life: in progress

Five days in and I'm beginning (barely) to feel like I have an idea of what it will be like to live here for the next three months. We spent our first three nights staying in Geneva, and here are a few things worth mentioning: -->It's true what they say.  Wine is in fact much cheaper than water in this fine city. -->The food is superb.  Fresh, local, whole.   -->Everyone (and I really do mean everyone) is multi-lingual, and being surrounded by it is the coolest thing. -->It is possible that, if you go to Mr. Pickwick pub on a Thursday night, you can witness the extraordinary.  Two grown women singing Shania Twain karaoke to an almost empty room.  But really, that don't impress me much.  -->Germans are splendid tour guides, but they don't like to wait around for taking pictures!  However, I did get the chance to capture these snapshots from the city:        Martin Luther goes green   ...

I wouldn't be nearly as nervous about the fact that I'm spending the next 15 weeks in Geneva, Switzerland, except that I only have one pair of black tights, and they have a hole in them.  I first saw the hole in November, and love them so much that I couldn't bear to replace them.  It's been three months now and they have been holding out like champs.  So many times I turned down buying a new pair; I had so much confidence in them!  But now that I'm in the airport, suitcase already en route to Europe, I'm having my doubts.  Oh well.  I guess this is my first lesson in trust.  The truth is, some things just have to be left up to fate.   My latest adventure (read: expensive endeavor) is going to be touring the Swiss countryside, skiing the Alps, and sampling every kind of chocolate, cheese, and wine I can afford.  In the off chance that I get tired of chocolate or skiing, I also registered for 16 college credits to occupy my time, studying g...

(this is who i was) (this is who i am) (this is who i want to be) You know those little spongy things that start out really tiny and then you put them in a glass of water and they grow bigger? They squish up against the sides of the glass and you think they’re done growing, but if you put them in the bathtub, they will get even bigger? It’s like I just got put into a bathtub and realized that I have so much more room to grow. I feel like I’m outgrowing my clothes. I mean, as a person, I’m just taking in so much that I don’t even think there’s room for it all in my head (hopefully the overflow doesn’t go to my hips). My current, somewhat narrow worldview and understanding of things literally can’t even keep up with everything my mind is learning. What do you do when this happens? Well, you buy new clothes. I don’t know exactly when this process began. But if I could draw it on a graph, it would look something like a series of exponential curves, with ea...

It’s easy for me to talk about poverty from the comfort of my bedroom, propped up with a few pillows, typing on my laptop, and trying to decide whether I should play music with my phone, computer, or ipod.    It’s much harder to talk about poverty when it’s staring you directly in the face. If you’ve never experienced this, take a ride on any passenger train in India. The train station in Bangalore was about 1 hour by bus from Visthar, through the most crowded streets I have ever encountered, and I’ve been in some pretty serious traffic.   The difference is that in America, we categorize.   “Trucks only” “Cars only” “Bus lane” “HOV lane.”   But in India there are no such laws.   “Truck? Rickshaw? Camel? Bike? Feet? Whatever your mode of transportation, you are welcome here!”   One thing that you will never be in a car in India is bored, even without a built in DVD player.   On the ride M, R, and I were having a casual conversat...

I am catching a flight to London tonight, and from there I'm going straight to Bangalore, India.  Even after reading it in print and seeing my bags stacked next to me, I can hardly believe that in two days, I will be in a foreign country. And not just any country at that, but INDIA!  I have wanted to go there for as long as I can remember, collecting wooden elephants and buying sari material to drape over my windows in my bedroom.  Now, it's finally happening.  It seems to me that everything is more extreme there: the heat, the traffic, the wealth, the poverty, even the colors seem more vibrant.  I can't wait to find out if that's true.  Goodbye USA, hello love. :)