Friday I move again. Classes at the University of Loyola New Orleans start on August 27th, and I'll be there, attending a new school for the seventh time in the last eight years.
It's weird that it's not weird, really. New city, new school, new people, new home. The routine starts again. Pack--travel--unpack--meet people, live life.
About two weeks ago we moved from Minnesota to Georgia. Again, it's weird that it's not weird. Everyone in my grade is going off to college, so the fact that I am moving is not a surprise to anyone. It's just that this time I won't be coming back for Christmas.
Since the middle of May, the longest I have stayed anywhere continuously is two weeks. The whole 'getting up and moving locations' now feels like a big game of musical chairs. I've already left Minnesota for a year, so leaving a second time doesn't seem so out of place.
Things here have been great so far. I can't say that I've seen much more besides the inside of our house or cardboard boxes, but it's nice here. There is also a whole new list of insects to add to my discovery list...
So, along the fine line of time, there are a few things I'd like to say that are way overdue. To everyone that has kept up with my endless rambling and stories, I really appreciate it. Hopefully there is something that will keep bringing you back to read more, as I hope somewhere down the line something I've written has had a positive impact in your life in some way.
To everyone who has sent me emails, thank you. The support has been great, and I am shocked at how many people decided to study abroad after reading my blog. Whooohooo!!! Those messages have nearly completed my mission. And congratulations to those who are going or went on exchange, Welcome to the Club.
There is a whole list of blogs that I follow. Whenever someone posts something new it comes up in my newsfeed, keeping me updated on the latest adventures and travels. It's been great to hear the stories of others, especially when you can relate so well to what they are saying. Reading other blogs has been quite the inspiration, and a great way to reflect back on my own year.
A some time after returning back to the United States, I logged into my blogger account, looking for the most recent blog updates as usual. At the same time I was on the phone with Jake. As we were talking, I was reading a blog post when all of a sudden both my name and Jake's appeared on screen, being thanked for writing. I was shocked. I (not only felt like a celebrity) was stunned at how helpful our writings have been for others. And that wasn't the only time--- So here's a big 'de nada' to you guys, and to those who have read "my whole blog," which blows my mind. Not even I have read my whole blog. Some blog posts I have read over before publishing, while others I have read several times. But I am sure that there are many posts that I have not read upon completing them. All I can say is I'm happy I could help. It means a lot to know that what I write actually gets read. And those who listen know I'm talking about you. Thank you. We owe it to you guys. There's no point in writing if there's no audience. We are glad there are listeners out there.
So cheers to that fine line of time we have all traveled. One day it's off to Spain, another day it's off to school. But either way,
"What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."
Another long delay, maybe sometime I'll get back into the swing of writing more regularly. I seem to have quite a collection of rough drafts though, it's just that I never seem to find a way to make the post flow or close whatever point I was trying to make or whatnot.
Not that all of my posts flow or really make much sense but...
So last week, Two and a half weeks ago my dad and I made the hike from Atlanta to New Orleans, where me and a carload of "things I think I need" for college got dropped of at the University of Loyola New Orleans. I didn't put any effort into packing since I was taking full advantage of not having weight or luggage restrictions. If it fit in the car, it was coming.
The 9 hour hike was a piece of cake. I feel like I have no excuse to complain about anything if I'm in a car... no matter how long we may be sitting on our rear ends memorizing the radio's song play list.
I finished writing up to there^ before we lost power at my uncle's house, where I was since I had to evacuate my dorm.
Evacuate....yeah. A word you don't use much in Minnesota.
The following Tuesday after arriving to New Orleans was when I moved into my dorm. Six trips with two people from the car in the parking garage all the way up to floor nine was something I don't ever want to have to go through again. That nor the cleaning required before you can actually unpack your stuff.
Gross.
That week was filled with welcome activities to get to know other students which included a hypnotist, excursion into the city, and an inspirational speaker that was absolutely outstanding.
It's hard to explain everything that he said, nor is there really a good YouTube video to show you exactly everything the two hour presentation covered.
Curtis Zimmerman talked about a variety of things targeting his audience- us. An auditorium filled with first year students.
He started off his presentation introducing himself, a best selling author, juggling, mime, fire eater, magician,... the list continues.
Immediately he asked us to put our phones and everything else away under our seats. He was going to talk for two hours, and he didn't spend the last day and a half traveling, missing his child's first day of school for nothing. The least we could do was to give him our full attention for these two hours.
And the same goes with the classroom. Teachers don't spend their entire career preparing themselves to talk to a bunch of students on their phones. Teachers wouldn't be there to teach if they weren't there to share something that they loved talking about.
But if you choose to stay on your phone, teachers aren't going to make you listen. Teachers aren't going to make you understand.
Teachers get paid whether you understand the material or not.
He was here to speak to us. If our friends on the phone were so important, why weren't they here with us?
The beginning of his speech started off like this..
Everyone was instructed to stand up. He had us do the following, and I would like you to do the same.
Hold up your right hand in the air, and make a circle.
Put it down.
Hold up your left hand in the air, and make a square.
Put it down.
Now, hold up your right hand and make a circle.
While making the circle, hold up your left hand and make a square.
Take a look at his video. Pay attention to what he says about the circle, and follow along with his actions.
Interesting, eh? Yeah we thought so too. He had us do a variety of things.
How many think you are responsible?
A show of hands went up.
Well, that's when we got to play a nice game of Simon Says.
You should have seen the two kids from the front row that jumped up on stage...Priceless, omg.
As the video showed, Curtis picked a random student and taught him how to juggle. The student had no idea how to juggle, but was taught in about ten minutes.
In the process of teaching the student how to juggle, for every time the student dropped a ball we were to cheer and applaud him loudly. Why?
Because he was that much further to learning how to juggle.
Starting out with one, then two, three balls were dropped many times, but after much cheering from the students, the student was finally able to juggle all three. Curtis then juggled himself, bouncing the balls off of his knees, chest, elbow, chin, the amazement continued.
And why was Curtis able to juggle this way? he asked us. Because he had dropped the ball 5,000 more times than we have. Have we given something 5,000 tries?
Throughout the duration of my blog, I have used a lot of metaphors and abstract examples to try to make a point or get a certain idea across. This was one of the reasons why I enjoyed this presentation so much.
---Cheer every time you drop the ball, because you are one step closer to reaching your goal. Give those people who make your show worse fewer lines. And even though you look great at doing what you already know, you are learning absolutely nothing.
Your teachers get paid whether you understand or not. Everyone in the room is in the 1% of the world to have the opportunities we do. That's right. 99% of the people in the world do not have the same opportunities as the first year students in that auditorium.
Starting off new in college is great. Everything in that circle, everything that we have done in our past is was got us here, in this room. All of those achievements, and grades and awards in high school and hard work got us here where we are now. But now what we are here, we start from zero. We are all starting from the bottom up. Because no one cares about what happened to us as a kid, the neighborhood we grew up in, or the school we went to. None of that matters now. What matters is what we do from here on out.---
Going on my EuroTrip was such an eye opening experience for so many reasons.
Upon returning home from exchange, many of us exchange students return home to a place where not many other people have gone through the same thing. Granted no two exchange students ever have the same experience, it is very difficult to return home to an environment where you finish up a conversation in a different language, and everyone looks at you as though they've seen a ghost.
Visiting my friends goes way back to that post I wrote on reality. The "the grass is greener on the other side" post. Being able to travel our not so small world really proved that nothing is impossible. It's not impossible to go back and see your friends. It's not impossible to pick up right where you left off with your friendships. It's just different. Your life how it was at whatever point in time will never duplicate itself. My AFS friendships aren't any worse just because people live far away. Ties weaken, sure. My trip proved that point to me. The value, however, stays the same if it is well preserved.
What a small world we live in, it was strange to bounce from one friend's house to an other's as if I was just walking down the street on a normal day. I didn't go to Europe as a tourist. In fact, the only time I felt like a tourist was in Hamburg, Germany, which brings me to my second point...
Seeing friends of people I hadn't seen in years was great. It's always another reminder of how times flys, and how every "good bye" makes the next "hello" closer. I was able to meet the neighborhood, culture, and families of the friends that I got to know under America's terms.
Hamburg, however, was quite different than any other stop on the map. This was simply because Hamburg was the only place I did NOT spend my time at a friend's house. I stayed in a youth hostel for two nights.
Turns out I have two connections in Hamburg. One from AFS US of A and one from Spain. Unfortunately it didn't work out to meet up with either of them, so I was on my own.
Was Hamburg great or what.
Not only did I have 4 amazing roommates from England, I met all sorts of different people doing the exact same thing.
I don't think I met a single German in Hamburg. Everyone was from a different country outside of Germany, passing by on a EuroTour. There were so many things to talk about. How was Berlin? Where are you going next? Oh you have to go see this church in Copenhagen! Yeah it was really crowded in Milan during the soccer game. Are you going to Poland? It must have been a crazy train ride from London! How many hours does it take to get to Amsterdam? How long are you traveling for? Where are you attending school? How many languages do you speak? Oh, you're from Canada? WE ARE NEIGHBORS!!!
....the list goes on, and on, and on, and on.
Another thing I realized during my trip is that, there's a time for everything. My exchange year was not my time to travel, but this trip was. My exchange year was not the time to get too hung up over my school work, but now it is. My EuroTrip was not the time to go to the blind museum, or the Anne Frank house, (yes, this one kills me I must say) but there will be another time. There will be another time to travel Eastern Europe, to see Auschwitz, to eat the mussels in Brussels, to go to Paris, or Rome, but instead I have to just know that my time spent in Europe was to do exactly what I did. No more, no less. It's always good to have a reason to go back. If it wasn't completed during my two month stay, it wasn't the time.
I really wish I could have realized that better during my exchange year.
Towards the end of my year in Spain, so much effort was put into thinking about "what I had done, and what I had failed to do." I look back at my year now knowing that, if it wasn't done during the year, it wasn't the time. You can't look back and say you should have done this or that, because the reality is that if it was the time to do this, or that... it would have been done.
My primary focus of my trip was to spend time with the people I was visiting. Remember the names of monuments, the history behind a bridge, and seeing things that the rest of the world marvels at were just bonuses. I didn't go to France to see the Eiffel Tower. I went to France to see the people who have impacted my life. And the last time I checked, I do not have a personal friendship with the Eiffel Tower. (nor the cost to get me there)
To be more realistic on the subject, I too want to do everything. Take advantage of any given moment. Jump at every opportunity available. Live life to the fullest. But in the end, if all effort was put forth and you only finished 4/7 items on the list, (and the 4 were done well) than that's all that was meant to happen at the time.
Not that we should let things slide by us, because that is definitely not what I meant.
Most of the friends of my friends that I visited in Europe (if that makes any sense) spoke English, most of which went on exchange either through AFS or another program. And if they didn't go on exchange, they had either traveled a lot or had quite a cultural background.
Meeting so many people who 'went on exchange' really helped me to get closure on the whole thing. Exchange was something we all had in common, but something of the past. It wasn't something we were trying to figure out, or waiting for, but instead something that made up part of our life resume. An event that was completed, a event that didn't need explaining, but yet, it automatically connected us all in this type of world that's hard to explain to anyone who's not in it.
So, what now? Well classes 'resume' on Tuesday, even though they never really started. My evacuation plan never included more than 'take the stairs,' but I guess that in other parts of the world such as here, there are other ideas of a plan. Going 68 hours without electricity, internet, (no, I am not the fortunate owner of a smartphone) or a single battery operated fan in the INCREDIBLY HUMID south I thought would kill me for sure.
I felt quite like Anne Frank, being locked up in a house, listening to the sounds of other's generators sounding through the night. The city curfew was from 8PM to 7AM, which put a psycological twist on things. Illegal to leave your house? For that long? I'd never experienced anything of the sort. Being arrested was never before a threat to disobeying curfew.
Our windows were open once the storm passed, in any hope of a breeze of any sort to get some air circulation in the house. We didn't know when we would get power back, and as of almost a week later it is not restored.
My makeup melted, along with my book. Who knew a book could melt in a house? The two inch thich pieces of tree started to curl up and get moist in no time at all. The house got dark starting as early as 7PM, when the sun began to set. We had two lanterns/flashlights that were our only source of light until we went to bed.
Friday we went to the store, and the first two places we went to were completely out of ice. It was unbelieveable. Walgreens was completely out of drinking water. Wiped clean. And the third store had ice...after you waited in line behind about 40 people. Even then it was only two bags per customer.
Campus halleluyah was up and running by mid Friday, with air conditioning and internet. I moved back in, and turned on the TV for the first time since Tuesday afternoon, a day before Hurricane Isaac came.
"Back at Loyola, which may be the only place back on it's feet after Isaac. 4.5 days of university canceled and a very long 68 hours without power--(AC, fridge/freezer, garage door, lights, TV, radio, phone, computer)-- internet, or a single battery operated fan in the very humid jungle of New Orleans. At one point someone informed me that we were among another half million people who also lost power, which was almost comforting to remind myself that we weren't the only ones. However, upon hours of sitting in darkness with two flashlights, it hits you..... there are a lot more than half a million people in this world without power."
--Facebook status from Friday
Friday morning alone there were 38 car accidents. Let me remind you that electricity is needed in order to run traffic lights. There were a fair number of 4 lane intersections that didn't have working traffic lights.
This resulted in the...
"whoever-gets-there-first-goes-first/CRAZYAGRESSIVE European driving" approach.
People, this is not a rational way to solve problems...
*Sigh.*
So that was that.
You should have seen Whole Foods when their power came back on. People from the bakery to the seafood were cheering. A guy was even standing behind a crate of wine, charging his phone from an unused outlet.
Later that day I walked around campus and took some pictures of the damage.
I promise no photoshop or picture editing was used in any of this.
Behind the library
On campus at the "Quad"
Like I said, we didn't get much flooding here in uptown, but supposedly other areas did. Areas that didn't flood during Katrina flooded during Isaac. The TV had unbelievable footage sent in from people who video taped what their house looked liked. Since I went the week without TV, my face dropped at the sight of the flooding damage.
Things here will hopefully continue to normal on Tuesday. It'll be nice to have health services open and the bookstore...so I can do my homework for the classes I haven't even been to yet.
No special plans for this Labor Day weekend; it's just the suite life, here in Buddig Hall...celebrating a great two year anniversary of meeting possibly the most awesome group of people on the planet.
