I know Macs well! I have one." And then I couldn't figure out how to turn the thing on!)

Here are some interesting facts from my Families in Global and Multicultural Perspective book:

-"1.2 billion of the world's population is absolutely poor, defined as living on less than dollar a day . . . over 900 million, or 70% of the poor are women."
-"In April 2001, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to offer full, legal marriage to same-sex couples."
-"In most of the developing world, homosexuality is still considered a mental illness and is punishable by imprisonment and even death."
-"The US has the highest rate of lone-parent families among industrialized nations, with one third of families headed by a single parent"

Interesting stuff, no? You can now pull those facts out at parties and sound education and concerned.

I am reading The Lost Message of Jesus by Steven Chalke and it has given me some thoughts. This particular chapter deals with the idea of being "saved" and "born again." Those words tend to make me cringe a little, and I'm glad to see that they do so to Steven Chalke too. It reminds me of a time during counselor training at Sky Ranch. While waiting to train on the jet skis, one of my fellow counselors asked me how I became "saved" and I told him my schpeel. Then I asked for his. And he said "This morning, I woke up and asked God to save me." And he says he is saved everyday. And I think that is beautiful.

In this book Chalke points out that in the Bible, Jesus only uses the phrase "born-again" twice and that was within one conversation with one guy--Nicodemus. "And yet it has become the basis for one of the most confusing, misused and abused, misunderstood and despised ideas in the history of the church." The Jesus of the Bible was more interested in the ongoing process of salvation. We are already saved and are continually learning to become and act like saved people all our lives. He quotes a bishop of the Church of England who, when asked if he was saved, replied, "I have been saved, I am being saved, and one day I will be saved." Isn't that beautiful?

My room is beautiful now too. I'm not as satisfied, though, as I thought I would be now that I'm all unpacked. It's just my room. The same. I like it, but it's just a room.

Class starts tomorrow and everywhere was crazy today--church, campus, the bookstore, Wal-Mart. I quickly returned to the sanctuary of my apartment, which is where I am now, snuggled in the papasan in the corner or my room.

I'm sitting on the floor of my furniture-less room in Waco. Me and some of my gal pals painted it green yesterday, which was a lot of fun. I left some of the pink though, as you can see in this picture.

Yesterday, all four of my roommates came back (roommates=Rachael, Tinsley, Elise, and Claire)! There was much merriment, together again. We ate at Clay Pot while Elise regaled us with stories of her adventures in Italy and Lithuania, and we did the same with a our various Texan adventures. Tomorrow I will move my furniture in. I'm not looking forward to the process, but I am looking forward to being able to assemble my room and put everything away. I'm living out of a suitcase right now.

It's good to be back, and weird, and scarey, and comfortable, and the same, and different. I'm just here right now, let's just leave it at that. I don't have to label everything with an emotion. I can just be.

I had some trouble this morning paying attention to the sermon at church. My mind was preoccupied. After the sermon though, while the band was playing a David Crowder Band song--"The Glory of It All"-- people who had been hidden backstage came out one by one, each holding a handwritten cardboard sign. On the front of the sign was a short sentence of what happened in their life and/or heart before knowing Christ, and the back of the sign said how Christ changed things. It was really moving. The last one was an older woman, Julia's grandmother, whose sign first said "I committed my life to Christ 78 years ago" and the back said something like "and he has remained faithful." By the end of the "show" I was crying, and was kind of embarrassed by it, but then heard the sniffles of people around me and realized I wasn't the only one moved to tears. After the service the women's restroom was more crowded than I usually found it, with women still dabbing their eyes or reapplying makeup. It was all very moving. And it was people just simply saying what God meant to them, in black letters on a piece of cardboard.


In other news, I just took a "spiritual gift analysis." Basically it's a long quiz to assert what gifts God had has blessed me with. I have taken one before, in high school, and nowadays I'm honestly kind of wary of things like this. To quantitatively measure how God has blessed me. And also just the separating of "spiritual" gifts and "worldly" gifts. I don't like those lines. I believe God is in all my gifts and talents.

It reminds me of a poll I took a few years back. The question was "When do you like to spend time with God?" The answer choices were like "in the morning," "in the car," "in the evening," etc. I didn't like the question. I thought, "I want to spend every minute of my day with God."

Anywho, I took the Spiritual Gift test and failed. I have no spiritual gifts. Just kidding. My top two were hospitality and mercy. The hospitality one didn't surprise me, I've always enjoyed having people over to my house and such, but the mercy one did. Looking back at my life now though, I can see it. Like in the way I've never been really angry with someone. Even if I know I've been wronged or treated unfairly, I think to myself "I feel like I should be mad . . . but I'm not. Hm, weird," and go about my merry way. That's nice I guess. It's not an invitation for you people to walk all over me. I

Ok, Bailey and Will are here now so I'm going to end this.
It's over!
(as in this post, not my blog in general)