The Trip, Part I

It's not like I haven't gone on any trips lately--I kind of feel bad for not giving others this kind of attention. But this really was a special one. I signed up for a Church history class this semester because I needed two more religion credits, two more Honors credits, and something that fit with a crazy schedule. This class was the only one that fit the bill. I was surprised, though, to get an email this summer informing me that the class included a trip to Church history sites in the eastern US. My parents, bless them, agreed to pay the subsidized fee--and it was an amazing week.

We flew into Rochester on the 22nd. For the first half of the trip, we were in rental cars and mini vans. We landed and started driving, and all of us were just excited to be there. Couldn't quite believe it--midterms one day, New York the next.

The next morning we went first thing to the Joseph Smith farm. This is where the 14-year-old Joseph Smith prayed about which church to join, and got a direct answer from God and Jesus Christ.

I was just blown away with how beautiful upstate New York is. When we were flying in I had already pretty much decided to move there. The farm itself is also beautiful. And, this is silly, but part of what was so cool about being there was that that's where the Restoration DVD was filmed--the DVD I sometimes saw three times a day on my mission with people learning about the Church. It's a good one. Click the link, go watch it.

The Sacred Grove was a highlight of the trip. It was so peaceful. A few people talked about hoping for a life-changing experience going into the Grove where Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ came to answer a prayer, but that that didn't happen. That instead, there was a feeling of calm and of peace. The feeling here--that feeling--was like being in the temple.

Next was the Grandin Print Shop, where the first edition of the Book of Mormon was printed. As we were about to leave, a senior missionary stood up and said they were one of a handful of missions that was piloting a program with missionaries blogging. MISSIONARIES BLOGGING! Using technology, how wonderful is that? And it's not just the senior couples, but young missionaries, too. Here's his blog, and a link to all the official missionary blogs that have been started. I'll put a link in my blogroll, too.


This is Alvin Smith's grave (Joseph Smith's older brother), though his remains got washed away in a storm a long time ago. So his grave marker.

Home Again, Redbox, Halloween

I got home last night from a Church history trip to Palmyra, New York, Kirtland, Ohio, and Nauvoo, Illinois. It was a wonderful trip. I wanted to blog while I was gone but then I forgot my camera cable...so I'll post about it--with pictures!--real soon. I feel so cheerful since getting back. It was so good to have in the middle of a hard semester.

I used Redbox for the first time in my life tonight. It just blew me away. I think it's pretty much space-age. Technology in general is just amazing me particularly lately. Maybe the Church history tour helped with this--hearing lots of stories and reading about a time when communication was hard, transportation was hard. Now there are cell phones, computer models of buildings, instant publications, airplanes...and Redbox. The video comes out in a little case. It really is like something out of a movie. Seriously.

Today was Halloween on campus--the day closest to it that people could dress up for. This just delights me. I saw a black cat and a couple of wizards. There was the Queen of Hearts with a full Elizabethan collar. I saw a Miss Frizzle with red curly hair piled up, and a dress made out of planet fabric. I had two favorites, though. One was a girl dressed up as an old person. This itself is not that creative. What made me smile was that she was on her own, but still walking with her cane using little shuffles. She was on her cell phone, telling the person on the other end in a grandma voice, "no, today my name is Granny Granger, and that's what I made my second-graders call me." She carried on the voice and the shuffle for as long as I could see or hear her. The second favorite was when I went up to the video section of the library on campus. They keep the videos behind a big desk, and employees have to go get them for you. I was asking about one when all of a sudden Charlie Chaplin walked out from the shelves of videos. I was severely disappointed when he started talking to someone.

Poetry About Cannibalism

French lit assignment: Write a poem (two verses of four lines of twelve syllables, ABAB rime scheme, etc). Topic: food.

L’anthropophagie

Le mâle d’araignée survive pas la veuve

Et un têtard (parfois) mangerait son voisin

La version animale ce n’est pas la preuve—

Le cannibalisme, c’est aussi pour l’humain.

En Nouvelle-Guinée, ils ont la pratique

L’expédition Donner, ils l’ont fait dans le froid

Quoiqu’on préfère un cœur, le cerveau, j’explique :

C’est anthropophagie—et dangereux parfois.

Sometimes I am uncomfortable with my major

I was walking back to my apartment today, past the dorms that are being torn down. The project fascinates me, and I stopped to take some pictures. The sun was out--that beautiful, evening sun--and as I took my pictures the workers were packing up and going home. Some Latinos were duct taping a salvaged desk or bookshelf on top of a car--with the sound of the tape ripping off the roll.

They were chattering in Spanish. That's my major, I thought. I am studying your language. I do it in a university classroom, where una güera simpática who speaks with the zeta teaches us how to stage seventeenth-century plays. I study their language, I thought. And it has nothing to do with them.

Walk Out

I had an hour between classes the other day. I was in the math building, and went to a computer lab--that a friend had shown me a few weeks earlier--to check my email. I was at a computer towards the middle of the room, reading through some things, when a woman came in, uncapped a dry erase marker, and said, "okay, now where did we end off last week?" Hands started raising around me as this woman wrote complicated equations on the white board and as I looked around in amazement at my managing to be right in the middle of somebody's class. It was then that I noticed a sign on the door that clearly stated open access to the lab had ended five minutes previously. I logged out of the computer, told myself it wasn't really happening, and got up and walked out.

Cannon Center Dada

Yesterday in my French class, we talked about the Dadaists and their artistic movement after WWI. According to my professor, they were disenchanted generation of young people. The War wasn't as glorious as they had been promised, and when they got back, no one could understand what they had been through--or even conceive their war in the trenches when machine guns and tanks and gas had barely replaced horse and cannon warfare.

And thus began the Dada movement, with the goal of making nonsense. The world didn't make sense, reality was disconnected from language--therefore disconnect language from any reality, the Dadaists figured. It was a primal scream and a hatred of civilization when what they saw of "civilization" was rotten to the core.

But it's also that disconnect when someone just doesn't understand. When there is a gap that doesn't get crossed. Like I wrote in my notes: that frustration when you're trying to communicate something, and there is something dividing that communication. The other person hasn't had the same experiences as you, or they are too young, or too old, or you are afraid of hurting them my telling everything, or they don't understand the words you are using, or, or...

But that's not why I'm writing about Dada. During my freshman year, I was sitting in the cafeteria with some friends, and one of them brought up talking about it in on of her classes, and the other friend knew what she was talking about. I didn't have any idea what they were talking about, and didn't pay much attention--I was so distracted with my delight in the word. Dada. This delight elicited the beginning of a poem using all the phrases that I thought were lovely that we used in our conversation that night.

So yesterday in class, I was delighted [I think I've overused this word, but it is the only one that fits the way I want it to] when the professor said "dada," and even more so when I found out my Cannon Center version pretty much fits with the description (I think) because it is absolutely nonsense. But it sounds pretty. So maybe it doesn't count.

Cannon Center Dada

I have a strait-laced spoon on a Welch bed of grapes
The cult of Katie Couric and the dreaded Spanish drapes.
Chips on ice and an empty plate for dinner

Count or not, it needs additions, so feel free.

Numbers

Age in months of my nephew: 17
Number of times I’ve changed my major: 1
Number of bedrooms I’ve had: 6
Number of siblings: 2
Books I’ve completed since the third grade: 393
Months since I’ve seen my sister: 15
Number of photos on my computer: 3,766









Foreign language dictionaries, print and electronic, I own: 6
Number of pens I’ve used up this semester: 2
Hours spent in foreign language classes: 1,272


Hours slept last night: 3.5
Percent of my life spent in Sunday church services: 1.6
Paris of shoes that I own: 12
Number of roommates I’ve had: 17

Rito de inicación

Last week I was inducted into Sigma Delta Pi, the honors society for my major.

Inducted. Seriously inducted.

They told us the oath had been toned down some in the last few years. Apparently it used to include a pledge to all that is good and beautiful that is and comes from Spain. Something like that. As it currently stands, this is what I promised (no going back now). Strait from the rite, translated from Spanish.

To the members of the Hispanic society Sigma Delta Pi: I offer you my loyalty and cooperation in your Hispanophile activities and I assure you that I participate in this act with all sincerity and good will.

They told us lots more things about things that are brave and good, then they turned out the lights and we stood in a circle and lit the candles we were each given—with these words:

Come—so have gone many before you. Take this warmth and this light that symbolize hard work and wisdom. This light that you have received is the flame that we entrust to you—may it always burn this bright. This flame in your hands symbolizes the ideal of our society. It is the flame of all that is beautiful and noble…it is the spiritual light that lights each of us. Let us live, then, in the light, and scatter the shadows….

Doodle

I have had a hard time of late staying captivated by my classes. Particularly with all the observing I have been doing for my education class. This is the third week of sitting in on two block-schedule foreign language classes a day at a high school or junior high. The novelty is wearing off a little (though there are always things to learn).

So I have increased my resolve to improve my doodling skills. Here are my best examples.


This is inspired by the necklace my classmate was wearing.

I am also working on fancy handwriting.

I forgot what inspired this one.

This wasn't actually in class, but when I was trying to avoid writing my French paper.

Fall

I went hiking yesterday. Lately, when I’m outside walking, all sorts of thoughts go through my head. The air, the breezes, the coolness and sunlight all make it feel like fall. And fall makes me think of how wonderful it felt to go home after a day at school. It makes me think about being back in a routine, and about walking home, and about family dinners. It makes me think about when I would wait until 8:00 to do homework but I still got it done. It makes me think about the time I got home and my two sisters and my mom and I realized we were all wearing red shirts and jeans that day.

Fall makes me happy. Whenever the seasons change, I think, “This one. This one is my favorite.” But I think I just like the changes.

Tongue

I was at the grocery store at 7:30 this Saturday morning. I was walking around, and found these awful looking things in the meat department.

This is tongue. Cow tongues, lined up next to pigs feet and tripe.

Much of my life relates to the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary that I heard over and over and over again as I was growing up. This morning Ramona came to mind again—the time her and her sister had to make dinner, and had to use tongue because it was inexpensive. The characters narrated how awful a thing tongue was, and always in my mind, tongue was gray and about the size of an adult’s hand. If you can’t tell by my cell phone picture, tongue is slimy and looks like a mid-sized animal curled up in the package. Like a cross between a goldfish and a housecat.

Speaking of tongues, I am taking a class about the phonetics of Spanish. A good part of studying consists of looking at diagrams of how the mouth shapes sounds. (And trying to imitate them—slowly and thoroughly) I am gaining a new appreciation for the versatility of the tongue.

Today was my first day of observation for my education class. We were a group of five, and went to a junior high nearby and watched two Spanish classes. After, I had a bunch of questions for one of the teachers, and I asked them as the rest of the group kind of hung back waiting for me. I’m a geek about languages even among other people studying to be language teachers.

Tonight there was an evening church activity. I went with some people from my apartment complex. Two of them are in this picture. I met one of them a couple of days ago, and he told me his name. Dan. Then I saw him again yesterday, and said, “it’s Dan, right?” It turns out it wasn’t really Dan. It was a whole different person. So anyway, this is a picture of the two of them, plus Dan’s twin brother.

School has started, and I have been so busy I can hardly think. I have thought the same thing at the beginning of each new school year in college: I can't ever get enough done in a day. There is too much to do.

You're the kind of girl that fits into my world

I didn't take any pictures today, though I did observe a French as a second language class and an English class. I talked to the French teacher about Silent Way methodology and misspelled "femme" in front of the class. I talked to the English teacher about autonomous learning and learned how to conjugate "have got" (as in, "I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like it's got a basket, a bell that rings and things to make it look good." Their English texts are based on British English).

I spent the afternoon working on actual evidence of this adventure (hence the picture), and I went to the little zoo in the park with Simone.

There are pictures I wish I could post, but that I never took. I wish I could post a picture of walking along the river yesterday, and one of the elementary school I visited today. The school looked like it was designed by Ikea. But I didn't have my camera.

Yesterday I went to church. It was a beautiful morning, and it was lovely making my way there and back. It felt good to be there--church meetings are something very familiar, even in other languages. I was suprised to find that a good fraction of the ward is composed of Spanish speakers. Hearing Spanish also made things feel more familiar!

After church and some lunch with Dyvia (I finally found out the correct way to write her name) and some reading, I went on a nice long walk. It was still a wonderful day. I ended up down by the river (which, I discovered looking at a map today, is the Rhone). Geneva doesn't seem to even try to erase graffiti, and so I saw some pretty impresive street art, too.

This morning I ended up talking to the Spanish-speaking house keeper for a long time before going off to observe a French as a second language class and visiting the elementary school. It was just recently built, and it is amazing--a glass cube, with colorful shades pulled down behind the windows. Inside, the desks and chairs are light-colored wood and everything was airy and bright--really, think Ikea. The students take their shoes off and put on slippers before entering the classroom.

This afternoon, I went shopping downtown with Simone. I bought a pair of sunglasses--at Claire's.

One Post

I should be sleeping, or at least working on the questionnaire on autonomous learning that I stayed up to finish. Instead, I chose to share a few images of my apartment.