This picture should give you a good idea of how my day went. Stressssss. I'm struggling so hard core in my classes! I went to class so proud of myself for having everything done, and then boof, I'm lost, totally completely, and nothing makes sense. Egyptian is weird. So I spent my day in the library cramming cramming. Stress! And I think I probably looked something like this photo.Hahahaha. I crack myself up!
Julia came over tonight and we had dinner and drank tea and talked. And she told me something that I knew already, but that hadn't actually sunk in yet. To wit: If I fail my Egyptian exams... I can take them again! Whoa. This is completely normal in Europe. This has changed my life! :-)
Now I look like this photo, and I feel much better! :-D
So here's my actual, interesting entry. There are a few things I want to write about (today I made a list as thoughts came into my head, so I wouldn't lose them in my fog of stress.)
First of all, today was gorgeous, so I walked everywhere I went.
In mastaba class the professor showed us a scene of an elite person being carried in a palanquin by a bunch of servants. At the front of the group was an overseer whose job was to organize the workers and make sure they were all doing their job correctly. There's an inscription above, which records the conversation between the overseer and one of the servants. Sort of like speech bubbles. The overseer's head is turned to look at the servant and he says something to them. The servant replies "Turn around and be quiet, I know what I'm doing!" To me this is hilarious. When you think of Egyptian scenes you think of very serene people, calmly going through their lives, with inscriptions that describe wildly fascinating and mysterious secrets. But no, the Egyptians had a sense of humor! :-)
In other news: I've rediscovered a part of myself that I had almost completely forgotten about! Namely, Béla Fleck. Or rather, his music's impact on me. Béla is a banjo player, but he takes the instrument to new heights. He plays bluegrass, but he also plays jazz, and his own fusion of these and Eastern music. I think his most rediculously amazing achievement is his use of the banjo within classical music. He took a group of classical songs and arranged them for banjo in his album Perpetual Motion. He's absolutely amazing! He always plays with the most amazing musicians too. Jeff Coffin, Vic and Roy Wooten (who together make up the Flecktones, Béla's group), Yo-Yo Ma, Chick Corea, Mark O'Connor, Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer!! The list goes on and on! (Like the marimba player on Perpetual Motion who's deaf!!)
He's also super nice, and has beautiful eyes! :-) I went to a New Year's party at his house a few years back, and hung out with him and some of the best musicians EVER. And they're all really great (especially Jeff Coffin, who has remembered my name every time I've seen him.)
Watch these videos, and learn of Béla Fleck (and the Flecktones):
(Warning: These are all painfully good, but they start out with lots of talking and cheering. Hold out, it's WORTH IT.)
Ah Shu Dekio (The guy singing in this song is a Tuvan Throat Singer called Kongar-ol Ondar. Check him out in Alash Khem)
Ok, I'll stop. But don't you feel like your world has just gotten a little bigger? Or smaller? At least better? :-)
Ps. Béla played the banjo on Dave Matthew's Before These Crowded Streets album, and I think he's worked with Phish too.
If I could go back and talk to a 17 year old Me, I think she would be absolutely thrilled to hear she became the sort of person who lives in Europe and listens to Béla Fleck with candles burning in her apartment, and friends stopping by for tea on cold autumn nights. Yes, I think she would be content with who she will become.
Lolpod: André, my buddy from Portugal, knows an amazing amount of American slang, and lots of really strange and obscure idioms. Sometimes, however, he uses them in a way that is completely, and humorously wrong. Today we both had a meeting with the professor, and we had about 30 min to kill between class and the meeting. So André says to me: "So, shall we chase the wild geese around?" He was trying to use the phrase "wild goose chase" to mean "let's waste some time." :-) André rocks!
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