Long time no write

How it do, friends & family? I'm sitting in my room in good ol' New Orleans, watching the rain through my balcony door. Sometimes the rain days are better than the sun days. Today was better than most.

I got a full night's rest after a weekend at the beach in Alabama. I could write page upon page of my criticisms about Alabama/Mississippi/the South in general, but I won't, because I don't feel the need to be political. That's one thing I feel like I should be but I'm not. I just don't like talking politics. It's rude, right? Regardless of the many backwards things there, the beach was nice and I only got a little sunburned and it's because I neglected to put sunscreen on my upper left thigh. My bad. You know, I do have one (more than one if I think hard) really nice thing to say about Alabama- they have a lot of great farmers markets. I wanted to stop so badly, but we were crunched for time and I had no cash on me....but I bet those peaches are delicious. What a pie I could make...

Speaking of, I've been slacking off on my baking these days. I was on a roll, starting at the end of June, when I would make at least one baked treat a week. After my birthday, and the bag of peanut butter cookies that just couldn't get eaten, I stopped. Maybe I'll make something this week. It is only Monday.

Work improves daily. The kids and I are becoming more comfortable with one another and learning each other's likes and dislikes. Communication is key.

So I still don't have pictures of our place...because I haven't taken any. But I will! I'll wait until there is no rain. Fingers crossed. Be good and stay sweet.

Tired.

Having a full-time job is a lot of work. Ha..ha.

I flew back to Austin on Wednesday night and I am feeling a little bit tired. I've been thinking that maybe I should get one of those credit cards that gives you airline miles when you buy stuff. I don't know when I got to flying so much, but I feel like I do. And I think that's funny because I like to think that I'm somewhat of a "green person". Austin was nice, though. I got to hit up the three food establishments I've been missing (Mother's, FoodHeads and Wheatsville) and spend time with friends I thought I wouldn't see for a long time.

ANYWAY, on the plane this morning I felt tired because it was 6:45AM and I've had about eight hours of sleep the past two nights. The clouds looked like the stuffing had been ripped out of a giant, well-loved teddy bear's stomach. And I got to watch the sun rise, which is nice, although I guess I see it rise almost every weekday now.

I don't know. The past couple of days have just got me to get to some thinking. I whine too often about things that really aren't problems. However, I don't think that I should spend so much time down playing the value of my problems or comparing them to problems that will Always be worse than mine (poverty, hunger, whatnot) because they do still matter to my life. Do you know what I mean? Just because it's middle class, doesn't make it a non-problem.

Sigh, I'm still tired and this doesn't make much sense. I think I should take a nap.

Hi hi

So I thought I'd include a video I took on the train from Granada to Barcelona back in June. I talked to my dad on the phone just after I made it, or maybe just before, so that he could see what it is like. So, here you all may see what it is like too!

I've survived my first full work week here in New Orleans and I think I can tell you all a bit better now what my life is going to be like. I work as an in-office nanny at a company called Earth Search. Their website is www.earth-search.com. You should check it out. Here is a cut and paste text from their website that explains what they do:

"ESI maintains a full-time, professional staff of archaeolologists, historians, and architectural historians with in-depth knowledge of the field of cultural resource management, and has extensive experience with intensive cultural resource surveys, NRHP evaluations, archaeological data recovery, HABS and HAER documentation, construction monitoring, archival research, informant interviews, and Section 106 documentation. We have in-house capabilities in archaeology, historic preservation, history, marine archaeology, zooarchaeology, paleoethnobotany, bioarchaeology, and cultural anthropology."

I realize obviously that this job has nothing to do with my History degree, but I don't think it took me very long after graduation to figure out that most people don't really do anything that has to do with their degree. I get paid pretty well, have health benefits and a good office environment to work in. I can wear what I want to work AND I get to play with really funny and intelligent little kids all day. It's a pretty good deal. Plus, I think in the future I'd really like to teach English abroad to kids, so it'll be great experience for that. I also think that there may or may not be a slight chance to do other work in the office someday. Maybe then I can use my degree.

I am happy and things are good. I can't really think of any very funny stories to tell at the moment. I did have a dream the other night that I asked Allison how to get "baby smell" out of my clothes. Oh! Other good news... I was concerned when moving here about where I was going to buy groceries (being vegan and not wanting to support Whole Foods). Austin has a great co-op where I would do 85 percent of my shopping. I just learned (via a flyer someone posted on the refrigerator at work) that a co-op is going to open up in 2009 just down the street from where I work. HOORAY! I went ahead and paid the $100 to become a member now and I think I am going to start going to the meetings that they have. Anyway, I'm excited by this. It also makes living here feel a lot more permanent.

And I feel okay with that too. I am going to try to take some pictures and give you guys an idea of where I live.

Good news.

I got a job. And I start on Monday. Now's when I start complaining about how I hate having to be a "grown up" and going to work and "selling out to the man."


But really...I kinda like it. Don't tell.

Week One

Anyone else who has ever looked for a job, ever, probably understands how I feel right now: incredibly frustrated. I'm at the lovely post-college place of little to no experience, but a hell of a lot of courses about post-colonial rhetoric in modern American cinema...or something equally useless. I've had a couple of interviews, so that's good, but still! I need employment. I need purpose. I need structure!

I think most of my frustration stems from everything feeling so unknown. And I know that I won't "know" anything unless I start to make an effort to "know" things, but it turns out that is hard to do. It's hard to make yourself leave your comfortable little, air-conditioned space and go out into the big, bad, humid, stormy city that everyone tells you you are going to be shot in. And really, REALLY when I think about it, that isn't what makes me nervous or hesitant. It's just the not knowing. And maybe the roads here. They are miserable. Driving in New Orleans is like driving in a foreign country. There is all this "neutral ground" crap that I still totally don't understand and now that the street cars are running, it's just one more hazard that's there to look out for.

My point, sort of: if you are ever going to move to a new city, try to have a job before you get there. Having nothing to do is much harder than the opposite...psychologically anyway.

First night in New Orleans

I had a dream last night that I was back at High School. It had just been rebuilt and had room for tons of kids, even little tiny ones. I went into my math class, where there were also some other people from my High School, notably a group of overly eager people who REALLY REALLY wanted to sit with each other in the front row. I took a spot in the back next to Allison. There was a math problem up on the overhead that everyone was working on. I looked at it for a minute and picked up my pen as if I were going to attempt to solve it. After a few seconds and looking around, I put down my pen and said out loud to the class, "Yeah...this isn't the place for me, so...I'm just going to go now. History is more my thing. I like facts. I like reading and writing History ...so... see ya later." I stood up and my math teacher, Mr. Rowe (the same man from my Pre-Calculus and AP Calculus classes), followed me out the door. He gave me a huge bear hug, lifted me off of the ground even, and said, "Good luck. I think you should write your first novel." But in very kind and supportive way and then went on to describe what I should have in my novel, WHICH! terribly, I can't remember now, but he went on for quite some time. Then I walked away and woke up.

Is this a bad sign?

Back in Texas

Hi, I am safely back to Texas AND figured out how to make the title not be in Hindi.

Getting back to Texas was a trial. We were awake for nearly 24 straight hours and by the end of it, I felt that way. I feel much happier to be back in Texas than I did the last time I came home. I know that this is because before I was leaving a home and this time I wasn't leaving anything necessarily. I am excited to not live out of a backpack anymore. I will be living out of boxes that my mother has so kindly organized for me. I do feel a little bit like a child when I have to ask my mom where she packed my underwear. So it goes...

Even though I only just arrived home 48 hours ago, I think I have figured out why I took this trip. That sounds stupid, but it's not, hold on, I'll explain. Obviously, I had motivations for taking this trip in the first place: Leonie's wedding, seeing friends, seeing things, getting away (from what, I don't know), etc. And I did all of these things (I have the pictures to prove it) but post-trip, I realize that there was a lot more about this past month, beyond the obvious.

Before I left in May I was feeling a lot of anxiety and a lot of stress and generally not in a very positive state of mind. The only thing that was really "getting me through" it all was that I would be in Germany in a matter of days. I am not really sure why I felt like Germany (or the people in it) were going to solve my problems, but I did. I am very good at running away. But anyway, I wasn't feeling good about moving to New Orleans or out of my place in Austin or my parents moving or really, pretty much, anything that happened to be taking place at the time. (This was before Barack Obama was named the democratic nominee). But time continued on and everything happened whether I thought I was prepared to deal with or not. Turns out that's how things work: shit happens, you adapt. So, time rolled on and I got all packed up and moved out and to Dallas and on a plane and in Frankfurt and in a car and at Alban Stolz Haus and then it was...you know...real. I walked in the door, passed the mail boxes, up the stairs, into the kitchen and I was there. It smelled the same. It mostly looked the same. I saw the same people. It was weird. Really weird. And uncomfortable and I had to really think about why I felt that way so that I could stop feeling that way because Lord knows I don't already feel weird enough about everything. I really like change, most of the time, and I was having a lot of difficulty dealing with this place that had been such a huge part of my life in the past few years. Anyway, I'm not going to go into that much deeper.

But the trip continued and I pretty much continued to feel uneasiness about moving. And then I saw Kristen and we had a lot of time to just talk and she shared about her experiences with moving abroad and being alone and adapting to different situations and it was very good for me. And I began to feel a bit better. And then I traveled alone through Spain and met Crystal, which was great, because it was a connection back to the past. And then I traveled alone to meet Helki, who was a reconnection with the present. And we made it through France, although I got sick again but was nursed by Chris' mother in Paris. And then we got back to Germany and again we had the mindset of Germany somehow solving our problems. Cologne was great, but we saw Erik there, who more or less, I think could be considered a tie back to Freiburg. So I was now having a sort of emotional mix of past, present, future, and it was strange but not bad. And anyway, after this rambling and poorly written paragraph, I have this to say.

I realized the importance of maintaining relationships and giving people more than a face-value. I learned about learning from other's experiences. I became slightly more self-aware, or at least more comfortable with the idea of being alone. And I think, most importantly, I am less afraid now of certain things I was a month ago. Not necessarily in some huge way (it was only a month) but I am definitely slightly (slightly) less wimpy, and I think that is good. And this is what I have to offer you for a post right now.