New Project!

Hello all-

I apologize for so suddenly abandoning this blog over the summer. As summers at camp are wont to do, it got very busy, and it was hard to expend any energy outside of my camp focus.

And of course, when camp ended, after a short break, I set off for my final year of college in Claremont, California. Senior year has been a whirlwind of emotions and lots of time spent working on my honors thesis (which is what I’m actually supposed to be working on right now), as well as getting in as much dance as I can, while I’m still surrounded by such a great dance community (and not having to pay individually for classes).

Lastly, the other reason that I have not had much time for additional posts on here is that, over my winter break, I signed onto a new blogging project: The Daily Geekette. We are sort of a fandom/geek culture oriented site, with a feminist angle, and we’ve been in the process of a soft launch, finding new writers, etc. I am the TV editor and have weekly posts that go up (usually) on Mondays at 10AM Eastern. I would love if folks would come check us out! You can also like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter. For the time being, that site (and finishing up my senior year!) will be where my energy is focused, but perhaps as my senior year starts to wrap up (and TDG gets into more of a rhythm), I will be able to start posting on here once more.

Until then, feel free to follow my posts over at The Daily Geekette, or my tweets.

Camp Life

First off – apologies that I haven’t posted in ages. Camp tends to make contact with the outside world quite difficult, as we don’t have a lot of time off, or much energy left when we do have time off, but I am going to do my best to get in some posts as the summer goes along. I’ve been at camp for almost three weeks now, and I can say without hesitation that I am very glad to be back. I love working here, and as usual, staff has included a mix of people I already know and love, and new people that I am learning to know and love, including several people I was a camper with and had since forgotten.

Found on my first counselor bunk of the summer – a friend of mine thinks he might have written it there when he was a camper

Right before coming to camp I also discovered this fabulous tumblr: All I Do is Camp Camp Camp which includes some posts that are very accurate and some posts that clearly only apply to camps which have a lot more money/fancier facilities than my beloved camp. If you have ever been a camp counselor, you should check that blog out, although I’m not sure it’s still actively posting new content.

Almost no campers on land because they’re all in the water! (this was before the endless days of rain hit us)

I love getting in the rhythm of camp – both the really good days, and the really difficult days, and the way days off can turn into such fun adventures, and great ways to get to know people better. I love singing my heart (and voice) out with campers, teaching them new songs, new games, and watching them make all sorts of new friends in their brief time with us. Being a third-year counselor I now also have the extra advantage of seeing how much some of these kids have grown since I first met them two years ago, and that’s probably one of the best parts.

To change topics as I round out this blog post – I’m going to try and make some more ukulele videos as the summer goes on and I (sometimes) have a moment on days off, and I will try to also post those on here as I do that (although you are also welcome to just go directly to my youtube page here and subscribe to that).

My American Dream

Going through the stories over at http://genstuck.wbur.org/ the other week, I started thinking a lot about the American Dream. I remember being in 10^th grade English, reading things like The Great Gatsby and Their Eyes Were Watching God, and trying to piece out what we thought this “American Dream” was all about. What were the characters in The Joy Luck Club and “Death of a Salesman” really looking for? Were they even looking for the same thing? I can’t remember what we ended up deciding – although knowing high school, we probably covered a bulletin board with all of our ideas for what it was.

5 years later I’m a rising senior at a small liberal arts college who chose to study things I found interesting and engaging, and as much as I have loved the past three years, I know I have to be looking ahead. Last summer as I tried to plan ahead I was overjoyed that I actually had some ideas – maybe apply for a Fulbright, and look at graduate programs in a couple areas I was interested in. Nine months later the only things I seem to know for sure is that I don’t want to rush straight into a graduate program and I don’t want to get stuck like those 20-somethings from the Generation Stuck page. So where does that leave me? To take advice from one of my favorite musicals, I’m going to “start at the very beginning.” I’m told it’s “a very good place to start.” In order for me to figure out what to do next, I need to figure out what I want to come next. What is my American Dream?

I want a job. And probably a cat, because cuddly animals help me de-stress. I don’t just want a job that pays the bills though, I want a job that I find engaging or interesting, or that I feel is doing some sort of good in the world. It doesn’t have to do all of those things, but what I don’t want is a job that makes me miserable, or wears me out and leaves me no energy for the things I love, like dancing, and reading, and playing ukulele. I don’t want a job that strips away who I am – I want a job that enriches me, that revives me. I want a place to live that is my own. A place where I can keep all of my kitschy treasures, and my ever-growing library, and where I can curl up with my cats and a bottle of wine at the end of a long week (yes, I know, the cats are multiplying. I just really like cats.).

My American Dream is also about community. At 21, I’ve already started making decisions about what I do based on where I know I will have a strong community. I’m about to spend my third summer in a row working at the camp I attended as a teenager because every time I go to that magical place, I know that I will be surrounded by a loving and supportive community. I decided that I would rather experience three summers of camp than try to score any sort of fancy-sounding internship. Working at that camp (and even being a camper there, when I was younger) has helped me to grow so much, and shaped a lot of who I am as a person. It’s the place that grounds me, and reminds me of a lot of the principles and values that I try to live my life by, and I know I will treasure the memories of these summers far more than any resume boost I might have gotten from an internship.

So my American Dream is about being the best version of myself that I can be. I want to be able to take care of myself – physically, emotionally, spiritually – and have a community (or communities) around me that support me in doing that, whether those communities are a part of where I work or not. And I want all of this for my friends and loved ones too. Is that too much to ask?

(Rhetorical question, folks. I don’t respond well to angry cynics. I’m too much of a dreamer.)

The Return Home

As of today, I have been home for a full week, and I have been very happy to be here. I still haven’t gotten around to seeing lots of my friends because most of them are graduating from college this year and aren’t even home yet, but I have seen plenty of my family and my cat. I’ve started cleaning up the disaster zone that I left in my room after having only 10 days at home to unpack from a semester in California and repack for my time in Ireland. I’ve started to readjust to having cars drive on the right. I no longer have to convert prices in euros back into dollars whenever I am at a store. I have my QWERTY keyboard phone back and no longer have to dread typing out a text to a friend.

Now that I’m home I finally feel like my junior year is well and done and that I can enjoy my summer vacation time before starting work at camp. Plenty of television and reading and sleeping in (as much as my body will let me as it still struggles to shift timezones). Of course the downside of finally feeling like my junior year is complete is that I am even more aware of the looming presence of senior year, come September. While it will be nice to return to Scripps and Claremont in the fall, it will be bittersweet. I only have two semester of my undergraduate career left, but I plan to enjoy them to the fullest.

In terms of where I see this blog going now that I’m back – I do plan to continue blogging. I don’t know how consistently I’ll be able to do it while I’m at camp – that will presumably depend on how inspired I’m feeling in my little bits of time off. But in the remaining weeks before I leave, and certainly once I am done at camp, I will do my best to keep posting, even in to senior year. But the content will be shifting a little – I’ll probably be throwing in some book and movie reviews, and more linking to some of my favorite current things that I have found on the internet (cat videos, news articles, etc.). There will be fewer entries about trips I am taking, and more posts where I am just responding to something I read, or sharing something that’s been on my mind. Also, the blog title (but not the link) will be changing. Eire Apparent was specifically for my time in Ireland, and as I am no longer in Ireland, I will be coming up with a new title. Suggestions are welcome. But you can continue to find my posts here at nerdywanderlust.wordpress.com, and you are welcome to stick around, even if you started reading just for my posts about being abroad.

For now, I am leaving you with a picture from my trip to Newgrange in April. It was a very Irish day when I visited – alternating between rain and sun every ten minutes, with plenty of wind – but I was very happy I got to see this amazing site before I left Ireland.

April Travels Bring May Finals

So here it is! I am now, more or less, in the midst of finals. My travels are nearly done and to be honest, so are my finals – my last essay is written, and all I have left is my archaeology exam on Thursday. I’d meant to write this a little earlier but I decided I was better off getting back into the school-mode a little bit before taking the time to write this, because I knew how difficult the former was going to be. You try taking five weeks of vacation time and then jumping back into an academic mode long enough to write one essay, and study for one exam. It’s unsettling.

But come Thursday afternoon I shall be done with all of my academic requirements for study abroad here in Cork! I leave that evening for a weekend trip up to the Galway area which I will try to write more about after I get back. And then the weekend after that is when I go home. Don’t worry – I have five full days in Cork before I depart in which I plan to revisit all of my favorite places around the city and do my final souvenir shopping, as well as packing and cleaning my apartment. It’s somewhat exhilarating to be so close to being done with both finals, and my time here. That’s not to say I won’t miss being in Ireland – I most certainly will – but I won’t miss constantly having to deal with bank accounts on different continents, having to cook and shop for myself all the time, or being away from my friends, family, and adorable cat. And I’m not going to lie – I miss some of the things I left at home as well – the rest of my nail polish collection, all of my beloved books, all of my summer clothes that it would be too cold to wear in Ireland anyways (I never thought I would miss flip flops as much as I have these past four months).

Of course the other part of going home is the awareness of all that comes next – my third summer working as a camp counselor where I have been so so happy the last two summers, and then, onward into senior year. It’s terrifying, and I’m pretty sure I spend half my time trying to pretend it’s not real, but I do know that another four months from now I will be back on Scripps’ campus, getting started on thesis, and trying to enjoy every last moment I have in that magical place. There’s a lot ahead of me when I leave Ireland – both exciting and scary – and so as I try to focus on studying what life was like in mesolithic Ireland, or how the Vikings weren’t as terrible as the stories make them out to be – I’m also thinking past my exams. I’m savoring the memories of all the amazing sights I’ve managed to see while abroad, both in Ireland, and elsewhere in Europe, and getting ready to make even more amazing memories in the next year of my life. And that’s not a bad thing, no matter how scary it may be.

A Crazy Week in Boston Experienced from Afar

So pretty much anyone who has seen any news this week will know about the events that passed in Boston this week – first the bombings on Marathon Monday, and then the manhunt from Thursday night thru Friday. I’m from Boston, and grew up about a mile from where the second suspect was caught Friday night. I’ve been traveling with my parents this week, first in Scotland, and then in Ireland. It has been eerie watching all of this unfold while we ourselves are not there. We recognize places, and sometimes even people we know who are involved in the investigation, but we are not there ourselves, experiencing the tense atmosphere we can tell is filling the city, although I heard plenty about it from friends online. I am lucky that, as far as I know, no one I know was among those hurt in either situation. While I knew several people who had beem close to the bombings, none seemed to actually be among the injured. That’s not the case for everyone.

I’ve thought a lot about what I wanted to say in relation to all of these events, and the range of reactions I’ve seen in the media and among friends and acquaintances on facebook, but it’s hard to form a coherent thought. Yesterday was the first day  since Monday evening where I didn’t feel the need to be checking the news at least every couple of hours to see if some new information had been discovered. I’m grateful that this is not our usual pattern of life – that we, for the most part, live in a safe city, in a safe country. We do not have to deal with bombs on a regular basis. We don’t spend every day wondering if there will never be a response to the “are you okay?” text because the answer is “no.”

I guess what I am feeling most right now is gratitude that, at least for now, these unnecessary and tragic deaths seem to be at an end. My city is safe. My friends and family are safe. And those responsible are not out on the loose with the potential to hurt others (although we’ll see whether or not they were working alone).

On a different, happier note – my apologies for not posting while in London last week, but I was so busy exploring the city and having fun that I couldn’t really come up with anything coherent to post about. Perhaps next week when I start to gear up for finals I can write a post summarizing more of my travels as a way to procrastinate. For now, though, I’m going to enjoy a little bit of rest before I scurry off to Edinburgh later this week!

An American in Paris…and Amsterdam

Today is my 6th day of traveling – and I’ve still got about 11 more before I get back to Cork. So far I think I’m doing a good job of balancing frantic sightseeing, without completely wearing myself out.

Amsterdam was a lot of fun – my Scripps friend that I met up with there had already been traveling for about a week, so we mixed up sightseeing with just wandering along the canals, popping into little stores and cafes as we wanted. The Rijksmuseum was closed, unfortunately (we knew that was going to be the case, but this was the week that worked for us to go, so there was nothing to be done about it), and so was the Van Gogh museum, but the latter had an installation at another site, the Hermitage Museum, which we went and saw our first day there. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time that day to go through the actual Hermitage Museum and never made it back over there in our 3 short days, but that just means it’s another thing I can do next time I am in Amsterdam!

We did find some very nice and decently priced restaurants for dinner the second and third nights, so our culinary experience of Amsterdam also felt complete (even if we never got around to trying any of the many Indonesian places, or the local fast food chain called ‘Febo’). In one used book store I found a copy of Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories, a lesbian feminist vampire novel which I had never heard of before. Naturally, as a vampire-obsessed gender studies major, I had to buy it. On Friday I took the first train to Paris, first class, and had a delicious breakfast on the train (although it may have been so delicious in part because I was so sleep-deprived from getting up early to catch the train).

I’ve been in Paris since about mid-morning Friday, and it has been absolutely amazing. Friday I ate my lunch sitting on the steps in front of Sacre Coeur, looking out over the city. A Cork friend and I were meeting up for the day, and we also did a fair bit of wandering through Montmartre (where I’m staying, courtesy of airbnb), and then had drinks by the Moulin Rouge in the evening, and went and saw the Eiffel Tower at night. As we were there on the hour, we even got to see it sparkle! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, look up a video of it, because it was gorgeous.

Yesterday I got up and did the Louvre by myself, and then walked through the Jardin des Tuileries sipping hot wine, before meeting another Scripps friend to go through the Musee d’Orsay. She even brought me macarons from the bakery by her home-stay! After that, we made our way over to the famous English bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, where I bought a little copy of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”. We parted ways, and I got a very tasty dinner right around the corner from the apartment where I’m staying, followed by possibly the best creme brulee that I have ever had.

As I write this, I’m about to head out to meet up with her again for brunch, followed by checking out Notre Dame Cathedral, Sainte Chapelle (which I’m actually more excited for than Notre Dame), and then in the evening I plan to walk up the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. Tomorrow morning I catch the bus to London.

I was saying in a note to a friend this morning – I don’t think I’d realized how excited I was about coming to Paris, and possibly how much I really wanted to come here, until I got here. I think in part, just seeing Paris in so many movies over the years, it had been really built up in my mind, but it has completely lived up to my imagination. The food has been delicious, the people have all been very friendly and helpful (don’t believe the rumors that Parisians are rude!), and all of the sights have been amazing. I haven’t even left yet, but I already know I want to come back. And maybe next time I’ll remember to look up some French phrases before I come!

Au revoir! I will write you from London next!

Good Friday Bonus Post!

So today was Good Friday, and as I am all done with classes and don’t start my traveling until Tuesday, I didn’t have very much to do with myself today. So I recorded another video of me playing ukulele. Enjoy!

Last Week Of Classes!

I can’t believe it’s finally here. My last class is on Thursday – the final meeting of the English seminar I’ve been taking. After class I have a meeting with the lecturer about the oral paper I gave last week. And then I will probably be submitting my last paper for my English seminar. And then I will be done with all schoolwork until May, and just gearing up for my April travels! (Oh, and the return of Doctor Who and Game of Thrones. But I’m trying to pretend the travel is more exciting than television.)

In addition to this week being the last week of classes, it is also Election Week back at Scripps. While I’ve always appreciated the work of Scripps Associated Students (SAS), our student government, I’ve never been directly involved. Next year, I’m hoping that will change. I’m currently running a campaign for Student Union Chair while abroad in Ireland. In addition to writing my last English paper of the semester. In addition to getting ready to, starting next Tuesday, hop through about 4 countries in two weeks (followed by a short break back in Cork, then hopping over to Scotland, then back to Cork, then finals, and lastly, a trip up to Galway and the Aran Islands – so much travel!). Have I mentioned it’s a bit of a crazy week?

Anyways, because of all the other things I should be doing right now, I’m going to try a  (hopefully) more stream-lined post this week. It’s what a good friend of mine calls “two bad, three good”, and it’s how she’s been writing her blog posts while abroad in Argentina. So here goes nothing!

Two bad:

1) I’m kind of sad that classes are ending because it feels like I haven’t even been here that long and some of them are really awesome. (like step dancing. and archaeology. and my english seminar.)

2) Because we have all of April off as a break and I’m kind of doing my own thing in terms of travel, I’m probably not going to see a lot of my Cork friends for awhile, and then when we get back we’ll all be doing finals. But study breaks can still occur! And post-final celebrations! (and then I’m going home.)

Three good:

1) This weekend was our Killary Adventure Weekend with IFSA, and I got to do clay pigeon shooting, and archery, and laser combat, and rock climbing, and SO MANY FUN ACTIVITIES. And meet other cool IFSA kids from other cities in Ireland and get travel tips for when I go to London. And my team won the table quiz on friday so we got a free round of drinks the next nice, which was pretty sweet.

2) I had my dance exam Friday, before leaving for the Killary trip, and even though I was freaking out a lot and really stressed because of having to run back to catch the bus to Killary, I think I did okay on the exam. And then a group of us who have all done Irish step before/currently did a set of reels during the dance party Saturday night at Killary and it was a lot of fun.

3) Okay, this contradicts my first bad thing but….my classes are almost done! There is no way to not be excited by this as a college student. You may be sad to see your favorite classes go, but there is a really great feeling when you don’t have to go to lectures anymore and are finishing up final assignments. It’s a sense of accomplishment. That I won’t entirely feel until May when I finish off my last two classes. But I’m getting some of it now, and I like it.

That’s all for this week, folks! Sorry I’ve been rubbish about getting photos up recently – I just hate having to go through all of them, because I take a lot. Hopefully this weekend, before I start traveling, I can get some more up.

Scrippsie Exchange: Cork and Dublin

Hello all! As you may have noticed, I skipped posting last week. It hadn’t been a particularly interesting week, and it got very busy very quickly. I had two essays (both submitted yesterday, although one is an oral paper so I will actually be presenting it in class tomorrow), and a fellow Scrippsie who is currently studying in Dublin came down to visit me in Cork. We went out to the session in Blarney that I go to with my dance teacher and friends most weeks, and then stayed overnight in the hotel there, and went to the castle the next day. We went to the UCC Sci-Fi Society’s screening of Thor, and even got out to the Fota Wildlife Park, just outside of Cork, which I hadn’t been to yet. Friday, after my dance class, I headed up to Dublin to stay with her and celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in full Dublin style. We watched the parade in the city, but didn’t stay in town all day, instead going to a house party and getting away from all the crowds for a while.

All in all it was a very fun (if exhausting) week, but I’m very close to the end of my classes, so I’ve got plenty of time to catch up on sleep. This Friday I have my dance exam, then my IFSA “Adventure Weekend” up to Connemara – we’re going to the Killary Adventure Centre and doing stuff like ropes courses, archery, and kayaking. Next thursday I plan to turn in my final paper for my English seminar, meaning I will only have one essay and one exam left for early May (my music and archaeology classes). And two weeks from yesterday I will be in Amsterdam, beginning my traveling adventure! Then back for finals, some final traveling, and home in mid-May. It’s all happening so fast!

Traveling up to Dublin and back this last weekend made it really clear to me how much I love being in Cork, and other Cork friends who went up for the weekend had a similar reaction. I love being able to get to everything on foot, whether for the exercise, or just to avoid paying for the bus. I like being in a smaller city, with fewer tourists. I like knowing where I’m going all the time, being somewhere that has enough landmarks in close proximity that it’s nearly impossible for me to actually get lost. I think I’m going to miss Cork quite a bit while I travel in April, but it will be nice to come back to it for finals in May. I like being somewhere that, although it’s certainly not quite home, is still the closest thing to it that I have right now.