Insanity

I just did what I'm pretty sure is the craziest and most spontaneous thing I've ever done. Before I tell you what it is, though, I want to give some context. I was sitting at my friend Lynn's house with her and my other friend Kylie. All three of us are in circus together, and Kylie wants to go to Senegal for study abroad next year. Last night, I hosted a Senegal reunion/informational dinner, for which I made ceebu jen (the fish and rice dish that everyone eats about three times per week for lunch). Eating Senegalese food and telling stories and knowing that Alyssa got a grant to go back over the upcoming break made me really nostalgic and made me miss Senegal even more than I already do, which is a ton.

So I was sitting there with Lynn and Kylie, and I said, "Man, I feel silly, but I found these tickets to Dakar for pretty cheap, and I keep just staring at them. I really want to go back."

Kylie asked me, "So why don't you?"

"I don't want to travel alone."

"I'll go with you!" she said.

So we both called our families to make sure we weren't totally insane, and we booked tickets. Just like that.

I've decided not to tell anyone (not Alyssa, not my friend Ellen who's studying abroad there right now, not anyone at the Baobab Center or at SenCirk', not any of the neighborhood boys...). I want to just show up and surprise them all.

Also, my housemates pointed out, "That's really soon." I leave in less than a month. Just like that!

My heart won't stop pounding, I'm antsy and excited, and I'm pretty sure I won't be able to sleep tonight. I keep formulating more and more plans.

It's going to happen!

Nostalgia

I'm in Peer Leader training these days, which means I'm spending the majority of every day (no, we don't get weekends off) around other similarly self-motivated, overly helpful, crazy enthusiastic students. We're going through training to be the best possible resources for incoming freshmen. I'm having a blast! The group of Peer Leaders this year is phenomenal. They accepted fewer applicants, so some freshmen seminars will have only one Peer Leader, rather than the usual two. The result is that the more experienced Peer Leaders (who are generally the ones leading seminars alone [like me]) won't be held back by a less-qualified Peer Leader, and the less experienced Peer Leaders have partners to help them out. The less experienced Peer Leaders are better fits for the program than a lot of people who Peer Led my sophomore year, so I think things will go very well this year.

In our social time, I often find myself talking to others about my time in Senegal. ALL THE TIME. It makes me miss Senegal pretty terribly. In particular, I find myself describing how welcoming Senegalese people were to us, and how we were immediately invited to birthday parties, weddings, and baptisms--even by people we'd just met. I miss the way people were so eager to get to know others. Networking is so important there that everyone wants to be friends with everyone else. The networks people form open up all kinds of opportunities for them, and everyone helps out everyone else in their network. Looking at it that way, it's easier to understand why there's so much corruption in Senegalese government--politicians have to bestow favors upon people in their networks.

On a different note, there are lots of exciting and stressful things coming up for me. I move houses in four days, I need to turn in a new draft of my SIP ASAP, Orientation starts in three days, and I need to come up with a silks routine in the next week and a half. I'm halfway through ordering my own aerial silk (I'm waiting on some information from the woman I'm ordering through), and I started a Cafe Press store selling items with the Cirque Du K logo on them. Things are moving right along.

Tonight some people at my house are hanging out and dressing up and drinking cocktails. I'm looking forward to doing that and then getting to sleep in tomorrow morning, finally. I hope everyone has a great Labor Day!

...and sorry this post was sort of all over the place.

A little off

I'm feeling a little off today. I've been mentally prepared all day to work on my SIP, and I think I've been working pretty much since I woke up. But rather than feeling at all accomplished, I'm just feeling pretty depressed. Part of it is probably that the people I've been hanging out with lately all just left town for a few days. And my bed is the only place in my house where I can get reliable internet, which means that's where I have to do my SIP work. Sitting in bed all day is pretty lame.

I'm at 22 pages (out of 30, I think) of my SIP. I still have some sections to write that I'm not especially prepared for, which is why progress is slow right now. I'm gathering information and sources, which is time-consuming and doesn't produce writing. I need to be finished writing by Friday night. That will be challenging. Actually, if I can just write two pages a day for the next four days, I'd be done. It just seems impossible at the moment.

I also feel a little bit like I'm getting sick, but I'm hoping that's just a function of feeling depressed and overwhelmed. In general lately, I've been the happiest I can ever remember being. It's weird when I have periods of depression lately, because it's such a contrast to my normal state.

Anyways, I WILL finish my SIP, I WILL feel better mentally and physically, and life is going to rock next weekend and beyond. I just need to keep my head up and push on through this week. Here we go!

What? I still have a blog?

Sorry, Mom, that I haven't been posting lately.

Life is moving right along here. I'm up to 12ish pages written of my SIP, and I'm planning to work from home tomorrow to get maximum writing done then. I'm hoping to get up to 20 by the time I leave town tomorrow afternoon/evening for the Traverse City Film Fest.

Things have been far more interesting this week than they had been. I suddenly have people to hang out with all over the place! It's great. The weather has cooled down, so now I can actually handle cooking, working out, and eating real food. Not to mention sleeping.

We've been getting a bunch of intense summer thunder storms, which I love. Since my new room has windows on three sides, it feels like being in a tree house when it storms. It's so loud and airy. I love it.

I have two and a half weeks left of work, which is pretty exciting. Tonight I'm heading up north to the Traverse City Film Fest, which should be fun. I think we're also going to take a slackline and possibly some aerial equipment and see if we can get some playtime in.

Life is exciting!

Moving

Today is a joyous day. Why? Because even though I still haven't gotten over this nasty cold, even though I have work today and will probably have to make dozens of phone calls, even though I didn't sleep well last night, even though I can't take out my smelly trash because we don't have trash removal services...THIS IS MY LAST DAY IN THIS HOUSE! I'm packing things up to move even as I type this post.

Tomorrow morning, all my stuff will be packed away, and I will head to California for a glorious two-week vacation. Meanwhile, my housemate (sort of a misnomer, since I've been living alone here the past couple weeks) will move all my stuff to her (and my) new house. The new house will have the things I have been so lacking here, including:

• garbage removal services
• laundry
• working windows
• neighbors

I suppose I could update this...

Sorry for the long lapse in posts. I had a few crazy busy weeks, then a depressing one or two. Now that things are back under control...here I am! My internship has started, I'm about to leave for the annual RESULTS conference in DC, I get to see my friend Joe for the first time in about a year, I'm living alone, and things are pretty good overall.

This week at my internship, I've been learning about poverty simulations. They seem really cool and interesting. I get to witness my first one next Friday. The simulations run about three hours long, and they simulate a month in the life of someone living in poverty. Participants are randomly assigned roles, and volunteers play the parts of people working at services these people will need (mortgage company, school, community action agency, etc). Each week is 15 minutes, separated by 5-minute "weekends". Each week, families have to take care of basic things like going to work, paying bills, feeding their families--all while dealing with crime in their neighborhood, lack of money, long lines at service agencies, job loss, lack of funds to get to the places they need to go, etc.

I met with my supervisor, Kelcie, this morning. We had a great talk about what kind of experience I have and what I can do at PRI. I'm really excited now about how I'm spending my summer. There's a chance that PRI may need to make their own unique simulation model; I'm hoping I can help with that if it comes up. If not, I'll be working on grant-writing, volunteer recruitment and management, research, etc. It should all be great experience for me.

I may be taking a sort of last-minute road trip out to New York with my friend Evan who I met freshman year at K (He was a senior at the time. Now he's in a PhD program at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor getting paid to do what he loves [chemistry]). So I'll be in DC this weekend, New York next weekend, and California the weekend after that. It also looks like I'll be back in California at the end of August; I think I'll be taking the train out there.

I didn't get the straight A's I was hoping for this last quarter, thanks to B+ in African Studies, but I think I'll survive. I'm looking forward to taking a seriously fun course load in the fall (Intro to African Studies, Photography II, and Intro to Creative Writing), leading the circus club, and seriously squeezing every drop of value and fun out of my senior year of college.

Maybe I'll even post again semi-regularly. We'll see. :)

Life

Here's what's new with me:

I may not get the grant I was offered for my internship, because my internship will be a 10ish-week part-time ordeal, rather than a 6-week, full-time one. I'm meeting with someone tomorrow to see what we can do, because the grant would pay for my rent for the summer. That would be fantastic.

I bought a beautiful yellow bike a few weeks ago. A vintage Schwinn. Now the person who sold it to me wants to buy it back. I'm irritated, but giving it back is the right thing to do. So that's what I'm doing.

I've been sick for the last few days. I don't feel particularly bad--my throat hurts and I'm mildly congested--but I've been so foggy-headed and sluggish and exhausted that I've been completely unable to get anything done. I'm hoping to work double-time tomorrow. I have lots to do.

Tomorrow we're planning to set up our NEW PORTABLE AERIAL RIG for the first time! This is a four-legged, 18' tall rig that can be used for any and all of our aerial equipment. I'm really excited about it.

Yesterday my throat was feeling icky, so I made some lentil soup. Today, I made fried rice. I also bought stuff to make sesame noodles, so I'm hoping to do that this week. I managed to spend very little on groceries this week because I'm only in town until Thursday morning, when I'll be starting my voyage to New York to convene with my family and hopefully watch my brother graduate.

The quarter is wrapping up, and there's a lot still to do. Here's hoping it all goes smoothly.