Hermione is my homegirl

Dear everyone,

Lately, I've been in a funk.

You know it's bad when the person you identify most with is a cranky toddler on tricycle.(Watch it. It contextualizes e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.) Also I am slowly killing my basil plant. And everyone knows, as my basil grows, so my life goes.

If you think killing a plant is no big deal, watch Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" m'kay?

By most accounts, my life is going well. But like the cranky toddler, I want so much more. I want everything to be in place. I want to be riding forwards, writing big-time posts and talking shop at my internship. And I don't know why I insist on kicking myself when that doesn't quite happen. If you've read any of my earlier posts, you are well aware that I am prone to hiding in the bathroom when I get uncomfortable. The fact that I walk in and exchange pleasantries is the equivalent of a moon landing for me.

So everyday after work when get back to campus, I throw myself into the news. If you want to talk shop, you have to know the shop. Recently, I read a book by David Mindich, "Tuned Out", that tried to explain why our generation doesn't read the news. Let me condense those 200 pages for you: news is not our point of reference. Until I felt like a dumbass for knowing nothing about the D.C. mayoral election, I didn't learn anything about it. When everyone else feels the same, news is going to be the crack cocaine of America. There is just so much that I want to learn now. Honestly, I wish I could drop out of school, just for the semester, and really truly throw myself into my internship.

Out of this, the funk is born. Trite as it is, I just do not have enough time to do what I want. Me and Hermione Granger have so much in common right now. Girl, I feel you. No one knows what it's like to be using your time so efficiently that you're actually using a time-turner. I get that.

Harry probably didn't even appreciate this. Jerk.

The only thing that I am certain of anymore is that I can do this. I can do this, and I can do a great job.

Jamaa Yangu

In the past two weeks I have consumed more cups of chai, held more small children, and listened to more of Whitney Houston’s greatest hits than ever before in my life.
I am living with an amazing Kenyan family in Ft. Jesus, a neighborhood in Western Nairobi. My host dad owns a restaurant & bar in Ft. Jesus called Kiboko. In my Kiswahili class last week I asked what Kiboko means and was told that like many Kiswahili words, it means several different things. Kiboko is Kiswahili for hippo, whip, and a word meaning boyfriend/girlfriend (a reference to he or she is whipped). It is next to an internet café, a butchery, and a club ironically named ‘Club Denver.’ My host family is of the Luo tribe and plays traditional Luo music in their bar. Candles illuminate the tables at night and the atmosphere is always festive.

My mom owns a small clothing store right by our house. She sells mitumba or second hand clothing, an extremely popular small business in Kenya. You can score designer labels for only 200 shillings (less than 3 USD) making it much more worth it for Kenyans to purchase clothing at markets versus expensive retail outlets. Her stall is right behind Toi Market. Kenyans from all over the region come to Toi Market to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables, beans, charcoal, hats, belts, watches, jewelry, clothing, DVD’s, and various other goods.

I have four host brothers ages 24, 21, 15, and 13 and one sister age 11. I love spending time with them and we often watch Tusker Project Fame together, the equivalent of American Idol. I have the most difficult time trying to explain the house I live in. The best I can do is to compare it loosely to a rectangular duplex with restrooms on the outside of the rectangle. Several other families live in the rectangle. Our living room is the hang out place for all of the kids. There can be as many as ten kids at one time huddled around the television playing Fifa World Cup Futbol. My favorite neighborhood kid is Gid, a two year old who enjoys ramming into walls while fighting invisible ninjas.

I’ve got to sign off now. Time for a Kiswahili smack down at school! Quaheri!

One Ring to Rule Them All...porteño edition

We're all eagerly awaiting Jennifer's next post in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres, and it should be forthcoming. She's been really busy and has intermittent access to the Internet, but from everything she sent us thus far, she already has lots of things to tell us and stories a-plenty, never you fear. But on this side of the pond...

My time with the Hat is almost over. Soon, it will be sent off to Washington, D.C., where Megan will have the power, the pleasure, and the responsibility of ownership. Until then, the Hat is still mine, and I am wearing it as I type about this particular adventure.

How do you imagine South American music? Peruvian flute bands?* Well, I don't think you imagined Tengwar**, who describe their sound as EPIC FOLK METAL. (Tengwar, for all our more 'mainstream' readers is the name of the elvish script based on Indian brahmic scripts and created by J.R.R. Tolkein for his Lord of the Rings trilogy). As a card-carrying member of the Mythopoeic Society, stumbling upon this hobbit-loving crowd seemed like fate rather than dumb luck.

It was a Friday night, I had been planning on staying in, but my host-brother was having some old grade-school friends over. I knew if I didn't leave soon one of two terribly socially awkward things would happen: 1) I would stay in my room, typing on my computer all night, while I heard the laughter and conversation outside, only emerging from my room to use bathroom, like some Gollum-like creature. 2) Be introduced to everyone, and then becoming the awkward extranjera who doesn't really understand what's going on in a get-together that was supposed to be only old friends.

Luckily, I have made friends in the program here who took pity on me, and we hastily made plans to meet at a restaurant relatively near all of our residences. It was a German/Irish place (the two are nearly synonmous on this side of the world) and the bottom floor was crowded with porteños so we decided to go upstairs. Where, lo and behold, we came upon a scene that could have at the Renaissance Faire; it was the band setting up for an acoustic show, and they were all dressed like barbarians, furs and boots, the whole shebang. Surprise and more awkwardness ensued as we went back downstairs, unsure of what it was we had just witnessed. Retreat is more or less a safe initial response, although in retrospect, we shouldn't have left.

A half hour later we began to hear the celtic melodies and rhythms coming from upstairs. People were stomping, clapping, and singing and a variety of metalheads were walking up and down the stairs. What was this music? It sounded awesome! We went back upstairs only to be turned away at the top by a waitress who said there was no more room.

What happened next? Torture. To be so close and yet so far from the fantasy geeks of Argentina was almost too much to bear. After the show, I went and talked to one of the roadies who told me that the band sang in English because it was more "celtic" and that they often had performances at this establishment. I could see them again.

I never thought to find celtic/metal/punk in ARGENTINA, a country that has not had as much British immigration as, say, Canada and the U.S. There is a bagpipe and celtic music tradition in Northern Spain, but the band here had a distinct fantasy flare, namely Tolkienian. I'm surprised to find a Tolkien fan base of non-English speakers here, even an Argentine Tolkien Association (ATA), mostly because Tolkien's medium and expertise was in the English language. He wrote the epic and his stories with the intent of using as many Anglo-Saxon derived words as he could. I am extremely curious about how well that attention to detail was translated into Spanish, and if the fan base grew up from around the LOTR films, the ex-pat community, fantasy fans, or the metalheads.

The existence of Tengwar reassures me. I have been having difficulty finding sci-fi and fantasy books here, in Spanish or English, and the stuff that is here, like Asimov collections and Dragonlance, is not exactly representative of the state of the art. I will definitely be exploring this subject more and at least buying their new album as soon as it comes out, if only because I missed out on the Ren Faire this year!

--Nicole
*Click here for South Park clip about Peruvian flute bands.
**Tengwar's Myspace site

Cookies of my life

I’ve only been in D.C. for a week and it feels like so much has happened already. Naturally, when I was looking for a common thread so I could encapsulate it all into one blog post, I settled on food as a theme. As a girl who may love food a tad bit too much, it was the only element present in all of this week’s adventures. Specifically, cookies keep popping up in the most glorious moments of the week. Thus, here are the cookies of my week.

Monday, I moved into my apartment. More accurately, my family moved me into an efficiency that I share. Although I questioned the merits of having both my mom and dad out in D.C., it was actually very nice. As a junior/senior, I’m pretty sure I was the only one dragging around a set of parents. But maybe I’ve grown up enough not to care my “image”. I can only hope that as a middle aged woman I will wander the streets in a muumuu. We spent the day running around getting furniture without running into a single cookie until we went to dinner. Then we went to McDonald’s to get a cookies-n-cream mcflurrie and a brawl almost broke out. (My dad actually blogged about it here.)

Tuesday, I realized I am a complete sap. As I sent my parents down the metro to go back home, I shed more than a few tears. To the caring readers of the world wide web, I can admit that I wept. For some reason, leaving home is always sad to me. Walking back, shoving cookies into my mouth and crying, I ran into one of my old roommates. I hope she believed that old “my-contacts-are-acting-up” lie. (Maybe I do still care a little about image.) Later, I topped myself by crying in class during “The Fog of War”. Why? Movies about the Cold War just make me cry ok?!?

Typical charming me

Wednesday, I completely restructured my life. Classes were changed, majors and minors declared, advisors were spoken too, and emails were sent. Basically, I'm officially an International Economics major with a minor in journalism now. The best part is that I’ll be getting credit for my internship. This means I only have to be in four classes, which makes things a whole lot smoother. I didn’t get a cookie for that, but I know I deserved one. I even remember thinking, “By God, get this woman a cookie.”

Thursday and Friday were also devoid of cookies, but to be fair, they were devoid of almost any other food too. Life is so busy now that I’m back. I actually have to carve out time to eat. But I started my D.C. Reads job and so far I love it. The other leaders are exceptionally nice students and somehow knew I was the co-president of the Scrabble club. It was probably the only time I’ll ever hear the phrase, “I’m sorry, but are you the Co-president of the Scrabble club? I heard about you!” Usually it’s more along the lines of: “I’m sorry, but are you going to move out of the way?” or something else not special.

And Saturday, after a very long shift at work, my new roommate let me have some of the pizza she made. (Pizza is round, like a cookie. Sometimes called pie.) It was the only thing I had to eat that day, so by default, I just thought of it as a cookie.

Many more shenanigans are brewing; I can feel it in my bones, so keep looking for updates. Right now, I’m trying to edit the audio for my radio show and our “Love Advice from Engineers” segment. If you want to hear that, you can stream at this link or just become a fan of the show. Phew. Sorry this was a little like a diary entry and less like a post. Until next time!