I'm psyched.

[The end result of all this is that I will be taking Intermediate French all summer at ASU. This is going to be a bitch, yes - two hours a day, five days a week, for ten weeks - but the hard work will pay off one day: fluency, baby! It's gotta happen; it's on the Things to Do Before I Die list.]

I'm also psyched because the Heard Museum contacted me today about a summer internship in their Development and Marketing Department, so I have an appointment/interview a few days after I return home. If that works out, I'll finish the summer with a year of Intermediate French, experience in fundraising and marketing for a museum (the most versatile skill in both the art and business world, according to my advisor), and maybe even some money from a part-time evening job, perhaps as a server or a babysitter. It's going to be a busy summer, but hey, it's a competitive, expensive world out there.

22 April 2007

woe

Today I went to Henry's Farmer's Market, a natural foods store chain owned by Wild Oats. The closest one to me is 10 miles east of Claremont in Rancho Cucamonga, a town that has sprung up from nothing in the last few decades. (When I was exiting the freeway, I actually thought in my head, "Oh my God" as I looked north to see thousands and thousands of identical houses lined up to the millimeter on a huge development tract. It was the largest one I've ever seen. I'll take a photo next time.) There used to be a Henry's near my house in Arizona, which I discovered half-way through last summer and adored, but it closed last fall. Henry's and its parent company, Wild Oats, are my favorites of the natural foods stores [NFS] (although Wild Oats and Whole Foods are merging, and I don't know if that's good). Whole Foods is enormous and yuppieish, Sprouts is half-way between a NFS and a normal supermarket, and Trader Joes I don't count because it doesn't really offer brands except for the TJ label. It's great when I want hummus but not when I want Whole Soy Co. yogurt. Henry's is lovely. It consists of thirty-two stores in California and Arizona; it's small, cozy, and always has a good selection of products. I walked in with my canvas bag, expecting to buy two things, and as I passed all the little aisles that are shorter than me (I'm 5'9") and came upon their huge produce section in the middle of the store, I actually felt really sad.

Sad that I can't eat what I want to when I'm at school because I'm on a required meal plan and without access to well equipped kitchen facilities.

Sad that my fridge is the size of my head and it doesn't have a freezer.

Sad that my parents pay quadruple times to Scripps in board fees what I actually consume in the dining hall... and then more for all the extra food I have to buy.

Sad that the nearest NFS is ten miles away on the freeway.

Sad that my current diet consists of oatmeal, soy yogurt, hummus, pita bread, salads, steamed veggies, bean stews, fruit, peanut butter and Larabars.

Not eating white flour or liking tofu makes vegan meals at the dining hall a pathetic affair, and I survive on bean stew and salad twice a day, for four days a week, supplemented by some monotonous combination of the above foods. On the weekends I'm usually in Pasadena or LA and eat well, for much less than students pay to eat in the cafeteria (approximately $20, I've calculated). I've started buying a second meal to-go at the Ethiopian restaurant I love, so I have a yummy supper in the fridge for a rainy day. Walking into Henry's was like having no feet and walking (somehow) into a shoe store. I wanted everything, but didn't have a place to store it or a way to use it. I miss buying my own food: picking out the best apples, scooping lentils from the bulk bins, choosing the best olive oil. And it goes without saying how much I miss making my own meals. I feel a bit less human when I have to shuffle along in a line, drop pre-made, poorly labeled food into plastic bowls and plates and eat on a tray. (It may sound strange, but sometimes I'll read back through my archives and get lost in them and smile when I see a photo of something I made and read the entry under it. Much like I associate songs with specific moments in my life, I do the same with memorable meals I've made.) Despite my sadness, I was happy to stock up on soy milk, nuts (macadamia, pecan and cashew) and dried fruit (currants, cranberries) for morning muesli/oatmeal, vanilla soy yogurt (Whole Soy Co. is good; so is Silk Live! which is less sweet, and I've never had a good experience with Nancy's), whole wheat flat bread (I was going for pita bread, but unfortunately, the only flat bread they had left, Toufayan, has lots of unnecessary things in it like vegetable oil, soy flour and sugar, but oh well I guess and is gross so I threw it away), Larabars (I bought their new Jocolat bar - yum!), almond butter (for once I bought the freshly made tub by Henry's instead of the jar stuff), and ZenSoy chocolate soy pudding. Soy yogurt is the extent of the processed food I buy, and I've never bought soy pudding, but this was an impulse purchase because I've been missing desserty things. And it was pretty good! So now I'm stocked up in the fort, and all I need now is more hummus and then I'm set. Nineteen days left of eating like this and then paradise.

21 April 2007

occupied

This Thursday was one of the more stressful days I've had lately. Three big things happened within nine hours - a class presentation, advisor stuff, and Hall Draw. The class presentation was for my Ancient Women class, the class I dislike, and it was fine except for feeling pretty incompetent on what I was presenting. In order to escape the task of actually teaching us herself, each day the professor has one or two students "teach" the class about a topic that was the subject of an article she had to read. The topic you get is arbitrary, and mine was about the switching of the name of God in Genesis of the Hebrew Bible. Yeah. Don't know, don't care. I didn't have time until Wednesday night to read my article and take notes, so I was up late, got less sleep than usual and was tired, and the presentation was okay but I can never enjoy giving them unless I really know what I'm talking about. And I definitely didn't. Unless someone is really into religious studies (which is what this class has turned into), most people in my class don't really know what's going on. Ugh, so glad for it to end.

Then in the afternoon I met with my new advisor and went through several forms - major declaration, fall courses and study abroad stuff. I'm now officially an art history major, and this fall I'm taking:

I'm really excited for my first semester of five truly enjoyable and interesting classes. Art History is a joint department between Scripps, Pomona and Pitzer, and it's a very strong one with excellent professors and interesting courses, so I'm psyched for the three I've chosen. The Music class fulfills my Fine Arts requirement and French is my last required semester of language. I don't know yet if I want to take French at ASU this summer; if I do, I can take Advanced French in the fall. I should also start learning German if I want to go to grad school for art history, but I have no idea where German is going to fit into my last two years of college! As for studying abroad: I don't know which art history courses will be offered at Edinburgh in the spring, but their department is one of the best in the UK and the potential courses all sound fantastic. Yay for liking your major! So lots of paperwork was completed on Thursday, and my study abroad application, which is due in nine days, is almost complete except for a personal statement and passport photos. Not that I need to get a passport (already have two), or even a visa (UK citizen), but I guess they don't know that yet.

Then, three hours later, it was Hall Draw. It's a very stressful and cut-throat process at Scripps, and really doesn't need to be. If you want to live off-campus, in the four apartments we have, in a suite, a triple, a double, or in the language corridors, you apply earlier and skip most of the stress. If you want a plain old single, as most girls do, you show up before your assigned time, wait in a big room with the floor plans that are actively altered as girls pick rooms (Clark 214 taken! Browning 155 taken!), and then at your time, you and three other girls walk to the grand hall and plonk your finger down on the room you want, and only then are you safe. Complicating this a bit is the fact that there is one dorm, Kimberly, that's ugly and no one wants to live in, and its unlucky juniors who end up in it. Here, an "old dorm" here means "historic and beautiful" so the four old dorms - Clark, Toll, Browning and Dorsey - are the most popular. Rooms are picked by class, so seniors have first pick and they take most of the rooms in GJW, Clark, Toll, Browning and Dorsey. Juniors are left to fight in the rat race for the rooms left in the above dorms, and once they're taken, Kimberly is the only option. My friends and I decided that our best strategy was to try to live in singles in Toll. All but one of us had good numbers, so there was a good chance it would work out, but there were about ten rooms left in Toll when my class began to draw rooms, and the tension in the waiting room thickened as one by one, rooms were chosen and dreams were shattered. My good draw number let me get the second-to-last room left in Toll, and Catherine got the last. So all of my closest friends and I will live in Toll, except for poor Hilary, who had a terrible number and is in Kimberly. Hopefully she can switch rooms over the summer. I'm really happy that I get to live in a beautiful dorm with most of my friends nearby. My room doesn't have a sink or a balcony, as do some rooms, but I'm adjacent to the bathroom (a plus?) and my window faces north, unfortunately opposite "the freshman ghetto" which isn't a ghetto but an extension added onto Toll to house freshmen, usually the kind of freshmen who indicate on their housing form that they like to drink and smoke, but hopefully that will be okay. I've lived with crazy people, studious people, snoring people, praying people, and stoner people, so I think I can handle anything.

After a long day, I jumped in my car, picked up the same friend from CC who I hung out with last week, and went to REDCAT in the Walt Disney Concert Hall to listen to a concert by Lavender Diamond, a cool indie band. Then we refueled at Mani's Bakery, went to Nova Express, a funky alien-themed pizza place in Hollywood, and talked, and finally I drove home at 2am. To balance out the mayhem of Thursday, I took a four-hour nap yesterday afternoon while it poured down rain outside. It was glorious!

Tonight and tomorrow is the Spring Choir Concert, and I want to at least have taken a stab at reading/research for finals papers by Monday. Eight days of classes left!

18 April 2007

cotton

I can't wait until I have my own apartment. And later, my own house! I often go on walks near school through pretty residential streets, and part of the fun is ogling the houses. One day I'm going to go around and take pictures of all the things I like about the lovely houses here. My iPod battery was dead so I didn't listen to music on my walk this morning, and it was really nice to listen to the birds chirping and my footsteps on the pavement, and looking up around me instead of at a little screen every three minutes. I went a bit later than normal, at 9:15, and now I remember why I like leaving early, around 8. I like being outside when the day is still waking up, when the kids are being dropped off at the elementary school, when the sun hasn't broken through the clouds yet and the chilly air opens my eyes. The other time I go is at sunset, when the day is ending spectacularly and the sky is a melange of different colors every minute. Lights are on in the houses and I look in the windows and see quiet, familiar scenes - a family sitting down for dinner, a man reading the paper in an armchair, a mother gathering her thoughts. And I like that it's only going to get darker and cooler. Closing the curtains on another day. But no matter when I go, there are always cats sitting in the driveways.

15 April 2007

taxes

Positive Changes I Have Made In My Life In The Past Year

Goals

To...

13 April 2007

steady

I finally did laundry this afternoon. I'm the kind of person who waits as long as possible - usually until I have to wear the same pair of underwear twice - before doing a megaload of clothes, towels and sheets every ten to fourteen days. I end up wearing the same clothes a lot, since I don't own that many relative to my peers, but I don't mind. It saves money, water, and time. There are four washers and four dryers here, and throughout the weekend they are almost always in use, so I try to do laundry during the week, either before class or on a quiet sunny afternoon like today when everyone is sunbathing. To wash and dry one load takes about an hour and a half, and I want to be in my room for that entire time to go switch the clothes to the dryer, fold them, etc., so it takes some planning to figure out a block of time when I'll definitely be here. Just like suitcases at the airport, I never leave [clean] laundry unattended - my entire fabric existence at the mercy of strangers? I don't think so. Other things in my life to which I apply this principle of waiting as long as possible include showering (every other day, occasionally every third), taking out the trash (although always before it starts smelling) and the recycle (lax to the point where the bin is almost overflowing). So 'laundry' has been on my whiteboard for five days and now can finally be wiped off. Note the fun magnet thing to the left: my mom found it in the Getty's gift shop. It has eight mini magnets that hold eight cards, photos, notes, whatever to a long wire that hooks onto a tack or pin in the wall. My favorites from Ali's Send A Postcard A Day For Thirty Days personal challenge are up there now. So pretty!

Lately I've been feeling the need to be surrounded by strangers, but I also have three papers due Monday. To reconcile these two spheres of life, I decided to go into LA but to go there to work. Yesterday after class I drove into the city, ate lunch at Real Food Daily, a hip vegan restaurant in West Hollywood and then spent three hours at the Literati Cafe in Brentwood sipping a gigantic cup of soy cafe au lait and writing up an outline for one of my art history papers due Monday. I have to say, It's a pretty sweet outline and it beautifully sets up the skeleton of the paper itself, from which I'm now taking a writing break and playing with my poor neglected camera. I also have an online economics problem set due tonight at 11pm, and I'd like to put together the outline for my second paper before I go to bed. Suffice to say, I have my work for the rest of the night cut out for me.

11 April 2007

addiction

I bet Ali is chuckling.

Ever since I lured her to an Ethiopian restaurant in Tempe last February, Ethiopian food has been up there on my list of ethnic cuisines I could eat almost every day, along with Indian, Tibetan and Thai. While she described the meal as "interesting", possibly "unusual" (code words for strange and bizarre), I found its characteristics a refreshing change from the everyday American fare. There are no utensils, most of the food comes in the form of 'wots', or stews, and these are spread out on a huge round plate of injera bread. Injera is a thick, holey, sourdoughish-tasting crepe made from teff, a very nutritious African grain. To eat your meal, you tear off a piece of injera bread, scoop up a bit of a stew and try to get it into your mouth in one go. Also, it suits carnivores and herbivores alike because any dish that is meat-free is vegan; there are no dairy products in traditional Ethiopian cuisine.

Since that day in Tempe, I haven't been able to lure any of my friends down to Cafe Lalibela to shake up their perceptions of African cuisine (this summer, anyone?). But in New York last month, the adventurous Danielle and I had our farewell dinner at a great Ethiopian restaurant, and when I was in LA on Saturday I satiated myself down the street from LACMA at Rahel's Veggie Cuisine, one of a dozen Ethiopian restaurants on a one-block stretch of Fairfax known as Little Ethiopia. Rahel's Veggie Cuisine is a vegan Ethiopian place, and it may be the only vegan one in LA. Last Saturday I ordered a Vegetarian sampler, and am now hooked on Yemiser Kik Wot (red lentil stew). I need more of this stuff. Well, I actually need the recipe but until then, I am going to be a frequent visitor to Rahel's for a take-out order of this fabulous stew. And last night, when I drove into LA to have dinner with a friend from CC who is spending a block in Hollywood studying film, I couldn't pass up the opportunity. He's not an adventurous eater (Korean BBQ is about the extent of his ethnic exploration) so I ordered the lentil stew to go (my delicious lunch today!), but perhaps I can lure him to an Ethiopian place with both meat and veggie options next week.

I jumped in the car at 7pm, and was in Hollywood by 7:40. We ate at Mani's Bakery and Cafe (delightful) and then saw Black Book at the Hollywood Arclight Cinemas, a fantastic moviegoing experience. The movie was two and a half hours, so I didn't get back to Claremont until 2:30am, but it was such a fun night. That's the stuff of life, you know?

10 April 2007

halfawake

Please, remember me
Happily
By the rosebush laughing
With bruises on my chin
The time when
We counted every black car passing
Your house beneath the hill
And up until
Someone caught us in the kitchen
With maps, a mountain range,
A piggy bank
A vision too removed to mention
But...

"The Trapeze Swinger", Iron & Wine

07 April 2007

fairfax

I needed to be away from here for a while, so I explored LA, all day. Little Ethiopia, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Old Town Pasadena, back to school for a shower and a meal, and then back into LA for a long, reflective drive admiring the city on a hopping Saturday night. Hollywood, Wilshire, Santa Monica, the 210, the 110, the 101, the 10. Lots of circles, lots of sights, cute neighborhoods, hipsters, the Wiltern, the ocean. Not something I usually do, but it was what I needed. After driving down certain streets half a dozen times this last year I feel much more comfortable getting around quickly in the city. It's such an easy trip now. And god there is so much going on in LA! People, boulevards, cafes, theatre, quiet streets, neon signs, every ethnicity possible, surprises at every turn. I love it. A day well spent.

"People are most happy when they are moving towards something not yet attained. (I also wonder if this extends as well to the sensation of physical motion in space. I believe that I am happier when I am in a plane or car because I am moving towards an identifiable and attainable goal.)"

No. 14, These Things I Know For Sure; Andrea Zittel

06 April 2007

domine

Thank god it is Friday. I spent four hours last night and part of today throwing together a 5-page "reflection paper" about ancient women using any reading from the last few months. You might remember I had one of these due at the end of February which I also threw together in a day... well, I finally got that paper back this week and I received 19.5/20 points. So I didn't worry about this paper but still having to write it kind of sucked. I also had to work my four-hour-per week shift this morning, but the warmup and performance of Gregorian Chant cut into my work schedule by an hour and a half, so I worked from 8:30 to 11, warmed up, practiced and sung the chant (it was beautiful, with a full house), ate lunch alone in the dining hall at 1:15, edited several drafts of my paper, went back to work for an hour or so (everyone left early for Good Friday) and turned in my paper, and then about collapsed in bed. Well, I mailed a letter and drove to the store to buy soy milk and envelopes, and then at 4:30pm collapsed in bed.

A strange thing happened last night. I was working on my paper in the library, and at 10:15pm I walked to the Motley to buy a snack. It's a three-minute walk and its really safe at night on campus, but there were two groups of a few guys sitting on benches as I walked over and they watched me as I walked by. They were college kids, no one weird, but it was a cold Thursday night and I sensed immediately that something didn't feel right. So I bought a Larabar and walked back, on the other side of the street from the cluster of guys. I'm walking past a tall wall covered in leaves and shrubbery, and suddenly I hear a really loud (human) scream, just about inside my ear. I don't stop walking and I don't say anything, but I quickly twist my head over my left shoulder and see a wolf head mask, and then I look ahead and keep walking. Some idiot has decided to be a jerk and scare the shit out of poor people trying to finish stupid papers so they can sleep. This all happened in a second, of course, and I don't know why I didn't say the first things that came to my head, because I remember thinking very clearly, in succession: "What the fuck. Who the fuck do you think you are? Fuck you." I felt a huge surge of adrenaline dance from my heart up to my head and then down to my feet, and I thought the situation over while walking back and I decided that I did the best thing by not making a sound, because he and his stupid friends did that just to hear someone freak out so they could burst into laughter. But after he screamed in my ear, no one spoke or laughed, not the guys watching, not the screamer himself, and definitely not me. I just walked away with a disgusted look on my face. Take that, asshole. I suppose the experience woke me up, but it was really inconsiderate thing to do and I hope the fucker felt like a douche after his plan didn't work.

I really want to do something fun tomorrow. A trip to a new museum may be in order. Not that I should - work work work Katherine work - but I want to.

Ok, so now it is 6pm, and I shall go to Sushi Night at the dining hall, and then maybe re-check out from the library Kenneth Burns' The West (a 12-hour PBS special) and find out what happened in California after gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill...

The Art Institute of Chicago, March 2006

01 April 2007

theme

I had a fun weekend with my mom (and grandma, I suppose). On Friday afternoon we walked around the Village, taking ages since old people walk ridiculously slowly, and after I fulfilled some commitments and did homework, they both took me and four friends out for Greek food (where I tried lamb for the first time in five years. I quickly decided it would also be the last time I eat any kind of red meat, and it seriously put me off even chicken for a while). On Saturday we spent nine hours at the Getty Museum in the hills overlooking Brentwood and LA. It was so nice to have a blank check with regards to time... we took three tours, visited several exhibits, saw the famous stuff and ate dinner at their super-fancy guilt-inducing restaurant. I wore a skirt because it was 75 degrees, but when the sun went down the temperature dropped dramatically and my legs were covered in dramatic goosebumps any time we were outside (and at the Getty, this is quite often since it's meant to be an external/internal facility). But it's really fun to be there at 8pm because the rooms are devoid of people except for guards who are tired yet still nice and helpful, and all of LA glitters and you forget how ugly it can look sometimes. In the main entrance there was a piece of artwork called Uberorgan: a musical organ of bag-like shapes that resemble human organs connected by pipes. For five minutes on the top of each hour, it plays a random assortment of hymns, pop tunes and contemporary arrangements by reading streams of paper with black dots on them. Everyone claps at the end of its performance. It was so cool I couldn't handle it.

I love the Getty. I love how it was designed, I love that it is in the hills, I love that its white (Getty White and Off-White) and has an electric tram and makes you go outside and has cool fountains and a sweet gift shop. And I love that lots of young people work there and that the museum is making bold steps with its exhibits and in expanding its collection. I'd work there if they wanted me, and I'll visit it any time you want.

I drove us all over LA, so after two hours of driving and eight hours of walking yesterday, I collapsed into bed at 10:30pm. Today I woke up early, showered, and got my car washed since it was filthy from being parked under trees. Clean, now everything is clean. We went to the Huntington in Pasadena for a few hours. In my opinion, it is a fussy Anglophilic place: it consists of a huge estate (belonging to, of course, the late, great Mr. Huntington) on which sits a famous library of important manuscripts and books, a focused-but-boring art collection and lots and lots of gardens. British grandmothers love gardens and flowers and exclaiming every few seconds over another little pink thing, so after we looked at the art gallery together, I went off and explored the LA Times and the Freedom of Speech exhibit (excellent) while my mom and grandma strolled about under the hot sun. When we were through, I drove them to the airport and came back to Scripps. I had a nice break away from everything here, but now it's back to homework and appointments and responsibilities. Not that I didn't have responsibilities this weekend; I was the driver, I was the watch, I was the pleasant smiling granddaughter. Luckily I wasn't the wallet! I loved being with my mom, even if it was only for 48 hours.

April doesn't appeal to me as much as other months because there is no fun holiday or food or weather to look forward to (well, I suppose there's Easter but I'm not religious and I don't get any days off). It does mean that: school is getting closer to being done with, the weather will get very hot, I will hear about my possible internship by the end of the month, and stress will start to accumulate in my muscles, not to be relieved until May 11th! Happy things...? Friends, morning walks, open windows at night, two choir performances, my study abroad application done with, and the last full month I'll be in school until September.