London bound!

I'm leaving tomorrow to go to London for the semester, and if I weren't so tired from all the planning that's been going on this past week, I'd be more articulate about it right now.

I have until about 6pm tomorrow to finish my packing, then it's off to the airport where I will probably do a little more crying and get on the plane, where I will attempt to sleep for a few hours but will be lucky if I sleep for ten minutes. Then I'll get to Heathrow, which is the cleanest place I've ever been in that isn't a hospital, certainly the cleanest place I've ever been in that doesn't have trash cans. I'll take the shuttle bus to campus, and then I'll probably say I should get to the pub and meet some people who will potentially become my lifelong friends, but I'll most likely pass out while I'm getting dressed.

I've wanted to do this for years. Study abroad in London, that is. Something about it has always drawn me. I can't wait to just be settled there.

I'll be keeping another blog during the next few months, documenting my time abroad. Don't know how this one will hold up, but I might pop in every now and then to ramble about things not England-related. But you should read my London blog (http://semesterinlondontown.tumblr.com/) even if it's just because you like the layout. I deliberated a long time on that.

Come on, Irene too loo-rye-ay

At this moment, I'm in my bed waiting for the apocalypse. I mean Hurricane Irene. But all the news stations are making this look like the end of days.

Northern Westchester isn't in any of the evacuation zones, but we've filled the bathtub with water and stocked up on canned food anyway. I have so many books for when the power goes out. But it's hard to imagine anything now. It's eerily calm and quiet. Kind of like that scene in Carrie right before the hand shoots out of the grave. No one likes a tease, Irene. Give us some rain and gusts of wind so we can all stop waiting around.

All I want is for the storm to pass so I can get focusing on my next thing to wait for. I'm flying out to London on September 23rd. I'm a little nervous because I'm going on a red eye and I can't sleep on planes. Also because I'm worried I won't make any friends. I feel like a kid on her first day of middle school when I type that. At least I don't have a Trapper Keeper and haven't been to an orthodontist in years. But my hair still frizzes out a lot. Who am I kidding, I'll always be somewhat of an awkward middle schooler.

What I do know that is that I would be very unhappy and bored going back to Hampshire for this semester. It's time for a break. I'll miss all my friends dearly, as well as the cider donuts and packed mod dance parties and even the smell of cow farts wafting onto campus, but it's time for another adventure.

Bucket Lists

Before I came to New York for the summer, I made a bucket list of what I wanted to do here this summer. I have nine days left and I've only crossed off two of those things. Somehow, I'm okay with that.

Those two things, in case you were wondering, were seeing the McQueen exhibit at The Met (kind of like a rush hour subway but with couture and the Schindler's List theme playing on loop in one part) and doing karaoke. They were really great, but honestly not the highlights of my summer. I've realized that when you're so focused on crossing things off a list, you miss out on other things that are happening around you, like ordering pizza at 11:45 pm on a weeknight in the park with your friends, as surprise Bastille Day fireworks go off on the river. Or swing dancing in Lincoln Center. Or making friends on fire escapes.

I think I'm abandoning bucket lists forever, starting now. They're stressful and keep you on a straight path, when you could be looking around and taking detours. I would burn the one that I made, but I don't want to set off the smoke alarm and I'm not one for theatrics anyway. But I will rip it up and throw it away. Because while I only crossed two things off of it, it's still been a great summer.

Things I've learned in New York so far

I've been here for nearly two weeks now and it's been pretty great, apart from a few unexpected boring nights that I end up feeling oddly guilty about because I'm in the most exciting city in the world and therefore should be doing something terribly exotic and wonderful all the time. But I'll get over that soon hopefully. My internship is actually pretty awesome. I haven't had to go on any coffee runs for other people yet, but I did have to file some things once. Mostly I write press releases and research blogs that will review books the company has published.

This is kind of a big summer for me since it's my first one living completely away from home, without any kind of adult supervision like camp counselors etc. So I thought it would be good to make a list of what I've learned.

-When a dude catcalls you on the street, pretend you don't hear him. If this is not an option, tell him you have a boyfriend who is very protective, weighs 300 pounds of pure muscle, and also happens to be Eastern Europe's top cage fighter. This is kind of hilarious to people who know that the guys I usually fancy tend to be smaller than me and won't even dare kill spiders in the bathroom. But Mr. Caneyehaveyonumbuh doesn't need to know that.

-It's completely hilarious to watch tourists reading maps, and it's nice to convince yourself you'll never need one, but the second you walk a block in the wrong direction and have to awkwardly turn your lost ass around, or when you're trying to find that one little coffee shop in the village that got five stars on Yelp and all you see are upscale clothing stores, you'll wish you had the ability to swallow your pride and get a map.

-The cops you see on SVU and the ones that circle the park at night and yell at you and your friends through a megaphone to leave at 1am sharp are completely different species.

-The only train that goes to your 116th street is the 1. The 3 says it goes to 116th, and it does, but it's not the one where you live. You will get off the subway and find yourself on 116th street and "the hood where you don't belong" avenue.

-You might like the Meatpacking district because it's got wide cobblestone streets and cute restaurants and stores, but so does everyone else. You'll find that you're the only person there with no product in their hair who didn't put her makeup on with a paintroller. However, it is always fun to get an outside table at one of those trendy-cause-they're-delicious restaurants, eat a fancy grilled cheese, and watch sixteen year olds in cocktail napkin dresses try to get into clubs with their fake IDs.

-No one here has time to judge you for going to a movie alone.

-But if you eat alone, it's fine to feel so awkward that you pretend to read a book.

-The people at Pinkberry will always try to guide you through all their options even though you go there every week and the same guy who's trying to tell you how to order swirled you your second lunch last Wednesday.

-Try and not be too creepy when you go to dog parks sans dog and pet other people's dogs.

I'll be adding to this list more as the summer goes on. I'm on a quest for some food right now.

I'm in New York now!

I feel completely apologetic for the lack of entries. Does anyone actually read this? What happened was that I got totally swept up in the wave of final papers, and just became an essay writing machine for a while. I realize that feeling guilty for neglecting your blog is a total first world problem, but it's kind of how I've been feeling. I started this thing to encourage me to write more often, and I haven't really done that.

But I digress. What I really wanted to write here is that I've moved into a cozy (that's a euphemism) room at the International House at Columbia University in New York. As you can see, I've got a sweet view of Riverside Church. I've been completely wiped all day, and I definitely forgot some things at home, but it's good to be here. I took a walk tonight and found a bookstore a few blocks from me that's open until 11pm, plays punk music, and has chairs for reading. It's nice to be somewhere that shares my sleep schedule.

I don't start my internship until the 15th so I've got some time here to just wander and get my bearings. It's my first time living in New York, and there's so much to do I feel myself going just a little bit crazy already. I passed at least ten restaurants tonight that I want to eat at (I'm becoming my mother. Food is everything.) and that's just within a ten block radius of my dorm room. That place where they always ate on Seinfeld is here. It looks almost the same as it does on the TBS reruns I watched in my living room this past year.

I'll write more later. Now I need to get into bed with the book I got in preparation for my semester in London this fall. It's called "The Anglo Files" by Sarah Lyall. I need to know what I'm getting myself into.

In which I find meaning in 90s teen dramas

Lately I've been watching "My So-Called Life" on Netflix Instant. I probably vowed at one point in my life that I'd never watch it, because I found Claire Danes so annoying or something, but I caved inexplicably and now I just wish that I had found it when I was in high school. The show is structured around Angela Chase's (Claire Danes) inner monologue (kind of like what Zach Braff did on "Scrubs" but takes itself a lot more seriously.) The things she says are just the kind of things teenagers say when they think they've earned the right to be world-weary. But I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. It makes those times when she's happy all the more poignant, actually. Like there's this scene where she's in the car with Jordan Catalano, who's played by Jared Leto and is totally dreamy and lazy and doesn't give a damn. Also he wears a lot of flannel and doesn't talk too much. Anyways, the voiceover says something about that moment when you feel like your life is about to change, and you can feel everything turning around for the better.

As much as I hate relating to a 90s teen drama, I'm kind of having a moment like that right now.

In the past two days, I've landed a summer internship in New York and an official spot (with classes and everything) for the fall semester at Goldsmiths College in London. It's been a weird awakening that I live in a world where good things happen to me, and I'm a little worried that I'm going to get hit by a PVTA bus soon. When I was in high school, I didn't think I had what it took to live a life by my own standards. I lived for other people, and resigned myself to the supposed fact that I wasn't wired to get what I wanted. Lately (even as I type this) I'm feeling vibrations in the air because things are finally turning around and reshifting. I'm going to spend this summer in New York and next fall in London. It sort of feels like I shouldn't get to say that, like those are things that more fortunate people get to say and do. But then I realize that this is my life, and I do get to say those things because shit is finally coming together.

Library, 7:25 pm on a Friday night

I wish I could stop feeling so self-conscious about having no intention to leave this place for a while. My mod is about as as messy as my head, and the library is clean and neat. The fluorescent lighting feels institutional in a good way. I don't know if there are any parties happening tonight, and I don't really want to go to them. It's not that I'm becoming a homebody, because I plan on going dancing every night when I'm in London next semester, I think I'm just over Hampshire parties for a while. They're crowded and full of people I don't know. Also it's awkward when I do see someone I know and it's too loud to talk to them. If I see someone I don't know in the library, it's okay to share a table as long as you mind your own business. My headphones are helping me out with that. I'm listening to music from the 90s that I vaguely remember.

Thank goodness I've got nothing planned for tomorrow. The past two days have just been packed. I am so ready to spend the whole day at Amherst Coffee with my laptop and just work on this midterm I have due Tuesday. Hopefully I can knock it out in one day. But it's for a psych class, and I'm really getting sick of it. So much of it is too open-ended, which is good but I can't say I'm not relieved to have my history class right after this one every time. It's like I go from "what is power? we don't know" to "this is an event. this is what happened because of that event." Very refreshing. History is fascinating, and I like that it has a balance of theory and extrapolating, as well as concrete facts. There is so much resilience in it as well. Events that happened so long ago are still present in discourse because people worked hard to preserve the records of these events. It just reeks of passion.

Writing all this makes me even less excited about this psych midterm paper. When will I learn that psych courses at Hampshire=endless theory or endless neuroscience? Probably never.

Live from the Maho Bay Cyber Hut

Good Lord. Last time I was here I was bitching about the mistreatment of an Israeli soldier on campus, now I'm in a cyber hut at an eco-resort in the Caribbean, at which going on Facebook or Myspace will seriously damage the infrastructure of the computer system. Things change fast. Or maybe I just haven't updated in a while.

Things on vacation are typical. I have a terrible sunburn and sometimes my family and I get bored and bicker. But the beach is too beautiful to be real and also there are lots of friendly stray cats and pineapples. Also, glass blowing. I made a flower yesterday. This morning, my hands cramped from the pottery wheel. It feels good to make things.

But the real reason I'm here is to share some much bigger news, that I found out in this very cyber hut two days ago.

I'm spending next semester in LONDON.

I can't even believe it. I've wanted to study abroad since I was seven years old and now I finally get to, in one of my favorite cities in the world. Julia says I'd better find a British boyfriend. I say sure as long as I get to take him back here. But I'm still floating on this news. I wish I was there right now.

I should probably log off before this whole Internet-on-a-remote-island thing gets too expensive. More to come soon (I hopefully mean it this time.)

In which I try and talk about something important

Yesterday, an Israeli Defense Soldier came to my school to share his story and then take questions from students, faculty, and others in attendance. The shit hit the fan, and even though I didn't go to the talk, I still feel pretty affected by what happened. So I'll take my opinion here, because I tried to do it on Twitter and found that 140 characters wasn't enough.

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a very big issue at my school, and the vast majority of the student body has sided with Palestine. It seems that I can't go anywhere on campus without seeing evidence of this. Guys with moustaches and Buddy Holly glasses type away in the library on Macbooks adorned with stickers reading "Stop US Aid to Israel," banners hang on buildings advertising marches in solidarity with Palestine, bumper stickers on beat up Volvo station wagons in the parking lot tell us all that Israel is made up of terrorists. Last year I went to the Bridge cafe on campus for a turkey sandwich and found it was decorated with chains of small green paper ovals. Upon further investigation, I found that each oval represented an olive tree in Palestine that had been uprooted by Israeli Forces.

This would all be fine, if I saw anything at all on campus that showed the other side. There was nothing at all of that sort, until yesterday. An Israeli Defense Soldier was coming to speak at our Main Lecture Hall. Mind you, I didn't know about this until late last night when Facebook was flooded with responses to the shit that hit the fan upon his arrival. To make a long story short, The Students for Justice in Palestine came to the talk with signs bearing slogans such as "Stop the Show," whistles, and their opinions that wouldn't wait for the Q&A session. No one let this man share his story, which he has told as countless other colleges without much of a hitch. They treated him with complete disrespect, when he was not there looking for pity or even sympathy. I applaud my administrators (for the first time in a while) for inviting him to come and give us all a much-needed glimpse at the other side of this issue. My fellow students acted like stubborn, privileged, liberal brats.

Maybe I'm not the best person to be talking about this, because I didn't even go. What I'm writing about now is all based on other peoples' accounts. I didn't even find out about this event until later because I generally try to avoid the SJP group, for they have a history of acting like stubborn, liberal, privileged brats. I am wondering now if I would have gone had I known this talk were happening. I am also realizing that this issue has more of an effect on me than I've previously realized. I was raised Jewish, my mother's religion, after a few confusing years of not knowing what the hell I was. I had a bat mitzvah, and the synagogue my family attended was always in favor of supporting Israel, as were my friends at school. I never heard the other side of the story until I came to Hampshire, at which point I decided that neither side was right or wrong. All we can do, I said to myself, was do everything we can to hear both sides speak and try not to vilify one side or the other.

But I'm dancing around the question I posed earlier, and plan to answer. Do I wish I had gone to this? On one hand, I would have really liked to hear this soldier's story. I believe that supporting our troops is a moral, not a political issue and that honoring someone's testimony is one of the best ways to support them. But obviously none of this happened. Still, I would have liked to witness the events of the protest that erupted, just so I could better understand the ways that this conflict in the Middle East has reached Amherst, MA. I think that this refusal to listen to the other side is what was exhibited at the lecture, and it is one of the roots of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Which brings me to why I might not have wanted to go. I can see myself sitting in the Main Lecture Hall, on the brink of an anxiety attack as everything went to chaos around me, feeling sorry for the Israeli Solder onstage not for what he has been through in the army, but because he was given a platform to speak and a bunch of college kids who think they know everything took it away from him.

I'm a totally neglectful blogger

I can't seem to update this regularly, and I do feel bad about it. I really do. I'm not even that busy, it's just that I never really know what to write about here. Maybe someday I'll blog every day, but that day will only come when every day is blog-worthy. Argh.

The Spring semester is off to an okay start. I'm resigning myself to the fact that I probably won't get into that great-looking Writing World War 2 class, so I'll probably try and get an independent study together based of this course one of my professors taught a few semesters back called "Love, Sex, and Death." The name alone makes me want it.

Other than courses, I've been getting into award shows. I've always been big on them, and the ones now are my favorites because they give everybody wine at their tables. Nothing makes me happier than seeing Alec Baldwin completely toasted onstage, trying to accept an award. But I also really like seeing who wears what. My housemates think I'm completely cheesy for getting so into award shows, but they always watch with me and we always make fun of how Ryan Seacrest is shorter than everyone he interviews.

I need to stop rambling and eat something so I can be coherent for my meeting with the program representative at the Global Education Office in a little over an hour. We're going to talk about me possibly going abroad in the fall! But more on that later. Right now I'm just stoked to be putting my dream into action.

Snowpocalypse

Being on the second floor of my house means that the snow doesn't look so scary. But there's got to be at least a foot or two on the ground right now, and it's still coming down in clumps. I can't remember the last time I saw this much snow, and I've been living up north my whole life.

Of course, this inclement weather gives me a huge justification to sit on my bed in my big purple sweater all day. I've been watching way too much Law and Order SVU on Netflix, but I'm also putting together cover letters for the summer. Then again, that's basically been my whole Janterm. I didn't get into any classes but that's turning out alright. The universe wanted me to have a month sitting and knitting and working when I feel like it. It's nice to not have to worry about waking up for the same class every day, especially not when it feels like Siberia outside.

Speaking of which, there is a row of students outside trekking through the snow, trying to have an adventure of some sorts. They're crazy. But I had a snow adventure last night (or this morning?) in the form of a wintry walk in the wee hours, as the snow was just starting to come down. There were three of us out there, and it felt like we were the only people in the world besides the snow plow men. We threw snowballs at each other and wrote our names in the snow with our feet. It was so pretty out; I kept feeling like we were in Scandinavia or something. I felt like I was a kid again. Like cover letters didn't matter and the most exciting thing in the world was staying up late to play in the snow and then drink hot chocolate.

This is all even more poignant when I realize that I'm turning twenty this Monday, and Saturday is the big party night. We're celebrating two other mid-January birthdays that night too. There will be colored twinkle lights and a whole lot of floor-shaking dancing. It'll be the perfect Viking funeral for my teenage years.

JanTerm, beaking hearts all over town.

Janterm, you're showing yourself to be quite the heartbreaker.

I arrived here last night for January Term. All the lights in the mod were off, because I was the first to arrive. Also, I was the last to leave back in December. I guess I just love this place too much. I spent the first night here with my knitting, a big plate of spaghetti bolognese, and a Law and Order SVU marathon. I felt an overwhelming sense of hope for the coming month.

Then came the morning. I dragged my tired old ass out of bed for my 10am class for which I was waitlisted for. Then I proceeded to realize I had left a bunch of my clothes back in New York. But that soon became the least of my worries. In the next hour, I would slice my finger while opening a package of lox, and then rush to class precariously balancing a cup of coffee only to show up late.

This all would have been worth it had I actually gotten into the course, but upon seeing how many other people were on the waitlist as well, and seeing my spot in relation to theirs, the professor and I both agreed I probably wouldn't be able to enroll.

I'm miffed because this was basically the only writing class available this January that wasn't limited to first year students. I have a backup plan, and I'll give it a shot, but I really don't want to settle. So if I don't like the backup plan, I'll just spend this month bumming around, working on my Division 2 contract, and planning the summer.

It's good that I believe everything happens for a reason, otherwise I'd be really freaking out now.