Shout out to my girl Elyse, she-who-should-have-won Season One of America's Next Top Model. My sentiments, well, exactly:
"By the way, my countrymen, it's been eight months since I've been here, and I just love what you've done with the place! Chicken fries? "I'm N Luv (Wit a Stripper)"? Snakes on a Plane? Majestic! Our country is truly crunker than it has ever been. "
In other slightly related news, I am a really big girl, for better or worse. I was on my way out to Gresham to hang out with the Russians, with Amy, the caseworker. She drove me out so I could translate for her with a new family we were signing up for the kids outreach program. Poor chick is on crutches after a nasty bike accident a few weeks back. We're literally in sight of the exit off 86 I think, when she realizes the cars kinda making funny noises. We think nothing of it, 'till five minutes later it gets louder. I look out the window, and 'lo and behold, I glimpse pieces of car trailing after us back down the highway.
Me: "Um, I think you've got a flat tire or something"
Two more minutes pass, and the car starts weaving.
Me: "No, I'm sure you've got a big friggin' flat tire..."
So we pull off into the shoulder, I get out, and she inches past me. The tire is seriously shredded, like, it looks like it's been mauled by a small dinosaur. No sooner do we stand staring at each other scratching our heads, and I manage to get the bike rack off the back, the spare and the jack out of its little secret underground compartment, then a magical bearded stranger swoops down and rescues us. Two, in fact. This dude had the tire off and the spare on in, no joke, less than 10 minutes flat. I was AMAZED.
So to my mysterious bearded stranger I say this: LET ME CHANGE MY OWN DAMN TIRE, MKAY? I may look helpless and confused, but I promise you. ITS ALL A RUSE.
Dang it.
In other really less related news, I'm out of my lease on campus come September, and already daydreaming of Santiago, in all its dirty glory. OK, so daydreaming of Latin french brasilien guys who play gorgeously on their acoustic guitars and rock the Chuck Taylors. Oh me...
I'm wondering what my russian-czech-spanish hybrid will sound like...
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Friday, June 16, 2006
Fug
So, for the most part, I've gotten used to everyone at my workplace just automatically assuming I'm their collective daughter. For the most part, I've embraced that, and used it to my advantage. Never have I recieved so much free food.
Until today.
Now, I love my job, and I've made a pretty solid concerted effort to dress the part of the poised mature office worker. I've consumed more makeup these past six months than I have in, well, ever. I dress much nicer, and much more conservatively, than I would otherwise. I am on time. I am cheerful. I am engaged. I am caffeinated. I am enthusiastic.
Friday's are my one and only day where I don't have to get up at 5:15 am, in order to be at the Graduate School by 7am. Fridays, are known to some, as casual Friday. So today I slept in 'till a most luxurious 8 AM, had a nice slow shower, nice slow breakfast. Hey, even caught a ride to school with Cat across the hall. I am dressed well, however, in jeans and a polo, and did not stop for coffee at the Chevron on the corner, as is now my habit. There is not a smidge of makeup on my face. Not even chapstick.
Enter caffeine headache of doom.
I was on my way to my bosses boss to get some signitures, earlier today. We have an atleast congenial relationship, and she seems to take a pretty solid interest in my affairs. She also has a 20 year old daughter, as does my boss. See above. So I get my signitures, and turn to leave, she grabs me by the shoulders and says:
"You know, you need to take care of yourself. We love you, and you do great work for us, and we love you, and by all means work work work make lots of money, but you know, if you need time off or something..."
Thanks, Mary. Thanks a big one.
Until today.
Now, I love my job, and I've made a pretty solid concerted effort to dress the part of the poised mature office worker. I've consumed more makeup these past six months than I have in, well, ever. I dress much nicer, and much more conservatively, than I would otherwise. I am on time. I am cheerful. I am engaged. I am caffeinated. I am enthusiastic.
Friday's are my one and only day where I don't have to get up at 5:15 am, in order to be at the Graduate School by 7am. Fridays, are known to some, as casual Friday. So today I slept in 'till a most luxurious 8 AM, had a nice slow shower, nice slow breakfast. Hey, even caught a ride to school with Cat across the hall. I am dressed well, however, in jeans and a polo, and did not stop for coffee at the Chevron on the corner, as is now my habit. There is not a smidge of makeup on my face. Not even chapstick.
Enter caffeine headache of doom.
I was on my way to my bosses boss to get some signitures, earlier today. We have an atleast congenial relationship, and she seems to take a pretty solid interest in my affairs. She also has a 20 year old daughter, as does my boss. See above. So I get my signitures, and turn to leave, she grabs me by the shoulders and says:
"You know, you need to take care of yourself. We love you, and you do great work for us, and we love you, and by all means work work work make lots of money, but you know, if you need time off or something..."
Thanks, Mary. Thanks a big one.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
I have just succeeded in dipping half my hair in my coffee.
Good morning Peggy. Its Monday and I have just succeeded in dipping half my hair into my coffee. Brilliant. I'm sitting at Papaccino's nursing a rather large carmel coffee concoction and a bit of an endorphin rush after fighting my way up the hill. I wanted so bad to stop this morning and decompress a bit, to purge some of this craziness on paper. But honestly, I don't know if I can let it flow when I know theres a time guillotine hanging over my head. I'll be late enough as it is, even just leaving here by 7, I'll make it up to campus by 7:30. But its finally a five day work week, so horray horray horray I'll be in and out in 6 hours.
Summer is slowly snowballing into one big experiment and excitement trip. I fear that the bubble will burst and the secret well where I'm finding all my energy will dry up and disappear. I've made a pact that doing good works will keep me sane, and so far so good, but it is such a novely I cant help but question the unexpected gift. I started working for Catholic charities a few weeks ago, doing volunteer, what? Tutoring? Life Skills? Cultural Orientation? Some conglomeration of all of it I gues. The coordinator for the refugee program is an L & C grad, desperate for Russian speakers, thus entery Peggy, stage left. She matched me with a Meshketian Turk family who arrived maybe a month ago from Uzbekistan by way of Voronezh for maybe 15 years. Only real hitch is they live way the hel out in SE, basically Gresham really, its like SE 182 and Stark, the end of the Blue line MAX.
En Route to Gresham...
So a rather delayed start due to some loss in the translation when I tried to kall the kids earlier, but hey, an unexpected detour to a new haunt and a beautiful barista who allowed my pithy attempts at flirtation, and hey, what more could a girl ask for?
I don't know why I want so badly to do this right, the whole Russian thing. Maybe it feeds these pangs of destiny that keep ringing so close, the unshakable affliction that I am in hot pursuit of my calling. I keep being told in very many small ways that I should be teaching, and I cant run far enough. Or maybe I'm full of shit and I just get off being able to speak Russian and do some small good in my world.
En Route to town...
I'm sitting on the train and the guys around me don't realize I know they're talking about me in Spanish. The girls behind me are trash talking some guy in Russian. And suburbia is forever suburbia, except for Portland is so gentrified that here the poor are pushed to the outskirts and the rich lounge about in $1000 apartments. But here the two faces of suburbia have come to a grudging peace and you have the modest 2 bedroom single family homes sitting across the wannabe culdesac taunting the newly arrived. The stratification is palpable, and I'm intrigued. Out as far as my charges live, not a person of color to be seen. Well, no, thats not true. When I got off the train earlier I saw a whole Black family chasing this very drunk Russian guy, screaming that he'd stollen some of their shit. I just do what I do best, keep walking, and imagine I'm as inconspicuous as I endevour to seem. And suddely everyone I see on the street, on the bus, on the trains, everyone is someone from somewhere else. I swear to God I was sitting across from the Russian woman who works at Ross who always yells at me for messing up the shoes. And its weird because faces are all taking on new weight and new meaning, and everyone I encounter becomes someone I knew in a past life. The recollections come in layers and suddnly it hits me, all the small mysterious sources of this petulant dejavus, whatever it is. Like on this trian now, suddenly, I am on the train v Cechach on the ourskirts of rural Prague, watching the monsterous panelaky give way to the city I so adore. The settlments are built up around transit stops, real autonomous villages with their own gyms and shops and bars, the endless trek into civilization encapsulated in the last 800 yards of parking lot to some consumer mecca. It is not in the grand philosophical meanderings that we are able to grasp the oneness of humanity, but rather in the mundane dailty battles and the well worn trip to somewhere and someone and something neccesary. And suddenly life here is life elsewhere, the layers of existance then just a matter of circumstance and faith. I wonder then, how rare it is to never really get that far in their quest for...what wholeness? Identity? Understanding? Its all luck, and the only thing that distinguishes my experience here from those people's lives back in Voronezh is just luck, perception, and the faith I have in my surroundings and my relationships. Thats just it though, experience is a matter of perceiving and processing the world, not of the events themselves.
Summer is slowly snowballing into one big experiment and excitement trip. I fear that the bubble will burst and the secret well where I'm finding all my energy will dry up and disappear. I've made a pact that doing good works will keep me sane, and so far so good, but it is such a novely I cant help but question the unexpected gift. I started working for Catholic charities a few weeks ago, doing volunteer, what? Tutoring? Life Skills? Cultural Orientation? Some conglomeration of all of it I gues. The coordinator for the refugee program is an L & C grad, desperate for Russian speakers, thus entery Peggy, stage left. She matched me with a Meshketian Turk family who arrived maybe a month ago from Uzbekistan by way of Voronezh for maybe 15 years. Only real hitch is they live way the hel out in SE, basically Gresham really, its like SE 182 and Stark, the end of the Blue line MAX.
En Route to Gresham...
So a rather delayed start due to some loss in the translation when I tried to kall the kids earlier, but hey, an unexpected detour to a new haunt and a beautiful barista who allowed my pithy attempts at flirtation, and hey, what more could a girl ask for?
I don't know why I want so badly to do this right, the whole Russian thing. Maybe it feeds these pangs of destiny that keep ringing so close, the unshakable affliction that I am in hot pursuit of my calling. I keep being told in very many small ways that I should be teaching, and I cant run far enough. Or maybe I'm full of shit and I just get off being able to speak Russian and do some small good in my world.
En Route to town...
I'm sitting on the train and the guys around me don't realize I know they're talking about me in Spanish. The girls behind me are trash talking some guy in Russian. And suburbia is forever suburbia, except for Portland is so gentrified that here the poor are pushed to the outskirts and the rich lounge about in $1000 apartments. But here the two faces of suburbia have come to a grudging peace and you have the modest 2 bedroom single family homes sitting across the wannabe culdesac taunting the newly arrived. The stratification is palpable, and I'm intrigued. Out as far as my charges live, not a person of color to be seen. Well, no, thats not true. When I got off the train earlier I saw a whole Black family chasing this very drunk Russian guy, screaming that he'd stollen some of their shit. I just do what I do best, keep walking, and imagine I'm as inconspicuous as I endevour to seem. And suddely everyone I see on the street, on the bus, on the trains, everyone is someone from somewhere else. I swear to God I was sitting across from the Russian woman who works at Ross who always yells at me for messing up the shoes. And its weird because faces are all taking on new weight and new meaning, and everyone I encounter becomes someone I knew in a past life. The recollections come in layers and suddnly it hits me, all the small mysterious sources of this petulant dejavus, whatever it is. Like on this trian now, suddenly, I am on the train v Cechach on the ourskirts of rural Prague, watching the monsterous panelaky give way to the city I so adore. The settlments are built up around transit stops, real autonomous villages with their own gyms and shops and bars, the endless trek into civilization encapsulated in the last 800 yards of parking lot to some consumer mecca. It is not in the grand philosophical meanderings that we are able to grasp the oneness of humanity, but rather in the mundane dailty battles and the well worn trip to somewhere and someone and something neccesary. And suddenly life here is life elsewhere, the layers of existance then just a matter of circumstance and faith. I wonder then, how rare it is to never really get that far in their quest for...what wholeness? Identity? Understanding? Its all luck, and the only thing that distinguishes my experience here from those people's lives back in Voronezh is just luck, perception, and the faith I have in my surroundings and my relationships. Thats just it though, experience is a matter of perceiving and processing the world, not of the events themselves.
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