May I Follow My Heart in its Season of Fire and Night

Well, my marathon day is over.  It has been really great, surprisingly.

I woke up at 8.  Egyptian at 9.  I had the text translated, so I knew what was going on.  Group project at 11.  Signs of individuality in the carrying chair scene of mastaba tombs of the 5th and 6th Dynasties.  It was fun.  1pm-3pm: beginning Egyptian.  Had no problems translating, and managed to finally learn about participles.  3pm-4:30pm: Met with the prof and André (Portugal) to translate some more. I hadn't prepared the texts we were supposed to translate, but I was able to sight read with no problems.  4:30-5pm: Searched for articles about trickster gods and the gods of gates and doorways. 5-6:30pm: Mastaba class.  Home.  Dinner (argh, yum!) Watched a show about pyramids, and am going to take a shower.  Maybe read.  Maybe just go to bed.  At 8:30.  Yeah.

If you had asked me yesterday, I would have said today was going to be a struggle.  So much to do with no stop!  (I took 10min to eat a sandwich around 1.)  But truthfully, it was amazing.  I had so much energy all day.  I think the difference is, I've gotten my confidence in this stuff back.  The fire is back and I love this stuff again.  I'm remembering how cool this language is.  All the weird little idioms, all the strange ways of wording things.  Egyptian is amazing!  

I'm also getting really excited about finding a master's thesis as well.  I have an amazingly broad interest in liminal space (that's the places in between, the doorways, the moments of change) and the gods and other critters that are found there.  Today we talked about the Eastern Souls who praise the sun god as he emerges from the world of death and rises into the world of the living at the eastern horizon.  They sound pretty cool.  I'm also interested in the gods and things that live between the hours of the underworld in the Book of Gates.  So, I've started doing some preliminary research.  Trying to narrow it all down.  But I'm excited.

Thank Thoth, but my fire is back.  :-)

My Hat is Blowing in the Wind

Mwahaha, crazy hat photo!  :-D

I'm tired.  I've been going non-stop since 8am today, and tomorrow doesn't look much different.  Lots of good stuff today though.  

Freaked out Janko (Netherlands) in Egyptian today by understanding what he said in Dutch and responding in the same.  He apparently didn't know I sort of know this language, and was really surprised.  :-)

Kaas' birthday was today, so after class we all ate apple pie and/or tiramisu in the koffie kamer (coffee room.) 

Finally remembered that I'm supposed to go to the Egyptian Inleiding (introduction) course.  It's beginner stuff, but it's perfect because he's using the linguistic vocab I need to learn.  Also, I've jumped in at the perfect time because all the super beginner stuff is over and we're into the stuff I've sort of forgotten now.  Excellent.  It's more class time (6hrs per week!) and a bit more homework, but I don't plan on taking the class for a grade, so it's just more study time, really.  

The teacher was about an hour late, but we'll forgive him: he just found out his wife is pregnant! 

Coptic just keeps getting more ridiculous.  Today we learned that the word for 'yes' is 'se'.  Much like the Spanish 'si'.  So, everyone laughed, and then for the REST of the class, everyone read every 's' in the text with a lisp!  "aeis" (behold) became "aesith."  Sopes (console) became "thopeth."  Kosmos --> "kothmoth".   Hahahahaha, these people are nuts!  Makes it all that much more interesting though!  :-)

I came home for an hour and ate a sandwich and made fried apples for my meeting.  The meeting took 4 hours, but we got LOTS of stuff done, and took a lot of stress off of me and a few others.  Life is good.

Tomorrow I have class from 9am straight through until 6:30pm.  Like, no breaks.  Not even a 15min overlap time.  Just straight through.  Oh well, c'est la vie.  I'm up to it.  :-)

Lolpod:  A woman had three dogs, one small, one medium, one large, all dressed in the same coat!

Moment of Zen:  Walking back from my meeting, I breathed in the frosty air, and enjoyed the cold on my skin.  There was a light fog in the air, and the canal was still as glass and reflected a starry sky and lit windows perfectly.  Everything is all right.  I feel it.  Even though I sometimes have to fight off negative emotions, I always win.  And I'll continue to win.

Pasa un bon dia.

Thunder and lightning and strange dreams all night.  I remember thinking that something really big was standing outside my window talking with the storm.

Woke up and bought some bread and (soy) milk.  And a banana.  

Spent the rest of the day sitting in Lipsius, translating Pyramid Text #222.  

An entire group of school children walked by me at one point, and all of them just stared and stared at my work.  :-)

I headed off to Wushu.  In the cold and rain.  I was soaked through and through, icy water dripping, by the time I got there.  Learned some new fun stuff in Tai Chi and was told I did it well.  Had a lot of fun in Wushu talking to my friend.  

I'm embarrassed to say that though we hang out for four and  a half hours per week (in Wushu and Tai Chi) I couldn't tell you what his name is.  I don't think I ever actually knew it, truthfully. We just started talking while waiting in line, and somehow names just never got exchanged.  

Nor did origins.  I found out today that he's from Curaçao.  He speaks English and Dutch, but his native language is Papiamento.  He thought I was Dutch, but he said at first he thought I might be from Curaçao too.  Said I looked like people from his island.  :-)  

I also talked with my friend's friend, Clinton, who is also from Curaçao.  My friend speaks only English to me, even though he knows Dutch, and Clinton only speaks Dutch to me, even though he knows English.  :-)  Clinton also spoke some Papiamento to me! (And I sort of blew them both away by understanding it.)  ;-)  (Papiamento is a creole of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and some African and Amerindian languages.)

I've been doing a little Wikiresearch on Curaçao and apparently the average low temperature in January is 24ºC (76ºC) !!!  I've decided that's the kind of place for me!  If for some reason, I had to live the rest of my life in this soggy green land, I'd make the best of it, and I'd quickly learn to love cold and wet more than anything else.  But, I've still got a choice, and though I'll love my time here, once it's over...well, there are places on this earth where it never gets below 20ºC.  And I'd very much like to be there.

Pasa un bon dia! Te aweró.

Womankind Arise!

I wanted to wake up early this morning so I could get some work done.  But I didn't.  Well, that's not true.  I got up 30 min early, which was only an hour later than I had planned....  That's actually a success I think!  I want to get one of those Zen alarm clocks that wakes you up übergradually by making these tiny little chiming noises that get more and more frequent.  It takes a few hours to wake up, and I like that idea.  For me the problem with waking up in the morning isn't about laziness, it's about difficult transitions.  My dreams are generally so vivid that it's like one minute I'm sitting here blogging and the next I'm lying in bed with loud noises blaring at me.  My first reaction is just to turn off the noise and get back to blogging.  I tend to have to set three or four alarms to get up.  If only Zen alarm clocks were cheap like normal ones.  

I had the most amazingly strange ride to class. It was a beautiful sunny day today, but cold. On the way to class it starting raining.  No clouds, just sunny blue sky and torrential rain!  I was wet and cold by the time I got to class!  Weird.  Irene (Italy) and I complained about the weather and dreamed about warm sunny dry weather.  :-)

Coptic continues to make everyone giggle.  The word of the day?  "Tako"  it means "to destroy" but everyone thought it sounded like taco, and so laughed.  There was also "para" which is some sort of preposition.  Apparently, Coptic is just Spanish only mixed up a bit.  haha

I had some lunch at Lipsius and then took up my place in the café.  There was an American sitting next to me, and I'm pretty sure he was the most annoying person I've ever heard.  He just didn't stop talking.  Quackquackquack.  And it was all strange stuff.  Buying pot, and overcooking rice, and this and that and quack.  Man, he just kept going.  I think he was really nervous.  There was a Turkish guy sitting at the table with him saying nothing.  Quacks would say these weirdly awkward things, and the Turkish guy would say nothing, so Quacks would say something else weird and awkward.  Poor guy.  A girl finally came over and sat with them, and he got much less annoying.  But man, he was my stereotype of an annoying American.  Gah.

Oh well, I wish him the best.  "What you react to in another, you amplify in yourself."  --Eckhart Tolle

I then got into this groove in my work, and didn't look up again until 6pm!  It was dark outside!  But I got so much work done!  And I was focused in a way that I haven't been able to focus in quite a long time. Felt good!  :-)

Had tea and apple pie with Ilaria, Silvia, Jason and Julia.  :-)  Then I went to a discussion of religion and spirituality.  There's a Christian group that's set up an English language discussion group.  I didn't realize they were X-tian until I got there, because the flyer didn't mention any specific ideology.  They were all, as predicted, convinced that X-tianity is the only way to the Truth, but they were all wonderfully open about it all anyway.  We had a really great, really interesting discussion about the nature of God and Truth and all that easy, simple stuff.  :-)  I really liked them all, and I really enjoy talking to people who see the world and the Universe in such a different way.  

After almost 3 hours(!) of talking, I'm now home, and decided to watch a bit of Mary Poppins.  Just the Sister Suffragette song, which is possibly my favorite of  the whole movie.  :-P

"We're clearly soldiers in petticoats,

And dauntless crusaders for women's votes

Though we adore men individually

We agree that as a group they're rather stupid!"

Votes for Women!  :-D

Dim Sum More?

I have an arguably better picture for today, but this one just shows off my grey streak so well!  I'm (not-so-)secretly very very proud of my grey!  Just look, isn't it fabulous!  The greatest part:  I will never be "old" and neither will you!  I discovered I had grey hair when I was living in Germany.  That moment of finding your first grey hair (or a few more) will no longer be terrifying.  "Whatever," you'll be able to say, "Leila's had grey hair since she was 22, it doesn't mean anything!"  You're welcome!  :-P

Today I woke up and didn't want to get out of bed.  My dreams were holding me back.  But I had to so I did.  I got ready and hit the road.  I was supposed to meet with Aiste and Cristina at the Central Station to go to Den Haag for Grace's birthday.  I was late!  Then, I realized:  daylight savings time went into effect last night....  I was early....  I got some coffee and watched people rush through the station.  I think next time I have a few free hours I'm going to get my notebook and sit and take little written photos of people.  They're just too interesting.

The girls arrived and we headed off to Den Haag.  Grace and her boyfriend, Steve unexpectedly showed up to take the same train.  I don't know why this was unexpected since we all live in the same city and all wanted to go to the same city at the same time.  But, it was, so my girls and I had to be very sneaky because Grace's present wasn't finished or wrapped, and her card wasn't signed yet.  We managed though!

We went to a dim sum restaurant called Kantori in Den Haag.  So good!  Grace had 18 people there!  Mostly her Surinamese friends and family.  We ate for over two hours!  Dim sum, for those of you who've never had it, is a sort of side dish sampler.  Mostly it's little dumplings, steamed or fried, sometimes steamed or fried bread filled with pork or chicken, beef, shrimp, tofu, whatever.  You order lots of them (especially with 18 people!) because an order generally has 2-4 dumplings.  We had tons of food!  Fortunately, being a vegetarian (ok, pescatarian) I wasn't tempted by too many choices.  I didn't leave hungry though (I just didn't have to leave stuffed.)  My faaaaavorite were these fried dough balls stuffed with a sweet-ish tofu paste.  Grace's friends had never eaten tofu and were extremely unsure of it.  In fact, they didn't understand the concept of food with no meat in it.  :-)  Amazing.

After lunch we headed back to Leiden.  I walked slowly down the shopping street.  I'm still looking for shoes.  It was so cold and rainy today, I didn't went to be too long in the wet.  So I went shopping.  :-P  Got home, sort of soggy, and put on my big thick sweater, made some more chocolate chai tea and read De Bende van Anansi (Anansi Boys in English.)  Neil Gaiman,  'nough said.  I'm really pretty proud of myself, because I've only had to look up maybe 5 words!  If only this language were as easy to speak as to understand.  

Lolpod:  The head waiter walked into the back room carrying a cat.  We all just stopped eating and watched him.  Turns out the family lives over the restaurant and their pet escaped.  But...still, a waiter carrying a cat is NOT what you want to see in a Chinese restaurant.  Yikes.

The Weekend Returns

Yesterday was cold and misty and gross.  I didn't like it.  I also didn't wake up until noon because I was up half the night trying to do my laundry.  I finally got outside, and went to Bagels and Beans to work on some Egyptian.  

For some reason I kept having to fight off a sense of panic.  I'm not sure why, but I just didn't feel like I was getting anything done.  I felt like I was working and working and accomplishing nothing.  I drank my coffee and took a breath.  Worked for a while.  Panic began to slowly climb up my throat.  I nibbled on my apple-cinnamon muffin.  Calm.  Work.  Panic.  Calm.  So strange.  But after 2.5 hours, the text was translated!!

So, I took a break, bought a new notebook (mine was full) and changed venues.  Printed off the new text, and worked on that one for the rest of the evening.  No panic, just focused calm.  :-)  I got all 10 pages transliterated, which is just fabulous.  Go me!

I then went down to Julia's apartment and we made dinner and chatted (in English and in German) and ate brownies and drank tea.  :-)  Then we got ready for a party.  Christophe (France) was hosting a pre-Halloween costume party.  We had to dress up like movie characters.  I didn't know who to go as, so I just went with my wardrobe and went as Bollywood in general.  :-)  Julia was Marilyn Monroe.  :-)  We met with Janos and Ilaria and went to Silvia and Jason's to get ready.  Then we headed to Christophe's.  

I rode on the back of Janos' bike since I was wearing a long skirt.  You see this all the time here.  It is TERRIFYING!  I was carrying my purse and a bottle of wine in my left hand, so I had only one arm to hold on with.  So, believe me I DID.  After the first few moments of being convinced I was going to die, it was in fact a LOT of fun.  Really nice to watch the world fly by from a new angle.  :-)

The party was uh-mazing.  Most of my friends were there, and there were crazy costumes. Aiste and Cristina were the penguins from Madagascar, Judy put a white pom-pon on her head and wore a lab coat and was Doc from Back to the Future.  Lilu from 5th Element was there, and so were Al Capone and Smurfette, and two or three Audrey Hepburns.  There was a Rambo with a real, albeit no longer functional, gun! Too much fun!

And the music was great!  A perfect mix of 80s, pop, hip-hop, everything.  Perfect night for dancing.  So, you better believe I did!  :-D  Janos and I danced some Jive.  Juny and I danced some hip-hop (possibly scandalizing a few Europeans on the way!)  Iñigo and I danced...Iñigo-style dance.  Kia made me lead him in salsa.  Hahaha.  Entirely too much fun!  I had to force myself to leave at 3am!!  I could have stayed all night!  Well...I guess I sort of did.... Hahaha.

Today I got out of bed at 11:30.  Which I think is pretty impressive considering.  I went to the market to get a present for Grace, whose b-day is tomorrow.  I found a really cool little second hand store that sells a little bit of everything.  Dishes, irons, dolls, books, pictures, hats, oil lamps. I got a little framed ceramic tile that says: "Van 't concert des levens krijkt niemand een program" (No one gets a program for the concert of life.)  :-)  I thought it was a good quote, and I've been wanting something like that in Dutch, and this little guy was only a Euro.  Perfect.  :-)

I also bought myself some more tea.  I'm getting sort of addicted to interesting teas.  Which is great, I've always loved the idea of tea, but never drank it much.  Sort of like wine.  I have a very deep love of wine in my imagination.  It's the perfect drink, thick and it's flavors are complexly sweet and woody and it's just heavenly.  Except in reality it's good but not really that great.  Too bad.  (Pizza is the food equivalent for me, if you were wondering.)  Anyway...I digress.  Tea used to be like this too me: rather disappointing in reality.  But now I'm getting into it!  

Teas of the Day:  Mayan Treasure (chocolate tea!) and Spicy Chocolate Chai.  :-)

I then went to Lipsius to do some work.  No wildly interesting new friends, helas, but I did run into Yohann (France) on the way.  He's so cool.  I wish I saw more of him, but he's not a student (he works here) so we run in different circles.  Ah well.

I managed to get a few pages of my newest text translated.  I'm very pleased with my abilities.  Without noticing it, I'm suddenly able to translate much much easier and 10 times faster.  I rock.  Thanks for noticing.  hahaha

Lolpod:  A woman walked by me pushing a baby carriage.  In the baby carriage was the tiniest, poofiest, most pitiful dog I have EVER EVER seen.  She (he?) was wearing a dark blue coat with BRIGHT pink fur trim.  Oh lord.  The owner looked pretty much exactly like you think she would look:  platinum blonde hair, perfectly styled, perfect clothes, perfect body, probably closer to 40 than she would ever admit to you.

Lolpod 2: I was on the bridge over a canal, looking at the beauty of the sun shining on the water, and smiling to myself about all the people on the street (Saturday in Leiden is bustling and great) when out of nowhere came the hugest sneeze I've ever heard.  No idea where it came from, but it echoed and everyone around me made a surprised face and started laughing.  :-D

Bless you, unknown pedestrian.

For now, I'm making some Chocolate Chai tea, and I'm either going to work on more Egyptian or write for a while.  Lucas (Germany) and Yohann both said they'd call me if anything cool is going on.  So I might be chillin with the boys.  Or I might just write all night, drink my tea.  

Either way, life is good.

Horoscope Last Week

"I cannot tell if the day is ending, or the world, or if the secret of secrets is inside me again." So wrote Jane Kenyon, translating Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. At this juncture in history, that's a feeling many of us have. Part of the time we're on the verge of freaking out, half-expecting some new calamity to befall the world. Other times we're awash in wonder and awe, catching glimpses of the miraculous flow that's hidden just below the surface of everyday chaos; we're tantalizingly close to understanding that everything is proceeding exactly as it should. In the coming weeks, this excruciating poignancy will peak, especially for you. Regard it as a gift -- as a difficult blessing that has the potential to free you of your illusions. 

Livin' the Dream

Another day of getting up and at 'em.  Hit the streets for a little grocery shopping.  I've been drinking quite a bit of milk since coming to the Netherlands (been eating more cereal) but I noticed that my tummy was unhappy with me about it.  So I switched to soy and I've had no problems at all.  I've heard that you can become lactose intolerant if you don't drink enough milk.  Maybe I did.  

After a rockin lunch of potatoes, green beans and a (tofu) cutlet, I headed back to the stores to do a little shopping for my mom.  I bought some Sinterklaas candy for her to share with her kids  Kids get a big piece of chocolate in the shape of the first letter of their name, so I got a big N (for the name of mom's school.)  There are also chocolate coins in a little plastic pig (for luck,) and chocolate figures of Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet (nowadays he's Santa's helper, but back in the day... well he didn't have the retirement plan he's got now.) I also got a little slinger that says "Welkom Sinterklaas" that she can hang in her room.  :-)  

I recently re-"read" my favorite book, American Gods (it was the audio version this time, thus the quotation marks.)  There's a part where Mr. Wednesday tells the main character, Shadow, that they need snow.  He tells Shadow to think of snow, and Shadow throws himself completely into the idea of thick, white, beautiful snow.  And it snows.  (Shadow knows, of course, that he couldn't possibly have caused it....)  

I did the same thing, I think, only with sun.  A few weeks ago I just begged the Universe for a super sunny autumn and winter, and I imagined Leiden bathed in rich sunlight.  I'm not completely convinced that I can control the weather with my mind, but I've gotten exactly what I wanted.  The soggy days of summer are gone, and the sun has come out again.  It still rains, but not as much as I had feared.  Viva el sol!

So, today was sunny, but cold, so I went to the Lipsius café to study some Coptic.  Newest Universal gift: Kareem (Iran.)  He was sitting at the table next to mine and smiled at me when I sat down.  We started talking.  He was an ambassador in America until the hostage crisis.  They gave him 24 hours to get out of the country!  I expressed my shock at this, and he insisted that it wasn't a problem, and told me how nice everyone was to him.  He's now living in Den Haag, working for the UN.  But he often comes to the university because the library has so many Persian texts.  He's working on a book about them!  Truly a fascinating man.  He gave me advice on which travel agencies to use when going to Egypt!  :-) 

I had considered switching to Bagels and Beans for my studying, but how can I give up all these wonderful conversations with such fascinating Middle Easterners?!

Grace was sick today, so I watched the Common Room for her.  Met a new Chinese student, and Lucas (Germany) stopped by.  He's looking for a new apartment too, so he might just get added to my list of possible roommates.  Really cool guy, that Lucas.  We agreed we need to hang out more.  I don't even know if he knows I speak German.  

There was another Constitutional drink tonight, so I met with Aiste and Cristina and went.  I was standing outside, waiting for the girls, and it was cold, and dark, but everything was well lit by street lights and cafés.  People walking by were laughing, people in cafés were talking animatedly.  I was wearing high heels, a nice skirt, my new turquoise coat.  My hair is long.  We walked into the party.  It was held at the restaurant in the City Hall.  It was urban chic, candle lit, low jazz music weaving in and out of the chatter of diners.  I walked in and caught a glimpse of myself in a darkened window.  "Good Lord," I realized, "I'm living the life I've always wanted to lead."  

It's true.  Every week I meet a UN worker from half the world away in a café.  I go to parties at fancy restaurants and meet Dutch and international organizations.  I am surrounded by people from all corners of the world, and all of them are students at an elite university, working hard and loving life.  Things aren't always perfect, but I'm living my dream, and didn't even realize it!

Alhamdulillah! 

What happened to Wednesday?

I'm not really sure where today ran off to.  I woke up and I remember being pleased at how quickly I got out of the apartment.  I went to H&M to buy a skirt I needed.  I met with Aiste to decorate our pedel.  Constitutional.  Dinner. Carlos.  Home again?  Phew, what happened?

Well, tonight was our (ISN-R's) constitutional drink.  I've explained this very Dutch custom a few times, though probably not very well.  Whenever a student organization gets a new board constituted, they have a party and invite other student groups to come.  There's a ceremony to this.  The groups sign a guest book (which must be guarded closely, because it is a great honor to steal another group's book) and then they fill out a card with the name of their organization.  A man then bangs a huge stick called a pedel on the floor and announces the organization.  The members of that organization are then allowed to go up and congratulate the board and give them presents. 

Aiste and I met to decorate our pedel because all we could find was a broom stick!  These sticks are often very ornate.  We wrapped it in ribbon and stuck a coconut on top with ribbon hair and a lei around his coconut head.  :-)  He was beautiful, and served us well for most of the constitutional.  Eventually the coconut broke in half, but it was still beautiful.  Carlos said he took one look at it and knew I had had something to do with making it!  Haha.

So, we stood and chatted and laughed and greeted and were congratulated and opened presents and so forth for a few hours.  Then we went across the street and had dinner.  Today was Carlos' birthday, so afterwards we went to Hugo de Grootstraat and partied over there for a good long time.  Now I'm back and beyond tired and still not really sure what I did all day.  :-)

Oh yeah, I did have class in there somewhere.  I had forgotten.  I think I need more sleep!  

They Try To Make Me Go To Rehab, I Won't Go

I had a dream last night that I don't remember. I woke up feeling like I should be filled with sorrow, missing everyone I've ever loved.  Instead, I woke up with Rehab by Amy Winehouse in my head.  Haha.  Great song, let me tell ya.  I'm going to take this as a good sign.

I spent my morning cleaning up my apartment.  I spent the afternoon in Bagels and Beans, a coffee shop/bagel place down town.  It was perfect.  I can't study in my quiet, empty apartment.  And I certainly can't study in the oppressive silence of libraries.  I need noise.  Not music, noise, bustle, people.  So coffee shops are ideal for me.  There just aren't many places like Starbucks here where you can just go, sit in a big comfy chair, drink a cup of tea or coffee and just chill.  Most places here are really more cafés where you sit and drink and then either leave or buy something else.  They're more like restaurants, not coffee shops (and you can't actually call them "coffee shops" anyway, because a "coffee shop" is where they sell weed, and has nothing to do with coffee at all.)  

Today was a perfect day to sit in a coffee shop and work.  It was cold, and though it was really cloudy, the whole sky was bright, so you knew the sun was back there somewhere.  It looked like it was going to snow.  It wasn't cold enough to, but the air had that... snow quality to it.  Inside it was warm and alive, and Billie Holiday singing softly in the background.  It felt like winter in a big city.  Cold, bright, alive.  Alive.  It's funny, I crave female jazz singers during winter.  Something about the chill in the air, makes me long for warm bright rooms filled with people and the sounds of women singing quietly.

I met with Jennifer for a while and talked about life.  She's an absolutely amazing person, and I wish I could spend more time with her.  She's so full of life and energy and humor.  Art historian, writing her dissertation on some Dutch painter or the other and his use of religious symbolism.  Reading that you're probably thinking "meh" but just ask Jennifer to explain why she loves it and you'll go "Oh man AWESOME!"  

I met with Vanessa afterwards to look at an apartment.  We're trying to find a new one together.  Unfortunately, even though the internet said it was a two bedroom apartment, it was only a two room apartment.  Oh well, the search continues.  Vanessa does have a contact with a guy who's buying a boathouse and wants to rent out a few of the rooms.  No guarantees, but hm, it would totally ROCK my soggy Dutch socks to live on a boathouse!  :-D

Wushu was amazing, as usual.  Talked in my half-Dutch, half-English with a bunch of new people (now that I'm in a new line.)  My newest friends are from the Antilles!  Cool!  There was also a new teacher there tonight who says his name is Chewie (like the Wookie) and who was hilarious.  Most of the teachers are very quiet and calm, but he was noisy.

Keep this in mind: "Life sings in our silences, and dreams in our slumber.  Even when we are beaten and low, Life is enthroned and high.  And when we weep, Life smiles upon the day, and is free even when we drag our chains."  --Kahlil Gibran

Moving on Up!

Such a beautiful day!  Ah, Autumn, I love you so much!  It's a really strange time around here.  The first flush of yellow leaves are gone, so there are tons of naked trees around.  However, there are still loads of trees with leaves that haven't changed at all.  So it's a very odd mixture of winter and summer when you look at the trees.  :-)

We learned how to use a Coptic dictionary today.  Much like Hebrew or Arabic, you have to look up most verbs by the consonants, leaving out the vowels.  Coptic is more complicated, of course, because you sometimes leave certain vowels in, and don't even get me started on prepositions (which each have more than one form, and are only listed under one) so the whole thing can be difficult if you don't know what's up.  So, we read a bit of the Gospel of Lucas, and the prof made us look up a word.  Both times I turned to the exact page!  I'm a Coptic dictionary genius!  :-)

The rest of the day consisted of Egyptian, and ISN-R stuff, and walking around in the cool confused autumn air and warm confused autumn sunshine.  Then Wushu.

Jan, our teacher, moved me up to the Intermediate group tonight!  :-D  I'm an Intermediate now!  Whoo!  This meant that everything happened much much faster tonight, and that I had to just DO the new stuff without having Jan walk me through it.  Rock!

I can't really feel my legs now though, because Jan decided we needed to do some extra training after the lesson.  Ouch will come tomorrow, I imagine.  Tonight I just struggled to convince my legs that they could walk down stairs, and bike back from the sportscenter.

The other teachers are all in China this month for Wushu championships (!) which means I'll be getting my sword within the month!  :-D

I had a meeting after Wushu, and didn't think I was going to make it.  I hadn't eaten since noon or so!  But I had a rockin Pindakaas (peanut butter: lit. peanut cheese) sandwich and some soy milk.  Life, she is good.

In other news: check out the two blogs I've added to my long list of awesome blogs:  Faith in the Zone is a blog written by soldiers in Iraq who took a course on religions.  The blog is a chronicle of their reactions to various holy texts, and how they deal with religion in a war zone.  Spirit21 is a blog by a Muslim woman who discusses life in this modern world.  "I am not us," she writes, "nor am I Other.  I am me."  Good stuff, both of them.  :-)

Just Call Me Talula-Does-the-Hula-from-Hawaii

Another successful weekend has come and mostly gone.  Here's my weekend update.

Saturday morning I went shoe shopping.  I have been searching for new shoes for months, and have yet to buy a pair!  Ah well, I did finally find a suitable winter coat!  I'm wearing it in my photo of today, though it's difficult to see.  It's the most beautiful shade of turquoise and suits me just fine.  

Saturday afternoon was spent in the company of Julia, Silvia, Silvia's roommate Jason (Canada), Ilaria, and Janos (Hungary.)  Julia is working on a film of sorts about experiences in Leiden.  So each of us went to our favorite spots in Leiden to talk about why the mean so much to us.  After only one stop, however, it started raining a very cold rain, so we sat in a cafe and drank coffee and hot chocolate and nibbled on illegally smuggled almond cookies and talked about poetry and problems with cultural integration.  

I took the group to the Burcht, my fortress on the hill that kept me company in the deeply lonely days before I had any friends in Leiden.  It's also an amazingly beautiful view of the city.

Saturday night was Hawaiian Night!  We had flowers and balloons and coconuts and pineapples and beach music.  We played pass the coconut, and twister, and did the limbo.  The place was quickly filled with the usual crowd, and I was pleased to see some new faces (included a Dutch face!)  You can check out my Facebook page for the photos.  :-)  

We brought the Hawaiian sun to Leiden and hung it in our skies all night!

I feel like I had some amazingly strange dream last night, but I don't remember.  I remember a dream with a tall and twisted tree.  There were a lot of us trying to climb to sit right in the middle, but it was so high and so difficult most of us were probably going to fall.  I had a secret though:  I knew I could fly.  So I wasn't afraid of falling.

Today has been slow and great.  I've done a bit of homework, and I've worked on my autobiography.  I also found a site that I think it fabulous.  Again, I think I must have brought it to myself.  I decided I needed to write a list of my goals, long term and short, that I could look at.  I think it's important to know, and to see what your priorities are.  And today I found a site that lets you do just that:  www.43things.com  You make a list of what you want to accomplish, and you encourage others on their paths to do the same!  And they encourage you!  

I realized that the very top thing on my list is: to write a novel.  I've always been a writer, and I've wanted to write a novel since I was 11 years old (I used to act out this one story in my front yard.)  I actively started work on one last year, but stopped.  Maybe it's time to get back into it!  I have a lot of work to do, a WHOLE lot of work.  But, well, I always find time to waste, so maybe I could just fill in those empty moments with my words. :-)  

And hopefully Oprah will LOVE it!

I made the best dinner, oh, ever, of tofu, roasted potatoes, green beans, and roti sauce (a Surinamese sauce.)  I mean, this stuff was awesome!  I amaze myself!  For now, I'm working on my autobiography, and drinking lemon tea, listening to Zakir Hussain.  Can't get much better than this!  

Except, I'm going to make some fried apples (Southern style) and head out to watch a movie with Giovanni (Italy, duh) with Johnny Depp in it.  So it could possibly get better.  Just, well, not much!  :-D

Here's me and Janos, laughing at something.  That's my new coat.... Isn't it beautiful! :-)

Friday

Had a strange dream and woke myself up talking.  I was whispering something in a language I don't recognize and then I said "This is a strange night."  I was woken up by a flash of lightning followed almost immediately by the loudest and longest crash of thunder I've ever heard.

Wouldn't that make a great scene in a movie?

I went shopping today for a new skirt.  I don't really have anything that's appropriate for all the social events I have to do with ISN-R, so I got a new skirt today that is stylish but also professional.  I don't really have much professional gear.  Most of my nice clothes were my grandmother's (at least the ones I've held on to.  I had a major cleaning out of my closets before I left the states, and Goodwill got most of what I used to own.) which means they're not exactly modern business professional dress.  They're just oozing with personality.  :-)

I spent the rest of the day writing.  I worked in the Common Room.  Only Waseem (Jordan) and Julio (Mexico) stopped by, so I was alone most of the time.  I plugged my laptop to the speakers, jammed out and wrote.  Then I took a walk around night time Leiden and enjoyed the cool night air and the street lights on the canals.  I took some pretty cool photos too.  :-)  Then I came home, made dinner, and wrote some more.  Chatted and laughed with mom.  Wrote.  That's my day. :-) 

Enjoy the comic:

www.xkcd.com

Exhausted

Blahahaha.  I'm so tired I can't think.  I've been going strong ALL DAY.  (All week, really.)  Woke up at 8am.  It felt like my blanket weighed about 200lbs, but I managed to get out of bed.  Listened to the Political Junkie on NPR talk about the upcoming debate (I get my news a day late, so the debate already happened.  Tomorrow I get to hear the NPR response.)  It was RAINING, cats, dogs, hamsters, hard.  So I sloshed off to class on foot (I don't like biking in the rain: my thighs get wet and then I'm cold all day.)  

Egyptian translation.  Then I met with my group for the mastaba class to finish our project for today.  It took, oh, four? five? hours of pouring over books, searching for names, searching for pictures, describing the pictures.  Our task was to describe the Carrying Chair Scene as depicted in various tombs of the 5th Dynasty.  And by "describe" I mean, in great detail.  How many people, what are they doing, what are they wearing, what are they holding, what does the chair look like (low back?  high back?), what positions are their bodies in?  Seated?  Standing?  GaH!  Mind. Numbing.  Though, I have to admit I got into a rhythm somewhere around the 4th or 5th tomb and started having some fun with it.  And my group mates spoke to me in Dutch, which is awesome!  Also, the sun came out and it was gorgeous, and since the library has huuuuuge windows, we were all bathed in warm sunlight while we worked.  :-)

After that I had to rush off again.  Meeting with Hays.  I was able to stop by Easy and get some sushi (mini-Vega mix: veggie sushi, including my two favorites, tamago (egg) and inari (tofu pockets filled with sweet rice) to eat by the canal.  I almost made a new feline friend, but she was disappointed to find I had no fish.  I even found a few moments to chat with my mom.  She gave me some advice (and I'm not making this up.)  She quoted the Buddha(!) saying, "Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." !!!!  How strange is that?! I put pretty much that exact quote in my blog (which my mom doesn't read) on Tuesday!  And here she comes on Thursday quoting the man!  My mom doesn't study Buddhism!  Well, didn't.

"Funny," she said "That man and I think alike!!"  And you know, she's right!  Golly, I love my mom!  :-)

After my moment of motherly zen, I raced back out into the world.  Mastaba class was once again awesome.  (Did I mention this professor lives in my building?  Cause he does.)  We talked about identity and individuality.  Not just in Egypt, but that was of course the point.  So good.  

Then off to dinner with the Egyptologists at Donatello's.  I talked to Kaas (I really don't know if that's how you spell his name, but that's how you say his name.) and everyone else.  They mostly spoke to me in Dutch, but I had a hard time understanding in the loud restaurant.  I've found I have a hard time understanding any language in a loud restaurant.  I feel like even international students do better understanding English in loud environments than I do.  

After dinner we watched a slide show of last year's Cairo Semester.  I'm ready to go now!  Argh, Egypt!  :-)  One more year....  Then we went to 't Keizertje, a bar, for a "borrel" which is a sort of group drink. I don't know that we have a word for borrel, but it's like getting a drink with your co-workers or team mates, or social club.  KSDA has LOTS of borrels, for example.  

And I just go back.  And I'm going to read a book (in Dutch) and go to sleep.  And I intend to stay there as long as possible.  Thank you.  

Horoscope this Week

Describing the poet Kenneth Koch, his colleague John Ashbery said that his work "gives you the impression that you are leading an interesting life; going to parties and meeting interesting people, falling in love, going for rides in the country and to public swimming pools, eating in the best restaurants and going to movies and the theater in the afternoons. By comparison, most other modern poetry makes me feel as if I were living in a small Midwestern university town." In the coming weeks, Libra, I exhort you to have an impact on people that's like Koch's poetry. Here's the best way to do that: Live the most interesting and imaginative life you can dream up. 

Ko evol

Oh my friends, and oh foes, I allllllmost just stayed in bed this morning.  Sooooo clloooooose.  It was just so warm in bed, and there was a fine misting rain outside.  And I was having some dream about...well, something that seemed much more real than reality.  I don't remember it now, of course, but this morning it was real.

I went to class and it was worth it.  We read some pretty awesome texts about making offerings to the king, and having a heart made cool by these offerings.  Good stuff.  The professor also talked about his recent class reunion at West Point, so there were some cool stories there as well.  About all the former military people who were now heading super elite forces, or working for the FBI, or, had the kind of faces that, as he put it "you only get after killing too many people."    Actually, it sort of sounded like Gross Pointe Blank! (That's a movie where John Cusack is an assassin who goes back to his high school reunion and has to act natural, even though a counter-assassin is out to get him.)  I told the professor, and he agreed. 

I came home and worked on Coptic and Egyptian.  We're onto a new text: the King as Sun priest.  I only got the text today (problems with my Blackboard) and we're discussing it tomorrow!   Ah well, it's not really that difficult, fortunately.  Coptic was a lot of fun, as usual.  I learned how to say "to forgive" in Coptic.  It's 'ko evol'  (the 'o' is like the one in "bowl" not "Vols")  It literally means "to let go" and that's why I love it so.

The Dutch students in my Coptic class now speak Dutch to me!  And they invited me to a birthday party on Halloween!  :-D  Whoo hoo, integration! 

Speaking of which, ISN-I had their constitutional drink tonight.  Whenever any student organization puts together a new board, they have a party.  It was my first one, and I was a bit intimidated because there's a whole ceremony to it.  There's a guy with a huge stick, and you write your group's name on a card and give it to him, and when he gets to your card, he'll bang his stick on the ground and announce you.  Then you get to go up and congratulate the board, and give them a present.  Very complicated, but the drinks are free.  :-)  I had a good time, and it was wonderful to get to hang out with my board a bit more.  All we do really is plan ISN-R stuff.  We don't do enough social stuff together.

That's my day.  I feel like I've walked a hundred miles, lived a year or two since this morning.  I feel like today lasted a long long time.  This isn't a bad thing at all. I just look back on, say, my grocery shopping of today, and it seems like it was a week or more ago.  Phew, time.

In other news:  I found out my favorite professor lives in my building!  We're neighbors! 

The Song in My Head Today

I bought a cheap watch from the crazy man

Floating down canal

It doesn't use numbers or moving hands

It always just says "now"

Now you may be thinking that I was had

But this watch is never wrong

And if I had trouble the warranty said:

Breathe in, Breathe out, Move on.

And it rained

It was nothing really new

And it blew

Seen all that before

And it poured

The earth began to strain

Pontchartrain leaking through the door, tides at war.

If a hurricane doesn't leave you dead

It will make you strong

Don't try to explain it just nod your head

Breathe in, Breathe out, Move on

According to my watch the time is now

The past is dead and gone

Don't try to explain it just nod your head

Breathe in, Breathe out, Move on

--Jimmy Buffett

Beware the Skorgolian Storm

I sat again in the café at Lipsius and read and wrote.  And drank too much coffee!  Haha.

The café was pretty crowded, so I shared my table with three other men.  We started chatting, in Dutch.  One was a Persian studies professor, one was an economist (not a professor, I think he might have said he worked for some ministry or the other.  I don't know; it was in Dutch.) and the third was what we would consider a bum (poofy beard, Jamaican hat, funny smell.)  The four of us had a  great conversation!  We talked about the current economic crisis, and we talked about whether the Egyptian concept of Ma'at influenced Sufi writings!  We talked about life in your twenties and the good and the bad times.  They all said that they all look back on that time and remember mostly the good things, but if they're honest, it was a really hard time.  Beautiful!  This café just keeps bringing interesting (and completely strange) things my way!

I skipped Tai Chi tonight and got my life organized.  To Do lists and everything.  Tied up some loose ends.  You know, busy work.  

Wushu was wonderful though.  Dani, the teacher on Tuesdays, kept telling me to go lower, so now my thighs hurt.  I talked with Jansen, and Jonathan, and two others whose names I never caught, and we all laughed and laughed.  Jonathan is now calling me the Skorgolian Storm.  I told him I once had a Gatorade and the flavor was Skorgolian Storm.  We laughed at the strangeness of it.  Now it's my nickname!  Apparently, I'm the only Skorgolian in the Netherlands.  I ran into Lucas and Jan Claus.  Life is just too good.

Moment of Zen:  The Buddha said "Do not chase after the past, or place expectations on the future.  What is past is left behind.  The future is as yet unreached.  Whatever quality is present, you clearly see right there, right there.  Not taken in, unshaken, that's how you develop the heart.  Ardently doing what should be done today, for who knows what tomorrow brings.  It might bring death."

Another Zen Moment: (Icelandic Old People's War!)

Boo! Woo!

I blinked and suddenly it was autumn.  This season has been sneaking up on me, sending out hints.  A crispness in the air one morning, the yellowing of the leaves, the color of the sun.  But today, it was as if this sneaking autumn just jumped out at me and screamed "boo!" and started laughing!  Everything smells like browning leaves and acorns.  Dusk tonight was purple.

My day was busy, but invigorating.  ISN-R had a meeting with the International Student Support group from the University, and they've offered to help us out with anything we need help with.  Which is wonderful!  

The sword forms in Wushu tonight were much more intense than they have been.  Flashing metal, jumps, one handed cartwheels.  I hope I get my sword soon so I can practice more often! 

There was also a meditation workshop tonight.  Aiste organized it along with the Art of Living Foundation.  Our teacher was Ajay (Suriname) and he talked to us about mindfulness, living now (and not caught up with the past and the future), focusing on our breathing, that sort of thing.  We did some breathing, and some meditation, and some yoga, and we all chatted, and it was really great.  Ajay and I really hit it off.  I was the last person to come in, so I had to walk through the middle of the tiny room with everyone staring up at me from the floor.  So I made jokes and wasn't shy, and Ajay liked that.  When he asked us all why we were there, I said I was interested in possibly looking into teaching similar workshops.  I also mentioned the Quarter Life Crisis and my interest in the phenomenon.  He took that and ran with it.  He loved the idea of a QLC and had never heard of it. At the end he told me he liked my spirit, and that I would probably be very good at what he does.  :-D  

Good thing I took a mindfulness seminar, because I then realized that I had left my key at the sports center, so I had to bike back.  And then, they hadn't seen it, and I couldn't find it where I left it.  So, I had to come home and call the poor emergency maintenance man to come out at 11pm to make me a new key.  On the phone he told me I was stupid for losing my key!  None of this really bothered me though, and I actually laughed and agreed with him when he called me stupid.  It was the same guy who helped fix my electricity when it wouldn't work, so I joked with him, in Dutch about that, and he shook my hand and left me, both of us laughing.  Happy ending.

Best Thing Ever:  The maintenance man thought I was Dutch!  After hearing me speak the language!  Whoo hoo!!  

Bluegrass on the Brain

Only in Nashville would this happen.

I love this world!

Het Weekend --> Long Entry :-)

I'm back from the world. :-)  Weeeeekend.  Here's an update of what the past few days has had for me.

On Friday I spent much of my day sitting in the student café at Lipsius.  Writing my life story.  Writing other stories too.  Lots of stories are back in my head again.  I also read, Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties (stay tuned to 20somethingzen in the coming weeks for some comments on this book)a and drank coffee and enjoyed the sunlight outside.  And then I met Fadi.

He sat down at the table next to mine, and I could tell he was interested in the book I was reading, so I held it up for him to see.  We started talking.  He's from Lebanon, 54, divorced.  Before coming here he lived in New York, worked as a translator for the UN.  (!!)  He decided to come here, become a student, start over.  He's been here since May.  We talked for almost two hours.  Fascinating man!  

He complained about how the Dutch treat him.  He says they stare at him on the street, and when he tries to talk to them in Dutch, they always respond in English.  He says because of this, "I never speak Dutch seriously.  They'll only listen to me if I make jokes.  Of course it's a defense, but it helps me learn."  He talked about how often Dutch people complain about Middle Easterners not integrating into society, and said that he's been trying, and they haven't let him.  Not maliciously, not even intentionally, just passively.  He feels ignored, and alone.  He said it was ridiculous that there has to be a special organization just for International students.  

He also talked about Lebanon, and about how beautiful it was.  He talked with great pride, his face glowing, about all the great Lebanese people in the world who have helped humanity.  The man who developed modern techniques in heart surgery (who touched in his life, according to Fadi, 60,000 living hearts!), the astro-physicist who completely recreated how the jet engine functions.  The poets, the doctors, the musicians, the scientists, everyone.  He said that agriculture started in Lebanon (which is debatable) and that these people are proof of this.  "It's a cumulative effect, you see."  

On the way home, I sat on a bench, and a beautiful calico cat came and curled up in my lap and went to sleep, purring.  My people.  :-D

The rest of Friday was mostly Italian.  Emmanuela (Italy) and Claudia (ditto) organized a Spritz party.  (Spritz is a mixture of Prosecco (sparkling wine) and Aperol.)  They bought the last four bottles in town and had a party.  I set out with Ilaria, Silvia, Judy, Matteo, Laura, and Julia.  Julia and I were the only non-Italians, but Julia speaks Italian almost perfectly.  We walked in, and the entire room was filled with Italians!  So much fun!  I don't know how many people ended up there, but I doubt there were more than 7 of us non-Italians.  And almost all of them spoke Italian!  :-D  (I love being the only non-speaker in a room!)  Later, much later, we all went to HiFi for the Glow in the Dark Party.  Dancing + Black Lights = Glow in the Dark Party.  I didn't stay long.  It was late, and my outfit (which was awesome) didn't glow as much as I had hoped, and the music was too loud, and too techno.  But I saw just about everyone I know there.  (Juanjo danced and danced and danced!  Those Spanish men are wild! haha)

Saturday, 11.October was our Celebrating the Start of Winter and Farewell to the Sun Party.  Kia (Iran) organized it.  Kia jokingly told us that Saturday would be the last sunny day until Spring.  So about 20-30 of us got our bikes, and biked to Katwijk to enjoy the sun, and beg her to stick around a bit longer.  It was a great trip.  Sand, and water.  We all got ice cream, and sat in the sand and talked, and laughed, and just watched the waves roll in, roll out.  Turned our faces to the sun.  

I went off with Kia (Iran), Aiste (Lithuania), Ilaria (Italy), Adil (India-UK), Ime (Canada), Cristina (Switzerland), Elise (China), and Yuan (China) to get some coffee.  I sat with Kia, Yuan, Ilaria, and Elise and we all talked about life, and the future (the typical 20-something conversations!)  Both Chinese girls told me I have a bright future in China.  They want me to come teach English and belly dance!  :-)

We biked home, and Kia, Adil and I went to Eazy and ate awesome Chinese food, and talked some more.  Then I had tea with Julia, and had some girl talk.  Ach! These people are entirely too cool!  :-)

Today has been filled with dancing.  I taught an African Dance Workshop for the ISN-R theater group.  I spent my morning preparing and reorganizing.  Thanks to an iTunes glitch, I couldn't access much of the music I had chosen.  Naja, it went.  :-)  Actually, the workshop was amazing.  At least, I had a great time!  The point was to teach them how to tell a story with their bodies.  African movement became their words.  I told them a story (about friends, and Elegba's anger and his hat) and I taught them some moves.  And then, I told them to dance.  And they did!  It was beautiful!  They weren't just doing the moves I taught them, they were telling me their stories!  Ah... such power.  :-)

That's all.  I had coffee with Giovanni, Saeko (Japan) and Soyean (Korea).  I met with Farhad and he gave me my birthday present: a cute stuffed animal, and a CD of Persian music! I came home and completely reorganized my room.  I listened to American Gods (maybe listening to my favorite book by my favorite author has been inspiring me.)  I made fried apples.  I watched a show about ghosts and another about vampires.  

Now, I'm happy and at peace, and if you'll excuse me, my friends are at the door....  :-)

"All 5 Fingers Are Not the Same" --Sasha

Woke up this morning and listened to my usual morning podcasts.  I always start off with 365 Tao.  They read a poem, and give words of wisdom.  A quick 2 min pep talk each morning.  I had skipped a couple of days, including my birthday, so I listened to it first.  For my birthday they talked about: birthdays!  No kidding!  The guy said that Masters of the Tao don't celebrate birthdays, because the Tao is a constant stream and there is no need to mark any occasion or festival.  However, he concluded, until we are as practiced and as wise as the Masters, that it was a good idea to mark our milestones as we saw fit.  :-D  I'm just keeping to the Tao, letting things come!

The Master observes the world

But trusts his inner vision.

He allows things to come and go.

His heart is open as the sky.

--Tao Te Ching (12)

Today I went and sat by the Rapenburg canal and wrote.  I don't know that I can describe how wonderful it felt.  Today was painfully beautiful.  The sun was shining, and actually had heat to it, not just warmth, not just light.  Heat.  I rolled up my pant legs, I took off my sweater, I wished I had brought my sunglasses.  All along the canals there are little steps that lead down to the water (which is always a few feet below street level) so that people can get on and off of boats.  I sat on one of these to enjoy the sun.  The sun shone on the leaves, making them shine orange.  Reflected in the water they were gold, and stunning, and powerful.  For a long time I just watched the golden leaves in the shining green water tremble.  Every time the wind blew a shower of orange would fall from the sky like paper, and disturb the water into almost imperceptible, but ever expanding circles.  I wrote and I listened to American Gods on my iPod.  And I had some thought that I considered writing about in my blog tonight.  But I have forgotten it now.  I have something interesting to say anyway.

Iñigo and his sister stopped by for a while to chat.  Eventually I had to go to the Common Room for a meeting with my committee about the FAQ book we'll be writing and publishing, and the old  surveys we're compiling and the new surveys we're writing, and the interviews with the advisors we still have to arrange.  

Then I went to my Mastaba class.  I haven't been since the first class meeting, so long ago.  The professor went to Egypt, I think, and rescheduled the class for a time when I already had another class.  Then, during that class, they discussed a change of room, and no one told me.  So last week I sat at an empty table, waiting.  And I searched, and never found them.

I love this class, and I love the professor.  I just want to hug him.  He actually brought tears to my eyes in class today!  He's from India, or Pakistan, or somewhere like that.  Somewhere between the Middle East and the Far East.  And he talks like a guru, like a spiritual teacher, in metaphors and in poetry.  And the things he talks about!  The class is about a certain type of tomb used by non-royal elites in the Old Kingdom.  Today we talked about ideology.  He wants us to look at these tombs, and ask why they are decorated in the way they are, and to understand this, we must understand ideology.  

And so he began to talk to us, not about ancient Egyptian concepts of this or that, and not about what some old dusty man said once in some old dusty conference.  No, he started talking to us about veils and masks, about fear and power, about Europe and China, monarchs in Spain and England, and dictators in Korea, about American cemeteries and Dutch advertisements.  

"Ideology is never transparent, it's opaque.  You have to look behind the veil; see behind the mask.  And the mask of Ideology is very nice, like the mask of Tutankhamun, it's very nice.  But when you take it away, the skeleton underneath is not so nice."  -Sasha

I love the way he approaches this stuff.  He openly says that most of what we will learn will be based on his opinion, his interpretation of things.  Because of this he wants to show us the primary information and let us form our own opinions.  He's not here to teach us what to think, but how to think.  Unlike a lot of Egyptologists (and other ancient historians) Sasha doesn't believe we know (or can know) what the Egyptians were really thinking.  We can, however, understand their ideologies.  We can get a picture of how they wanted to see themselves.  :-)

"Egyptology," he said, "is not something far away, it's here.  To understand Egyptology, you have to understand what's going on in the world today."  And tears literally came into my eyes, and it was all I could do to not rush to hug him, or simply stand up and shout AMEN!  It was as if the questions my crisis of motivation has been asking were starting to be answered.  We talked for a bit after class, about liminal places, and about identity, and how difficult it is to put abstract concepts into words.  :-)

Maybe he'll be my advisor for my thesis. 

Lolpod:  A bird (not a duck, but something beautiful, with a small crest of brown feathers on its head, and a white neck) was swimming down the canal towards me.  Suddenly, he dove beneath the green water (I could see him for a moment, shadowy beneath the water, then he was gone.)  I watched, and waited.  Nothing.  Then bubbles.  Then nothing.  I watched a red candy wrapper float slowly down stream. Waited.  Then, unexpectedly, with a splash, the bird that was not a duck emerged from the water, a tiny fish in his beak flapping its tail furiously, the candy wrapper now on his head.

"How do we understand other cultures?  I have this advice for you: Apply distance and sympathy.  Don't look with your own ideologies, and don't judge. Be distanced from these things, and be sympathetic."  --Sasha

The Gods are Smiling: Here's Your Sign

So, I'm 25 now.  A quarter of a century behind me.  To me this seems significant, not because I'm afraid I'm getting old, but because it seems like a phase has ended a new phase of my life has begun.  This is a positive thing.  I want to mark it in some way.  Do something special that I will remember.  

I've been thinking about it for a while now, and I've decided to write my autobiography.  From the beginning of my life (in Africa)  to now.  Here's my reasoning:  Why wait until I'm 60 or 70 or older to write my life's story?  Why wait until I'm so far distanced from my youth that I can only write about it through the perspective of a complete stranger?  Everything will change, there's no doubt, and the way I look at the places I've stumbled and the places I've flown will change too.  The ones who have filled and/or broken my heart will land on the pages as completely different people when I am happily married with 3 children than they would now.  So this is my plan: to write my life up to now, as I see it now, at 25.  Perhaps I'll write another history when I'm 50, to fill in the spaces between now and then.  (Though maybe every 10 or 15 years would be better.)

As I fell asleep last night I decided where I would start today: the transition between high school and college.  There are lots of similarities between now and then.  And then, this morning, as if by divine providence, I checked to see if FreeWillAstrology had posted the horoscopes for the week.  It had:  

Please spend some time in the coming week meditating on the epic tale of your life journey. Why? Because it would be an excellent time for you to begin writing your autobiography. Don't tell me you're afraid that such a project would be presumptuous. The way I see it, the planets are aligned in such a way as to suggest that you now have extra insight about the big picture of your destiny. So I hope you will at least create an outline of the story you will eventually put down in words, complete with predictions of what will be unfolding for you five years from today, and ten years, and 15 years. 

www.freewillastrology.com

Seriously.  I just sort of stared at the computer screen for a moment, then I burst out laughing!  I never realized I had this much power over the Universe (or that It had this much power over me!)  Who needs to beg the Muses for their help, when they're practically screaming at you to do your work?!  Could it be any clearer?!  :-D  

So, with the toil of my heart and my hand blessed by the gods, I continued through an extremely happy day.  Sunshine and warmth.  I mailed in my absentee voter form!  I voted!  I have fulfilled my patriotic duty.  (Please remember, the gods are smiling upon me today....)  Had Coptic, which was hilarious as usual.  Then I went to the Lipsius building and wrote for a few hours.  :-)  

An old friend (if I may call someone I met in June an "old friend",) Fabio (Italy) was also in Lipsuis, so we had dinner and chatted, and I told him about my work.  He seemed really excited about the idea, and said he'd been thinking of starting up a blog.  So we talked about blogs, and about life, and everything was great.  Then I went off to my ISN meetings, and now I'm home, exhausted, but happy.

Lolpod:  An older couple was walking down the street holding hands, both huge and sort of square shaped.  They were too overweight to walk properly, so they sort of waddled.  They were holding hands, and walking perfectly in step, right foot, left foot, perfectly in time, both of them swaying, almost like a dance.  They both seemed so happy, too, smiling and laughing, and swaying in time to the other.  :-D

Happy Happy Birthday, Baby (7.Oct.08)

Yesterday was my birthday!  I woke up early to find my favorite type of fall weather:  a cool, foggy morning (first foggy morning I've witnessed!) that turned into a warm sunny day!  :-)  Just for me!

I took candy and cookies to class with me, and everyone congratulated me, and kissed me on both cheeks.  :-)

After classes were over, I went to the Common Room.  Grace had asked me to take over from 6-7.  However, when I got there, I found all the board members, waiting on me.  Surprise!  The brought me a cake!  Strawberry!  And they gave me the coolest birthday card.  It said "Happy Birthday Amazing Marvelous You!" but the best part was they all (the board members) signed it and left birthday wishes in their native languages!  So now I have birthday greetings in Swiss German, Chinese, Surinamese, and Lithuanian!  :-D  The best part, however, was the present they got me.  They bought me a belly dance outfit!  !!!  I was too shocked to speak!  It's beautiful, red and gold, with a shine and a song.  :-D  Such a wonderful present!!!  I don't have a good photo of it, but I'll post some when I get the pictures from the others.  :-D 

Susanne and Vanessa also stopped by and I got to chat with them, though not for long enough.  They had to rush off to a class.  :-(  I don't see them enough.

Then there was the Movie Night.  We watched "Lust, Caution" a Chinese movie.  And it was INTENSE though super slow.  Sort of like a rubber band being very very slowly stretched, and stretched, and you know it's bound to break at some point, but it just doesn't seem like it'll ever get there.  Gah.  Intense intense film, but good.  Really good.

Afterwards, a whole bunch of us headed over to Proost to celebrate.  Julia (Germany), Juan (Spain), Kia (Iran), Michele (Italy), Giorgious (Greece), Christoph (France), Anna (Portugal), Judy (Italy), Farhad (Iran), Ilaria (Italy), and Carlos (Venezuela) all showed up to party.  Paul (America) also stopped by to say hi.  :-)  We drank and laughed and talked and talked.  Most of them had never officially met each other, so new friendships were forged on the spot.  :-)  Julia gave me a present of Extra-Large Hagelslag!  (That's x-large chocolate sprinkles, for those who don't know.)  :-) 

Farhad and Carlos accompanied me home, and we talked about ancient Egyptian religion, and funerary texts, and literature.  It's pretty awesome to get to have bodyguards from Venezuela and Iran!  :-)

I came home, eventually, and talked to my parents for a bit on Skype.  My dad's b-day was also yesterday, so we had to wish each other Happy Birthday.  Another successful and friend-filled birthday!  

My friendships sort of slipped up on me.  It seems like just a few days ago (really it was June) I was lonely, and suddenly, I'm surrounded by fascinating people who really care.  :-D

I'm Thirsty Anyway

Today tried to get to me.  Oh, how it tried.  I woke up feeling yucky, sad, blech.  No reason, just blech.  Coptic was good, but not especially exciting.  Then problems started.  Nothing major, just lots of little drops of annoyance.  There's a problem with my apartment.  They don't have the documents they need.  There's a problem with my bank account.  They never gave me my pin number, they never gave me my online banking information.  There's a problem with my University.  I'm not registered.  I was told it would be taken care of for me.  It wasn't.  So now I have no internet access (outside of my apartment) and I have no access to Blackboard.  Argh!  Jammer!  

It's almost like the hard times circle round

A single drop and they all start coming down

Yeah, I might feel defeated

And I might hang my head

I might be barely breathing

But I'm not dead

But tomorrow's another day

And I am not afraid

So bring on the rain

--Jo Dee Messina (Bring on the Rain)

So, I strapped on my trusty iPod, armed with country music, Zen lectures, and Neil Gaiman audio books, and I hit the street.  Took control.  I haven't gotten it all sorted out yet, but by 2pm I was feeling pretty good.  It helped that I ran into Filippo on the way to the bank.  :-)  

I managed to finally get Weni translated! Woo!  I sat down in the Plexus and turned on the Tao Te Ching, and when that was over, I turned on M is for Magic by Neil Gaiman.  I'm not really sure how this works, but if I have something to listen to going in the background, I can really focus on my translating.  You'd think it would be impossible, but I suppose there must be two little parts of my brain working.  One side wants to be distracted, the other wants to work.  If I try to sit in silence and let the second part do its thing, that first part just runs wild.  If one side is focused, it's like the other has to find something to focus on, too.  Hm, this is probably something I should try to tame.  I'd like to be able to have a still mind, even when working.  Ah well, whatever gets the job done, is good for me right now.

I love Neil Gaiman.  Love.  His stories are just so beautiful, so intense, so true.  Listening to his short stories has really inspired me to write again.  I'm not sure where I'll find the time (though I do manage to find a few minutes a day to sort my thoughts here, why not on paper too?) but I want to write again.  I've tried off and on through the past months, but I always fall back out of it again.  I have good ideas though, and I'm sort of afraid of stories that go untold.  They get mean, I think, untold stories.

So, in the end, the day turned out to be pretty great.  Filled with sunshine, new friends, inspiration, and successful efforts.  I walked home tonight in the dark, and it was cool, but not cold, and just gorgeous.  

In other news:  Monkeys!

Happiness

I dreamt last night that I got a new apartment.  It was extremely small, but it was located above a Buddhist temple.  I think this is a good omen.  :-)

Today has been wonderful.  I woke up lazy, and drank some coffee in peace.  I gathered my stuff to head to the Plexus to do some work, and stepped out on to the balcony to check the temperature.  Laura and Matteo had their curtains open, and they waved to me, opened the door, let me in.  They were having a breakfast party!  They had invited a few friends over, and had their desk filled with breakfast food, and cakes and cookies.  Coffe, tea, orange juice.  So, I stayed.  :-)

It was raining outside, and inside it was warm and beautiful.  Arianna (Italy) was there.  I met her during the 3.October festivities.  She studied here last year, and came back to visit.  I also met Sangbreeta (India) and Filipo (Italy.)  We had a great time watching You Tube videos, and talking, and laughing.  I think I'll be hanging out with these guys again. :-)  

I came back to my room and worked on Coptic for a few hours.  Then I translated some more of the Lebensgeschichte des Weni.  I feel like I got quite a bit done today, though it just never seems like enough.  Oh well, I can rest easy knowing I was able to focus.  It helps that Coptic is so cool.  For example(I'll use Spanish for my example, since it shows gender and you can all read it anyway:) to say "mi madre" you would say "la-mi-madre" (only it's one word, so "lamimadre")  Love it!  This language does such weird stuff!

I also found two amazing songs today.  You should listen to them if you get a chance.  First of all we have "Our Hero (aka The Lotus Sutra Song)" by Greg Fain and Ben Gustin.  It's a folk song, almost bluegrass, about the Buddha.  Hee hee.  Secondly, there's "The Shotgun."  It's extremely popular in Iraq right now, and expresses the new hope of the country.  I found this one on NPR.  You need to read the article.  You can find the song on the site.  Check it out: "The Shotgun." by Hasam Al-Rasam.

Otherwise, I have a sore throat (too much partying in the rain, and not enough sleep!) so I've been wrapped up in a thick scarf, and my warm sweater, and my fuzzy brown house shoes, and I've been drinking amazing amounts of tea.  Lapsang Souchon, Autumn tea, Turkish Apple.  :-)  How can you argue with a day like today?  Rain, friends, new friends, food, tea, warmth, fun songs, hope, and rewarding hard work.  Le sigh.

This is true happiness.

I would never disparage you or keep you at arm's length

Where you only see your weaknesses, I only see your strength.

I would never despise you, or put you down in any way.

Because it's clear to me

I can plainly see

You'll be a buddha someday.

I love you.

--Greg Fain and Ben Gustin

I Could Go East, I Could Go West, It Was All Up To Me To Decide

I woke up before noon today, which was a lot more than I had planned on doing.  :-)  I have had a very nice, slow Saturday.  I went to the market and I went shoe shopping.  I need new shoes.  The ones I currently wear are 8 years old!  So I'm on the search.  Unfortunately, the cute shoes are expensive and the affordable shoes are awful.  Haha, ah well, my 8 year old shoes are still sewn together, so I suppose there's no rush.

I chatted with my mom again today.  She cheered me on.  We gossiped about my friends and her friends.  We laughed.  Funny how being half a world away brings us together.

I decided today I really need to work on my Dutch.  It has always amazed me how many people live in a country for a year or more without learning the language.  Now I understand how that happens.  I'm always surrounded by International students who don't speak Dutch, so I speak English most of the time.  I'm hardly ever around Dutch people, but when I am, they speak English to me.  I can speak a lot of Dutch considering I had my first lesson only three months ago.  But I'm not working on it enough.  Yesterday I lead a woman from Amsterdam to the bar she was searching for ( I was going to pass it anyway, so she just walked with me.)  She offered to speak English, but I insisted we speak in Dutch.  And I did just fine!  

So tonight I watched The Little Mermaid in Dutch.  I'm going to throw myself back into my Dutch books, and speak Dutch to my Dutch friends more often.  When I look for a new apartment, I'm going to try to find one with Dutch students instead of other Internationals.  I love my international friends, and I love my international world, but I don't feel connected to this country, and I want to be.  I don't want to live here for two years and have nothing to show for it but pictures.  I want to paint this country on my heart.  I want to love it.  I want to miss it when I go.

I know this is the place I need to be.  Holland connects this world in ways I hadn't expected.  They had colonies from Surinam to Indonesia!  From here I can jump to either end of the world!  I've been giving it some thought, and I'm thinking about the possibilities of going east to teach English.  I have friends who've done this in Korea and China, and they've loved every minute of it, they've been so rewarded by the experiences.  Maybe I'll go west to Surinam (if I can learn Dutch well enough!) and teach English there.  Maybe I'll go to Spain, or Sweden, or Cairo, Istanbul, Mongolia to teach English.  It's not a career, just something I feel I should do, could do well.  Could love.