Updates

Okay.  It's been a while, and a lot's happened.  I'll go chronologically.

So, Saturday morning we all piled onto the buses to go home for a week.  I brought a friend back with me, and she stayed until Tuesday - which included Passover, a phenomenon she'd never before witnessed.  It was the least organized seder I'd ever been to, and my mother's friends got drunk on Maniscewitz and asked my friend things like "you're not a Mormon, are you?"  We had fun.

So, remember how I was accepted to that Chinese language programme?  Well.  Last Monday, the woman from the Chinese school organizing the trip called me up and told me no dice.  Apparently, NSLI-Y wouldn't supply her school with the grant for me for the same reason they wouldn't send me to Tajikistan - I'd gotten a scholarship from them last year, and for the summer programmes, they give priority to those who haven't studied abroad.  They want repeaters to go for longer.  I a) didn't know that, and b) couldn't miss school for that anyway.  I couldn't graduate.  So.  I'm not going to China.  I cried a lot, but I'm done now and trying to find something else to do.  There are a few people I'm thinking of visiting, and I'll probably find some work and start learning to drive.  But I didn't want to speak English this summer...  As a consolation prize-type thing, the Chinese school offered me a scholarship to three weeks of language classes.  I'll probably take it, to get a head start on Chinese classes next year at school. 

The week improved on Wednesday, when my mother and I got up at something like 5:30 am to drive to Portland.  We stopped for breakfast at some little diner, where I had what must have been the best doughnut in the history of fried things - it was still warm, so crispy, not too sweet or oily or heavy... it was my friend - and cranberry-walnut pancakes I'm still dreaming of a week later.  Then it was onward to Portland, where we generally dance in the streets singing "civilization, darling, we're home!"  This time we were in a hurry, so we just did a little shopping.  Or intended to.  We ended up doing rather a lot of shopping, actually, and now I have some really fun summer dresses, shorts, etc.  There was no time for Trader Joe's, which is the only thing I regret about the whole day, because I had a lunch date to make it to.  I guess it was technically an interview, with a good friend of my Senator who's also the former chief of staff of her husband, who was the Governor who set up my school.  Anyway, the interview concerned my application to the Page Program in Washington.  We had a lovely time, and lovely eggs benedict, and though I haven't yet heard back from the Senator's office, I'm hopeful about being accepted.

After all that, my mother and I drove back home, stopping en route at John's Ice Cream for dinner.  John's Ice Cream is the best ice cream on the face of the planet, it's a tiny roadside shop run by a hilarious, tiny Italian guy, and whenever I have the chance I consume as much of his dazzling product as I can stand to.  He has an astounding range of flavours - chocolate orange or lemon peel and strawberry rhubarb, the best ginger and pistachio, chocolate that tastes like frozen mousse.  We shared a milkshake and two scoops of heaven, and didn't regret it for a minute.  I fell asleep in the car, and was happy.

And now I'm back at school.  I hurt my back on Sunday and haven't been feeling phenomenal, so I stayed in bed today.  Real life will start again tomorrow, but there's only a month left of it!  Granted, I don't know what I'm doing with my summer, but I will never, ever again study chemistry after a few weeks, and that alone makes them worth fighting through.  I'm actually sort of excited about my final paper for AP Composition - it's about globalization - and the rest I can gasp through. 

I found my old art class portfolio from last year.  God, so much has changed... here's my favourite piece from it.

Paragraphs

Well.  I may well be the laziest blogger on the planet.  This is disgraceful.  I have a thousand excuses for not talking at you over the internet for so long, but none of them are very compelling.  So I think I'll just tell you that I was waiting until I had something interesting to say.

Oh, where did we leave off...?  Okay, a few days after my last post, when I still hadn't heard back from NSLI-Y about spending the summer abroad learning a language, my father scanned me a newspaper article advertising this (THANK YOU, Daddy).  It's the same scholarship, but specifically for Maine residents (oh, God, am I a Maine resident?  I'd much prefer to continue to think of myself as visitor after these .... seven years) to go to China.  I sent in the application, kind of on a whim, thinking it would be nice backup for the primary NSLI-Y, about twelve hours before it was due.  On Tuesday night I had a skype interview with a lovely chinese woman who runs some sort of Maine School of Chinese Language and Culture, who kept telling me to break up with my boyfriend without asking if I had one.  It took a while to get a word in and reassure her.  There was also an American woman helping with admissions, and she used to live near my school and I think she approved of me. 

On Wednesday afternoon (oh, my - play-by-play accounts of the week?  No, this will end badly) I got The Email.  The NSLI-Y email. 

"Thank you for applying to the 2011-2012 National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) programs.  The NSLI-Y team recognizes the time and effort you took to complete your application.  Unfortunately, you were not selected to receive a NSLI-Y Scholarship. "

 None of my friends from Turkey last year were accepted to summer programmes!  It's most unfair, because look at this, which was hidden so sneakily on their FAQ page:

Q: Am I eligible if I have already participated in NSLI-Y?

A:  If you have participated on a summer program and are re-applying for the summer, preference will be given to qualified students who have not previously participated on NSLI-Y. Past summer participants are considered highly competitive for semester- and year-long programs in the same language. If you are accepted and you have been on a NSLI-Y program before, be aware that there is a possibility that you will be placed with a different administering organization and/or in a different country.

Well, whatever, I thought.  We'll all have kickass summers whatever.  I called my dad and let him know, cried a bit, stuff like that.  Then, that evening, my mother rang me up from London and told me that she'd gotten an email from the China scholarship people.  She forwarded said letter (I wish they'd just sent it to me) and... um, well:

 

Congratulations!

We are proud to announce that you have been selected as a finalist to participate in the NSLI-Y  program for study and travel in China during the summer 2011.

So, it's not really necessary to say how excited I am about this - or to be telling you, actually.  I started this blog because I was going to Turkey.  This course is a little different, and I don't know everything about it yet - I didn't actually do much research about the programme before applying, but I think I'll take a couple weeks of intensive Chinese classes here, then hop on a plane and skip around China for six weeks.  The interviewers made it sound like we'd see quite a lot of the country.  I know absolutely no chinese and far too little about the culture - I was sort of Middle East focused - but I'm extremely excited to go there, and I'm taking Chinese at school next year. 

So, Wednesday was a shitty day redeemed to the fullest.  You really should have seen me bounding about the dorms, I was - and am - so excited. 

Um... so, sorry to do this whole chronological thing, but YESTERDAY, guess what happened?  Did I tell you I'm playing softball with the local school's team?  There are three girls playing from my school, and though most of the time I've got no clue what I'm doing, I really enjoy it and the other girls are very nice.  They call me London, and when we pass each other in the hallways they yell it out.  It's very sweet. 

Anyway, yesterday at practice, I kind of took a ball to the head.  We were bunting, and it just bounced off the bat and hit me very neatly in the forehead.  What ensued was, in my opinion, a long and drawn-out chain of overreactions on the part of everyone in authority, because I sat down, started to feel sick and tired and dizzy, and was proclaimed likely to be concussed.  After a while of being incessantly talked to and made to respond (they don't let you fall asleep when things hit your head hard, and that was really all I wanted to do), one of the dorm staff came to insist on taking me to the emergency room.  A very long wait and a long story short, I was extremely mildly concussed, dosed up with a lot of painkillers and anti-anxiety pills the combined effect of which made me feel like I'd been hit on the head again, and sent home almost three hours later.  It was not fun, but sleep was sweet.  I'm not allowed to play any sports for a few days, and I feel so tired still that I might just stay in bed today.  But I hope you'll learn from my mistake.  softball is DEADLY. 

Oh, and this is Day of Silence, isn't it?  I hope blogging doesn't count.  I used to have a big problem with this day - isn't speaking up for gay rights a better way to go about it than remaining voiceless as generations of minorities have?  But I think it's a great way to raise awareness, so I'm participating to the best of my ability, ie, not in classes.  If I go to classes.  Hell, I might just sleep today.  We're going home tomorrow for a lovely long week.  And this week was So un-lovely.  Two tests, two quizzes, an English paper and a GMM (Group Math Major - it's evil, don't ask).  I am unbelievably glad it's almost over. 

Well, that's about all.  I'm going back to sleep, and you should, too.

New Amsterdam, It's Become Much Too Much

So... yeah... I haven't written anything in forever.  It's because I don't love you. 

Yesterday the weather was a proper April fools bitch and ruined our weeks-long run of achingly-almost-spring-ness by dumping eleven inches of snow on our heads.  Thanks, babe, much appreciated.  This was a nice short week, though, and now there are only two more until break.  It's almost as if there's a god.  However, today ruined all my (slim) chances of believing such a thing.  This place is a public school, which means we have to have a certain number of school days in order to, you know, get state funding, etc.  So, instead of operating on a normal high school schedule, we occasionally cram mandatory "school days" into weekends.  This is apparently "theme weekend" though nobody's mentioned the theme.  I guess it must be math and science.  What a lovely change.  So, I sat through two hour-long lectures on meteorology and weather broadcasting.  The first one was actually incredibly fun - the guy was from Alabama, said "I'm jus' sayin'..." about three hundred times throughout a lot of different powerpoint presentations that could really have been consolidated, but were okay because they concerned things like storm chasers, nutcases who drive into hurricanes with their video cameras, and what a bitch the TV weather broadcast industry is.  The second one, after lunch... well.  I was honestly fighting to stay awake.  But not very hard.  It wasn't worth it.  He gave up maps of the United States.  We drew lines around pressure zones and things like that in different coloured pencils.  Or we were meant to.  I drew lots of little purple circles. 

I'm getting nervous.  I still haven't heard back from NSLI-Y, and people are starting to.  One of my friends from Turkey last year is an alternate for this year, and I just want to know so that I can get a job if I don't get in.  But I really want to get in.  I don't care where, though India or Tajikistan would be amazing. 

Groucho Marx.  Goddamn genius.  I've been flipping through a book of his personal correspondence, and the man was just so rude to everybody, and so funny!  Observe this excerpt from a letter to some friend of his:

"Years ago I used to have a girl friend who made a pretty good living addressing envelopes for a mail order firm in Hollywood. She used to get five dollars a night for a thousand envelopes and she would knock them off by midnight. The most of the night she spent in the sack with various men friends. She averaged about a hundred dollars a night, five dollars from the mail order business and ninety-five from the female order business. Well, that's about all there is to the story, it was only a brief romance, but I did salvage some of the envelopes for myself. Ah, youth, that it should be wasted on addressing envelopes."

I mean... people just don't write like that any more.  It's crazy. 

I want new headphones, and I can't decide whether I should get some okay earbuds or go all out for a proper headset.  Advice? 

Well, it's Saturday night, which means pretending to do homework.  Chem test on Monday, and so much English.  I finished Great Expectations, but that bitch of a book isn't done with me... there's still an essay, and So Many Notes.  And I liked Estella, which nobody is supposed to do.  So I feel like if I write an essay happily equating feminism with lovelessness... I'll get in trouble.  Gah.  Whatever.  Night.

Men Go Crazy In Congregations, They Only Get Better One By One

I do adore Sting.  My dad would always play a few CDs at home when I was very, very small, whenever he was in a good mood or... something.  The Beatles #1 hits, a Nanci Griffith album, some Simon and Garfunkel, and Sting.  

So she took her love for to gaze a while, upon the fields of barley/ in his arms she fell as her hair came down, among the fields of gold. 

There are just a few things I don't think I will ever, ever get tired of.  That album, Fields of Gold.  The Lion King.  Salmon roe.  Russian dolls, Andy Warhol, marble notebooks, the mechanical pencils with the thick, thick leads that always lived on my daddy's drafting table (I'm fairly certain he's the only architect left in the world who has never heard of Google Sketchup), waffle weave shirts.  A couple people (you should know who you are).  

He who hesitates is last.

-Mae West

No shit, darling.  I adore Mae West.  So sexy, so clever, so unashamed of her body and unafraid to shock people.  I want to be Mae West when I grow up.  If I have to grow up.  Though sometimes that sounds pretty attractive, because surely grownups don't deal with the shit I deal with in high school?  Surely.  Okay, I'm done being silly now.

Oh, hello, again, darlings.  I'm so glad to know you're here.  And proving it, too!  You can tell I'm three years old and just met the internet, because I get really, really excited every time a single comment shows up on here.  So, thank you for making a sixteen-year-old geek who was born in the wrong decade (am I too young to say "at least the 90s are over"?) so very, very happy.  I don't mind being a bit of a cliché.

In other news: Ugh, Monday.  I have actually been quite productive this structured study period, so I'm taking the last half hour to write to you.  I begged off of swim team today, feeling quite genuinely sick.  We all are.  My hands and lips are cracked and bleeding, all I want to do is snuggle into my blankets, but my room is freezing and too full of foods I don't really have an appetite for but will eat anyway and then feel sick because of.  I want to bathe in warm olive oil.  I want to see the sun.  I want to eat fresh fish and ripe fruit and cake baked by someone other than me... I guess I want it to be summer, and I want this place not  to be Aroostook County.  Because the combination of winter and snow and wind and a tiny dorm full of a hundred-odd teenagers, many of whom kiss at least one other person rather a lot, and a crazy stressful school schedule turns out to be quite conducive to illness.  Who knew?  I want to lock myself in my room, but I'm too social and can't afford to miss maths.  I'm going to be all right (You hear that, you bloody bastard?!  I AM going to be all right!  I am!).  I have to be.  Because there's a swim meet on Wednesday.  

The meet on Saturday went quite well, considering that I hadn't been to one since seventh grade.  I made a 33-second 50 yard freestyle, and we did all right in the relays as well.  But it was    such    a    long    way.  Longer than it takes me to get home, and that's a couple hundred miles.  So, we left at about 9 am and got back well after midnight.  I kicked my shoes off, took out my contacts and fell into bed without even brushing out my oh-so-chlorinated hair.  

Woke up nice and late yesterday, had breakfast and proceeded to Do Nothing the rest of the day.  I really kind of hate Sundays here, because everybody else is working and I don't have the ethic, and it was too cold to go down to the shop and I couldn't have used the kitchen anyway, because there were people in it - in MY kitchen!  What the hell?  Anyway, I just sort of felt sorry for my lonely little self like a lonely little loser yesterday, and then wasted structured talking with friends.  Which is SO much more worth my time than stupid maths homework.  Honestly.  

Oh, but one fabulously hilarious thing did happen.  I don't know if you'll appreciate it, not knowing the girl who said this, but anyway... the instrumental ensemble class met for a few minutes on Sunday afternoon to distribute music, etc, and as we were all coming out of the school, I, in my grip-less flats, slipped on the compacted snow and fell flat on my face.  I've got this big bruise on my hip now.  But I must have been swearing a bit as I got up - my usual routine is something like "Oh, shit, fuck, what the fucking hell, JESUS!" - and after I'd brushed myself off, this girl said to me "I thought Jewish people swore to Moses."  I felt so much better after that.  Falling on your ass, then laughing it off, is wonderful.

And God I love food studies.  We sit.  In a room.  And talk about food.  And food in modern culture.  And food in history.  And non-food... read this article and be outraged, okay?  It is, as my teacher put it, a food hookah (makes me miss Turkey, actually) and the most completely stupid idea ever.  People don't just crave flavours.  If you're not full, you're still hungry, fool.  And you will eat.  

Oh, but speaking of Turkey-ish things!  Interview tomorrow.  Wish me luck, my dears.  Send some good vibes north at about 6:30 Eastern time, would you?  Tajikistan/ Egypt/ India, here I might come!  

Okay, this is a stupid post, because I have nothing very exciting to tell you about that I can tell you about - yeah, you thought you knew everything.  SORRY, babes.  Anyway, I'm nearly done with my DC video and have a ukulele one in the making, too.  

Okay, Jew question: there are lots of things I don't get about the Jesus Concept, but I think I'm fairly certain that people are always saying that he "died for everyone's sins" and stuff.  If he died to atone for everybody's sins, why can't Christians just go around doing whatever the hell they like?  If they've got to keep being sexually oppressive and intolerant and trying to convert people and stuff, what was the point of the Messiah dying?  Hell, now I'm going to get a lot of angry comments from the religious right.  Do you have any idea how many Christian family blogs there are out there?  Sick.

Goodbye, Washington

Sorry for not-posting in so long.  I'll give you the full story soon - it's been a crazy two weeks - but here's an interim video.  Flight tomorrow morning: Baltimore --> Philadelphia --> Bangor, ME.  If it's not too snowy.  Then a night with my darlings, then school! 






I think I got a little bit frostbitten walking around a freezing-cold (yet bleakly snowless) DC today because I didn't have to go into work.




Tonight I'm going to a pizza restaurant with ping pong tables.  Life is beautiful. 

We Are Stardust; Billion Year Old Carbon

So.  Library of Congress.  Pretty damn sexy.  I'm gathering material for another video, but so far all I've got are some artless pictures of the capitol, and a few subway shots.  The D.C. stations have curved ceilings, and it really feels as if you're walking inside a big tube... I've been imagining myself in the veins of a whale, but I'm just a geek.  Anyway, to keep the wolves at bay:

 

(Okay, also of the LOC's Jefferson Building.  And my Christmas tights)

 

I've been transcribing lots and lots of interviews with master violin makers, many of whom have impossibly thick German accents.  As a non-violin playing, part time classical music-listener, I'm learning a lot, but it sometimes gets a little dry.  Far more exciting for me is the two-disc "primer" of international jazz that the Library's jazz curator (they have a curator of jazz.  A full time specialist curator of jazz.  This man... I will meet him next week.  He unearthed all these John Coltrane/Thelonious Monk recordings nobody knew existed.  And these discs, especially the Brazilian stuff... he has amazing taste).  But this weekend should be fun.  Tomorrow I'm planning to meet up with a couple friends from Turkey!  Americans who were on that programme with me.  One lives a little outside D.C, and another's at college in New York but in town for the weekend... so glad I picked up on his facebook feed.  And on Sunday, my godfather's taking me to Thomas Jefferson's old house, Monticello.  By all accounts it's an architectural marvel with beautiful grounds, and of course the history is fascinating, so I'm very glad about that.

So, I know I'm throwing lots of videos at you lately, but I guess it's just how I'm relaxing these days.  You get my leftovers, but I think today's is pretty damn fantastic.  

 

A Week In Five Minutes

I'm throwing way too many videos at you these days, but at least this one's mine.  I edited it on the plane ride.  I will rave to you about how amazing my Library of Congress job is some other time, because I'm tired.  Soooo: Like!  Comment!  Rate!  Share!  YouTube!!!

You're My Best Friend, But Then You Died, When I was 23 And You Were 25

Proper update coming soon, but my cousin and I were browsing the backlogs of the BBC's predictions for the Next Big Things on the British music scene.  Some of them were right on - Adele, anyone? - and some we'd never even heard of but spent hours looking up because we are geeks.  These guys have me on my knees.  Their videos, their whole look is so vulnerable-'50s-drive in-drive by-skinny-gorgeous, the singer looks like Chet Baker, and their sound is really cool.  I give you The Drums.



The dancing in this one is just adorable.  So effectively awkward.  And what a a great stylist... look at the singer's paperbagged trousers!  And the saddle shoes behind him!

And this one... the grainy video style had me at 'hello'.  I want to be a critic, dammit!



SO, I'm nearly done packing to go back to the States on Sunday.  D.C., baby, here I come.  I'm dragging my feet over the lines I have to memorize for The Importance Of Being Ernest, but whatever, I'll do them on the plane.  Last night I went back to the neighbourhood I used to live in and saw a friend and his family.  The evening really couldn't have lasted long enough... they just don't make boys like that in America.  In a few minutes I'll go to synagogue with my family, then Friday night dinner at my grandmother's.  Tomorrow is Oxford, and then it's goodbye, England, maybe for a whole year.  But, on to merrier things, if only slightly: while we're looking at gorgeous skinny boys, click HERE for Bret Lloyd's The Quieter Poster Boys, a gorgeous bit of photography.  The tip came from my maytag model. 

I've done a nice bit of shopping while here, too.  I'll show you everything soon, but other than the shoes there's been a dress, some respectable trousers because I realized I'm going to be working in the Library of Congress and can't really show up in stained corduroys OR miniminiskirts, and some rather exciting leggings (think me: think polka dots).  And HAHA!  It all fits in my bag because I've distributed all of my granola!  Yes!

(It's LinkSlut Friday)

SO SORRY SO SORRY SO SORRY

But today, oh, guess what?  Let's see:

Article A: British Library exhibit on the evolution of the English language, from the Saxons and Vikings up to Muhamad Ali's and the Queen's speeches, through profanity, propaganda, accents and acronyms, traversing spelling variations, language derivations... for a spelling nerd like me it was basically heaven.  

 

Then B: lunch at St Pancras Station, a glorious place I couldn't get any decent pictures of.  

Then my aunt and I picked up my cousin and grandmother and dropped them off to go handbag-shopping.  We headed to D: Magnus, perhaps the only shop in the world with (fun, pretty) shoes my size, where I picked out two very exciting specimens with which I am deliriously happy:

However, as we were pulling up in front of the shop, something completely horrid, C, happened.  We were almost parked as a guy on a motorbike came down the road and braked.  Then, I don't know, it happened very fast but I suppose he tried to accelerate and he slipped on a patch of oil.  The front wheel slid out form underneath him and the bike fell on top of him.  He'd been about ten feet in front of us the whole time, but it looked and felt for all the world as though we'd hit him.  We and some other people got out of our cars and helped him to the pavement, picked up his bike etc.  He'd hurt his knee quite badly.  Very long and stressy and shaken story short, the police and an ambulance arrived and took him away, and a very nice police officer sat in my aunt's car for a bit and worked out what had happened.  The saddest bit was that it was this man's birthday.  And he'll be layed up for a couple weeks at least.  Awful.

Well, we got over that after a bit, and I was dropped off at a café to meet up with exhibit E: my mother's old boyfriend from, oh, before they went to university, I suppose.  He's an awfully nice guy, the sort who, according to all reports, has been wearing the converse and skinny jeans I saw him in today for about 35 years.  That look.  He's also a rather well-established journalist, who wrote this book, which is referenced in my chemistry textbook, as well as Just My Type, his most recent publication, about fonts.  My dad got it for Christmas and I read a couple chapters before catching my plane.  I definitely recommend it.

So, my day ended with exhibit F: three episodes of The West Wing.  Good times.  Must go to sleep as my cousin and I have a day of photography about the city planned for tomorrow.  Wish me luck and more shots like this, my favourite of the trip so far:  

Sorry I Haven't Posted In A Week...

...off to London tomorrow.  Lots of news soon!

News!

Well, it's that sort of time again where I start talking about languages.  I sent in my application for NSLI-Y summer a month or two ago, this time indicating preference: Farsi (Persian), then Arabic, then Hindi.  And today I got an email letting me know that I'm a semifinalist!  This basically means they liked my application enough to interview me and check if I'm a total psycho!  I started this post hours ago and have since been to a birthday party, gone for a walk, been hunted down by my mother for staying out too long in the dark (I did tell her where I was going) and threatened with... I'm not sure... house arrest?  They can't very well keep me from walking to the beach, can they?  Anyway, I'm just praying that this snow in London goes away before I'm meant to fly - the 29th.  Honestly... whenever I try to go to England, there's some natural disaster that freezes Heathrow.  Last time it was that volcano and I was almost stuck there, while my cousin was trapped in Spain - actually, I was over there when I found out I'd gotten into the Turkish summer programme.  I feel a bit like this:

Chet Baker.  Just a dream. 

Leave The Makeup On, You Won't Sleep For Long

Killed that math final.  Beat it to the ground.  Crushed it with all the anger and malice I have ever owned, stolen or had thrown at me.  It cowered on its back on the desk before me as I delivered Death by a Thousand Cuts by Pencil upon its sorry body, and it slunk slowly back to the grading pile knowing never again to screw with the God of Logarithms. 

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

Now it's late, and I'm luxuriously stretched out on the couch listening to Shakira sing stuff I don't understand because it's in Spanish, and reading Hyperbole and a Half which I don't understand because of its sheer excellence.  "We all know that coconuts smell good, but have you ever seen a coconut burst into flames from sheer excellence?!"  See what I mean?  No?  Well, screw you.  Wait!  No!  I didn't mean that!  You should not go cry in a corner because we read different blogs!  I want you to read me.  Really, I do. 

It's pretty here where I live.  Not quite as snow-smothered as school, but pleasantly shiny and sparkly without being all Oh*censored*ICan'tGetOutOfMyHouse.  Dorm.  Whatever.  I miss my friends.  I miss my freaking chem teacher.  Something's wrong here.  I miss my friends who live here too.  Because one of them had to go to Israel this morning, making my total time allotment with him equal to three hours per two months - we watched Undercover Brother last night and it was great, but now I don't get to hang with him till February.  Which is stupid. 

So, basically, I'm totally exhausted from finals, and I don't want to do anything again, ever.  I will sleep on the couch (my sister has a friend staying, and I somehow volunteered my room for the weekend) forever and be fed.  For twelve whole days.  Then I will go on a plane and live in England for a week or so.  Then I will go to the Library of Congress and be so freaking happy there that I will forget to go home to school.  And one day I'll be all "I miss my friends.  I miss my friends at home.  I miss my freaking chem teacher" and then I'll be all "Screw D.C, I'm going North!" and as soon as I get there I'll regret it because I'll miss Washington, which is a wonderful city where everyone should get to hang out if they're my friend, and hey, this is a run-on, isn't it?

Yesterday I acquired some very exciting sparkly tights I will soon show you, as well as my new-last week neon pink fencenets.  It's all very, very exciting.  I should probably go do something with my legs in a bit so they're still somewhat mini-worthy when I am set loose on London and Washington.  There's this girl at school who's totally gorgeous, makeup obsessed (my maytag model used her huge box of eye stuff on me on the bus yesterday and it was fantastic) and cool, and she lets me take lots and lots of pictures of her and therefore I love her.  Also, she lives directly underneath me and doesn't mind when I do occasionally practice my trombone or clarinet or sax... I don't think she can hear the ukulele.  Anyway, she said to me the other day, on two separate occasions that I had a) great legs and b) a great ass.  You should have seen me prancing around for happiness the moment(s) she was out of sight.  Because she should know.  Anyway, that's sort of what prompted me to buy another mini skirt.  And now I have to be worthy.  Because I love her and I do not want to disappoint her by having a not-great ass.  Also, I'd just like to maintain my apparently-great ass for the sake of having one.  A great one, I mean.

Oh.  I burn things.  I mean, you know I like fire.  But I apparently think destruction thereby is more beautiful than normal people.  I was making cheese biscuits today, because my parents are going to a Christmas party.  I was invited, too, I just didn't want to go.  In case you thought my parents have *censored* friends who don't think I'm cool enough to go to their parties.  Anyway, they came out really prettily.  But my dad was in a hurry, and the last tray wasn't done, so he decided not to wait for them to bake.  He left.  I thought "I have abstained from facebook for two weeks.  Let me go fry my brain."  About forty-five minutes after forgetting the already-almost done cheese biscuits (recipe below), I pulled these out of the oven.  And I think they're beautiful.

They look chocolate, don't they?  Well, they're not.

Okay, I'm going to ring people up or go to sleep or have a hot bath or something now.  Just enjoying not working, but it feels like walking down an escalator and then getting off, and you can't work out why you've lost momentum because your feet are still moving, you know?

Oh, and how about that whole DADT-being-beaten-almost-as-thoroughly-as-my-math-test-though-it-deserved-it-more thing?  Are we happy?  We are so god*censored* happy right now. 





Good If You Don't Burn Them, Pretty If You Do


4 oz soft butter
4 oz grated cheese (any kind - Jarlsberg works nicely)
6 oz flour
Salt
Pepper
Cayenne


Mix it all together until it's sort of a dough.  Roll it /4 inch thick and cut  or form it into logs, refrigerate them and slice them into 1/4 inch-thick coins.  Place the thingies on greased cookie sheets and bake at 350 °F (180°C) for about twenty minutes.  And watch them.  Oh, and you should put a pecan in the middle of each one, if that's what you're into, before you bake them.  Yeah. 

All-Nighter, Just Because

I'm going to feel like total shit tomorrow.  But I have been watching videos and listening to music and chatting with friends since about nine, and it's now about half one, so why stop?  I promised you pictures.  Here are some goddamn pictures.  I went and did it.  I found my bag, and found my wallet (can't call it a purse in this country 'cause they think you mean bag) and found my credit/debit whatever the hell it is card in the wallet (my wallet's ridiculous.  It's faux leopard fur and purple leather.  Some people sent it to me for my bat mitzvah.  I love it) in among all the shit that's in there.  Okay, just for the hell of it, while we're waiting for my order of 20GB of photo space to process (the stuff I do for you!  You'd better buy my memoirs when they don't come out) let's give people a chance to understand the female psyche by going through my goddamn purse/wallet/money thing:

Front pocket.  We've got some cool money in here.  A ten-dollar New Zealand note my mum brought back from, um, New Zealand.  Their money is pretty ridiculous.  It's got see-through bits.  Yep, plural, multiple see-through little windows in it, because why the fuck not?  (I'm going to end up blocked at school for weighted phrases and then I'll be really fucked)

Then we've got some Turkish ten-Lira notes.  They're pretty and pink and have Atatürk on one side and some scientist and equations on the other.  No windows, but still pretty nice.  Especially compared to American money.  Ugliest stuff in the world, I ask you, why?

There's also, let's see.... a blister-pack of Advil that's got three blisters punched out and one remaining.  And two stray quarters.

Moving backwards to the Pocket With The Zip. 

Shit, I had no idea this was where all my money was.  I assumed it was in some dark recess of my camera case.  We've got about sixty dollars cash (for food, see.  I have to buy food), a tube of lip balm that claims to be nourishing and organic and, incidentally, is also made in New Zealand, and lots and lots of coins.  These coins add up to: Five Lira and forty Kuruş (5.40 TL), sixty-two US cents and twenty-one pence.  How exciting!  Oh, and a broken rubbery earpiece bit from a set of Skullcandies. 

All right, I've shoved all that back in there and zipped it back up.  Now there's this big back pocket with all these slits for credit cards, though I don't know anyone who's got enough of any sort of card to fill them all up.  What I have is a crumpled up receipt for some groceries at the one shop that's any sort of feasible distance from my school, my key card to get into the dorms (I was so pleased to find that a week or two ago - I'd been knocking for ages), a University of Maine library card that the English teacher passed out to us all, two Aerie awards cards that make me buy lots of underwear for slightly lower ridiculous prices on occasion, an AFS Turkey business card with their Ankara address, and ooh!  Look, it's another receipt.  It's for a half-gallon of semi-skimmed milk.  How exciting!  I remember buying that milk!  I had to smack someone to stop him paying for it.  Moving on....some dollar bills, some more coins....a Canadian cent.  I think we're up to five currencies, aren't we?

In those actual slitty things where all those other cards should have been are a few card-shaped-ish things, too.  There's a ride ticket from the fair.  There's a student Müze Kart letting me into any public Turkish museum for free until Temmuz (July) 2011, and a card 'proving' that I'm a student at Ankara Üniversitesi.  There's my old student ID from my old school, and my actual credit-debit-card thing.

Just one more pocket now.

It looks like these are mostly just folded up bits of paper from Turkey.  A ticket for something, a receipt for something else.  A couple emergency addresses/phone numbers, my International Student insurance card, and a sort of customs declaration thing.  My wallet's not very feminine at all, is it?  I mean, there's expired lip balm.  But then there's just...shit.  I guess the bra cards count for something,

 

This one's on my wall in the dorm.  Robert Indiana is just fantastic.  And I am going to meet him!  Maybe.  I'll tell you about that later.  

So, only two nights ago, I was introduced to Torchwood.  I know.  I KNOW!  I'm English, for god's sake.  And I love the Doctor, but Captain Jack is something else.  I'm not ashamed to tell you that he's replaced Kapadokia as my desktop image.

Now, there was champagne involved in this weekend, which is the Only Reason some of these might be a bit blurry.  Let's start with my birthday cakes.  Yeah, plural.  One was a triple-layer chocolate ginger cake with ginger whipped cream and ginger ganache, and the other was (and still is - I had the most marvelous breakfast) a gingerbread apple upside down cake.  I can't decide which I liked better.  Both recipes were from Smitten Kitchen, my favourite food and photo blog of all time, but I'll post them separately, with my desperately-bereft-of-buttermilk adaptations, next post.  I'm getting better at keeping next-post promises, aren't I?

 

So, not beautiful pictures, but you get the idea.  And what wonderful ideas they were...

These were actually the night before.  But whatever. 

Oh, Christ, this is shaping up to be a really long post and somebody's going to murder me tomorrow for being so tired.  So I'll stop here - cake's all that really matters anyway, right?

It's None Of It True

Now, I don't mean to go all sentimental photo-montage on you, but a friend of mine, one who talked me out of all my money convinced me to get my camera and all ensuing tchotchkes, made this and it's really too good not to show you.







In other news, I'm home after an uncommonly pleasant bus ride.  I woke up at sixish, with far more ease than almost everyone else in the school, mostly due to the fact that I hadn't gone to a midnight-ish showing of Harry Potter the night before (I passed most of my birthday evening wandering about outside and looking in at the boys' windows - there is some frightful pornography to be seen on those walls).  Anyway, I came outside for breakfast and there was a thin layer of snow on the ground and more falling.  It was absolutely magical, and even in the groggy, cold, flip flop-clad state I was in I was delighted.  Boarding the buses was fun - I was the last on - and I found the usual company for my route enhanced by an addition with whom I listened to several issues (is that the right term for a podcast?) of The Bugle before dozing on the shoulder of a lovely boy whose taste in music rivals those of even my friends here.  He approved of the above video.  All through this is was snowing rather thickly and the bus was cold, but when I woke up we were 'south' and it was ridiculously sunny again.

I'll skip the part where I drag my father underwear shopping and go right to the food.  I swear, my next post will be nothing but pictures of what I'm eating.  I have been reduced to tears by real food that I didn't cook.  Last night, we had greens and Brussels sprouts with ginger and roast chicken and parsnips and garlic and potatoes and beets and carrots.  It's not the meat that I really miss, oddly enough - I could go vegetarian after having been at school this long - but it was all gorgeous.  I made fairy cakes, but went to bed before dessert.  Five weeks without a break is too long, though I don't imagine the scotch and soda helped.  In any case, I was out at seven-thirty, back up at nine and then asleep for the next twelve hours.  Then to a friend's house for a stunning breakfast of eggs, sausage and biscuits, and home with some other friends to make two cakes - count 'em - watch Torchwood and eat roast lamb with rice and lentils and open a few birthday presents.  I'm going to school tomorrow, just to hang out in the art room and catch up with whomever is cool enough to drift in there, so I've got to go to bed now.  Studying for finals starts tomorrow.  Just remind me. 

(Oh, what a lot of tags!)

Home Again - Temporarily

Ah, well.  I suppose this is just a time to catch my breath between Turkey and School.  It's all so impossibly short.  But hey.  I am back on my laptop, and the funny thing is that I'm having trouble adjusting back to US keyboards!  I keep reaching up to the 1 key to type an apostrophe, and I'm almost nostalgic for all those ı characters now.

Home is a funny place to be now.  The last six weeks were full of a lot of food, music and new friends - people I feel incredibly fortunate to have met.  I have been conscious in the last few days of just smiling at one memory or another, and having to snap out of it quickly before somebody decides I'm in love or up to no good.

I miss Turkey, and everything is still so fresh in my mind that I can't quite convince myself in the mornings that instead of going to school to see Arzu Hanım and wander Ankara with my friends, I am going to go downstairs, see the granola in production, and leave to babysit my darling five month-old friend from New York , and prepare for school, something I'd completely put off thinking about while in Turkey.  It's not that I'm not happy to be home.  I am.  But when I get on my computer, all I want to do is look at photos from this summer, and all I want to speak to people about is Turkey, in turkish.  Part of my head thinks I'm still there, but Im slowly catching on.  Today I will eat no simit from street stalls, catch no sweaty buses, and I probably won't even sweat. 

After my host family went to America, I moved in with my grandparents.  They and my eight-year-old cousin from İstanbul, who was also staying with them, don't speak much English, which was great for me.  I caught a dolmuş home in the afternoons instead of the bus, which was a little different and fun for the three days I had to do it, and, despite my host mother's fears that I would be fed to death, it was all great.  

Last Friday (I can't believe I was so far away a week ago) we had a party at school, with cake and certificates and many hugs with our teachers and waiter and a lot of photos.  The previous day we'd given Arzu Hanım a present - a lovely vase, flowers and a framed picture of the class and her, from my camera, and everything was pretty fantastic.

Actually, though, it was what happend after school on Friday that made the day a little special.  I walked a different route to Kızılay with two classmates, and we found ourselves looking at the magnificent Kocatepe Mosque, perhaps Ankara's only beautiful building.  A man came up to us on the street and somehow we ended up following him inside this mosque, which was perhaps even as stunning as the Aya Sofia and Sultan Ahmet ones in İstanbul.  We left our shoes at the door and I and my friend - the other was (and still is, I suppose) a boy - were brought headscarves, and god.  That place was beautiful in a way that made me understand religion a little bit.  If there was a faith centred on building places like that, I would be a crazed believer.

We are Americans.  This means that every experience, every day, no matter how authentic, fascinating or ethnically correct, must include Starbucks.  We walked to the one on Kızılay.  It was there that this gorgeous baby girl who was just learning to walk stumbled up to us and started to play with me.  Maybe I was still high on that mosque, but she made me so happy just by putting her snacks in my lap and letting me feed them to her, and after a few minutes, her mother called me 'abla'.  Big sister.  Lovely.

(I'm making it sound as if I really adore babies, aren't I?  Actually, I don't... they're here, and I'm here, and we get along all right, but don't pull my hair too hard or it's back to Mama.)

It was there that the goodness stopped, though.  I walked from Starbucks with a friend to his apartment to pick up his power adaptor so that I could charge my camera before going to İstanbul the next day, and on my way back to catch the dolmuş I saw a kid get hit by a car.

Turks drive like maniacs, and I heard a scream on the other side of the street and saw this little girl - she must have been about six - on the asphalt with the wheel of a taxi almost on top of her.  A huge crowd gathered as her mother grabbed her and dragged her to the pavement.  They were both screaming, which was a relief - at least the poor thing was alive.  I didn't realize until later that i understood what her mother was screaming at the taxi driver, as I watched people check this child over, pour water on her, pull out their mobile phones to call an ambulance.  I was thoroughly shocked, but there were at least fifty people there and I couldn't be of any help.  I carried on getting home, but was really shaky the rest of the afternoon.

That night, or the next morning really, at 1:30 am, we all met up at the bus station to catch our otobus to İstanbul.  I said goodbye to my grandparents and got on, and we all drifted in and out of consciousness for seven hours.  Then we got to İstanbul and I wished I'd slept solidly,  because what followed was a half hour of lugging overpacked bags through that crazy city, which, at eight in the morning, was just beginning to spill its hungover soul back into the streets and start to party again.

What followed was a day of sickness, reunitation with the İstanbul NSLI-Y crowd (we were a lucky group - they fought the whole six weeks and there was some t e n s i o n), more Starbucks, a gorgeous nighttime boat tour of the Bosphorus, and crazed hanging out in hotel rooms until five in the morning.

I was not destined to sleep the next day, either, for flights are delayed and shit happens.  And the strangest thing happened after we had 'de-planed'.  What a word.  Anyway, a turkish woman heard me talking to one of the other AFSers about my school, and she interrupted to say she knew it!  Turned out, she was a professor at the Florida Institute of Technology and had a student who went to MSSM a few years ago!  The world just keeps getting smaller...

Anyway, I'm home now and have far too much to do.  I have to go now, so I'll put a thousand pictures on this post later.

Oh, and isn't this just the Summer of Gay Rights?  Argentina, Mexico, now California again?  Keep it coming!

Hoş çakal!

Leaving

Well, this may be the last opportunity I have to post until I get back to the States.  We fly on Sunday, but my host family is actually off to America for a holiday tomorrow, so I'm staying with my host-grandparents until Friday night.  Our bus to İstanbul leaves Ankara at 1:30 am Saturday.  I am stunned by this information and have no comprehension of why anyone let alone (or even?  Some of them are pretty nuts) AFS would schedule such a thing.  No matter, we shall reach İstanbul early and spend an exhausting day basking in its glory before flying home Sunday.  I'm excited to see the İstanbul NSLI-Y group, and the other AFS Turkey summer people who weren't on this scholarship, and the 12 days I have at home are something I'm looking forward to

(Things I am going to eat: blueberries, rare meat, spelt bread, lobster, Maine mussels, greens from my family's garden, pork, distinct from bacon, and a lot of fruit desserts)

And I'm half-scared, half-excited for this nutty school I'm going to.  But, guys, I've just spent my summer in Türkiye.  I am just beginning to feel confident with this language, as if I could really do well if I could study it more.  The heat doesn't bother me as much as it used to - at the beginning of this trip, every day on the bus I would feel this slick of sweat on my back just slide hotly and roll down the backs of my legs, and now I can actually make it through the day conscious of something other than 'God, what did this part of the world do to deserve this?' - and I adore the food like nothing else.  The people are friendly and, for the most part, not too creepy, and I love my family and my teacher and my new friends. 

Oh, I dıdn't realıse I was leavıng NOW. 
Bye.

Frustrated, Homesick and Generally Happy

Merhaba, everyone, and happy July fourth ıf that's what you go for.  I love fireworks, but who doesn't?  I missed school this weekend, if you can believe it, because it's turned out to be the time I can unwind a little with people who speak fluent english.  Living wıth my host famıly ıs great, fantastic really, but it's also nıce to be in a constant settıng for a bıt.  Yesterday after goıng to the haırdresser's wıth my mother and sıster:

(he didn't speak englısh, so I only found out afterwards that thıs ıs permanent) I went bowlıng wıth Alkım and her frıends, and we had dınner wıth some old frıends of my parents.  The same frıends, plus the guy's brother and hıs famıly, came over thıs evenıng.  I ımprovısed a couple pıes - one apple and one made wıth tınned blueberrıes I brought ın my suıtcase - and they were very well receıved, whıch made me happy.  I felt a tiny bıt homesıck for the fırst tıme when I tasted the blueberry (I am the dısqualıfıed champıon of the Maıne State Blueberry Pıe Contest 2010), and the US embassy ın Ankara set off fantastıc fıreworks, whıch we could see from our balcony here. 

Earlıer today, my anne and sıster took me t Atatürk's mausoleum, whıch was very ınterestıng.  There are soldıers there who don't move at all, sımılar to the ones around Buckıngham Palace, and the structures and museum there are very dramatıc.  Turkısh people really, really love Mustafa Kemal, as Atatürk ıs also called, to the poınt, ıt seems to an outsıder, or worshıp or deıfıcatıon.  From what lıttle I know, he was a great guy wıth revolutıonary ıdeas way ahead of hıs tıme, and I can't thınk of a sımılar hıstorıcal leader who gets such posthumous adoratıon.

After the mausoleum we vısıted Ankara castle, whıch ıs a gorgeous stop, though I haven't fıgured out the hıstory yet.  Let me mentıon here that today ıt was 40 degrees celcıus, before the thunderstorm set ın, and almost unbearably brıght outsıde.  We ate lunch ın thıs ıncredıbly cool restaurant wıth crumblıng tıle rooves and two women ın headscarves who sat and prepared our food over a sort of ındoor grıll.  Then the castle ıtself - one of the hıghest poınts ın Ankara (thıs ıs a serıously underrated cıty, people, you should come here) and very old and beautıful.  So, yes, I am more than exhausted.  Oh, and we got up at noon thıs mornıng.  TUrkısh breakfasts on the weekends are the best thıngs imaginable.  Helva ıs my new favourite food, and we had omelette, olıves, pancakes (okay, that part's not so Turkısh), cheese, simit....Mmmm! 

So...I'm actually too tıred to wrıte anythıng more,  so I'm just goıng to show you some of the pıctures I've taken...apologıes for thıs completely ınexcusable excuse for bloggıng....ıt's just too hard to stay awake when you've been toastıng pıe all evenıng and readıng Paradıse Lost all nıght for a week.

Grr.  Okay, blogger beıng dıffıcult.  More tomorrow, I promıse and I do apologıze.  Bye.