Back 2 Skool

Today was my first day as a senior in college (!!), which is really kind of overwhelming for me.  On the one hand, Im excited to be almost done with school, but as I told my friend the other day, I'm not quite sure I'm done with academia.  There are always a million classes I want to take and I hate having to choose the ones that go best with my major over the ones that just sound cool.  I pretty much never want to stop learning.  I realize that I will continue to learn through my experiences, but I kind of enjoy the classroom setting and the opportunity to sit before an expert and have them relate their knowledge to me.  That and, like most people my age, I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with myself once forced to join that ominous proverbial Real World that looms over us, promising difficulty in finding jobs and lack of parental support and freedom to live as we please.

And so, like so many others, I remain hidden at least partially behind my veil of college student denial, pretending that my responsibilities are minimal...even though they are at the back of my mind, making themselves known at those times that I let my guard down.

Beyond that constant train of thought, when I am able to just sort of be in the moment, things are going pretty well.  I took a week-long road trip with one of my good Oregon friends, who flew down to ABQ, hung out with me and my friends for a couple of days, and then kept me company while I drove to Eugene.  It was SO fun!  I love introducing people to my crazy mix of friends, and I think she quite enjoyed the experience that is my friends (and she didn't even see anyone in drag!).  Some of my friends threw me a little going away party, which was a lot of fun and may have gotten a little out of hand...lets just say it's a really good thing we did it two nights before I had to drive to AZ and not the night before :-P

After doing the NM thing, we drove to Flagstaff and hung out with my dad and little sister, which was really good.  April loves kids, so she had a blast with Sofi, and I just plain adore Sofi to pieces and am so happy when I get to see her.  And it was good to spend some time with my dad, too, since I hardly got to see him this year.  

Well rested after a weekend in Flagstaff, we hit the road again and drove to San Francisco.  This was the only part of the drive I was worried about because it was about 11 hours and I was doing all the driving myself.  Thank god for Macy's coffee and Taco Bell and April, because I never once got very tired.  In Sanfran, we stayed with a friend's mom (as our friend was already back in Oregon), and mostly did a LOT of shopping.  It was insane, but how often are you in a place with Sephora and H&M across the street from each other?  And then Express and the Body Shop were having sales.  *sigh*

The last two days of the road trip were spent driving up the California coast and trying to visit my old roommate's parents (which was, sadly, unsuccessful) and hanging out on the beach, and watching the sunset, and seeing the Redwoods, etc.  I really love the drive between San Francisco and Crescent City because you get to see beauty in so many different forms.

Finally, I had a weekend to get settled and see my friends and prepare myself for going back to school in the states, which is overwhelming after the somewhat experience of the french system (not to say that I didn't have any work, I just didn't feel nearly as stressed in the first week as I do here).  I spent the weekend doing more shopping for necessities for my room and groceries, spending as much time with my friends that I hadn't seen in far too long, and decorating my room to give it the feeling that I live there.  I thing I did a pretty darn good job considering a relatively short time frame.  It's still a little messy because there are a few things I'm not quite sure what to do with and because there is a ton of cardboard waiting to be recycled being stored in my room.  There are still some things I would like to improve, but I'm pretty happy with the place.

On the school front, I actually only had one class today: Environmental Management.  It's looking like it will be an interesting class, but I'm a little overwhelmed because we are supposed to have at least a vague proposal for our environmental plan project by Wednesday.  Eek.  Tomorrow is my busiest day, and I would really like to get a few things out of the way over the next couple of days, but I also kind of want to just hang out a little bit more.  Today, despite knowing that I should have been working, I hung with half of my roommates.  We ran a couple errands and then Andy made mac n cheese, which was delicious, and then I helped Alexa with her French homework, which made me miss France and speaking French SO much (which I had already been doing after emails to Wei and my host family, and looking at Gaby's pics from France).

Ok, I need to send a couple emails, do a little more reading, and then go to bed!

Bisous!

Overdue...as usual

I recently wrote in an email to a friend that the hectic, somewhat spontaneous nature of my summer, while bringing a lot of fun and excitement, has left me feeling like I'm missing something.  Or a lot of somethings, really.  My plans of keeping up the blogging have been unsuccessful (and it's not for a lack of things to say, let me tell you).  I haven't done nearly as good of a job at keeping up with people as I had hoped...both people here and abroad.  I haven't had time to read as many books as I would like (or as I have bought this summer).  I definitely have a sense of absence of quite a few things in my life right now.  Although I think part of that is something that comes with nearing the end of something...as I look toward heading back up to Oregon here in a couple weeks.

That being said, I've been incredibly busy and done so many wonderful things and met a lot of really great people.  There have been ups and downs, but a lot of memories have been made.  I'm not even going to try to sum it all up, because I know I'll forget something, and I know that a lot of what I've done falls into the category of "you kinda had to be there".  I think the big things that really stand out are the great concerts (I really think live music is quite possibly my favorite thing ever), cleaning out my grandpa's house (which has played a part in so many of the ups and the downs of my summer), and, of course, the nights at "Terrorist Gardens" (my friend's apartment building, which has come to be the definitive location of my summers).

Most recently, though, I drove up to Denver for the Democratic National Convention last week.  It was definitely a spontaneous thing...I invited myself along with some friends two days before they were leaving and just kind of inserted myself into the trip, and I have to say they are amazing for accommodating me and pulling some strings to fit me into their plans...particularly calling in some favors to get me into Invesco stadium for Obama's speech on Thursday.  

My political involvement has been at a minimum this year, which is sad considering what an important year it is.  A big part of that, I just realized, is that Napoleon, my political mentor of sorts, isn't doing the campaign thing this year, so my main connect into campaign life isn't there.  I do have other friends that are working in politics, but not as much in capacities to pull me in.  And since LCV isn't running a field campaign in ABQ this year, I don't have that to compel me either.  I also kind of have this sense (which I know rationally isn't a correct one) that there is a lot of hype about this election and therefore enough people campaigning that I'm not as badly needed.  I've gotten the sense from friends that Defenders of Wildlife (who have kind of filled LCV's spot) isn't scrounging for volunteers, and a canvasser from Obama's campaign told me they were doing pretty good also.  I do know that the election is going to be close and I want to be a part of that, but something keeps stopping me.  I really hope I can get over that when I get up to Oregon, although in a way it will be harder there because politics is such an insider sport, and I'm much more of an insider in NM than in Oregon.

Going up to Denver was one of those things that left me feeling more inspired and motivated, though, at the same time as it actually left me feeling like I could have definitely experienced it more.  We ended up not making it to any of the caucuses for a couple reasons, and I think I spent more time looking at t-shirts and buttons than actually talking politics.  But in the end, the energy there definitely reminded me why I want to be a politico.  There's something about the inspiration, confusion, conflict, compassion, gossip, alcoholism, silliness, change, solidarity, struggle, intelligence, passion, insiderness, etc of politics that has a very strong appeal to the crazy schizo in me...while equally kind of making me want to run and hide and get a nice, stable job in an office or something.

Well, I think that's enough for now.  I would really like to say I'll be better at keeping up with this, but I don't like to make empty promises.  I will try, though.  I'm constantly telling myself that the reason I get so caught up in my thoughts is because I never take the time to let them out, but somehow I don't do much to fix that...and meanwhile both my journal and my blog are collecting dust and cobwebs...le sigh