It is very nice to have a car.
Got it yesterday, and it is spectacular. Holds a driver and four passengers, five in an emergency via a little-kid seat (with seatbelt and everything) between the driver and front seat. Has a CD player. Heck, has working turn signals and a gas door you do not pull a lever to open. I am continually impressed.
Today I took it to the library and got out five books. Spent the next couple of hours reading The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4, because it was on the BBC 200 Greatest Books list from whenever-ago, but I was really not all that impressed. Not as good as, say, Horatio Hornblower, which didn't make the list at all. ...They put a lot of young-adult books on that list. I have not read Jacqueline Wilson's books, but I glanced them over in the library, and from what I can tell, they're Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Alice books done a different way (and probably not even as well). And Naylor did it first.
Am currently making cinnamon bread, which should come out okay even though the recipe was a bit of a pain in the butt (among other things, it never did tell me when to add the cinnamon; I had to put it in as soon as I realized it, when I was about to start kneading).
My parents had the big whonking US atlas out today, and I looked at it and picked out where Tim and Tom live, and where their mail's addressed to, and where they went to school. And then I found Lily's town even though I've known her all my life, and I found Mike and John and Krystal and Kristin and Chris, and I looked for Evan and Gabe but couldn't remember where they lived (now I remember Evan, at least), and I even tried to find Albert, but his town may be different from his mailing address, and in either case I couldn't really find it. Oh, and I found Milwaukee.
It has been an only semi-social day: I am talking to Kristin and Aneya (and, a bit, 'Nanda) now, but they are it. Mostly I have played DDR and read my brains out. Tomorrow is my last day at home for about a week, 'cause after that's vacation.
...I miss everybody from school. I am starting to get friend-hugs in my dreams. This is a bad sign: any dream-hug usually occurs only when I am in some way sad or lonely. Usually lonely.
But there is no way I can get any closer to any of them, especially not with vacation so imminent.
More tomorrow or something. I think my bread's almost finished with the second rising.
-Laurel
6.23.2004
Postcard from a phobia
I have only been here an hour, and already I have realized that I forgot my driver's license (which I need because we're getting my car today), forgot my medicine (which's just as bad or even worse), been unable to locate Verna (who needs to help me with this wretched survey, 'cause this's my last day to get it done), and had to go six floors up in an elevator, which made me so shaky that when I got to the place I needed to be (payroll, to deliver an envelope), even I could tell how semi-incoherent I was. I wandered around the floor, searching dizzily for a set of stairs, until I gave up and went back down in said elevator, internally quaking.
And that was a good elevator, even: big, well-lit, much-used, with a counter that tells you what floor you're on, and which doesn't wait around when you arrive before it opens the doors. Too slow, though. ...Heaven help me if I ever have to get in the liberal arts elevator again, that dust-gathering 40s-era deathbox that I got half-trapped in two summers ago (see entry), 'cause apparently I'm worse than ever with the ones around here. ...It is the first one I've had to be in in months.
I hate the one at school in the performing arts center, too, but that's a subject for another entry, or, hopefully for my audience, a subject to remain silent on altogether. Meanwhile, I have to get back to work. That survey isn't getting done any faster.
-Laurel
And that was a good elevator, even: big, well-lit, much-used, with a counter that tells you what floor you're on, and which doesn't wait around when you arrive before it opens the doors. Too slow, though. ...Heaven help me if I ever have to get in the liberal arts elevator again, that dust-gathering 40s-era deathbox that I got half-trapped in two summers ago (see entry), 'cause apparently I'm worse than ever with the ones around here. ...It is the first one I've had to be in in months.
I hate the one at school in the performing arts center, too, but that's a subject for another entry, or, hopefully for my audience, a subject to remain silent on altogether. Meanwhile, I have to get back to work. That survey isn't getting done any faster.
-Laurel
6.18.2004
Comments/Ponderings
Saw Harry Potter again today with 'Nanda, and Daf; that was fun. Have been rereading the book-version of Azkaban for only the second time ever and enjoy it very much. I'm actually surprised how faithful the movie was to the book, even with all that got left out. A lot of the dialogue is direct, page-to-screen, and I was surprised with Aunt Marj and Professor Trelawney, how much their movie selves looked like the illustrations at the top of the chapters.
Work is a little less boring, now that they're either having me work around other people (I can't help but wonder if Marj in the back does a lot of work at all, but after twenty-eight total consecutive work-hours of entering SAP information alone, stuffing envelopes and listening to her and Al play music and joke with each other was like being let out for recess--new activity! And music!) or having me work alone with more interesting data.
Have come to a couple of song conclusions in the past week. First, that in the Wallflowers' beautiful, if sentimental, song "Closer to You", the line "but just remember that when you were asleep/I got a little bit closer to you" is probably not, as I originally assumed, about the singing finding his beloved asleep and watching her, or kissing her, or something. It is probably referring to her dreaming of him. That works probably better with the song.
Secondly, as for that old song "Best for Last", or whatever it's called, that strange line, "sometimes the snow comes down in June"? Well, sometimes it does: last week I was riding in the car with my dad and had to blink my eyes before I realized that the shower of small white puffs down the road was pollen. Perhaps that's not what they meant. But it was cool.
...And having a cold has made me consider germ defense itself. In microbio we learned about how viruses burst open cells and that creates other problems besides the spread of viruses: just randomly bursting open a cell is messy; all the material gets everywhere. But in some forms of the body's defense against germs, infected calls get a signal from the immune system and go kamikaze...self-destructing in a slower, deliberate, tidy manner, killing themselves before the viruses do, taking the would-be assassins with them.
The body doesn't play nice with viruses. Sneezes expel germs for anyone else to catch; the conscience might put up a fuss, but the immune system seems to say better them than us. In a way, I have come to think that covering one's nose and mouth with one's hands for a sneeze is a sort of ultimate politeness: reinfecting oneself, or at least deflecting the spray that one's body is trying to expel.
...I have also been planning for APO's rush in September (Chris and I are co-chairs), getting excited about the help while having to ask myself--again--whether true help really comes to pass.
'Cause those of you who don't know about Aubrey, he isn't very explicable here, but he hasn't changed significantly from when we did so much to help him, except that he isn't in danger living at home anymore. ...To what extent he ever was, I now say, with more than a hint of bitterness, since some of his story was lies. But at the time he'd told me than I'd taught him what friendship was, and I valued that more than anything in the world.
But he hasn't done anything different. He still fails classes, still lazes around, still does stupid things, still does exactly what he wants to and then looks around for a way out of the hole. So okay, we got him out of a situation that may--or, now, may not--have been bad. But he seems none the wiser for it.
And Calypso, what of him? He and I used to marvel at the connection between us, so present, so alive, in those nights we talked all night. Sometimes we'd have arguments, but sometimes we'd click, and feel so...so...
...and last summer we found out how much he'd been hiding--and who he'd tried to involve. After a lot of frustration, worry, planning, consulting, plotting, he said it'd end, told me later it was as much for me as for Daffy, my friendship--there it was again...
...and now we don't even speak to each other, and things are as though they'd never changed--from what we can tell, they're worse. Only this time, Daf and I are gone. No reason for him to do anything besides what he wants to do.
Doesn't this happen with everybody we try to help? That things are okay for a while, but then...
Zinni says that people who undergo chemo and go into remission, the cancer comes back a lot, and harder, and kills them. But that's better than if they'd never had remission at all.
...we don't really know much about cancer, but she's right. Better that I was friends with them then, that things were better for a while.
But I wish I could do something permanent. Can any human really change another, or does it take more than that? ...just how arrogant am I, to think that I have such power?
...but then, were Aubrey and Calypso lying about my friendship, too?
So yeah, that's all that.
And I've been playing DDR.
-Laurel
Work is a little less boring, now that they're either having me work around other people (I can't help but wonder if Marj in the back does a lot of work at all, but after twenty-eight total consecutive work-hours of entering SAP information alone, stuffing envelopes and listening to her and Al play music and joke with each other was like being let out for recess--new activity! And music!) or having me work alone with more interesting data.
Have come to a couple of song conclusions in the past week. First, that in the Wallflowers' beautiful, if sentimental, song "Closer to You", the line "but just remember that when you were asleep/I got a little bit closer to you" is probably not, as I originally assumed, about the singing finding his beloved asleep and watching her, or kissing her, or something. It is probably referring to her dreaming of him. That works probably better with the song.
Secondly, as for that old song "Best for Last", or whatever it's called, that strange line, "sometimes the snow comes down in June"? Well, sometimes it does: last week I was riding in the car with my dad and had to blink my eyes before I realized that the shower of small white puffs down the road was pollen. Perhaps that's not what they meant. But it was cool.
...And having a cold has made me consider germ defense itself. In microbio we learned about how viruses burst open cells and that creates other problems besides the spread of viruses: just randomly bursting open a cell is messy; all the material gets everywhere. But in some forms of the body's defense against germs, infected calls get a signal from the immune system and go kamikaze...self-destructing in a slower, deliberate, tidy manner, killing themselves before the viruses do, taking the would-be assassins with them.
The body doesn't play nice with viruses. Sneezes expel germs for anyone else to catch; the conscience might put up a fuss, but the immune system seems to say better them than us. In a way, I have come to think that covering one's nose and mouth with one's hands for a sneeze is a sort of ultimate politeness: reinfecting oneself, or at least deflecting the spray that one's body is trying to expel.
...I have also been planning for APO's rush in September (Chris and I are co-chairs), getting excited about the help while having to ask myself--again--whether true help really comes to pass.
'Cause those of you who don't know about Aubrey, he isn't very explicable here, but he hasn't changed significantly from when we did so much to help him, except that he isn't in danger living at home anymore. ...To what extent he ever was, I now say, with more than a hint of bitterness, since some of his story was lies. But at the time he'd told me than I'd taught him what friendship was, and I valued that more than anything in the world.
But he hasn't done anything different. He still fails classes, still lazes around, still does stupid things, still does exactly what he wants to and then looks around for a way out of the hole. So okay, we got him out of a situation that may--or, now, may not--have been bad. But he seems none the wiser for it.
And Calypso, what of him? He and I used to marvel at the connection between us, so present, so alive, in those nights we talked all night. Sometimes we'd have arguments, but sometimes we'd click, and feel so...so...
...and last summer we found out how much he'd been hiding--and who he'd tried to involve. After a lot of frustration, worry, planning, consulting, plotting, he said it'd end, told me later it was as much for me as for Daffy, my friendship--there it was again...
...and now we don't even speak to each other, and things are as though they'd never changed--from what we can tell, they're worse. Only this time, Daf and I are gone. No reason for him to do anything besides what he wants to do.
Doesn't this happen with everybody we try to help? That things are okay for a while, but then...
Zinni says that people who undergo chemo and go into remission, the cancer comes back a lot, and harder, and kills them. But that's better than if they'd never had remission at all.
...we don't really know much about cancer, but she's right. Better that I was friends with them then, that things were better for a while.
But I wish I could do something permanent. Can any human really change another, or does it take more than that? ...just how arrogant am I, to think that I have such power?
...but then, were Aubrey and Calypso lying about my friendship, too?
So yeah, that's all that.
And I've been playing DDR.
-Laurel
6.15.2004
Hurrah for days off.
Has been a very good day indeed.
No work, which's always a good thing, but that in itself signals a small disappointment: Lily and Devin were thinking about coming up tonight, so I was gonna work today so I could take off tomorrow instead, but they didn't, so I got up at 9:30 today instead of 7:15. Had some cinnamon toast--was okay; next time I'll get the butter to room temperature before I try to spread it, and will make sure the sugar hasn't gone sort of insipid from dryness. ::giggles:: But this sounds like it hasn't been a good day at all, and it has.
The good part started, mostly, when I went into another part of town with Erik and Aneya to poke around shops and run a couple of errands. In two and a half hours, we hit six spots: a quick stop at Babies-R-Us for Aneya to drop off a job-app, the mall right nearby (mostly CVS and EB), a game-and-hobby shop, an awesome Asian-food store right nearby, Media Play, and Ben & Jerry's.
The eight dollars and free-single-scoop coupon I had to my name bought me two packets of Fluxx Blanxx (blank cards for the game, which I have been looking for), an awesome Asian drink called Sac that was wonderful-quality grape juice with skinned whole grapes in the bottom, and a serving of Primary Berry Graham at Ben & Jerry's. Let it not be said that you can't happily pass an afternoon in that end of town carrying less than $10, for I have done it. :)
Got back home and Erik's graduation presents had come in the mail, so I presented them to him without wrapping paper but with fanfare. Cheers to thinkgeek.com, who provided the excellent gifts: a plushie Epstein-Barr (that's mono, folks) virus, since Erik came down with the kissing-disease early this year; and--this was the less teasing one--a bottle of caffeinated hot sauce, combining two of Erik's favorite things. He liked them, especially the second one, so yay.
Made dinner myself--spaghetti with shrimp (frozen pre-cooked, but they fry nicely) and the last of a frozen "spring mix" (vegetable medley) and some frozen green beans. The shrimp and vegetables were fried with garlic bits, olive oil, and a dash of paprika before being added to the pasta, which was also given a bit of a douse with olive oil. Not much of a meal, though complete in its way, so my mom made dessert (something she does with banana slices, brown sugar, and a bit of butter, fried together and poured over vanilla ice cream). Not wonderfully healthy, tonight's meal, nor even wonderfully filling, come to think of it. But it tasted very good.
Before dessert, Dad and I went out to finalize the buying of the car I'm getting. The old car is being put into storage for a year so my brother can drive it, 'cause we still like it and it's not, for the moment, dying; I get one that's better in the snow and bigger and heavier and safer. Ya-a-ay.
Perused, while my brother was using the computer, MFK Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf, one of the remaining texts from my honors class first semester, and I appreciate it, I think, even more than I originally did, though many of the recipes are not currently useful or even attractive to me.
And now I'm online happily translating things from Spanish to English for Heather and talking to people.
Whee.
-Laurel
No work, which's always a good thing, but that in itself signals a small disappointment: Lily and Devin were thinking about coming up tonight, so I was gonna work today so I could take off tomorrow instead, but they didn't, so I got up at 9:30 today instead of 7:15. Had some cinnamon toast--was okay; next time I'll get the butter to room temperature before I try to spread it, and will make sure the sugar hasn't gone sort of insipid from dryness. ::giggles:: But this sounds like it hasn't been a good day at all, and it has.
The good part started, mostly, when I went into another part of town with Erik and Aneya to poke around shops and run a couple of errands. In two and a half hours, we hit six spots: a quick stop at Babies-R-Us for Aneya to drop off a job-app, the mall right nearby (mostly CVS and EB), a game-and-hobby shop, an awesome Asian-food store right nearby, Media Play, and Ben & Jerry's.
The eight dollars and free-single-scoop coupon I had to my name bought me two packets of Fluxx Blanxx (blank cards for the game, which I have been looking for), an awesome Asian drink called Sac that was wonderful-quality grape juice with skinned whole grapes in the bottom, and a serving of Primary Berry Graham at Ben & Jerry's. Let it not be said that you can't happily pass an afternoon in that end of town carrying less than $10, for I have done it. :)
Got back home and Erik's graduation presents had come in the mail, so I presented them to him without wrapping paper but with fanfare. Cheers to thinkgeek.com, who provided the excellent gifts: a plushie Epstein-Barr (that's mono, folks) virus, since Erik came down with the kissing-disease early this year; and--this was the less teasing one--a bottle of caffeinated hot sauce, combining two of Erik's favorite things. He liked them, especially the second one, so yay.
Made dinner myself--spaghetti with shrimp (frozen pre-cooked, but they fry nicely) and the last of a frozen "spring mix" (vegetable medley) and some frozen green beans. The shrimp and vegetables were fried with garlic bits, olive oil, and a dash of paprika before being added to the pasta, which was also given a bit of a douse with olive oil. Not much of a meal, though complete in its way, so my mom made dessert (something she does with banana slices, brown sugar, and a bit of butter, fried together and poured over vanilla ice cream). Not wonderfully healthy, tonight's meal, nor even wonderfully filling, come to think of it. But it tasted very good.
Before dessert, Dad and I went out to finalize the buying of the car I'm getting. The old car is being put into storage for a year so my brother can drive it, 'cause we still like it and it's not, for the moment, dying; I get one that's better in the snow and bigger and heavier and safer. Ya-a-ay.
Perused, while my brother was using the computer, MFK Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf, one of the remaining texts from my honors class first semester, and I appreciate it, I think, even more than I originally did, though many of the recipes are not currently useful or even attractive to me.
And now I'm online happily translating things from Spanish to English for Heather and talking to people.
Whee.
-Laurel
6.14.2004
::as "Leavin' on a Jet Plane" plays mercilessly in my head::
Today was a nice day: watching the kids for church was very fun. Read this VeggieTales alphabet book to this one boy four consecutive times, 'cause we'd get to the end and he'd start it over again.
This week this guy from church I've known for a long time did a presentation on sponsoring children in other countries. They had kids from Peru on the sponsor table. I looked and looked, but couldn't find any towns mentioned, no way to know if any were from Pucallpa.
...'Nanda and Daf and I have Samweli anyway, from back in the tenth grade. Over three years now. It feels longer, in a way.
Saw Shrek 2, also very good, if a little predictable. For a sequel, I was very impressed.
And I am probably doomed, sleep-wise, for work tomorrow, but oh, what the heck, like I get enough even when I do go to bed on time. Went to bed on time last night and still woke up at the six-hours-and-change mark. Managed to doze off again, but I lost twenty minutes of a precious hour, trying to get back to sleep. I don't know what the deal is. Peru screwed with an already-tweaky circadian rhythm, and I guess having eastern-exposure windows at home doesn't help repair that.
And okay, can we, like, skip straight to July?
-Laurel
This week this guy from church I've known for a long time did a presentation on sponsoring children in other countries. They had kids from Peru on the sponsor table. I looked and looked, but couldn't find any towns mentioned, no way to know if any were from Pucallpa.
...'Nanda and Daf and I have Samweli anyway, from back in the tenth grade. Over three years now. It feels longer, in a way.
Saw Shrek 2, also very good, if a little predictable. For a sequel, I was very impressed.
And I am probably doomed, sleep-wise, for work tomorrow, but oh, what the heck, like I get enough even when I do go to bed on time. Went to bed on time last night and still woke up at the six-hours-and-change mark. Managed to doze off again, but I lost twenty minutes of a precious hour, trying to get back to sleep. I don't know what the deal is. Peru screwed with an already-tweaky circadian rhythm, and I guess having eastern-exposure windows at home doesn't help repair that.
And okay, can we, like, skip straight to July?
-Laurel
6.11.2004
6.10.2004
::helpless laugh::
Okay, dude, it feels pretty wrong that I'm sadder about Ray Charles dying than Ronald Reagan dying. But that's how it is.
For my first three days at work, I have done pretty much nothing but non-comp forms--these things where you check to see if the kid is academically eligible for the financial aid they're getting. Carolyn has been cool, giving me small piles at a time, never a new 'til I get done with the old. She probably knows that they're mind-numbing as all heck. 'Cause they are. My mom has to do them sometimes, and she says they're probably the most boring aspect of fin-aid. And I've been doing nothing else for three whole days, seven hours a day.
I got through all of Carolyn's, and today at ten in the morning I got Carol's, who's closer to the office I'm in. She gave me a stack as thick as my ring finger (really, I measured), and I worked on them alllll day. I'd gotten through, like, a third when she comes by with more, sees I'm still working, and plunks them down on the bottom of my pile. A pile as big as, maybe bigger than, the ones I'd gotten done after working all day.
So I worked for seven hours, minus the time my mom took pity on me and brought me trail mix and a Dr. Pepper and talked to me, and it looks like I did absolutely nothing all day. The pile size of done is pitiful for seven hours' work. In large part because after three days, it takes me like six minutes to get one sheet done, on average, 'cause I can't keep my mind on them. And being tired does not help.
Ech, thank goodness I'm off tomorrow.
-Laurel
For my first three days at work, I have done pretty much nothing but non-comp forms--these things where you check to see if the kid is academically eligible for the financial aid they're getting. Carolyn has been cool, giving me small piles at a time, never a new 'til I get done with the old. She probably knows that they're mind-numbing as all heck. 'Cause they are. My mom has to do them sometimes, and she says they're probably the most boring aspect of fin-aid. And I've been doing nothing else for three whole days, seven hours a day.
I got through all of Carolyn's, and today at ten in the morning I got Carol's, who's closer to the office I'm in. She gave me a stack as thick as my ring finger (really, I measured), and I worked on them alllll day. I'd gotten through, like, a third when she comes by with more, sees I'm still working, and plunks them down on the bottom of my pile. A pile as big as, maybe bigger than, the ones I'd gotten done after working all day.
So I worked for seven hours, minus the time my mom took pity on me and brought me trail mix and a Dr. Pepper and talked to me, and it looks like I did absolutely nothing all day. The pile size of done is pitiful for seven hours' work. In large part because after three days, it takes me like six minutes to get one sheet done, on average, 'cause I can't keep my mind on them. And being tired does not help.
Ech, thank goodness I'm off tomorrow.
-Laurel
6.07.2004
"I'm not the only one...starin' at the sun..."
w00t, partial solar eclipse crazy early tomorrow morning.
But I looked on a NASA page, and don't let the newspaper hype fool you: there'll be another one that we New Yorkers, at least, can see in like 2012.
So I'm working with my mom, sort of. At least in her department. It's less boring than it might be. And I get two days off a week, Tuesdays and Fridays.
Why post when I have so darn little to say?
-Laurel
But I looked on a NASA page, and don't let the newspaper hype fool you: there'll be another one that we New Yorkers, at least, can see in like 2012.
So I'm working with my mom, sort of. At least in her department. It's less boring than it might be. And I get two days off a week, Tuesdays and Fridays.
Why post when I have so darn little to say?
-Laurel
6.05.2004
Lalala--::pot bounces off wall::--lalala... (grin to all those who understand)
'kay, so I could talk about the Festival and it being rather disappointing (::sighs:: is it the curse of the AIM profile, that any event I put up in there is automatically going to be like only half as cool as I expected?), but instead I'll be happy and put up tonight's quizzes.
Ganked this one from 'Nanda, even though I hope that's not actually representative of me...
Furnulum pani nolo.
"I don't want a toaster."
Generally, things (like this quiz) tend to tick you
off. You have contemplated doing grievous
bodily harm to door-to-door salesmen.
Which Weird Latin Phrase Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
(for maximum entertainment on that one, after you get your result, click "show all possible results" and read)]
..and this one from Tim, who I guess was just taking it or something...
You want to hit Voldemort with a train! Too bad
the guy won't die...
Which Harry Potter Character Would You Hit With A Train? (done, w/images)
brought to you by Quizilla
Hee hee.
-Laurel
Ganked this one from 'Nanda, even though I hope that's not actually representative of me...
Furnulum pani nolo.
"I don't want a toaster."
Generally, things (like this quiz) tend to tick you
off. You have contemplated doing grievous
bodily harm to door-to-door salesmen.
Which Weird Latin Phrase Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
(for maximum entertainment on that one, after you get your result, click "show all possible results" and read)]
..and this one from Tim, who I guess was just taking it or something...
You want to hit Voldemort with a train! Too bad
the guy won't die...
Which Harry Potter Character Would You Hit With A Train? (done, w/images)
brought to you by Quizilla
Hee hee.
-Laurel
6.03.2004
'Cause it's 11:14 PM and I only got up from my nap like two hours ago...
...a useless quiz-thing. Swiped from, I believe, merani's friend Devon. (How did I wander over there? It's a long story.)
1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says.
"The Crown, where Jack was staying, had a certain resem-" (Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian)
2. Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What do you touch first?
The southwestern corner of the computer desk. When I'm not touching, you know, thin air.
3. What is the last thing you watched on TV?
M*A*S*H, bits and pieces of the ep "For the Good of the Outfit" as I was trying to get to bed last night.
4. WITHOUT LOOKING, guess what the time is.
10:34
5. Now look at the clock, what is the actual time?
11:18 (Okay, dude, I'm a total dork: did I not just say in my title that it was after 11? This's why I'm not working with numbers. Even telling time is apparently too much for me.)
6. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?
Songs playing in my head (VeggieTales and Jars of Clay)
7. When did you last step outside? What were you doing?
Earlier tonight; helping my mom grill hamburgers.
8. Before you came to this website, what did you look at?
Before I came to the website I found this quiz on? merani's new lj.
9. What are you wearing?
Black shirt, dark blue jeans, glasses.
10. Did you dream last night?
Yeah, but I don't remember what of.
11. When did you last laugh?
Maybe an hour ago, talking to Kristin as she teased me evilly. :-P
12. what is on the walls of the room you are in?
Wallpaper. Also bookshelves and pictures.
13. Seen anything weird lately?
I go with Devon on this one: my brother.
14. What is the word most often used in your vocabulary?
Today it was "um", used both as an interjection and as a sentence. It was one of those braindead days, apparently.
15. What is the last film you saw?
"King George and the Ducky", VeggieTales. ...It is too a film. :-P
16. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first?
First? How 'bout a decent car, maybe? Then after that I hope I'd do cool and generous things. But I need a different 'mobile, and so does APO need me to, 'cause Krystal and Gabe won't be around, and Ada can't do everything, and it'd help if I had something that stays running consistently, and has a working left front signal, and cool stuff like that.
17. Tell me something about you that I don't know.
I've never gotten head lice. (And I've never been to Boston in the fall. :-D Though I did go in the spring.)
18. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?
End world hunger. It wouldn't save the whole world, but it'd be darn cool.
19. Do you like to dance?
With the possible exception of that cool folk dancing thing where we get to run around the chairs, no. So it's kinda funny that I'm doing folk dancing next year, but before I got to college, in my idealistic eleventh-grade days, I promised myself that I'd take some form of dance during my higher education, apparently thinking that I'd actually get good with practice. ::snorts::
20. George Bush: is he a power-crazy nut case or someone who is finally doing something that has needed to be done for years?
Um...somewhere in between. Saddam being gone, that's one good thing out of this whole mess. But we've done some pretty darn stupid things overseas.
21. Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?
I hate these questions. I never know. ...I'm going instead to say what I wouldn't call her, and go with Helga.
22. Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?
See above; I am outlawing the name "Humphrey".
23. Would you ever consider living abroad?
At this point in my life, no. I never wanted to leave my home city even as a kid or a restless adolescent (well, restless in that not-being-able-to-keep-from-fidgeting sense, which indeed is still the case). And it turns out, as I have learned via school and Peru, that I do not take long-term separation from home well. Learning to really, really like where I go to school took over a semester. Peru, two days and I was ready to get out of there--I have a lot of hollow-chested memories of feeling just so far away and isolated. And now that school is a second home, I'm wretched that I can't be there. So no, the whole nomad thing just isn't in me. Sometimes I wish it was, but no, it's not.
This has been a brief quiz-thing. Tune in next time for...whatever else.
-Laurel
1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says.
"The Crown, where Jack was staying, had a certain resem-" (Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian)
2. Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What do you touch first?
The southwestern corner of the computer desk. When I'm not touching, you know, thin air.
3. What is the last thing you watched on TV?
M*A*S*H, bits and pieces of the ep "For the Good of the Outfit" as I was trying to get to bed last night.
4. WITHOUT LOOKING, guess what the time is.
10:34
5. Now look at the clock, what is the actual time?
11:18 (Okay, dude, I'm a total dork: did I not just say in my title that it was after 11? This's why I'm not working with numbers. Even telling time is apparently too much for me.)
6. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?
Songs playing in my head (VeggieTales and Jars of Clay)
7. When did you last step outside? What were you doing?
Earlier tonight; helping my mom grill hamburgers.
8. Before you came to this website, what did you look at?
Before I came to the website I found this quiz on? merani's new lj.
9. What are you wearing?
Black shirt, dark blue jeans, glasses.
10. Did you dream last night?
Yeah, but I don't remember what of.
11. When did you last laugh?
Maybe an hour ago, talking to Kristin as she teased me evilly. :-P
12. what is on the walls of the room you are in?
Wallpaper. Also bookshelves and pictures.
13. Seen anything weird lately?
I go with Devon on this one: my brother.
14. What is the word most often used in your vocabulary?
Today it was "um", used both as an interjection and as a sentence. It was one of those braindead days, apparently.
15. What is the last film you saw?
"King George and the Ducky", VeggieTales. ...It is too a film. :-P
16. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first?
First? How 'bout a decent car, maybe? Then after that I hope I'd do cool and generous things. But I need a different 'mobile, and so does APO need me to, 'cause Krystal and Gabe won't be around, and Ada can't do everything, and it'd help if I had something that stays running consistently, and has a working left front signal, and cool stuff like that.
17. Tell me something about you that I don't know.
I've never gotten head lice. (And I've never been to Boston in the fall. :-D Though I did go in the spring.)
18. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?
End world hunger. It wouldn't save the whole world, but it'd be darn cool.
19. Do you like to dance?
With the possible exception of that cool folk dancing thing where we get to run around the chairs, no. So it's kinda funny that I'm doing folk dancing next year, but before I got to college, in my idealistic eleventh-grade days, I promised myself that I'd take some form of dance during my higher education, apparently thinking that I'd actually get good with practice. ::snorts::
20. George Bush: is he a power-crazy nut case or someone who is finally doing something that has needed to be done for years?
Um...somewhere in between. Saddam being gone, that's one good thing out of this whole mess. But we've done some pretty darn stupid things overseas.
21. Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?
I hate these questions. I never know. ...I'm going instead to say what I wouldn't call her, and go with Helga.
22. Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?
See above; I am outlawing the name "Humphrey".
23. Would you ever consider living abroad?
At this point in my life, no. I never wanted to leave my home city even as a kid or a restless adolescent (well, restless in that not-being-able-to-keep-from-fidgeting sense, which indeed is still the case). And it turns out, as I have learned via school and Peru, that I do not take long-term separation from home well. Learning to really, really like where I go to school took over a semester. Peru, two days and I was ready to get out of there--I have a lot of hollow-chested memories of feeling just so far away and isolated. And now that school is a second home, I'm wretched that I can't be there. So no, the whole nomad thing just isn't in me. Sometimes I wish it was, but no, it's not.
This has been a brief quiz-thing. Tune in next time for...whatever else.
-Laurel
Hoo-rah!
Has been a good day. Got up disappointingly early, but that was all right. Went to the dermatologist, and I have evaded the Accutane of Doom for at least six months. :)
Took a random drive on the way home to explore the west part of town (hint: there is not much there), got back, attempted a nap (failed), got online, where I found Albert for the first time since I've been back (forgot to ask him how the wedding was that he went to...::shrugs::), and where he regaled me with stories of his school days and his meeting Norm. Whom I have yet to meet, but who both Tim and Albert talk about rather reverently, much like everyone talks about Nathanael.
To have been born 365 days earlier, so I could know what the heck everyone laughs about, between Norm, Nathanael, Josh, Sara, Mike T., and all the rest. ::sighs:: But that would throw off the time-space continuum. Oh, and I wouldn't have gotten NM, prolly, 'cause the cutoff was just low enough for me when I took it, so I wouldn't have gotten to the school I'm at anyway. And Norm would be, like 99.99% of the rest of the world, unknown to me.
So would all the friends I currently have. So I opt for time as it has played out heretofore.
In conclusion for this shortish and silly post, I raise my glass (or at least my plastic cup with dregs of milk in the bottom) to Ella Gunderson, who is very cool for being eleven years old and not wanting to look like Britney Spears. I am starting to get frustrated shopping at K-Mart about the low Decent Clothing Index, and I feel this is a very bad sign. If you can't trust the most uncool superstore on the planet, who can you trust?
Though I read several articles concerning her, and in one, Seventeen magazine uses the term "sexy librarian" to describe what more-skin fashion will be. ::rolls eyes:: Somebody's been watching too much Music Man, to get that idea. And even in Music Man, they made her pretty, but they gave her a horrible last name (Paroo?!).
But the whole thing oughta shut me up, in any case, about little people causing change.
< /useless tangent >
-Laurel
Took a random drive on the way home to explore the west part of town (hint: there is not much there), got back, attempted a nap (failed), got online, where I found Albert for the first time since I've been back (forgot to ask him how the wedding was that he went to...::shrugs::), and where he regaled me with stories of his school days and his meeting Norm. Whom I have yet to meet, but who both Tim and Albert talk about rather reverently, much like everyone talks about Nathanael.
To have been born 365 days earlier, so I could know what the heck everyone laughs about, between Norm, Nathanael, Josh, Sara, Mike T., and all the rest. ::sighs:: But that would throw off the time-space continuum. Oh, and I wouldn't have gotten NM, prolly, 'cause the cutoff was just low enough for me when I took it, so I wouldn't have gotten to the school I'm at anyway. And Norm would be, like 99.99% of the rest of the world, unknown to me.
So would all the friends I currently have. So I opt for time as it has played out heretofore.
In conclusion for this shortish and silly post, I raise my glass (or at least my plastic cup with dregs of milk in the bottom) to Ella Gunderson, who is very cool for being eleven years old and not wanting to look like Britney Spears. I am starting to get frustrated shopping at K-Mart about the low Decent Clothing Index, and I feel this is a very bad sign. If you can't trust the most uncool superstore on the planet, who can you trust?
Though I read several articles concerning her, and in one, Seventeen magazine uses the term "sexy librarian" to describe what more-skin fashion will be. ::rolls eyes:: Somebody's been watching too much Music Man, to get that idea. And even in Music Man, they made her pretty, but they gave her a horrible last name (Paroo?!).
But the whole thing oughta shut me up, in any case, about little people causing change.
< /useless tangent >
-Laurel
6.02.2004
Stranger in a Strange Land (Part 2)
So it turns out that Spanish class really does serve a real-life purpose.
Admittedly, some of the best help I had in figuring out how to get around in Pucallpa wasn't from what I did in class, but what I did outside of class. Marco coming three years ago and bringing us Spanish picture books and CDs; Aunt Cathy's present to my mom of Spanish for Dummies; my book of Calvin and Hobbes comics in Spanish; and of course my late-eleventh-grade plunge, one of the bravest geek-attempts I have ever made, into reading nearly half of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King in Spanish--all of those taught me things we never covered in class, and they did help. I knew, when I heard them, that cabello and rostro and pomelo were local words for hair and face and grapefruit, different from what we were taught. I knew words from looking them up for LotR that we never covered in class: pared for wall, orilla for shore, madrugada for dawn (that one most notorious, since I heard it in Pucallpa in the sentence you'll stay here in the village until the dawn when our boats broke down, which turned out not to be true).
I had one shining moment, pretty much to myself, where everything came together.
We had a concert for some university students--our age--and afterwards there was a big question-and-answer session in a circle. Yasmin had been speaking in Spanish for a little bit, and was standing by me, so when one girl stood up and asked what's your name?, I thought she meant Yasmin. Pointed to her, questioningly, and the girl shook her head, pointed to me.
She stated her question in Spanish, and before Hune (our guide) translated it, I understood most of it--she'd started watching us as a group during the concert...and ended up watching me. What gave me, she asked, so much expression, so much--the word she used--passion?
I started to answer in Spanish. Paused. Faltered. Un momento, I said, holding up a hand, an adrenaline-rush laugh escaping me...
...and the circle burst into applause. I laughed again, pleased and nervous. Felt Tim put a hand to my back, and it really did, just like in books, calm me down, feel like a support. I took a breath and started again.
I managed to explain, in wavering Spanish, that we're taught in United States schools (it was a little tricky saying American, 'cause as far as they're concerned, they're American, too) that we should make music mean something to us, imagine that we're involved in what we're singing about--that my expression is expected and taught.
Though I didn't explain this, it's also, for me, a little impossible to do anything else: I've heard from both Glenn and John, not to mention several people I know less, about my expression, and believe me, there are times I'd wipe my face blank if I could, but most of the time it doesn't work. There are many graces I do not possess, and stoicism is one of them: plenty of times my face rats me out. I will never be able to do what John did, something once that almost made me cry to look at: when Fernando died over Christmas break and we all went to the service for him, John held Fernando's girlfriend's hand as she sobbed, watched her and never changed expression. Just so placid. Just so calm.
But I explained it as best I could, and I was applauded again, and Hune looked at me, under cover of the noise, and said, "You see? Unwittingly you have changed someone's life."
...There were also the stars. The one good point in that wretched boat ride that caused so much trouble. Trees hung down over much of the river, making shadows, obscuring the sky, but on the big fishing boat, when we got out of the first tangle, the entire sky was out to greet us. 180 degrees of the most numerous, otherwordly-looking stars I've ever seen, and in Southern Hemisphere formations. The North Star and the Southern Cross on opposite ends of the sky (the former invisible under the horizon)...the Big Dipper closer to the ground than I've ever seen it, looking just a little different every 15 minutes.
That was really lovely.
And there was the concert for the schoolchildren--we were swamped for autographs for the first time ever. It was crazy. Teenage boys were giving Heather and Jen signed pictures--and some girls showed up at the resort for Brian and Jamie. Insanity. ...When did we become celebrities just for living in a specific country?
The thing I couldn't get over was just how far away I felt from everything. Like a flat plane, I could feel the distance from Point A to Point B--even when, surreally, it looked like we were just in the Everglades or something.
Oh, about Enrique, I have to mention him. He was the nurse who was with us, keeping us more or less healthy and tending to us when we were sick--and he was just cool. He acted as kind of an emcee for a lot of the trip, getting especially the village kids to applaud and get excited. Wore a clown suit for the little kids, called himself el payasito feliz (happy little clown), did a lot of shouting in a highish voice that must have killed his throat. As one of the choir singers put it, think Patch Adams, only Spanish.
At the university we had a "talent show", with Enrique keeping score (eventually he declared it a tie)--one of their students recited a poem, so Shaminda came out and performed a monologue from Shakespeare; two singers from each side did songs. On our side, John came out and did "Funiculi, Funicula", and we did backup; Heather picked a guy in the audience and sang him an Italian love song and kissed him on the cheek at the end. ...Which became very very funny when she found out later that the kid was married and his wife was there. They all sang a Peruvian nationalist song, we sang the national anthem. It was a great morning.
And I do miss signs in Spanish. I kind of miss trying to order ice cream in Spanish. And the Chinese food night was fun, watching Chris and Krystal eat turtle and Simon try to buy the entire place's supply of Inca Kola. (Inca Kola, which tastes pretty much like liquid bubble gum, is one of the two most-advertised products in all of Peru. The other is San Juan beer, whose plant we toured; I was amazed it didn't smell awful, but I smelled nothing but grain.)
The trip did have its moments. Even the practical joke Heather drew up, where everybody was supposed to pair off, one guy and one girl, over the course of the trip, to make it look to Luanne (who'd been asking if there were any romances shaping up) that every member of the trip had hooked up with someone, was funny, though it was also sort of cruel (Simon was deliberately left out of the joke; Megan was going to try to win him over), and, as Tim predicted, it didn't actually happen.
The second pizza outing wasn't a lot of fun once we got there, but the ride there, with forty people crammed into one small bus, was certainly amusing. We had been told not to look like tourists, much less American tourists, but when Peruvian children point to your face and say, in wonder, blanco (as one did to Don), you kind of give it up. Our last vestige of nativity vanished when we belted out the national anthem while rocketing down the streets of Peru with the bus lights on and half of us standing up, two inches between each other. (Peru was home of some of the worst bus-driving I've ever seen. It'll be a while before I think of buses in the same way.)
Things weren't all bad. I spent a lot of time frustrated, but a lot of times, when we couldn't find happiness and couldn't feel it, we went ahead and made it. Played Fluxx and Risk and swam (I never got to do that) and slept. Tortured each other with foods we were going to eat when we got back. Joked about turning those wretched roosters (they started crowing at midnight and didn't stop 'til two in the afternoon) into coq-au-vin.
It was the best of trips, it was the worst of trips, like Aneya reminded me.
So I talked to Kristin, and that was cool for thinking about APO next semester. I am still thinking that things need to change for me, but change is looking a little more attainable than it was. So this has been my big Jekyll-and-Hyde entry series, and this's what went on in Peru. I still don't know if I'dve come. But there must be something in the idea that I did.
-Laurel
Admittedly, some of the best help I had in figuring out how to get around in Pucallpa wasn't from what I did in class, but what I did outside of class. Marco coming three years ago and bringing us Spanish picture books and CDs; Aunt Cathy's present to my mom of Spanish for Dummies; my book of Calvin and Hobbes comics in Spanish; and of course my late-eleventh-grade plunge, one of the bravest geek-attempts I have ever made, into reading nearly half of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King in Spanish--all of those taught me things we never covered in class, and they did help. I knew, when I heard them, that cabello and rostro and pomelo were local words for hair and face and grapefruit, different from what we were taught. I knew words from looking them up for LotR that we never covered in class: pared for wall, orilla for shore, madrugada for dawn (that one most notorious, since I heard it in Pucallpa in the sentence you'll stay here in the village until the dawn when our boats broke down, which turned out not to be true).
I had one shining moment, pretty much to myself, where everything came together.
We had a concert for some university students--our age--and afterwards there was a big question-and-answer session in a circle. Yasmin had been speaking in Spanish for a little bit, and was standing by me, so when one girl stood up and asked what's your name?, I thought she meant Yasmin. Pointed to her, questioningly, and the girl shook her head, pointed to me.
She stated her question in Spanish, and before Hune (our guide) translated it, I understood most of it--she'd started watching us as a group during the concert...and ended up watching me. What gave me, she asked, so much expression, so much--the word she used--passion?
I started to answer in Spanish. Paused. Faltered. Un momento, I said, holding up a hand, an adrenaline-rush laugh escaping me...
...and the circle burst into applause. I laughed again, pleased and nervous. Felt Tim put a hand to my back, and it really did, just like in books, calm me down, feel like a support. I took a breath and started again.
I managed to explain, in wavering Spanish, that we're taught in United States schools (it was a little tricky saying American, 'cause as far as they're concerned, they're American, too) that we should make music mean something to us, imagine that we're involved in what we're singing about--that my expression is expected and taught.
Though I didn't explain this, it's also, for me, a little impossible to do anything else: I've heard from both Glenn and John, not to mention several people I know less, about my expression, and believe me, there are times I'd wipe my face blank if I could, but most of the time it doesn't work. There are many graces I do not possess, and stoicism is one of them: plenty of times my face rats me out. I will never be able to do what John did, something once that almost made me cry to look at: when Fernando died over Christmas break and we all went to the service for him, John held Fernando's girlfriend's hand as she sobbed, watched her and never changed expression. Just so placid. Just so calm.
But I explained it as best I could, and I was applauded again, and Hune looked at me, under cover of the noise, and said, "You see? Unwittingly you have changed someone's life."
...There were also the stars. The one good point in that wretched boat ride that caused so much trouble. Trees hung down over much of the river, making shadows, obscuring the sky, but on the big fishing boat, when we got out of the first tangle, the entire sky was out to greet us. 180 degrees of the most numerous, otherwordly-looking stars I've ever seen, and in Southern Hemisphere formations. The North Star and the Southern Cross on opposite ends of the sky (the former invisible under the horizon)...the Big Dipper closer to the ground than I've ever seen it, looking just a little different every 15 minutes.
That was really lovely.
And there was the concert for the schoolchildren--we were swamped for autographs for the first time ever. It was crazy. Teenage boys were giving Heather and Jen signed pictures--and some girls showed up at the resort for Brian and Jamie. Insanity. ...When did we become celebrities just for living in a specific country?
The thing I couldn't get over was just how far away I felt from everything. Like a flat plane, I could feel the distance from Point A to Point B--even when, surreally, it looked like we were just in the Everglades or something.
Oh, about Enrique, I have to mention him. He was the nurse who was with us, keeping us more or less healthy and tending to us when we were sick--and he was just cool. He acted as kind of an emcee for a lot of the trip, getting especially the village kids to applaud and get excited. Wore a clown suit for the little kids, called himself el payasito feliz (happy little clown), did a lot of shouting in a highish voice that must have killed his throat. As one of the choir singers put it, think Patch Adams, only Spanish.
At the university we had a "talent show", with Enrique keeping score (eventually he declared it a tie)--one of their students recited a poem, so Shaminda came out and performed a monologue from Shakespeare; two singers from each side did songs. On our side, John came out and did "Funiculi, Funicula", and we did backup; Heather picked a guy in the audience and sang him an Italian love song and kissed him on the cheek at the end. ...Which became very very funny when she found out later that the kid was married and his wife was there. They all sang a Peruvian nationalist song, we sang the national anthem. It was a great morning.
And I do miss signs in Spanish. I kind of miss trying to order ice cream in Spanish. And the Chinese food night was fun, watching Chris and Krystal eat turtle and Simon try to buy the entire place's supply of Inca Kola. (Inca Kola, which tastes pretty much like liquid bubble gum, is one of the two most-advertised products in all of Peru. The other is San Juan beer, whose plant we toured; I was amazed it didn't smell awful, but I smelled nothing but grain.)
The trip did have its moments. Even the practical joke Heather drew up, where everybody was supposed to pair off, one guy and one girl, over the course of the trip, to make it look to Luanne (who'd been asking if there were any romances shaping up) that every member of the trip had hooked up with someone, was funny, though it was also sort of cruel (Simon was deliberately left out of the joke; Megan was going to try to win him over), and, as Tim predicted, it didn't actually happen.
The second pizza outing wasn't a lot of fun once we got there, but the ride there, with forty people crammed into one small bus, was certainly amusing. We had been told not to look like tourists, much less American tourists, but when Peruvian children point to your face and say, in wonder, blanco (as one did to Don), you kind of give it up. Our last vestige of nativity vanished when we belted out the national anthem while rocketing down the streets of Peru with the bus lights on and half of us standing up, two inches between each other. (Peru was home of some of the worst bus-driving I've ever seen. It'll be a while before I think of buses in the same way.)
Things weren't all bad. I spent a lot of time frustrated, but a lot of times, when we couldn't find happiness and couldn't feel it, we went ahead and made it. Played Fluxx and Risk and swam (I never got to do that) and slept. Tortured each other with foods we were going to eat when we got back. Joked about turning those wretched roosters (they started crowing at midnight and didn't stop 'til two in the afternoon) into coq-au-vin.
It was the best of trips, it was the worst of trips, like Aneya reminded me.
So I talked to Kristin, and that was cool for thinking about APO next semester. I am still thinking that things need to change for me, but change is looking a little more attainable than it was. So this has been my big Jekyll-and-Hyde entry series, and this's what went on in Peru. I still don't know if I'dve come. But there must be something in the idea that I did.
-Laurel
6.01.2004
Stranger in a Strange Land (Part 1)
"Test this gold for its worth" is the same as testing me,
And the fire burns easily today...
-Smalltown Poets
I got home on Sunday afternoon, and in all the time since, I have not been able to get enough of either sleep or food, especially carbohydrates. Atkins would have a heart attack and die if he wasn't already dead (isn't he?). Cereal, Italian bread, lasagna, chocolate chip cookies (so many chocolate chip cookies), gummy worms, baked beans, and--joy of joys--milk. Chocolate milk, sometimes, made with NesQuik powder, stirred up with a spoon.
And searching FoodNetwork.com for recipes, main dishes to make for dinner with my mother, things to cook without an oven if possible because ours is being temperamental. Reading for hours on end (I both started and finished C.S. Lewis's Surprised By Joy yesterday--it was all right; a lot of his other books are better), talking to Kristin over the phone for three hours. Taking three-hour naps. Sleeping for ten hours straight, no roosters within a ten-mile radius.
I have not yet gotten over the wide-eyed wonder that is being home, something I wanted since two days after I got to Peru.
I haven't said anything here yet because I haven't really known where to start. I'm not even sure yet that I truly liked the trip, or even whether I should, considering all that happened. And what I think of myself as a person, something very connected (for good or ill, good reasons or bad) to that trip, changes from day to day.
I will not talk much about the planes, because the planes were secondary. I don't like turbulence, but whatever. They gave us two-and-a-half meals during the flights to and from Lima. Airline lasagna is pretty all right; airline omelets suck. And the seats lean back, but nobody likes it when you do, so sleeping gets a little funny, unless you have someone to sleep up against, and even then your neck is still going to hurt. Tim and Tom wisely decided that sitting next to each other for six-and-a-half hours each way was maybe not a good idea (drat that alphabetical order, right? First or last names, they were in trouble), so I swapped passes with Tom when we got on the plane, and everybody was happy, or so I hope.
So it turns out that I am probably not cut out for the Peace Corps. I already had this sneaking suspicion when I went off to college and found that three weeks only eighty miles from home, with my favorite cousin as a roommate, for crying out loud, still had me miserably homesick for maybe the first real time in my life.
This time I made it like maybe two days before I wanted to go home. And that was before the boats broke down in the middle of the Ucayali, before I got sick in another continent, and before the civil unrest that closed a road we were supposed to travel on. And being pasted to Tim, who thought, like any normal person, that two weeks in an exotic location with one's girlfriend was pretty darn cool.
In my own defense, I enjoyed that part. But there were times when that was the only part I enjoyed. I am still not sure whether, knowing what would happen, I would have gone on the trip at all. Certainly I would not have paid full price for it (my parents offered to pay for much of it, but I wanted to have a trip all my own, so I only let them buy my choir dress and my plane ticket from home to LaGuardia), and I am not sure I would have run a countdown for nearly 200 days.
I will tell the bad parts first to get them out of the way.
...We were, in many vague ways, lied to. They told us it was a hotel. It had cabins, but was essentially, let's be honest, a summer camp. (At least our toilets had both seats and paper. Many public ones had one or neither, and one village we needed to stop at, at one point, had no bathrooms, save the woods.) They told us we would have internet. We had nothing of the kind. We couldn't even work the phone system for the most part--no one would've been able to with American phone cards, had not Liz's mother managed to get some number to get to the AT&T system in Peru, so at least those of us with AT&T cards, like Krystal and Liz, could get out. (Mine was Sprint; I was out of luck.) Poor Victoria's mother called at one point, and the desk people, not understanding English, didn't even hang up, but just set the phone down and left it, running up her bill. ...We couldn't find postcards under $1 American, and when we bought those and we asked how to send them, they said "Put them in envelopes". Times for everything changed and we had no idea what we were doing from even one end of the day to the other.
None of this really really bothered me until we broke down on the river. The trip to this village was supposed to take three hours there and three hours back. Shaminda (who is a guy and who is wonderful; more on him later) made some calculations later and discovered that even if the engines had worked, it would have taken at least four. (That was typical: take however-long they said it'd take to get anywhere, add half again to it, and that was the more accurate estimate.) Two of the three boats' engines did not work, partway through the trip, so it took something like six and a half; the boat I was in at the time (number 13, and the engine never went out: I shall never be triskadekaphobic again) ended up towing the others. The return trip was longer: Superboat (number 13) took back the people who, medically, needed to return without problems (Betsey with her sprained foot she'd had before, one girl who's diabetic, etc.). The rest of us were either in another little boat whose engine had been replaced, or a huge whonkin' fishing boat. And then we were all in the fishing boat, because we in the little boat--Tim, Tom, Krystal, John, Simon, me, Luanne, her son Jesse, Theresa...the list goes on--got left behind for about 45 minutes when our new engine conked out and we ended up drifting down the river horizontally.
In the fishing boat, we couldn't sit down, 'cause the mud everywhere, and we hadn't gotten any dinner and were exhausted and had to go to the bathroom and it took until about 2:45 AM to get us back, and we'd started the return trip at 6:30 PM. We'd left the "resort" to get on the wretched boats at seven that morning. Twenty hours, the whole thing took us. We were supposed to get back around 4:30 that afternoon. Nope, 2:45 that morning. Four engines died, two in the one little boat, two in the two others we'd brought with us. Only the fishing boat, which we borrowed from one of the indigenous villages, and Superboat survived.
I was among the first wave, the next day, to get sick. Victoria, Ben, poor Betsey, and I all got the same thing, and I spent a miserable night before Luanne would let me take the medicine I'd brought with me for just such an occurance. 'Cause being sick, there was misinformation there, too. What I'd been told at home contradicted what Luanne was telling me to do, but those also contradicted what was on my medicine box and bottle. I was trying to strike a compromise between three opinions, knowing that if I got it more or less right, everyone would exonerate me, and if I got it wrong, I'd hear three choruses--the home doctor, Luanne, and my parents--of why didn't you do what you were told?
I got it more or less right, but poor Tim had to be pretty angelic. He and Shaminda and Don all did, 'cause all of their girlfriends (Betsey is Shaminda's, Victoria is Don's) were sick and, more than anything, frightened. Don and Tim had to deal with a couple of temper tantrums when Luanne informed us that our group was driving over the Andes mountains on unsafe roads at the end of the week (Victoria's mother had forbade her to do this, wanted to fly her home, and we were both trying to hide from our stressed-out parents just how sick we were; I got better faster because I was first on the medication, and therefore had more success than poor Vicki did), and Shaminda had to hold Betsey, sicker than the rest of us, while she cried in pain. It was watching the two of them (they lived in the same room), Vicki yelling at Don and Luanne at once (though Luanne wasn't there) and Shaminda trying to hush them as he held Betsey--it was that horrible tableau that pushed me over the edge even farther (though I was strung out already from the prospective Andes trip), and Tim caught a torrent, for which I've since apologized.
It was just so wretched, though. 45 insect bites I got on my legs on that boat, and that's with DEET lotion. Running a fever, having a different classic travel-sickness symptom (I'd had a miserable night and not that good a day, spending most of my time alone and reading I think four books), and when I was by myself sick, I missed our first pizza party, our first internet-cafe run in the city, and we'd had buses break down in the mud. I was half a world away from all I knew, and surrounded by 40 people, I couldn't trust the ones in charge, except Enrique, but he didn't speak English, and wasn't really in charge, just a nurse. They'd made Victoria out to be sicker than she was, and I'd been worried about that--and because my cabin was far-flung and there were communication problems, I didn't get brought food when I was sick, and lived first off of Tim and Tom's pretzels from home, and then off of castoff food that Shaminda gave me--chicken soup and crackers--because Betsey was too sick to eat it and Don didn't want it.
And, holy cow, why didn't they give us the chicken soup when we were well? It was the best thing I ate while I was there, save the ice cream we bought a few times. I shouldn't complain about eating fish-or-chicken, rice, and plantains-or-potatoes-or-yucca-or-vegetables-in-lime-juice for two weeks; there is not a whole lot they could have fed us. But there is a reason that Sean almost got killed when, on the day before we left for home, he woke up one morning, stretched, and said, in a tone of nostalgia, "Cinnamon rolls." (The most popular longing I heard was for chocolate. Mine was chocolate chip cookies, so that was close. We did get chocolate milkshakes one night while we were "on the town", as much as one can be in Pucallpa in a large group, and I sucked that down like I was on a stopwatch. Oh my word. Oh my word.)
It felt like half a world away. I felt so far from home.
And I felt like such a failure. The more I watched Tim, so quiet, so steady, so comforting, the more frustrated I became with myself, so much the complainer, so desperate for home. And what can I do with my life? Ananda and I have whispered Africa to each other for years. Three weeks and I was this bad? I'd get worse long-term. And I didn't feel safe. I feel horrible, but I am a United States American, and when I'm out of my habitat, all I want is the quiet suburban existence I hate so much in theory. I hate my need for safety. My need for what I consider decent food. My tendency to grow ever more frightened about how sick I'm getting, how little sleep I'm getting. I hate my being unsure that I can or even should help these people. I'm not sure what effect America's had on them--North America--and I'm not sure I like it.
I felt so strange on the way back, sitting in front of a group of Peruvian missionary kids, about my age. After the fury I felt at how Simon mangled the story of Christianity to Luanne's children, and the deeper fury at myself for so little effort to stop him, when did missionaries become something strange, something almost to cringe at?
I'm not sure anymore that I should save the world. But without that, everything I ever wanted for myself is gone. I can't replace it just with getting a job, getting a house, getting a husband, having kids. Not just those things. But even in APO I feel so useless so much of the time...like nothing I do really means anything...checking off names on a blood drive form, couldn't any group do that? That isn't a wonderful sentiment for a Rush co-chair, I know. But with Leo Club I got impatient as President because when I asked everyone why they were there, I got twelve replies that it looked good on a college application. Now I'm with people who, for the most part, want to do things, but I still feel like, in such a tiny town, it'll never be enough. I'm so bad at contenting myself with the ordinary. So bad.
For months now I have been less impressed with myself every time I look. I was so much better a person in high school. When did trying to be understanding, trying to help people, turn into overliberality--or into apathy--or into fear? And why does everything go so wrong every time I try to take a stand on anything, draw a line anywhere?
Why, so much of the time, am I too afraid to take it?
(I don't want to be reassured. I want to be different. I want to be something else.)
I don't know what to make of Pucallpa. All the signs are wooden, and I had no idea how much I associate wooden shops with painted signs and proprietors that I can't understand with seediness, poverty, lack of trust. Everything looked unchanged since the 70s. And I wasn't sure, especially in the "city" part, whether I was going to be ripped off if they could tell I was from the US. ...We don't rip off South American immigrants on purpose, I told myself. But I wasn't sure.
All the people we actually met were friendly. I loved the people.
Two weeks in Peru, and so far my biggest conclusion is that I've got lots of thinking to do. I do not like at all what I have shown myself to be.
But there were several saving graces. More on that and many other things next time.
-Laurel
And the fire burns easily today...
-Smalltown Poets
I got home on Sunday afternoon, and in all the time since, I have not been able to get enough of either sleep or food, especially carbohydrates. Atkins would have a heart attack and die if he wasn't already dead (isn't he?). Cereal, Italian bread, lasagna, chocolate chip cookies (so many chocolate chip cookies), gummy worms, baked beans, and--joy of joys--milk. Chocolate milk, sometimes, made with NesQuik powder, stirred up with a spoon.
And searching FoodNetwork.com for recipes, main dishes to make for dinner with my mother, things to cook without an oven if possible because ours is being temperamental. Reading for hours on end (I both started and finished C.S. Lewis's Surprised By Joy yesterday--it was all right; a lot of his other books are better), talking to Kristin over the phone for three hours. Taking three-hour naps. Sleeping for ten hours straight, no roosters within a ten-mile radius.
I have not yet gotten over the wide-eyed wonder that is being home, something I wanted since two days after I got to Peru.
I haven't said anything here yet because I haven't really known where to start. I'm not even sure yet that I truly liked the trip, or even whether I should, considering all that happened. And what I think of myself as a person, something very connected (for good or ill, good reasons or bad) to that trip, changes from day to day.
I will not talk much about the planes, because the planes were secondary. I don't like turbulence, but whatever. They gave us two-and-a-half meals during the flights to and from Lima. Airline lasagna is pretty all right; airline omelets suck. And the seats lean back, but nobody likes it when you do, so sleeping gets a little funny, unless you have someone to sleep up against, and even then your neck is still going to hurt. Tim and Tom wisely decided that sitting next to each other for six-and-a-half hours each way was maybe not a good idea (drat that alphabetical order, right? First or last names, they were in trouble), so I swapped passes with Tom when we got on the plane, and everybody was happy, or so I hope.
So it turns out that I am probably not cut out for the Peace Corps. I already had this sneaking suspicion when I went off to college and found that three weeks only eighty miles from home, with my favorite cousin as a roommate, for crying out loud, still had me miserably homesick for maybe the first real time in my life.
This time I made it like maybe two days before I wanted to go home. And that was before the boats broke down in the middle of the Ucayali, before I got sick in another continent, and before the civil unrest that closed a road we were supposed to travel on. And being pasted to Tim, who thought, like any normal person, that two weeks in an exotic location with one's girlfriend was pretty darn cool.
In my own defense, I enjoyed that part. But there were times when that was the only part I enjoyed. I am still not sure whether, knowing what would happen, I would have gone on the trip at all. Certainly I would not have paid full price for it (my parents offered to pay for much of it, but I wanted to have a trip all my own, so I only let them buy my choir dress and my plane ticket from home to LaGuardia), and I am not sure I would have run a countdown for nearly 200 days.
I will tell the bad parts first to get them out of the way.
...We were, in many vague ways, lied to. They told us it was a hotel. It had cabins, but was essentially, let's be honest, a summer camp. (At least our toilets had both seats and paper. Many public ones had one or neither, and one village we needed to stop at, at one point, had no bathrooms, save the woods.) They told us we would have internet. We had nothing of the kind. We couldn't even work the phone system for the most part--no one would've been able to with American phone cards, had not Liz's mother managed to get some number to get to the AT&T system in Peru, so at least those of us with AT&T cards, like Krystal and Liz, could get out. (Mine was Sprint; I was out of luck.) Poor Victoria's mother called at one point, and the desk people, not understanding English, didn't even hang up, but just set the phone down and left it, running up her bill. ...We couldn't find postcards under $1 American, and when we bought those and we asked how to send them, they said "Put them in envelopes". Times for everything changed and we had no idea what we were doing from even one end of the day to the other.
None of this really really bothered me until we broke down on the river. The trip to this village was supposed to take three hours there and three hours back. Shaminda (who is a guy and who is wonderful; more on him later) made some calculations later and discovered that even if the engines had worked, it would have taken at least four. (That was typical: take however-long they said it'd take to get anywhere, add half again to it, and that was the more accurate estimate.) Two of the three boats' engines did not work, partway through the trip, so it took something like six and a half; the boat I was in at the time (number 13, and the engine never went out: I shall never be triskadekaphobic again) ended up towing the others. The return trip was longer: Superboat (number 13) took back the people who, medically, needed to return without problems (Betsey with her sprained foot she'd had before, one girl who's diabetic, etc.). The rest of us were either in another little boat whose engine had been replaced, or a huge whonkin' fishing boat. And then we were all in the fishing boat, because we in the little boat--Tim, Tom, Krystal, John, Simon, me, Luanne, her son Jesse, Theresa...the list goes on--got left behind for about 45 minutes when our new engine conked out and we ended up drifting down the river horizontally.
In the fishing boat, we couldn't sit down, 'cause the mud everywhere, and we hadn't gotten any dinner and were exhausted and had to go to the bathroom and it took until about 2:45 AM to get us back, and we'd started the return trip at 6:30 PM. We'd left the "resort" to get on the wretched boats at seven that morning. Twenty hours, the whole thing took us. We were supposed to get back around 4:30 that afternoon. Nope, 2:45 that morning. Four engines died, two in the one little boat, two in the two others we'd brought with us. Only the fishing boat, which we borrowed from one of the indigenous villages, and Superboat survived.
I was among the first wave, the next day, to get sick. Victoria, Ben, poor Betsey, and I all got the same thing, and I spent a miserable night before Luanne would let me take the medicine I'd brought with me for just such an occurance. 'Cause being sick, there was misinformation there, too. What I'd been told at home contradicted what Luanne was telling me to do, but those also contradicted what was on my medicine box and bottle. I was trying to strike a compromise between three opinions, knowing that if I got it more or less right, everyone would exonerate me, and if I got it wrong, I'd hear three choruses--the home doctor, Luanne, and my parents--of why didn't you do what you were told?
I got it more or less right, but poor Tim had to be pretty angelic. He and Shaminda and Don all did, 'cause all of their girlfriends (Betsey is Shaminda's, Victoria is Don's) were sick and, more than anything, frightened. Don and Tim had to deal with a couple of temper tantrums when Luanne informed us that our group was driving over the Andes mountains on unsafe roads at the end of the week (Victoria's mother had forbade her to do this, wanted to fly her home, and we were both trying to hide from our stressed-out parents just how sick we were; I got better faster because I was first on the medication, and therefore had more success than poor Vicki did), and Shaminda had to hold Betsey, sicker than the rest of us, while she cried in pain. It was watching the two of them (they lived in the same room), Vicki yelling at Don and Luanne at once (though Luanne wasn't there) and Shaminda trying to hush them as he held Betsey--it was that horrible tableau that pushed me over the edge even farther (though I was strung out already from the prospective Andes trip), and Tim caught a torrent, for which I've since apologized.
It was just so wretched, though. 45 insect bites I got on my legs on that boat, and that's with DEET lotion. Running a fever, having a different classic travel-sickness symptom (I'd had a miserable night and not that good a day, spending most of my time alone and reading I think four books), and when I was by myself sick, I missed our first pizza party, our first internet-cafe run in the city, and we'd had buses break down in the mud. I was half a world away from all I knew, and surrounded by 40 people, I couldn't trust the ones in charge, except Enrique, but he didn't speak English, and wasn't really in charge, just a nurse. They'd made Victoria out to be sicker than she was, and I'd been worried about that--and because my cabin was far-flung and there were communication problems, I didn't get brought food when I was sick, and lived first off of Tim and Tom's pretzels from home, and then off of castoff food that Shaminda gave me--chicken soup and crackers--because Betsey was too sick to eat it and Don didn't want it.
And, holy cow, why didn't they give us the chicken soup when we were well? It was the best thing I ate while I was there, save the ice cream we bought a few times. I shouldn't complain about eating fish-or-chicken, rice, and plantains-or-potatoes-or-yucca-or-vegetables-in-lime-juice for two weeks; there is not a whole lot they could have fed us. But there is a reason that Sean almost got killed when, on the day before we left for home, he woke up one morning, stretched, and said, in a tone of nostalgia, "Cinnamon rolls." (The most popular longing I heard was for chocolate. Mine was chocolate chip cookies, so that was close. We did get chocolate milkshakes one night while we were "on the town", as much as one can be in Pucallpa in a large group, and I sucked that down like I was on a stopwatch. Oh my word. Oh my word.)
It felt like half a world away. I felt so far from home.
And I felt like such a failure. The more I watched Tim, so quiet, so steady, so comforting, the more frustrated I became with myself, so much the complainer, so desperate for home. And what can I do with my life? Ananda and I have whispered Africa to each other for years. Three weeks and I was this bad? I'd get worse long-term. And I didn't feel safe. I feel horrible, but I am a United States American, and when I'm out of my habitat, all I want is the quiet suburban existence I hate so much in theory. I hate my need for safety. My need for what I consider decent food. My tendency to grow ever more frightened about how sick I'm getting, how little sleep I'm getting. I hate my being unsure that I can or even should help these people. I'm not sure what effect America's had on them--North America--and I'm not sure I like it.
I felt so strange on the way back, sitting in front of a group of Peruvian missionary kids, about my age. After the fury I felt at how Simon mangled the story of Christianity to Luanne's children, and the deeper fury at myself for so little effort to stop him, when did missionaries become something strange, something almost to cringe at?
I'm not sure anymore that I should save the world. But without that, everything I ever wanted for myself is gone. I can't replace it just with getting a job, getting a house, getting a husband, having kids. Not just those things. But even in APO I feel so useless so much of the time...like nothing I do really means anything...checking off names on a blood drive form, couldn't any group do that? That isn't a wonderful sentiment for a Rush co-chair, I know. But with Leo Club I got impatient as President because when I asked everyone why they were there, I got twelve replies that it looked good on a college application. Now I'm with people who, for the most part, want to do things, but I still feel like, in such a tiny town, it'll never be enough. I'm so bad at contenting myself with the ordinary. So bad.
For months now I have been less impressed with myself every time I look. I was so much better a person in high school. When did trying to be understanding, trying to help people, turn into overliberality--or into apathy--or into fear? And why does everything go so wrong every time I try to take a stand on anything, draw a line anywhere?
Why, so much of the time, am I too afraid to take it?
(I don't want to be reassured. I want to be different. I want to be something else.)
I don't know what to make of Pucallpa. All the signs are wooden, and I had no idea how much I associate wooden shops with painted signs and proprietors that I can't understand with seediness, poverty, lack of trust. Everything looked unchanged since the 70s. And I wasn't sure, especially in the "city" part, whether I was going to be ripped off if they could tell I was from the US. ...We don't rip off South American immigrants on purpose, I told myself. But I wasn't sure.
All the people we actually met were friendly. I loved the people.
Two weeks in Peru, and so far my biggest conclusion is that I've got lots of thinking to do. I do not like at all what I have shown myself to be.
But there were several saving graces. More on that and many other things next time.
-Laurel