Thoughts and Travels

2011-04-10T11:49:00.000-07:00

"It won't be long/ I belong /somewhere past the setting sun/ finally free / finally strong/
somewhere back where I belong"

Geneva from atop Saleve... see the Jet D'eau??

So I have been totally losing track of blogging... I'm really in shock that it's April already and that in a couple of weeks time I will be in Ireland for spring break... In general, I am planning on doing most of my traveling this summer, but I've been on some interesting day trips...

I guess recently, I have been feeling like even if I had the money to go on a trip every weekend, I wouldn't want to. I am starting to fall in love with Geneva in a way I honestly didn't think I would my first couple of months here. It might be the sudden appearance of summer (we seem to have skipped spring here... Or at least I believe that. I jumped in the lake one day and people looked at me like I was a psychopath).

I've been on two hiking trips since the good weather hit - one trip with a new friend, Verena, and a group of other Erasmus students, biking to Saleve and hiking up... and one to the Alps with my flatmate Laurena, Dagny, and a hiking group from IHEID (the graduate institute). I think hiking with people is one of my favorite things here, partly because it's just so breathtakingly beautiful, and because it's nice to be able to chat and to fall into silence and feel natural.

Cafe near the top of Saleve, view of the alps

hi that's definitely me parasailing right now.

our group resting after a long days biking and hiking!

Saleve! the mountain I can see from my window

SO those pics were all from Saleve, which is basically in walking distance.

Here are some from the daytrip I took to Les Diablerets, in the alps:

Dagny, in shock at the beauty?

mountain silhouette from the train station

not skiiing...there was just that much snow on the trail, but it was warm enough for t-shirts!

I also had tons of fun the Berne weekend, both hanging out at the Cite, and with Kayla and her awesome friend Jordon who was visiting from Grenada... we spent a lot of time at the park and took the little boat from the park to the "Baby Plage":

I sadly forgot my camera for the actual trip to Berne, but Kayla tends to be a better blogger than I am and when she updates it, you may find that and other interesting entries about Geneva here: http://kcarpenzano.blogspot.com/

advice to future Geneva students: always take advantage of the free Smith trips! The tour of Parliament wasn't my favorite part, except for the fact that our swiss german tour guide had the most enchanting accent, pronouncing "village" as "willage" and country as "country" which if combined into one phrase, results in the almost-too-charming-to-handle "countwy willage."

It's often a struggle for me to want to correct my friends' or student's english mistakes whether of usage or accent when they're just so endearing/ enchanting. Like when the little girl I tutor wrote a paragraph about her cousin and used the phrase "she is naughty with me" or when another friend said "we have to go upstairs" to indicate having to continue up a mountain path. I think trying to improve in french, keep up a tiny bit with italian, and hearing various kinds of english accents etc is actually resulting in my losing some sense of what is actually correct in my native tongue! Or actually, I am finding that I really WISH some french words had an english equivalent and its too bad we can't just import them. even just using a phrase as simple as "Il faut que"... One night I actually had to keep turning it around in my brain trying and trying to think of a satisfying english phrase that could substitute in the sentence in my head "It's necessary that I..." sounds awkward and "I have to" doesn't get at quite the same sense... also I really love the word "incroyable" and even though it's a direct translation of "unbelievable" it sounds way more expressive. I still feel like I'm lacking enough opportunities to speak french with people, but maybe I will try and initiate french conversation more with my flatmates and friends rather than reverting to english.

So anyways, yeah right now my life consists of french class and a class on international orgs at the Smith center, a class called "water as a literary element" at UNIGE (university of Geneva, which is in the Park de Bastions, which is just a short walk form my residence), an internship with International Bridges to Justice and independent research project related to it, university chorus, giving guitar lessons to two awesome people at the Cite, and tutoring a really sweet middle-schooler once a week... and then whatever little routines develop around that - reading at the park, writing, sketching, painting, occasionally trying out different churches when I'm not traveling... and trying to plan my summer and future while trying to live in the moment and just connect with people and have experiences.

Of which I will try to write soon....

Speaking Corramente

2011-04-07T16:31:00.000-07:00

While in Geneva, I have found myself immersed surprisingly in none of the four national languages, nor in English, so much as a 5^th language that may be familiar to some of you: Franglais.

Franglais is a little like “Esperanto” – a language Dagny did a lovely presentation on in Jaci’s class yesterday, so it is fresh on my mind. Esperanto was an attempt to create a language that would be easy to learn so that members of the UN would be able to communicate without linguistic barriers, miscommunications, or hierarchies/ divisions caused by language.

Franglais is more of an organic Creole, serving many purposes. As well as building bridges between speakers of different languages like Esperanto, Franglais has many stylistic purposes that place it a cut above what I will refer to here as “Traditional English” though that may be a PARAPLUIE term.

Adding a hint of a romance language into the POTAGE of your daily speech really brings out the zest or intensity in phrases that have dramatic implications such as « That’s what YOU pense” or “que’est-ce que c’est happened?” The element of surprise is like an implicit exclamation point.

Alternativelty, franglais can, in certain contexts, give an edge of superiority or sophistication. It says "I am not only pretending/ attempting to be bilingual. I have the confidence to ride the wave that is the erosion of two languages into one and dit ce que I darn well Veut" Speakers of franglais are pioneer of the future, not natives anywhere but nomads everywhere.

Some common uses of Franglais:

“Are we prêt?”

« She didn’t succeed in getting the avocat» (**note: use with caution. This creates some fantastique ambiguity regarding whether “she” failed to obtain a lawyer or an avocado)

« Il me faut un nap »

« This ascensure is a piece of zoot »

“Quelle sour-puss” (and its uncensored variations)

“That is just pas juste!”

And perhaps the most common and beloved: “quoiever”

Franglais is used not only among my circle of acquaintances, but in Geneva itself… I saw a gym called “EXERSUISSE” and a beach called “BABY PLAGE”

Similar, but not to be confused with franglais is the construction of French phrases in the English language such as:

“I am following a class about 2 times a week” (as in learning in a classroom, not creepily stalking a group of students on a bi-weekly basis)

“I am in the bus” (in traditional English this would communicate and image of being digested by a bus with personality like the magic school bus or the catbus in Totoro)

“I have 20 years” (you've lived 20 years or you have 20 years to live?!)

“I take myself a shower” (in T.E. (Traditional English, this has a sort of a southern feel “I’mna take me self a shower”)

“The words escape language” (like one of those phrases that foreigners say that make you forget what is actually correct because the new version sounds so charming)

“We have to continue upstairs” (for continuing uphill on a mountain path… for relation to TE, see above comment)

Or, some very fascinating results can come of literally translating French idioms and importing them into the English language, as in “she laughs like a whale.”

These phrases tend to build a sense of incroyable intercultural unity and faith in language’s ability to transform and grandir… nothing is really set in pierre. tout peut change.

It's a good idea to expose your children to franglais at an early age in order to build their confidence in linguistic improvisation and understanding of other cultures. Take them to a Baby plage near you and let them mix with other young pioneers. Sometimes audio tracks are available at progressive local libraries. Don't perd a moment!

CARNEVAL!

2011-03-18T06:47:00.000-07:00

This is how I ended my day at the Carneval at Basel:

confetti strewn over everything, oranges and candy bulging out of my pockets... and a turnip in my backpack.

How did this happen? Let's go back to the beginning:

I woke up earlier than I've woken up EVER in Switzerland: 6:45!
And saw this sunrise out my window, and was so shocked to see the sunrise that I haven't seen yet here that I took a picture.

I didn't know what to expect from Basel. Kayla was apprehensive about the clowns that would be involved. (She is on the lookout for clowns in this picture. Of course, she also seemed torn between her instinctual fear of clowns and her desire for the flowers they were handing out...)

As well as flowers, they were also throwing fruit and candy. Mostly oranges, which actually seems a little dangerous... my french teacher got hit in the head by one!

And there were the occasional vegetables.

At one point, a Swiss stranger in the crowd came up to me and said something in German. I stood staring at her blankly and before I knew what was happening, she was unzipping my backpack and holding a turnip. I didn't know if I was being robbed in a very friendly way or given dinner. And in my language-barrier paralysis, I pulled another "roadrunner" like at the store in Zurich and simply didn't react. Maybe it was also my carneval- induced joy and trust in all humanity. At the end, she saw that I was troubled and switched to English, bothering to give cooking instructions, so I knew it was safe.

But like Kayla, I had had my reservations about Carneval. I wasn't expecting much because I am the kind of person who hates parades and skipped every rally in high school.

Maybe this is because the only couple of parades I've been to have been bad experiences... the first was a county fair parade I went to when I was about 5. I hadn't been plannning on going, but my parents found out at the last minute that I could be part of our landlords' float (they had a float because they had one of the few businesses in my small town, selling produce from their farm... and maybe showing some of their llamas? For those who don't know, I grew up on a llama farm because my parents rented the bottom floor of their farmhouse).

Anyways, long story short, they thought it would be a brilliant idea for me to go as a bumble bee and commenced to cover me in strips of yellow and black duct tape... I have a very traumatic memory of having to go to the bathroom all day and being stuck in this impenetrable suit of tape...

The only other parade I can think of offhand that I've been involved in was the Memorial Day Parade, in which I played trumpet. But one of the two years I did this, I somehow forgot my mouthpiece and found myself stuck in the center of town, after the roads had closed to cars, with a trumpet and no mouthpiece... someone ended up sacrificing one for me or having an extra. I sort of forget how it worked out...

But before Carneval, I really thought parades were just a source of stress, the benefits of which were nil.

Let me say I have changed my opinion. In spite of the unsettling clowns:

There was some really fascinating, beautiful architecture in the city of Basel as well, as we walked around beforehand.

And then, the festivities themselves just blew me away. Most of the themes were really clever, witty plays on political ideas. The costumes are made a year in advance, so they pertain to pressing issues of the past, but are still relevant, like the references to BP and saving the oceans. There was one group of military posters that had a really rousing, and chilling demonstration. But not all of them were political, such as the army of Shreks, or the monkeys, which I didn't entirely understand. Maybe some of them were also specific to German culture... Every group had handouts/ written up explanations, but of course

This was part of the anti-military demonstration:

Sweeping up for the environmental campaign:

One I didn't really get:
The clowns give and they take:

And all the while, all these pipers were coming... pat a pat pat, tut a tut tut, tut a tut pat, tuppete tappeta pat, pattepa pattepa tut...

All in all, I just loved the celebration. and honestly, as stupefied as I was about the turnip, after that incident, standing in the sunlight, hearing the music, catching oranges, feeling like I was part of some medieval village celebration... I hit euphoria. Carneval was definitely a great memory for me, one of those days when time just time just stops for happiness.

It was also very thrilling to run through the crowds as a group and enter the train just before it took off, in a shower of confetti...

Zurich!

2011-03-16T16:01:00.000-07:00

Ready for another lightning-speed, skipping details catch-up blog?

This is Zurich, which someone told me today is actually the largest city in Switzerland. Which surprised me because I'm not a city person, and even i didn't think it was all that big.

A lovely Old Cathedral.

"Pizza Go Home" This is either a failed attempt at "we do delivery" or "our pizza tastes homemade" or else some strain of anti-pizza sentiment rampant in German-speaking Switzerland.

Ah German Speaking Switzerland... I have never been in a country before in which i knew absolutely NONE of the language. I tried to learn the word for "excuse me" from Anne, who live in Zurich for 3 years of High School, but whatever she said sounded to me like a 4 syllable sneeze. So needless to say, in every crowded store we went into, I was reduced to waiting to get around people and smiling apologetically like a mute if I bumped anyone.

I tried to buy post cards, thinking I could just hold out the money and leave... but the woman behind the counter actually said something to me that sounded interrogative and I panicked, totally frozen. I didn't even reason that I could try French or English in this very multilingual city... I just stared blankly at her, like Road runner staring up at the anvil crashing down on him.

Thankfully, she must have been used to this kind of behavior and immediately said, in a perfect accent, "English? Do you want stamps?"

It really made me reflect on how foreigners feel who come to live in a place as monolingual as America.

Some more pictures:

This is a great statue, but I just realized that this angle sort of makes it look like a terrible story of abuse.

pretty!

So yes, most of the day was spent walking around, seeing Anne's old house and school, trying to understand the significance of a mysterious company building with a sign on it that said "Hebert the Nose"... and shopping/ generally sightseeing.

Also, in the more suburban part of Zurich, farther from the city center, we found this incredible slide. It was definitely a highlight of the day for me.

Gruyeres

2011-03-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, a group of girls set out who were tired of Museums. They wanted to see a little village in the country in Switzerland, a happy land named for its famous cheese. or perhaps the cheese was named for the place. But in any case, off they set in search of this magical place.

They did not know that they would actually find themselves in NARNIA. Yes that is the self-same lamp post that Lucy Pevensie stumbled upon - (and not "stumbed upon" as in the online phenomenon of being led to a random webpage... stumbled upon in the flesh) - the day she met Tumnus the Fawn and began her second life. It was a little like that, with a little Julie Andrews in the mix for good measure just in case it wasn't happy enough.

Also they did not travel through a wardrobe, but by train. But it is highly possible that there was magic involved in the journey because, as has become tradition, the moment they arrived on the train, they all opened Kinder Eggs. Kinder Eggs have a way of bringing magic with them. As you can observe in the pictures below:

But the moment they got out of the train, they noticed that they had arrived at the very doorstop of another museum! DA DA DUNNNN....

Yet this museum was not like others they had experienced. It was not a museum of history, natural history, Rousseau, art history, ancient Baths, church ruins, or watch-making. It was a museum... of CHEESE.

a trilingual museum of cheese no less. At first i thought "Cave" was the English translation haha

... and something else was different about this museum too. The audio guide was not a distinguished deep-voiced gentleman, but an uppity British Cow. In the video here, it is hard to make out well, but she informs the public:

"...Man had the idea of turning my milk into cheese
so that he could feed himself in winter
And he’s still pleased with himself
As Man said, “my cheese”
But its not true! It’s MY cheese! (here she sounds a bit sadistic while remaining cheery)

... We're superior to humans.
They only have one stomach.
But my girlfriends and I have four each!
Okay so we can ruminate, but at least we aren’t chewing over our past…
We chew the cud to turn grass into milk.
Say whatever you like, but it’s magic!"

As if our day wasn't full of enough magic already!

(kayla looks skeptical of this "magic")

Another magical thing happened: I smelled! You may know that I have an extremely weak sense of smell. My cousin Heather can relate, but only because she fell on her head. So she has better reasons. When I saw her at new years, we were in Bath & Body works trying in vain to smell the difference between "clean cotton" and "water" and "grass" or to smell anything at all... But somehow, at this museum, the concentration of scent in these things was high enough that I really felt like I was out in a meadow, ruminating with Cherry, smelling all the subtleties of the fields and flowers. A miracle!

This picture is from a trivia slide show in the museum. Cherry can be so cheery, but she has a sadistic side that comes out if you A.) think humans are superior to cows, B.) think cheese belongs solely to humanity or C.) answer one of these questions about the process of cheese-making incorrectly.

After the magical museum with its magical free samples, we went to a magical CASTLE!

In the magical tourist town:

And from there is was sort of too beautiful for words.

Also, they ate fondue. and lived happily ever after, only with mild indigestion.

The END!

Bobbie

2011-03-03T15:57:00.000-08:00

No you're not hallucinating. That is a rabbit. It's just hard to tell because he's pretty sedentary.

If you were to enter my apartment building, walk past the elevator and turn left, you would see Bobbie, the resident rabbit.

Or I have been told this is his name, and in the same breath, that the name connotates stupidity.

I look at this picture and think "one of these things is not like the others/ one of these things does not belong..." And I wonder, is it the ceramic parrot, the coat hangers, or the rabbit itself?

I know if I lived in a veritable Tupperware container in a triangle of glass between an elevator and an office, beneath a curious assortment of what do seem to be coat hangers, and my only companion was a ceramic parrot, I might be too perky myself.

This is the most enthused I have ever seen Bobbie. I think the flash startled him:

One of my projects this semester will be to cheer up Bobbie. And I may continue putting updates here about how Bobbie is doing from day to day.

Suggestions for cheering him up are welcome. So far I have just made an effort to stop and greet him and channel positive energy. Sometimes I also pet him if the office is open and I can get in.

If I were the owner I would at least TRY to deceive him into thinking he's in the country - some large leaves, pictures of fields... a bonsai... something! Even I had to get pictures of nature for my room, to remind myself of the country and I am not

a. a field animal
b. living isolated (with a parrot) in Tupperware.

Let's all take a moment to consider the well-being of those unnoticed around us who might need cheering up... they are there, just around the corner. Or around the elevator in this case...

Oriented

2011-02-19T15:58:00.000-08:00

I have really lost any sense of time here. In some ways, I feel like I've entered an alternate life. But I'm starting to find my niche in it, to be familiar with many of the street names and bus and tram lines, to know my way to the most important places I'll need to go... I suppose it's good I feel oriented, considering that I just finished orientation.

The conclusion of orientation was a delicious dinner, choice of fondu or raclette. I chose fondue, reasoning that it's not just a meal - it's an activity too - an experience. Every time I plunged my pronged spear into the vat of gently bubbling cheese, I thought "I made the right decision." The fondue pot is mesmerizing like watching a fireplace, or else watching a gentle volcano... and fondue is pretty much heaven on a stick. Apparently it goes with white wine but I broke the rules and picked red. Supposedly also, wine and tea are acceptable but you're not supposed to drink water with fondue? Odd, but I'll trust the experts.

So, backing up...

The past couple of weeks have been very packed. One of my favorite days was our trip to Chateau de Chillon on the train. I was enthousiastically snapping pictures out the window when the local sitting next to me said "you might want to wait to take pictures... there's something better coming.

She was right:

This is our whole group. most everyone in the program has a shot almost identical to this because our director was patiently taking pictures with everyone's cameras while passerbys were patiently... well waiting to pass by!

The castle was gorgeous inside and out, but our tour guide didn't want us to take pictures during the tour and there wasn't time afterwards... It was a fascinating tour, in french. The most striking detail I learned was that long ago, people slept sitting up because it was a religious superstition that lying down at night could result in death! Then, a witch walked by and I thought "well that's odd." Apparently, children can have themed birthday parties at this Chateau led by the witch (who is actually Professor McGonagal), the architect, or the page. So I know what I'm doing on May 15th lol.

As Kayla said "Silly Switzerland, thinking they could fool us into believing these mountains are real." It's sort of an elaborate hologram I guess - only explanation for this much beauty. It's working apparently - attracts a lot of tourists.

So that was last saturday. Sunday, I had a lazy day and then met the family I'll be working for as a tutor. It seems like it will be a lot of fun so far, and seeing family life here makes me feel more connected to the city.

The next week, in addition to my orientation class (3 hours of french every day), we had a few outings. One to the United Nations.

I love the symbol of the UN - the image of the earth from the north pole, which is essentially as neutral as they could be, embraced by olive branches.

And here is a painting in a UN building that is an optical illusion, designed to look as if the road is facing you no matter what angle you're standing at:

To me, this serves as another insight into the ideas at the foundation of the UN - a kind of pluralism that leaves room for many perspectives in peaceful co-existence... No matter where you stand, there is a path to the same goal.

Also, the UN grounds are full of peacocks, oddly enough:

LOVELY!!!

In addition to the UN, last week, we went to the Patek Philippe Museum, which is a museum of swiss watches. Aka, purgatory - soft classical music, a very nice guide, nothing truly terrible... but a sense that I would be looking at watches in glass cases for all eternity. Every time I thought we'd reached the end, we came into a new room or level and I felt like Sisyphus pushing his stone to the top of the hill only to start at the beginning again... Some people in our group enjoyed that museum, but somehow for me, it was too much like being in a historical department store.

Anyways, this weekend, I went hiking two days in a row!

Friday, I went to this mountain, just over the border, a short bus ride into France with one of my roommates, Katie, and some other girls from the program. There was a lovely town with some little fruitstands and quaint houses and cafes, and a really nice trail.

Then, on saturday, I went with my french roommate, Laurena (right), Kayla, and 2 of her friends, on another hiking venture, more of a woodsy walking trail, and some parts by a lake... Lots of fun.

So from my first days here

To this last weekend before classes and my internship start,

I have had a great time. And I am officially ORIENTED. !!

First week in Geneva

2011-02-05T03:11:00.000-08:00

From my window, I can see a Catholic church, a skate park, streets, buildings, some very odd looking trees someone told me recently are Chestnut... and behind it all, on days when it’s not foggy, a mountain.

The second evening I was here I noticed what I thought was the silhouette of a mountain around dusk, but the next morning, it had disappeared and I was sure I had somehow hallucinated it because I WANT a mountain view out my window. The next few days were perpetually gray and I had no way of knowing, but finally, the sun broke through and my mountain is back.

So I am sitting at this sunny kitchen table, staring at it in a grateful stupor for the second sunny day in a row, eating my “pain perdu” and listening to the noises of birds and street traffic and distant voices.

My first week in Geneva has been many things, but mostly like my confusion over the existence of this mountain. Nothing is the way I had pictured it – it is dangerous to create mental pictures, but also impossible – but I am starting to really appreciate the place that I’m in. There are moments when I am overjoyed to be here, and moments when I have doubts. But if the first week is always the hardest, and my first week has had so much good in it, then I am sure the semester will be unforgettable; there's so much to discover that is sometimes concealed behind fog at first glance.

The weather in this city has such a drastic effect… when it’s gloomy, no mountains are visible, the color of the nicer stone buildings sort of washes out, and I swear people look less friendly. But yesterday, on our tour of “le vieille ville” I was thrilled to get to see some absolutely beautiful parts of this city – older stone alleyways and cathedrals…

Probably the most amusing thing was a sign pointing down to “Parking & Archeological Site":

apparently, when Geneva's fortifications became useless, they were converted into a parking garage haha

So some general and personal, good and bad and neutral (this is Switzerland after all) things I've experienced/noted so far:

1. Everyone here has a scooter. I have seen 50 year old men with briefcases and scooters. Not the motorized kind - the kind kids ride on sidewalks with helmets and knee pads...

2. it is definitely expensive to eat out. the conversion rate isn't bad, but a veggie burger on my street is advertised outside as being "only 20 francs" Still, if you buy food at "Migros" and cook for yourself, it's not bad at all.

3. The sirens here are almost quasi musical. But sound like sort of a deranged carnival, or a mangled ice cream truck… plus little more incessant… and also they either go flat or it’s the Doppler effect and my musical sensibilities are sort of going haywire. But earplugs solve everything, I’ve found.

4. It's sort of exciting to know I can take the bus to France. I plan to also get a Eurorail pass and try not to have classes on Fridays so I can travel a lot of weekends... and hike!

5. There is a french religious holiday that is celebrated by making crepes. No one I asked seemed to know why, but apparently the higher you toss the crepe when you flip it the more prosperous your year will be? or fertile? I wasn't clear on which...

6. Last night, I met a distant non blood relative who is very nice and lives here in Geneva with his wife and 3 kids. He was at a nearby cafe with a group from his "student society" which sounds a lot like a fraternity... but as he called it a "vertical friendship" where there are people of all ages, all disciplines, etc, that come together to socialize. I also learned a german/ french drinking song. There was a lot of elbow and fist banging on the table. And Kayla looked souped for the singing haha. So I learned about a student society in Geneva called "Stella."

6. The culture is very interesting here because while Geneva is an "international city" in the sense that there are lots of foreigners studying here, I have heard less English on the streets etc than I expected to. French is the primary language, but no one is monolingual and everyone seems to know a different combination of languages... so it creates a really fascinating cultural dynamic. I had known that ahead of time, but not quite how it would look because I've never been to a country with more than one national language.

The people in my apartment for instance, have quite a mix of languages. There are two girls from france, one who has spent a lot of time with us and been extremely welcoming... and both are wonderful, another girl with the smith program from Swarthmore who's fantastic. and vegan, which makes it easier for me to be vegetarian, though this isn't a hard place to be vegetarian at all. I think that would only really be an issue if I were living with a family. Anyways, so there are 4 girls and 3 guys - one from Senegal, one from Italy, and one from Vietnam. I haven't seen as much of the guys, but everyone who lives here is really pleasant and I hope I'll get to know

7. also, this probably is just exciting to me, but a girl from the fall or a previous year left a guitar at the smith center to be passed on!! And no one else wanted it or else everyone was just being nice... so now I have a guitar to play! Which is wonderful because that's been the way I de-stress and the sort of filler activity in my life for a long time and I felt pretty naked without one. But when my program director, Jonathon Gosnell, entered the room with a guitar, I really though it was going to be a Julie Andrews moment and he was going to sing us a song, maybe about the history of Geneva or something... too bad it wasn't both haha

Well it's getting time for me to stop writing and go exploring. Today I'm going to take a long walk to a park, and try to pass my probably internship on the way to be sure I can get there alone!

Now that the sun is back - in more ways than one - I'll try to write somewhat often.

England snapshots

2011-01-27T04:18:00.000-08:00

I think I am finally adjusting to UK time. Ironic considering that I am leaving England tomorrow. Oops I’ve been a terrible blogger!

Here are some snapshots of trip highlights so far:
Oxford: I love this city. It’s almost monochromatic – so many of the buildings and the cobblestone are made of this warm, tan-ish yellowish stone. Maybe it’s meant to cheer up the perpetually grey sky! No - we’ve had a few days of sun, but January is quite bleak on the whole.

Still, heedless of the weather, I decided that I wanted to go to the top of a castle to get a view of the city. After walking all the way there we found out that we would have to pay for a tour, but there was an option of going up the "mound" for only a pound. And for some idiotic reason, I thought the "mound" was the castle tower, which I was more interested in climbing than in paying for a tour of the whole castle. It turns out the mound was just a gated off hill. So yes, we paid to climb a hill. In the rain. And took lots of pictures pouting at the top "look what Rachel made us do!" Needless to say, my friends have lost trust in my activity choices... lolol

The next day I didn't improve much on that reputation! I was determined to go on a bike ride, and took them to this path that goes to White Horse Hill which in the summertime is BREATHTAKING. But in the winter, the "ridgeway" is full of mud and white horse hill was so windy we couldn't even hear each other. Another pouting photoshoot at a muddy intersection ensued... it was definitely cold and overcast, but the view was still spectacular and the exercise felt great. plus it was amusing to watch these indomitable, hardy British parents taking their reluctant children on walks up the hill - little lisping British voices lost in the wind "mum i need to keep my body warm!"

Of course both days ended up being great, my blunders aside. The rest of that day in Oxford, we toured Christ Church College, and saw the dining hall where Harry Potter's great hall dinners were filmed, went to a famous botanic garden with a bench associated with the Golden Compass series (which my friend Julie said she'd wanted to see for ten years - the famous bench i mean), saw the Natural History museum, and had dinner at a pub called the Cape of good Hope - some great soup and risotto and cider... and took a taxi to the hotel where my aunt play bridge every other week.

The next Big Outing we had was our trip into London. We took the train in, found the Swiss Embassy (I had to work on getting my passport stamped with a visa over here…. Thankfully that all worked out!), then took the “Tube” over to a section of the city with a cluster of museums, including the Science museum where we spent some time. Julie kept looking for exhibits about time travel/ futuristic explorations, but the exhibit that sounded like it was about Time ended up being about clocks through the ages - from the Sundial to the cases of various watches up to the digital clock on the back wall counting down the milliseconds. (timepieces are A bit less exciting than THE FUTURE… )

At the museum café, we met Kayla’s friend Hilary who is studying photography in London for the semester. Then we could all stop worry about getting lost because Hilary is a Tube genius! I also got a little lazy about taking pictures! We had a really nice time walking in Regent’s park and then found Abbey Road and took a Beatles picture… which felt a little less cool than expected because there were crowds of other tourists all doing the same thing, waiting to walk through the cross walk and all I could think was “gosh it must be annoying to live on this street and have to wait to drive through here for everyone’s pictures…” But Hilary and Kayla seemed to be experts on the Beatles’ picture, so our rendition was a lot more accurate than the other tourists’ – Julie even volunteered to be Paul and go barefoot. That definitely put us a notch above the rabble 

That mission complete, we went to eat. We found a really nice Italian restaurant in Covent Garden and then wandered around… and eventually found a café to have desert before heading home.

Other daytrips included Bath and Stonehenge. Bath might be my favorite little city, or is neck and neck with Oxford. Kayla said it’s probably because of the Roman influence speaking to my Italian genes. There were some incredibly talented street performers outside the Abbey – first a woman with a powerful, clear operatic voice, then a fiddle player, later a guy with an acoustic guitar… We ate in the museum café and toured the ancient Baths. I’m a little jealous of the Romans to be perfectly honest – they would soak in hot springs, get massages, dry out in heated rooms… and then go through the whole process in reverse. No wonder it was considered a spiritual experience.

Stonehenge and Avebury are both ancient stone circles. We toured them on the same day – they’re a little over half an hour apart. The stone circles definitely have a mystique. It was funny to see something as ordinary as sheep, and tourists with audio guides walking around a formation that looks so mysterious and imposing. We were joking about the sheep being specially selected to guard the stones… I really liked the section of the audio guide section “myths and legends.” If the stones aren’t some kind of observatory or calendar, they were definitely brought by Merlin. Or aliens.

At Avebury, we ate at the only known pub inside an ancient stone circle: The Red Lion. I got excited because the lion on their sign looks like Aslan on the Narnian’s shields (please no one make fun of me). Plus, we were inside a stone circle… maybe the Stone Table was here too…

This week we went back to London just to pick up my passport. We didn’t have much time to spare but I did arrange to meet an Italian relative from Norwich in London – a lovely older woman named Luciana who is my grandfather’s late cousin’s wife. I met her at my cousin’s wedding, but immediately felt like she was family. She even invited me to stay with her and her relatives in Florence some day.

I think this is turning into a long enough entry. I’m going to try to write shorter entries more frequently and not play catch-up (I hope). I really enjoyed our outings in England but the thing that always means the most to me when I come to England is just seeing my aunt Gail and my uncle Jonathon. It’s the little moments – chats at dinner, walks, watching in wonder as the hermit crab in their salt water aquarium molts its shell… I too am changing, molting. I’m ready for something different, something that scares me a little. The prospect of living in a city scares me a little. But I am mostly just excited, mostly just anticipating being surprised by joy, as Lewis might say.

In the car on the way home from the last London trip to the embassy, Kayla played a lot of Crosby Stills and Nash. Opening the window and letting the cool damp night air flood into my face, looking at the hints of stars, these line jumped out at me:

When you see the Southern Cross for the first time,
You understand now why you came this way.
'Cause the truth you might be runnin' from is so small.
But it's as big as the promise, the promise of a comin' day.

The harmonies and everything behind them just gives me chills. I’m not sure how to explain the connection I felt in the lyrics to my own life… but it was very strong and startling. The truth you might be running from is so small… maybe as small as forgetting to notice all the potential joy that surrounds you every day: this eternal sense of wonder…

We’ll see if I’m so dreamy and idealistic tomorrow when I’m terrified! Haha

Packing up

2010-12-22T15:03:00.000-08:00

I moved everything home from college today and spent most of the day unpacking and organizing, willing my closet to grow or my nostalgia to shrink. It’s strange, how the affection I feel for my room, for this house I’ve lived in since I was six, can almost make me feel like I’ve gone back in time as my present and past selves unite, as my books from the past semester merge into the shelves with Calvin and Hobbes, ancient journals and school papers and projects… Today I rediscovered, for instance, a book of short poems I was required to write in 3rd grade in which I rhymed “umbrella” with “salmonella” probably because of the many lectures I got as a child about the dangers of eating cookie batter with raw egg in it. (Yes my dad is Woody Allen sometimes). Yet In my room, it all coheres; not as one of many worlds I am present in, but a kind of wood between the worlds. Like this poem I love - something along the lines of “There are three of us: the child I was, the girl I am, and the woman I will become.” And here, I am reminded of that view of a life as being like a Russian-doll... all the inner layers I often ignore that remind me who I am and where I came from.

More on travels coming.
Next week, maybe Florida, next month England and Geneva!

cookies fix everything

2010-07-31T05:27:00.000-07:00

It’s been a week full of surprises.

Wednesday morning at 6:57, my I heard my fellow Agape intern Kristen running up the stairs and, thinking she was going to hurry me to the morning meeting to help me keep from being late (again), I shut off my alarm for the third and final time and sped to meet her on the landing, to prove I was on my way down.

But instead of saying anything about my sleeping habits, she said “Rachel guess what? Michele is here!”

“What?” I was stupefied. Michele was a WOOOFer from Italy who had left the previous week to finish his vacation in America by going to Niagra Falls. What did she mean he was back?

Apparently that morning at 5:00, Suzanne had seen a car parked in the driveway, and someone sleeping inside it!

I could picture Suzanne and Kristen creeping up to the vehicle, peering cautiously in the window at the imposter, seeing only a striped hat, under which was… Michele!

He had gotten tired on his commute from Niagra back to Boston, and just decided to sleep in his car here. And he happened to come just in time to give Kristen a ride to Boston the next day. It was unthinkable timing.

All I could think was of the end of Chamber Singers’ tour this spring. We had said many emotional goodbyes to our tour guide, Luigi, and to Italy, and we were on the road. As we stood moping in the airport, feeling the hollowness that marks the end of every powerfully happy experience, a man walked over to us.

“LUIGI IS BACK!”

I was stupefied.

“What?!”

How could he be back?

He was going to be picking up his next tour group at the airport, and had decided to meet up with us, say a final goodbye, and help us get through the security/ baggage line faster (I don’t know how this happened, but Luigi can do anything.)

Now, “the time Luigi came back” has made the cannon of Sicily stories.

And the moral of the story: Italians always come back!

Maybe that’s why the word for “goodbye” in Italian is “Arrivederci”: “until we see each other again” because it’s never too long, be it in the airport or in a car in your driveway…

So Michele’s return was the first big surprise of my week. The second was a less welcome visitor.

At 2:30 Thursday morning, I awoke to a rustling and a vague sense of something hitting me. It took me a few moments to groggily awake and register that this was not a dream, roll out from under a tangle of blankets, turn on the light…

And there on my bed, stark and fearsome, was the silhouette of a squirrel, crouched in a frozen, about-to-jerk-away-and-run-like-wild posture.

So I did the most natural thing, ran out of my room and shut the door, swearing inaudibly and fighting the urge to scream. Thankfully Kristen (later compared to Miss Clavel from Madeline) was already awake (“Something is not right!), or else was a light enough sleeper to hear me and come out to calm me down.

So after a shower (mostly for psychological comfort) and a few cookies (again, for psychological comfort), we resolved to sleep in an empty room on the second floor instead. A happy resolution to a traumatizing night.

Or so I thought….

Until after a few peaceful moments in the darkness, I heard the faint insidious humming of a mosquito, hovering just outside my ear like an evil dwarf vacuum cleaner. Or something else evil and small that hums. Too tired to swat and not wanting to wake Kristen, I just tried to sleep with a sheet over my head. But eventually I had to breath. So life became a cycle of “stay under the sheet until you suffocate” and “listen to the mosquito until you want to suffocate something.” How do people sleep in the actually wilderness? I wondered. I’m inside a nice house!

Eventually I moved to the couch downstairs. It was like a triathlon, first event facing down a squirrel that apparently really wanted to sleep in my bed, second event the mosquito population of this room, third event finding a comfortable way to sleep on the couch. The last event was my favorite, but by that time I only had a few hours left to sleep before someone would wake up and make noise.

Ah well. All is well that ends well. I got to nap the next day a little, the squirrel tracker man was called, and now I have a funny story to tell.

a closer look

2010-07-11T21:40:00.000-07:00

I saw a hummingbird today. While I was out working in the garden, watering rows of beans, all of a sudden there was this whirring object in front of me making a loud buzzing sound… and I thought it was a bee and almost sprayed the hose at it instinctively before I took a closer look and saw its colorful tiny body and black beady eyes, unreal looking like an animation. It stood in the air staring straight at me for a full five seconds before zooming over to a flower, and then off into the woods. Seeing it, I felt shivers of otherworldly ecstasy.

I have been in this place for a month now. And it’s surprising - the surprise of stopping, the surprise of sunlight, the surprise of an indefinable smell. The surprise as the wind gathers and rustles the semicircle of trees around the land and they all shake so violently it’s hard to believe the leaves don’t all fall down. And the surprise of remembering how we are all moved by so many unseen forces.

For those of you who do not know, I am working and living at the Agape Community in Hardwick, Ma this summer, which is a peace community with a focus on sustainability, established by ecumenical lay Catholics.

I feel like I must do a bad job of describing this place and the work that I’m doing, because after giving a brief description to friends or family, they still seem doubtful about how to reference my job “when you go back to your…. Camp?”… “your farm” …“your thing” …“that place”… “what is it you’re doing?”

I could try again to express the external features of this internship in more detail. The place was founded by a couple who wanted to live in a more holistic way, as peace activists and educators about waste and sustainability. That they grow much of their own food, own a grease car, have solar electricity, have connections with many high school, college, and grad school environmental and spiritual groups who come for workdays or education or retreats. That they host 9 major events throughout the year, one of which they once had Gandhi’s grandson come out to speak at. So the work is a combination of physical, active organic gardening, working with the people who come out, maintaining and building connections, helping with mailings… and so forth, and essentially just learning how a nonprofit community operates.

But beyond all of this, in some ways I feel like I am learning how to really live for the first time. In school, we trace the paths of philosophers with our fingers on a map to know where they have gone, but rarely follow them with our feet. There is too little time for that, too little silence for that.

Here, I’m only a long driveway away from civilization, but it feels like so much more. My first week here, my friend Monika stayed with me to check out the place, and I guess I did a bad job of describing what she should expect, as usual, so on our first day, when we took a walk, she looked at the neighbor’s house and paused in shock.

“Is that a ‘house house’?”

I looked at her, puzzled. “umm…. Yeah. And that’s a ‘car car’.” I said, and then realized that she had thought we were miles from the world of cell phone reception and lawn mowers and televisions. Nope! Just a driveway’s length.

I can’t believe that was over a month ago now. The details are still fresh and vibrant, like a charcoal drawing that I haven’t closed up to smudge in a sketchbook.

I remember the first week I was here, they held a poetry and arts evening here, and before anything had started, Suzanne asked the interns to share a little about our experiences. Which led to the retelling of the “house house” story and other funny moments:

Suzanne said, “Monika, tell them the funny thing that happened earlier today when we were cleaning”

“Oh” she answered, “You mean when Justin almost made me un-marriable?”

At this point in the conversation my mother, who was visiting for the event, turned to me in shock.

But Monika went on to explain that it’s a Croatian superstition that sweeping dirt on a person’s feet gives them bad luck for future marriage.

I’ve learned so much!

And I have so much more to learn. There is so much we never learn just in the conversations we fail to engage in with the people around us.

Since then, I have met recent grads from the Franciscan volunteer corps, new WOOFers, one from France, one coming tomorrow from Italy, the man whose restaurant supplies Brayton and Suzanne with their grease for the car, two high school groups, a retreat group of people from NYC with roots in the Dominican Republic (who made amazing plantains and did karaoke with us and even made me dance!)… and overall, I just have this feeling of being deeply settled and peaceful, of being in a place that my whole heart can respond to without corners of doubt, because the focus here is so practical and so clearly right on target. It feels like time has slowed down when I am here, like most every conversation has real meat in it (metaphorically speaking… they’re actually vegetarians, which is perfect for me).

I feel like my spirituality and creativity has been on passionless autopilot for a long time, feeling like I have less and less to say, to add, that hasn’t been said before…

Like, I’ve said before to people that I decided to become vegetarian for clear reasons when I was ten, but over the years, the convictions wane and all that’s left is the habit of not eating meat. I rarely thought about what led me to that conclusion anymore, the hatred I felt for the Factory Farm system, the cruelty and unhealthiness… At Agape, I feel like the passionate resolve I used to feel about so many things is slowly rising again, that I’m getting back in touch with the roots and the cause, and believing that moving out of all kinds of stagnancy is possible.

YAWN I’m so exhausted but I really want to at least start this so I will move out of the stagnancy of an empty blog! More thoughts to come.