Engine Engine Number 9

Heyyy everybody!

I'm not sure how many of you will be blogging or checking supsup this holiday season, but I hope this post brings a smile to your beautiful faces wherever you are.
It is 1030am and I am on a train, traveling to London. I departed from Waverley Station in Edinburgh for the last time this morning, and despite the ridiculous holiday journey I have ahead of me, that departure was perhaps one of the most heartbreaking moments of my life. I have talked to many of you over the past few months, and I think I got all of one post in about two months ago, but this wasn't out of neglect. I check this shit every few days. I have just been so incredibly busy and happy and full of life that I could not find time to write anything until now. Edinburgh is the most wonderful city I have ever been in, and I am sure I am biased on account of the spoiled lifestyle I lived and the remarkable people I shared my time with, but still, I cannot help but envy children lucky enough to be born in Scotland's capital.
I believe I mentioned in my last blog my discontent with the fact that I found myself falling into place with a crew of Americans. I definitely completely withdraw that notion - the group that I was a part of, the bonds that we forged, and the experiences we had were among the most heartwarming and spectacular of my life. (in the words of my friend and flatmate Adam, "this semester was like kindergarten... but if you lived with your classmates, and could go out drinking every night...)
I also met a girl here, a wonderful, beautiful, brilliant and kind gal from Philly named Kate who goes to Brown. I don't want to rant and rave too much but she really was fantastic and, dare I say, close to perfect for me. Every moment I spent with her was remarkable, and while I am not sure if we have a future, on account of the distance, we are definitely keeping in touch, and I suppose we will just give it time and see what happens.
My friendships here have also been extraordinary, but also unusual for me. I have never really had a solid group of guy friends - that's not to say Timm and Chris and Tyguy aren't solid friends, I really just want to emphasize the group dynamic. Each crew I have been a part of has consisted of at least half girlies, and while I definitely LOVE all of you lady friends, I must say it was really great to have an awesome group of guys to hang out with. Unfortunately, of the friends I made in my programme, only two live on the West coast, and they both go to school in the East. I will miss them all greatly, but it is very exciting to be coming back to Salem (errr... well, maybe not Salem, but definitely Willamette!) and all/most of you in January.
weeellll, as I mentioned, I'm on a train to London. I only have the day there, so I hope I can make the most of it, but it sure is shitty out (seems to be a pretty common theme here in the UK). I am meeting my uncle tonight, and in the morning we are flying to Havana, where I will get to spend fouuurrr lovely days getting some solid R&R. Christmas day I fly to London for a holiday brunch with my uncle and his friends, then in the evening I am flying to Paris on my own to stay at my uncle's flat. I have a Interrail pass, which I am hoping to use excessively. I have a tentative plan to go through about 8 countries with a sort of culmination when I (hopefully) meet Sol in Amsterdam for NEW YEARS 2009!! I do not yet have a ticket back to the states, my uncle is (again, hopefully) hooking me up with a cheap flight to somewhere in the states and then I can find my way to PDX. I am hoping to pass through Philadelphia for a week or so to see Kate and some other kids from my program (somehow a good 30% of the students were from Philly or the surrounding area...) and then!!! SPRING SEMESTER 2009!!! yay.
I'm not sure where I'm living yet (hint hint... you know who you are) but even if I end up on campus again I will be content. Looking forward to so many things... BGB, settling Catan, B I G DUMPS, the bistro!! I will see you all so soon.

love
i town

so long EU

Firenze Night

Hey Friends!

I'm in Prague! I wish I could tell you everything that has happened between the last time I posted and now. I promise I will write up a nice long post once I am at home. It has been a crazy time here in Europe and I only have three more days. so bittersweet... Hope all of you are doing well this winter.
Love,
Claire

happy dia de santo lucia (day of light in sweden)

I killed my first turkey.

That is, me, and the two other gringos living here at Pina Palmera: Al, a slightly obnoxious man in his 40´s whose sole source of knowledge about cooking comes from a book called Fanny Farmer, and my friend Jeff, a vegetarian who has no experience meddling in the lives of animals. I as well did not have any experience in this area, but upon realizing this a little image of Lucia Norris popped into my head saying ¨its a once in a lifetime opportunity!!!¨ And so it goes. Blood, feathers and turkey drippings later we prepared a beautiful thanksgiving meal to share with the community at Pina Palmera. (Side note: we actually saved the feathers to make dream catchers. crafty? yes.) Before eating the meal everyone went around and said one thing they were grateful for, and then, we ate. and sang, and danced, and ate again, alllll through the night.

Friends, I am so grateful that bearcatz sup-sup is in my life and that I have the opportunity to listen (well read, but really I hear all your voices) to all of your beautiful stories! And while I have been listening attentively, I have failed to write anything myself. So here are some stories.

I have been living on the coast of Oaxaca for about 3 months now, volunteering at Pina Palmera - a center for rehabilitation for people with disabilities. My role here? Changes everyday but could involve anything from working in our handicraft store, to chopping things with a machete en la huerta (what a wonderfully satisfying tool) to playing goal ball (a sport invented after WWII for blind war veterans. check it out ) to dancing to U2 with Jose (one of the adults here with autism whose two favorite things in life are cars and U2) and the list goes on.

Overall, life is very tranquillo here and I have grown to be quiet content spending my afternoons simply reading in a hammock or perfecting my sand castle skills at the beach with Elsa. (Fun fact: the beach I am living at is a nudist beach! I haven´t fully taken advantage of this liberty yet, but Elsa and Dana are planning to visit this coming week, in which case we will go WILD!

As far as the spring goes, I am planning to study abroad with a program based out of Chiapas that focuses on social movements throughout Mexico. I`m pretty excited about getting back into the academic scene and learning more about what I think to be some of the most interesting social movements going on in Mexico. My program ends May 2nd in Ciudad Juarez, in which time I plan to return to Oaxaca to visit the people I have been working with here at Pina. Then, travel! I am still planning to dance in Lucia Norris`s kitchen with her mom and eat lots of peanutbutter, so I will have about a month to get over to Ecuador by late May to see her graduate! I encourage and support you all to come!

A word I really like using is spanish is YA. translation: that`s it, enough, no more, YA.

entonces... YA! that´s it for now bearcatz.

Lots of love, feathers and turkey drippings,
HalesWeed

Oh, Harvard men, you're so enlightened

Last night, a fraternity of drunken cross-dressing Harvard men flooded Smith's campus. A group of them yelled the lyrics to the song "We don't need no education" at me and some friends as we passed them and said they could not wait to get into the house party and make sexist jokes. It's a tradition for this group of guys to come to this particularly house party every year and collect girls' signatures on their asses. I will let you all make your own interpretations, but I will just tell you that I felt very uncomfortable in my own space.

Yet Another Awakening

I think my heart beats about twice as fast as a healthy twenty year-old heart. I drink six cups of coffee a day, I sleep for six hours a night, and never have I felt so alert. I know this just sounds like an unhealthy caffeine addiction, but it's more than that (although I concede that it is probably partially a side effect of the coffee).

I am studying connectivity. We can only understand our individual places on this planet once we deconstruct the context in which we exist. A synthesis of historical, economic, and political approaches is vital to understanding the fluid power dynamics that define each and every one of our interactions and relationships. Globalization did not simply begin in the 1960s or 80s or 90s; globalization describes a process, which must be historicized. This means that every time I ask "why?" the answer I find necessarily demands another "why". That is not to say that I am working in circles. With each new layer of "whys", I find myself digging deeper into this endless search.

So, how can I sleep? How can I sleep when I don't know who lobbied the government to subsidize the production of the food that I am eating? I don't know whose small businesses suffered from inflated corporate market power. I don't know what toxins and green house gases were released into whose towns to produce my food or for that matter to package and transport that food. I don't know what portion of the price I paid is going to the people who produced my food or the people who sold me my food at the grocery store. I don't know where the packaging of my food will wind up once it leaves my trash can, and I don't know whose neighborhood will take on the burden of my waste or whether or not more toxins will be released in some town that has the disadvantage of being the site of an incinerator.

The cliche is true; you are what you eat. I am what I consume. I am the criminally low wages of factory workers, the disproportionately high number of toxins released into low-income neighborhoods, the withholding of health care from the pregnant check-out woman. I am the melting of the polar ice caps. I am the enslavement of children and the trafficking of human beings. I am war, poverty, and suffering. I am torture. And let me tell you, shopping at Whole Foods or Trader Joe's will not help me sleep at night.

Oppression is systemic, and we are all a part of this system. We urgently need to explore real alternatives now for humanity and the planet. Electing Barack Obama is not going to cut it.

Yours in the land of lesbians and socialists and lesbian socialists,

Sars

As the days get shorter and darker...

I'm sitting here at about 1:00 am and thinking it's just as dark at 4:00 pm as it is now. I remember hearing about the cold darkness of Denmark's wintertime and dreading the idea of only a few hours of daylight. However looking back now, I can't say it has affected me much more than wintertime at WU. In fact, the days are clearer and it hasn't rained much at all yet. When the sun does go down, it is replaced with thousands of Christmas lights and ornaments decorating the entire city. I told my friend the other day, if it's got to be dark here in the wintertime at least the old city of Aalborg looks pretty at night. 

Santa and his elves have even come from Greenland for a couple weeks visit. They have set up shop in a little Christmas Village that has overtaken one of the city's plazas along with an ice-skating rink! I am personally very excited about trying this out. After all, I've only been once and I held onto one of those metal bar things to keep on my feet...like training wheels for ice-skates. Also, as a sort of gift to Aalborg residents, public transportation is now free on Sundays until the end of the month. This is actually very helpful considering how expensive a one time bus pass is (16 DKK which is about 3.50). 

Most of the long nights here are spent practicing Hygge-- the Danish word for relaxation, snug and cozy or comfort. My friends and I are constantly making big feasts together, having home-spa nights, or playing games like Norwegian Monopoly. I've become a fan of small gatherings, movie nights, sitting around the kitchen table with my roommates and a cup of tea, and even cooking! Yeah, I sound like an old lady...so sue me. While I'm a fan of going out, taking risks and am more than excited for upcoming travels and adventures, I've been learning that the simple things in life, if in good company, can be just as enjoyable. 

Besides hygge, I do work. With all of my homework these days, at least really nice warm weather isn't taunting me to come outside and play. However, my workload hasn't been nearly this heavy the entire time I've been in Aalborg. The university system here is very unique but not necessarily in a good way. The first two months of my stay in Aalborg I spent attending classes I didn't have to go to if I didn't want and learning almost nothing. The readings were not mandatory and fairly surface-level and there were no other assignments. I was lucky if I got a professor who sounded engaged in the subject-- though there were a couple who made going to class much less painful. On top of lame curriculum, my program is completely unorganized. In all honesty, we were basically told to "go to school, but let's have a beer first" leaving too many questions and concerns unanswered. While, a more relaxed vibe from a university was welcome on my part, this university is way too relaxed. Even if we pose questions, no one can or wants to answer them. I'm talking relevant questions that should obviously be figured out before launching a program and bringing in students from all over the world to study in it. The response is usually "Hmm, yeah...That's interesting. I'll look into that and get back to you," which usually never happens. I've practically had to corner them in their office with the door locked to get them to even consider my question. That is a little drastic, but it's almost that bad. Needless to say, now classes are over and I am all of a sudden up to my neck in work. At least I enjoy the topics I have to spend so much time researching and writing about, though they have almost no correlation whatsoever with the classes I took. 

The university system here has left me thinking a lot about my time at Willamette. I have much more respect for the way Willamette presents itself and encourages students. Even if the "independent student" is what Aalborg University encourages, they don't give enough incentive or motivation to make students interested and ambitious. Here a student can barge in the classroom 15 minutes late, on their cell phone, sit down and start talking to their neighbor. At WU, it's more likely a professor would tell a student who tried to sneak in quietly 5 minutes late to not even bother coming in. Maybe the difference is students here are paid by the government to be enrolled in university, where as we pay an un-Godly amount for education. In any case, even the Danes feel Aalborg University needs to improve it's plan of attack. On top of that, in my experience Willamette's classes are engaging and if the information isn't usually the professor is. We do work that keeps us on our toes and motivated the entire semester, where as here no one does anything until the end when it all hits at once. Another characteristic about Willamette that I've come to truly respect is it's community awareness and engagement-- student community and otherwise. There are always so many events and awareness campaigns going on at Willamette that it's hard to choose between them. At AAU, students are lucky if a speaker comes into town once or twice a semester and they use non-recyclable and non-reusable PLASTIC for everything! I truly wish I had some things to boast about AAU, but the reality is I am not impressed in the least. However, what this university experience has given me is a respect for the "Willamette Bubble" that I think I lost amidst the stress of past semesters. So, my advice to you other Bearcats is take as much out of your time at Willamette as you possibly can and bring it with you into the world, because many opportunities won't be available to you elsewhere.

Excuse the rant. Even though I am here to study and the study is not up to par, I have been enjoying myself otherwise. I learn from the amazing people I meet and the new things I experience everyday. Most of this knowledge couldn't be taught in a classroom anyway and I consider it priceless. I feel like I've been catching up from he lack of "world history" taught in the American education system (in my experience anyway). 

For now, I will say ciao. Hygge calls :)

Megan

P.S. There are 2 pigs for every Dane in Denmark.

Today was the day when Julia stopped dragging her feet about deciding the next step and finally started to take action. The target: Maui's boating world. The weapon: one killer resume, edited by miss Geneva Wilgus; and a killer 5-second over-the-phone schpeel. Relentless, Julia tracked down phone numbers and followed up emails left and right...

OK, maybe it wasn't that intense or exciting, but it felt that way for me after being indecisive for so long. A phone call from Christine, an old neighbor who moved back to Hawaii, was the kick in the pants I needed. It feels good to be under pressure to reach a goal soon- busy season starts very shortly, so I'd better find a spot quick. I do miss working under pressure a bit: I guess old habits die hard.


In the meantime, not too much to report since my last posting. I have visited a couple of schools, including UMaine and the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont. It didn't knock my socks off like I expected, but the trip was a blast. I went with my friend Kyle and got to spend a night visiting my roomie Britt from Alaska (a UMaine alum from NH!). Kyle and I both (figuratively) drooled a little when we drove through the White Mountains, eager to hit the trail again. We got quite a snowstorm on the way back, which was rather exciting. Culinary school is still on my radar, but not as much in the forefront as it was previous to the visit and a chat with Geneva's mom about the difference between a passion and what makes you tick day-in, day-out. I know I love food and cooking, but I think that working in a restaurant likely wouldn't be the best outlet for that passion or the most gratifying career I might pursue.

I also got to spend a week in Tucson, Arizona, visiting my friend Alex from work this summer. We did quite a bit of hiking, which was great. One thing I've come to realize recently is how much I really love hiking. I may not be the most experienced backpacker, but sometimes I feel like the queen of day hikes. I also had no idea how much I'd like the southwest- it's beautiful, and entirely different than other landscapes I've seen. And it's surprising how easy it is to adjust to 80 degrees and sunny... what a shock when I had to walk back to my car at the airport in 12-degree darkness. Brr.


But for now, I'm doing the cold-weather chant. The pond out front looks like glass, but it's not quite frozen enough. Good. That gives me time to get my skates sharpened. :-)