Where were we camping, you might ask? Why, Chesterton, Indiana. Obviously.
Indiana Dunes State Park is quite a lovely place, about an hour and fifteen minutes from Chicago by train. The entire thing was beyond crazy, however, so let's see how well I can narrate it. To begin with, we were supposed to be taking a bus to the train stop at 57th Street at 3:40 on Friday to catch a 4:16 south/east bound train to Indiana. I had Italian until 3:20. I ran home, literally, threw all my school stuff out of my bag, and then threw the camping stuff (which I had stacked up the night before) in the bag. It didn't all fit, so I put my towel, an extra jacket, and my quilt in a huge Borders bag. Of course, I was still one of the first people done and, to make a long story very short, we missed the 3:40 bus and caught the 3:50 bus instead....which died about two blocks from the train station. Just when we thought we would have to get out and schlep all our stuff, the bus was resurrected and we got off, ran up the stairs to the train platform, and caught the NICTD South Shore line, which was so crowded with commuters that we couldn't sit near one another.
Fast forward to getting off the train. As it turns out, the campsite is about a mile from the train station, so we had to walk through random parts of Indiana. For about an hour because we got lost. With a heavy bag on my back, my overflow bag in one hand, and my sleeping bag in the other. When we finally got to the overnight part of the campground, we found that my male RH, who had driven a car down with the one-year-old and all our food, had chosen a spot very far away from the entrance to the campground. We eventually got there, pitched three tents, started a fire, ate dinner by dark or so, which consisted of (for me) two burnt hot dogs and s'mores. Most everyone else had fish tacos, since it's a Friday in Lent and apparently real Catholics (aka not my mother's side of the family) actually don't eat meat on Fridays in Lent, but frozen whiting (yeah that's apparently a type of lake fish) is just not particularly edible to me, someone who grew up with fresh haddock as a conception of what "fish" is. It was raining on and off, it was pretty cold, the one-year-old was cranky, I was cranky, etc.
When we eventually went to bed, I was so tired that I collapsed into my sleeping bag and basically fell asleep right then and there. The next day was more fun, with card games and much better food and hiking to the lakeshore, which was so windy that the waves were enormous and the wind blew us all off our feet. It did look a lot like the ocean, which was cool, only without that key ocean-y feel and smell, where your hair gets matted and tangly and salty even without getting it wet. The sand from the dunes was blowing around everywhere, so that I sort of felt like I was walking on Mars or something, and afterwards when we reached the beach house, out of the wind, it felt a bit like we were survivors of an apocalypse. Once we got back, I went to take a shower in the bathhouse, which turned out to be an excellent life decision because it enabled me to dry off nearly every article of clothing I had under the hand dryers. I spent about an hour in there drying off clothes and watching my female RH, the five-year-old, and my RA take equally long and hot showers.
Things went downhill after that, however. It turned out that 4pm was a great time to take a shower, as that was when it was snowing--yes, snowing--outside. By the time I returned to the fireside the snow was replaced by consistent 40 mph wind and bitter cold, so cold that even after I put on three pairs of pants and four layers of shirts and sweatshirts I was still unbearably cold. The food was slow to cook, we were all frozen, the wind was blowing acrid fire-smoke into our eyes and nostrils and mouths no matter where we stood near the fire (and it was too cold to not stand near the fire), the one-year-old screamed for probably half-an-hour without stopping; we finally just admitted, out loud, that things were "sucky" and "pretty awful" (in far more colorful language), and of course after that the food started to finish, so that the first bites of biscuit-dumplings we passed around the fire were pretty much the best bites of food I have ever had in my life.
After that the wind went down to only about 20 mph, which was bearable, and the food and hot chocolate was all really warm and nice. We considered sleeping all seven of us students in one tent but eventually just divided it up into two tents instead of three, with the 4 girls in one and the 3 boys in the other. Before bed we all huddled together in the impromptu girls' tent talking, lying on one another, and trying to keep warm, until the boys eventually left. I thought the tent was going to come down on us several times, as the gusts were back up in probably the 30-40mph range at night, but at least it was fairly warm in the tent with four bodies in it. (In the morning our female RH informed us that the previous night had seen a record low for the northern Indiana area.) In the morning it was cool but not so cold, and the sun was finally out, just in time for us to strike camp after breakfast and come back to the city, where I am now only wearing the usual one pair of pants, long-sleeved shirt, and sweatshirt and am not bone-achingly cold and covered in campfire smoke.
Despite all that, it really was a fun trip, just sleeping and shivering with one another and eating campfire foods and reveling in simple things like showers. You get to know even people you already know well just that much better when you are stinky, cold, tired, and yet somehow still happy at the same time and sharing the same cramped living spaces. Now I get to sleep in a real bed again and take a real shower (which I should get on, after I put away my all-too-real disgusting laundry from this past weekend), and do quite a bit of real homework.
Sounds like real fun.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Drowning in things
This week (since Sunday night), I have done the following things:
--read 500 pages of a Victorian novel (well, 500 minus the 90 pages I still have left to read)
--interviewed 8 candidates for our house RA next year (our current RA is graduating)
--wrestled with the housing office
--ordered and picked up prescriptions
--played IM inner tube water polo for my house
--gone to the gym three times
--read a couple hundred pages of Freud
--taught a health workshop on the far southwest side with someone I don't know and without the necessary materials
--taken notes on three of the densest psych studies I've seen in a while
--done various busywork for Italian
Tonight we have 5 more RA candidates to interview, which will take approximately four hours (no joke: 7 to 11 pm). Tomorrow I am teaching again, this time closer to home, at 8:45 in the morning (hopefully with materials?), then going to three hours of class, and then running back home, packing a bag, and going camping in Indiana until Sunday afternoon. When I return I will probably have several hundred pages of reading and an Italian writing assignment to do. Oh yeah, and Game of Thrones premieres Sunday night, but my hopes of finding it online before Monday or Tuesday are not great. I guess it's not like I really have time anyway. I'm kind of just still just surprised at how quickly this supposed-to-still-be-innocuous 3rd week of the quarter turned into an angry blur of too much homework and not enough time.
--read 500 pages of a Victorian novel (well, 500 minus the 90 pages I still have left to read)
--interviewed 8 candidates for our house RA next year (our current RA is graduating)
--wrestled with the housing office
--ordered and picked up prescriptions
--played IM inner tube water polo for my house
--gone to the gym three times
--read a couple hundred pages of Freud
--taught a health workshop on the far southwest side with someone I don't know and without the necessary materials
--taken notes on three of the densest psych studies I've seen in a while
--done various busywork for Italian
Tonight we have 5 more RA candidates to interview, which will take approximately four hours (no joke: 7 to 11 pm). Tomorrow I am teaching again, this time closer to home, at 8:45 in the morning (hopefully with materials?), then going to three hours of class, and then running back home, packing a bag, and going camping in Indiana until Sunday afternoon. When I return I will probably have several hundred pages of reading and an Italian writing assignment to do. Oh yeah, and Game of Thrones premieres Sunday night, but my hopes of finding it online before Monday or Tuesday are not great. I guess it's not like I really have time anyway. I'm kind of just still just surprised at how quickly this supposed-to-still-be-innocuous 3rd week of the quarter turned into an angry blur of too much homework and not enough time.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Rolling the dice
It had to come eventually: making decisions.
The day I was accepted into the Rome study abroad program, I knew two things immediately. The first was that I had to go and would be a fool to refuse, and so I didn't. The second was that I was very likely going to have to pull myself away from my house, since UChicago can't get its head on straight regarding undergraduate housing and study abroad. On the one hand, the college loves you to go abroad and tell everyone how great it was when you get back. On the other hand, the college loves to try to keep third- and fourth-years in the housing system, since the vast majority move off campus, since there IS no housing for everyone, try as UChicago might to say otherwise. So you would think that the college would jump at the chance to make it easy for students to both go abroad and stay comfortably in the housing system, regardless of when students choose to go abroad.
No, no, and no again.
When you return from abroad, the college guarantees you housing the same way that it guarantees housing for all who want it--but it does not let you choose. They can't let rooms sit empty for a quarter waiting for you, so you go where there is a space. As far as I can see now (unless someone drops out of school after autumn quarter next year), there will be no space for me in my house beginning winter quarter 2012. In my dorm, maybe, although that's a bit of a stretch. But more than likely not in my house.
It's conflicting because I really do love my house, in many ways. It's not just a dorm or a room to live; it's also many of my friends, two of my elder-sibling-I-never-had substitutes in my resident heads (house heads), my job for the past year in working for our resident masters (dorm heads), and a lot of happiness a thousand miles away from home. This means quite a bit to someone who grew up painfully shy and oftentimes (comfortably) alone, as only children so frequently are. It's basically my family out here, in many ways, and while relationships aren't strictly dependent on where you are, physically, in the world, there's a reason why the people you are closest with are often those who also live near you. Ease of access and frequency of contact give you both the impetus and the need to make relationships work.
It is entirely one thing to move out of housing because you're ready to move on, because you want to pay rent and cook meals for yourself and start pretending to be a real person. I could do that eventually, and I probably will by the time I'm a fourth-year. It's another thing, however, to realize that you don't really have a choice, that your choice is either a) go live and learn for seventy-some-odd days on another continent, or b) stay where you are and keep living with the people you love. How can anyone ever possibly pass up the opportunity to live for a bit in another country? And yet it is so hard, harder than I want it to be, to think of letting go of this vibrant community I've helped make for the past two years, to know that when I come back it won't be waiting for me. The price I pay for international studying is the community I've been a part of back here, domestically.
Of course I can and will visit this old home regardless of where I live next winter quarter and of course I can and will be changed, emotionally and socially, by spending seventy-some-odd days living in an apartment in Rome. In so many ways my house is changing anyway; our resident heads are finally leaving to go, beautifully and yet a bit painfully, be real people who own a house, and our RA is graduating and going to New Mexico to work. But many of the students, my compadres, the meat and bones of the housing community, from this year are staying, and it's just that much harder to swing by the lounge and play Mario Kart or watch stupid TV or bemoan homework when I live somewhere else, blocks away, instead of simply four floors above.
Tonight the randomized seniority list for room pick came out, and I got a great position. One I can't take, of course, because I am barred from participating in the spring lottery due to my not being physically on campus in the fall. (The sweet, sweet laughability of it all.) The first-years and my own yearmates besides are, as I type this, beginning the long process of scheming and trying to figure out what rooms they want to set their sights on. This is a month-long diplomatic (and sometimes just dramatic) affair that is both amusing and yet highly annoying, in that wearying way that over-eager and over-emotional drama can become. It's especially bitter this year because I feel forced out of it. At least three of my yearmates are also studying abroad and staying in housing. But because they are not going abroad fall quarter (because it didn't please them to go to Rome, for instance, or other fall programs), they will have no problems whatsoever living where they want to in the house. The one girl who is also going abroad fall will be okay because she has an arrangement with a girl going abroad winter and a girl going abroad spring, to rotate in and out of a double as each goes abroad.
It's an arrangement I would gladly have participated in, and yet it was not offered to me, something that does make me feel awful in a vague and impersonal way. I know it was simply chance, really, an instance of the other girl probably being around when this bright idea first occurred to the other two, while I simply wasn't in the room. And yet it does make me feel rather left out, not least because although I love my other fall-study-abroader in many ways, I simply feel like, in many ways, I would make a better roommate than she would; I'm far neater and quieter than she is, and the other two girls are also quite quiet and relatively neat. Mostly the entire proceeding just took me by surprise, caught me in a painful presumption that I had something with these other two girls that turned out not to be and left me to fend for myself. I'm not angry at any of them, particularly, just upset in general at being left out by what I can only hope and presume (although look at what presumption brought me!) was simply chance. If I had been in that room when that decision was made, if I had somehow seen it and made my own case, if only if only if only--well, life would be a bit easier for next year, that's all.
And yet right now, when everyone else has some sense of security and I do not (not yet, anyway), it's hard to see this as simply a complication; it feels a lot more like a serious blow, one that I keep coming back to with every end-of-the-year ritual, which will only come more and more frequently as the year rolls on towards its end. It feels personal, even though I know it likely isn't, and it puts me at the mercy of chance, moreso than other people, something inevitable in life that I still have to figure out how to take in stride. I guess that makes this all a somber and rather bitter lesson, at the moment--but a lesson nonetheless.
The day I was accepted into the Rome study abroad program, I knew two things immediately. The first was that I had to go and would be a fool to refuse, and so I didn't. The second was that I was very likely going to have to pull myself away from my house, since UChicago can't get its head on straight regarding undergraduate housing and study abroad. On the one hand, the college loves you to go abroad and tell everyone how great it was when you get back. On the other hand, the college loves to try to keep third- and fourth-years in the housing system, since the vast majority move off campus, since there IS no housing for everyone, try as UChicago might to say otherwise. So you would think that the college would jump at the chance to make it easy for students to both go abroad and stay comfortably in the housing system, regardless of when students choose to go abroad.
No, no, and no again.
When you return from abroad, the college guarantees you housing the same way that it guarantees housing for all who want it--but it does not let you choose. They can't let rooms sit empty for a quarter waiting for you, so you go where there is a space. As far as I can see now (unless someone drops out of school after autumn quarter next year), there will be no space for me in my house beginning winter quarter 2012. In my dorm, maybe, although that's a bit of a stretch. But more than likely not in my house.
It's conflicting because I really do love my house, in many ways. It's not just a dorm or a room to live; it's also many of my friends, two of my elder-sibling-I-never-had substitutes in my resident heads (house heads), my job for the past year in working for our resident masters (dorm heads), and a lot of happiness a thousand miles away from home. This means quite a bit to someone who grew up painfully shy and oftentimes (comfortably) alone, as only children so frequently are. It's basically my family out here, in many ways, and while relationships aren't strictly dependent on where you are, physically, in the world, there's a reason why the people you are closest with are often those who also live near you. Ease of access and frequency of contact give you both the impetus and the need to make relationships work.
It is entirely one thing to move out of housing because you're ready to move on, because you want to pay rent and cook meals for yourself and start pretending to be a real person. I could do that eventually, and I probably will by the time I'm a fourth-year. It's another thing, however, to realize that you don't really have a choice, that your choice is either a) go live and learn for seventy-some-odd days on another continent, or b) stay where you are and keep living with the people you love. How can anyone ever possibly pass up the opportunity to live for a bit in another country? And yet it is so hard, harder than I want it to be, to think of letting go of this vibrant community I've helped make for the past two years, to know that when I come back it won't be waiting for me. The price I pay for international studying is the community I've been a part of back here, domestically.
Of course I can and will visit this old home regardless of where I live next winter quarter and of course I can and will be changed, emotionally and socially, by spending seventy-some-odd days living in an apartment in Rome. In so many ways my house is changing anyway; our resident heads are finally leaving to go, beautifully and yet a bit painfully, be real people who own a house, and our RA is graduating and going to New Mexico to work. But many of the students, my compadres, the meat and bones of the housing community, from this year are staying, and it's just that much harder to swing by the lounge and play Mario Kart or watch stupid TV or bemoan homework when I live somewhere else, blocks away, instead of simply four floors above.
Tonight the randomized seniority list for room pick came out, and I got a great position. One I can't take, of course, because I am barred from participating in the spring lottery due to my not being physically on campus in the fall. (The sweet, sweet laughability of it all.) The first-years and my own yearmates besides are, as I type this, beginning the long process of scheming and trying to figure out what rooms they want to set their sights on. This is a month-long diplomatic (and sometimes just dramatic) affair that is both amusing and yet highly annoying, in that wearying way that over-eager and over-emotional drama can become. It's especially bitter this year because I feel forced out of it. At least three of my yearmates are also studying abroad and staying in housing. But because they are not going abroad fall quarter (because it didn't please them to go to Rome, for instance, or other fall programs), they will have no problems whatsoever living where they want to in the house. The one girl who is also going abroad fall will be okay because she has an arrangement with a girl going abroad winter and a girl going abroad spring, to rotate in and out of a double as each goes abroad.
It's an arrangement I would gladly have participated in, and yet it was not offered to me, something that does make me feel awful in a vague and impersonal way. I know it was simply chance, really, an instance of the other girl probably being around when this bright idea first occurred to the other two, while I simply wasn't in the room. And yet it does make me feel rather left out, not least because although I love my other fall-study-abroader in many ways, I simply feel like, in many ways, I would make a better roommate than she would; I'm far neater and quieter than she is, and the other two girls are also quite quiet and relatively neat. Mostly the entire proceeding just took me by surprise, caught me in a painful presumption that I had something with these other two girls that turned out not to be and left me to fend for myself. I'm not angry at any of them, particularly, just upset in general at being left out by what I can only hope and presume (although look at what presumption brought me!) was simply chance. If I had been in that room when that decision was made, if I had somehow seen it and made my own case, if only if only if only--well, life would be a bit easier for next year, that's all.
And yet right now, when everyone else has some sense of security and I do not (not yet, anyway), it's hard to see this as simply a complication; it feels a lot more like a serious blow, one that I keep coming back to with every end-of-the-year ritual, which will only come more and more frequently as the year rolls on towards its end. It feels personal, even though I know it likely isn't, and it puts me at the mercy of chance, moreso than other people, something inevitable in life that I still have to figure out how to take in stride. I guess that makes this all a somber and rather bitter lesson, at the moment--but a lesson nonetheless.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Poison
"Jon Arryn was a man of peace. Why kill him?"
"He started asking questions."
"I know the truth Jon Arryn died for."
And so will we, beginning next Sunday at 9/8 central. Some great shots here: Dany coated in blood, Varys, Littlefinger, Lysa Tully Arryn, Dothraki orgies, and more. 8 days until the premiere!
"He started asking questions."
"I know the truth Jon Arryn died for."
And so will we, beginning next Sunday at 9/8 central. Some great shots here: Dany coated in blood, Varys, Littlefinger, Lysa Tully Arryn, Dothraki orgies, and more. 8 days until the premiere!
Thursday, April 7, 2011
UDaR on meeting numero uno
Una Donna a Roma has been updated with details, most notably pertaining to visas and plans for other Europe excursions, from the first pre-departure program meeting yesterday afternoon. Enjoy!
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Schedules 'n things
Many people who read this blog actually care very little about A Song of Ice and Fire or HBO's Game of Thrones, shockingly. So as to keep this from simply becoming a repository of fan-girling over the latest and greatest in Westeros, here's some news that has everything to do with the real world and nothing to do with George R.R. Martin or HBO, namely: what I'm doing this quarter.
A week in, it's safe to say this is the solidified version of my schedule from now through June. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I have Modern Love in Victorian Poetry and Prose from 11:30-12:20 and then Italian from 1:30-2:20. On Wednesdays I also have my lector (conversation) session for Italian from 10:30-11:20, and on Fridays I have another hour of Italian right after the normal hour, from 2:30-3:20. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have the third quarter of sosc from 1:30-2:50 and The Social Brain and Empathy, a psych class with the renowned empathy pioneer Jean Decety, from 3:00-4:20. (All times central, of course.) All that time on TTh mornings is usually spent getting ready for the gym, from which I actually just returned, while I'm at the gym from 3:15ish to 4:15ish on MW and later than that on Fridays.
The English class is pretty good, although there are actually quite a lot of people in it for a discussion-based class, probably about 25 or so. I'm not crazy about the Victorians, but it fulfills a period requirement for the English major and is kind of hilarious, in both ironic and non-ironic ways, so it's overall good. Italian is, well, Italian, although it is really quite awkward this quarter since only two people (another girl and I) are in the class; the rest are in the 11:30 section that I used to be in but had to switch out of so that I could take this English class. Our teacher is also kind of awkward, although it's gotten less awkward as time has gone by, so it's okay now. Sosc is sosc, basically the same as ever, although so far it's been a little more interesting this quarter than the last two quarters; we're currently reading Freud, and then we're reading Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Memmi, and some other Freud. Empathy (or, should I say, ze ehm-pat-EE) is pretty entertaining; Decety has probably the thickest French accent I've ever heard, which makes lecture that much more interesting. He's also really nice, which I guess is sort of surprising considering what a bigwig in the field he is, but it's definitely appreciated.
Besides classes, not too much interesting is going on yet. Went to Chinatown on Saturday and had some really delicious food with some housemates. Our house is doing a camping trip at the Indiana Dunes in a week and a half, assuming all the planning comes out okay, which is really exciting. It's spring and the prospies are out everywhere; there's an admitted students overnight this Thursday and next Thursday, so we'll be swamped with eager and awkward high school seniors. The weather's been pretty okay; it was legitimately hot on Sunday, and although it's still very sunny, the temperatures are back down into the 40s and 50s. I think it's supposed to stay there for the next few days, but I guess we'll just end up seeing what happens.
A week in, it's safe to say this is the solidified version of my schedule from now through June. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I have Modern Love in Victorian Poetry and Prose from 11:30-12:20 and then Italian from 1:30-2:20. On Wednesdays I also have my lector (conversation) session for Italian from 10:30-11:20, and on Fridays I have another hour of Italian right after the normal hour, from 2:30-3:20. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have the third quarter of sosc from 1:30-2:50 and The Social Brain and Empathy, a psych class with the renowned empathy pioneer Jean Decety, from 3:00-4:20. (All times central, of course.) All that time on TTh mornings is usually spent getting ready for the gym, from which I actually just returned, while I'm at the gym from 3:15ish to 4:15ish on MW and later than that on Fridays.
The English class is pretty good, although there are actually quite a lot of people in it for a discussion-based class, probably about 25 or so. I'm not crazy about the Victorians, but it fulfills a period requirement for the English major and is kind of hilarious, in both ironic and non-ironic ways, so it's overall good. Italian is, well, Italian, although it is really quite awkward this quarter since only two people (another girl and I) are in the class; the rest are in the 11:30 section that I used to be in but had to switch out of so that I could take this English class. Our teacher is also kind of awkward, although it's gotten less awkward as time has gone by, so it's okay now. Sosc is sosc, basically the same as ever, although so far it's been a little more interesting this quarter than the last two quarters; we're currently reading Freud, and then we're reading Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Memmi, and some other Freud. Empathy (or, should I say, ze ehm-pat-EE) is pretty entertaining; Decety has probably the thickest French accent I've ever heard, which makes lecture that much more interesting. He's also really nice, which I guess is sort of surprising considering what a bigwig in the field he is, but it's definitely appreciated.
Besides classes, not too much interesting is going on yet. Went to Chinatown on Saturday and had some really delicious food with some housemates. Our house is doing a camping trip at the Indiana Dunes in a week and a half, assuming all the planning comes out okay, which is really exciting. It's spring and the prospies are out everywhere; there's an admitted students overnight this Thursday and next Thursday, so we'll be swamped with eager and awkward high school seniors. The weather's been pretty okay; it was legitimately hot on Sunday, and although it's still very sunny, the temperatures are back down into the 40s and 50s. I think it's supposed to stay there for the next few days, but I guess we'll just end up seeing what happens.
UDaR: in which I can't smile
A new Una Donna a Roma post about the bizarre process of having six pictures of me taken for mysterious study-abroad purposes is up and rockin'.
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