Where I've Been

So, it's been a while since I blogged. That's because it's been a while since I did anything. I mean, I did have a fantastic, fun, amazing, delicious, WONDERFUL trip to Egypt at the start of the decade, but I think everyone reading this is my facebook friend, and so you have already seen the incredibleness that was that trip.

Since then, I have been here:

This is my desk where, in a standard weekday, I will spend the better part of 9 hours sitting here, emailing, meeting with students, emailing, doing secretarial stuff, emailing, and a little more emailing.

It is also where, for the last (slightly more than a) month, I have spent the better part of 12 hours a day scrambling to stay afloat amid a rising tide of---well, everything.
I knew before the semester began that it would be crazy. Last semester I worked 2 nearly 60-hour weeks at the start of the semester and it was only me and 8 students. This year it was supposed to be me, 11 students, my boss, and a new & improved orientation program. I was prepared for 2 exhausting weeks.

Then, the Egyptians revoluted (woohoo them!) and we had a bunch a bunch of emails from partners and non-partners asking if their students could come here. And, since I am in charge of all incoming non-degree-seeking students, I had a lot of extra work to do. Our numbers doubled in just 5 short days and now, a full 4 weeks (+ a little) later, I'm nearly back to my cushy 9 hour day :)

My workspace is quite orderly now. Cluttered, sure, but the important thing is: you can see my desk!
You can also see my collection of sunglasses (to the left), my toys (on the computer), my speakers, and the music that's playing (800 points to whoever names the song that's playing) (also, I don't watch videos during the day, but they are playing in the background. Realplayer is so awesome!), and the Best Bulletin Board since the one before it (below).

Like how I've arranged it? I have the three most important, most frequently used reference documents prominently displayed, and surrounding them is happy travel awesomeness. Genius!

All the postcards were given (or sent!) to me from abroad. Starting at top left, we have Nepal, below that I'm not sure (probably the US, actually) (it's a normal card, not a post one), the UK, top right column: Sri Lanka (just arrived today!), China, India and Malaysia.

It's the Best, I tell you! (Also, feel free to send me a postcard anytime!) (I will display it prominently and proudly)

On the far right, we have my Year in Yes calendar:

It has a whole column devoted to "Favorite Words"! And a space to write the Things I loved this month. And sprinkled throughout each months are little special occasions and holidays liiiike:

Plan a Solo Vacation Day---which I am doing now.

Yesssssss!

So, you should all get one. It's awesome. Plus, the blogger, Ms Sarah Von, is so ridiculously cool that I donated to her cause and got cool things in return! I'll tell you about that in a minute.

Right now, it's time to introduce you to the First Bulletin Board of Awesome:

That green thing at the top is my (un)official name plate. It says Annabeans. It was wrapping paper for the stickers (get to those in a minute), but I liked it to much to throw away.

Once again, this bulletin board is more play than work. Sorry, did I say play? I meant, What the heck is all the crap?

I hung this up in honour of that one time the chancellor corrected my grammar. It's my favorite comic ever.

Above it hangs my little gift from Sarah Von. As I was saying, she is spending several months volunteering her way across Asia (started a few months ago in India and is currently in Laos. Click here to read about it). I can't find the post now, but if you donated some money, she would send you something cool. This little bag has a bracelet inside, and that postcard from Nepal? From Sarah :)

Those frogs, however, I've had since Jr high. And I still love them ♥

Speaking of adorable things I love, LOOK AT THESE STICKERS:

I nearly die from Cuteness every time I see them! ♥ ♥

And last but not least, my two favorite sticky notes ever:

The yellow was written on a particularly tough day last semester. :)

The pink was waiting for me when I came back from lunch one day in the Fall. It says, Pls find out the number of this hot girl in my marketing (401) 1400 clock session. First name Fatima! Thx, Tobi.

Sure Tobi. I'll get right on that.

Ask...

...and ye shall receive:

Happy Valentine's Day!

♥

3 Days of Rain

**But first, a little Wednesday wisdom: When breaking the seal on a new bottle of water, be sure you aren't squeezing the bottle. The water may spill out alll over you. And your couch.**

I'm not big into New Year's resolutions. Or small into them. Or, really, into them at all.

I did, though, commit to doing a few things better this year. One of those is taking pictures. I have a friend who's doing a photo-a-day project for 2011, and I thought that was an awesome idea! But it didn't come to me until the 10th, and by then it was almost midnight, so my first picture looks like this:

I call it 'unpacked!'

That is the (flattened) duffel bag I took with me for my two-week trip in Egypt. Those are the fuzzy blue socks I wore around the ship because I forgot to bring those grey slippers. D'oh!

Aaaand I forgot again the next day, so I got this picture, taken well after midnight (but whatever. It still counts!)

Unfortunately, it's not what I was going for. I've never seen fog like that--just wisps, snaking through the air. It was eerie. I took this picture and ran inside.

Ah, look! A picture taken during the day:

And what a beautiful day it was.

One morning this week, the sky looked particularly amazing. This picture doesn't quite capture it, but it's the best I could do while driving...

...an activity I am not practiced at, I swear!

This was yesterday afternoon:

It's been raining all week.

Last night, Halina and I went to the mall. We ate Thai food until I had to unbutton my pants, and then we spent an hour digesting in Border's.

And then, when we were good and ready for more gorging, she introduced me to PinkBerry.

It's no SpoonMe, but it is delightfully aesthetic.

Tonight, I am excited because Halina saved me an empty Mayonnaise jar.

I am not a fan of mayonnaise, but I am a fan of bread, and I am really freaking excited to try making my own SOURDOUGH!

I have more pictures, but they are on my phone. One day, I might get around to uploading them.

In the meantime, I plan to do a whole lot more exploring around Dubai, and hope to bring you many wonderful pictures of the city and the people in it. It's my last year here. It's about time I did some exploring.

The Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr

is one of my heroes. My all-time favorite speech EVER is I've Been to the Mountaintop. I'm sure I've heard it well over a dozen times. It's just to powerful and beautiful not to listen to over and over again.

I'm sorry I missed his birthday celebrations yesterday, but his message is relevant--and crucial--across all days and times and so I figure now is as good a time as Monday to dedicate this post to him. May you take it to heart.

“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

And to leave you with his final (publicly uttered) words:



I get chills every time I hear them.

Welcome to 2011

Wow, we are already over a week into the new year. Time just flies on by, don't it?

For reasons I can't put my finger on, I am really looking forward to 2011. I think it's because I did a lot of self-discovery last year and you know what I found? I'm freaking awesome. You know what else is freaking awesome? Life. Life, and me, and my freaking awesome life ROCK. 2010 taught me that there is a me-shaped hole in the universe and I am having one hell of a time filling it.

I hope you will too.

You-shaped Hole**

Sometimes the world feels inhospitable.
You feel all the ways that you and it don’t fit.
You see what’s missing, how it all could be different.


You feel as if you weren’t meant for the world, or the world wasn’t
meant for you.


As if the world is “the way it is” and your discomfort with it a problem.


So you get timid. You get quiet about what you see.


But what if this? What if you are meant
to feel the world is inhospitable, unfriendly, off-track
in just the particular ways that you do?


The world has a you-shaped hole in it.
It is missing what you see.
It lacks what you know.


And so you were called into being.
To see the gap, to feel the pain of it, and to fill it.


Filling it is speaking what is missing.
Filling it is stepping into the center of the crowd, into a clearing, and
saying, here, my friends, is the future.
Filling it is being what is missing, becoming it.


You don’t have to do it all, but you do have to speak it.
You have to tell your slice of the truth.
You do have to walk toward it with your choices, with your own being.

Then allies and energies will come to you like fireflies swirling around
a light.

The roughness of the world, the off-track-ness, the folly that you see,
these are the most precious gifts you will receive in this lifetime.

They are not here to distance you from the world, but to guide you
into your contribution to it.

The world was made with a you-shaped hole in it.
In that way you are important.
In that way you are here to make the world.
In that way you are called.

**by Tara Mohr. Her complete book of awesome poems can be found here, and I do recommend a read.

A Reflection

In September, I posted a quote from The Book Thief. It's one of my favorite quotes from the book, but it's incomplete. Actually, the complete quote is this:

I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race--that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.
None of those things, however, came out of my mouth.
All I was able to do was turn to Leisel Meminger and tell her the only truth I truly know. I said it to the book thief and I say it now to you.

"I am haunted by humans."

I am haunted by humans.

Most of the time, I see us like this:

If the history of humanity were the clinical case history of a single human being, the diagnosis would have to be: chronic paranoid delusions. a pathological propensity to commit murder and acts of extreme violence and cruelty against his perceived "enemies"--his own unconsciousness projected outward. Criminally insane, with a few brief lucid intervals.

--Eckhart Tolle

It's deeply cynical, and I'm not proud of it, nor am I soothed by it for it omits the human propensity to do good, and the incredible talent of joy.

How can humanity be both criminally insane and compassionate? I wonder this all the time, and consequently find myself talking about it all the time. Conversations about delusional, selfish humanity, that exploits young girls, and works to exterminate entire races. The humanity that abuses animals and betrays loved ones. I can't help but marvel at its cruelty.

A few weeks ago, it came up with my roommate and we shared stories of maids and enslaved migrant workers, and about the elephants she saw being beaten in Sri Lanka. I told her that the night before, I had a dream about rescuing a cat from a sadistic cat-torturer. It was only a dream, but I was disturbed by it because I knew it was also a reality. From the comfort of our living room, we looked out over humankind's depravity.

Later that afternoon, I went to Ikea. The conversation was still fresh in mind as I stood picking through sheets.

What size is my bed, anyway? None of these say 'single'. Does Ikea really expect me to know the dimensions in centimeters? I wondered. And why am I even bothering with sheets? I already have sheets! And a bed. Some people don't even have a bed, and I'm stressing about sheets.

My rationale argued back. The point isn't to deprive yourself of sheets; The point is to live so that everyone can have a bed with clean, non-scratchy sheets. Not buying sheets won't make anyone else's circumstances better, including your own.

Okay, but what color? And threadcount? Do these even have threadcount? Ugh. Threadcount. Can't I just be grateful for the sheets?

I wandered to the next aisle, still unsure of my mattress size, the color I wanted, and why I was even bothering.

A toddler with big rosy jowls and a smile like sunshine waved at me from her cart.

Hi! Her whole face was a smile.

Hi! I returned the wave, and her grin gave way to a fit of giggles. She excitedly waved again. Hi!

She was so excited, I couldn't help but giggle, too. I'd never seen someone so happy to be in Ikea!

I lifted a pack of sheets so it covered my face, then moved them quickly away again. Hi!

Oh, how she laughed!

And in the middle of that busy Ikea, surrounded by (surely) ill-fitting sheets, I did too.

How could I not?

One minute I'm guilty over buying sheets, and the next I'm laughing with a stranger. Isn't that just like humanity?

Her mom came up then and together they began walking to the aisle I had just come from. She looked past her mom, to me, and waved again.

Ma Salaama! (In Arabic, 'goodbye' is actually '[Go] with Peace'.)

It stunned me. She looked Asian, and too small to be able to speak.

Her mom turned to me and laughed a little. Yeah, she says 'Salaam aleykum! An Arabic greeting that translates to, Peace be upon you. Sometimes she gets mixed up and says, 'Ma salaam aleykum!'

Amused, I smiled at both of them, then lifted my hand and waved goodbye to the girl. Ma salaam aleykum! Goodbye! I called after them.

She waved back. Go with peace!

She was beaming.

I beamed, too.

_____


I am haunted by humans. And as I think this, another line from The Book Thief comes floating back to me: I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both.

Hmm.

What I've Been Up To

1. Work. So much work.

2. Travel.

3. Doing 2 for 1.

4. Halloween, for which I did not dress up.

5. Achieving Parallel Parking Victory!

6. Touring Philadelphia (see #3). It was fantastic.

7. Falling back in love with the US. I've decided to move to DC or New York. In 2012.

8. Visiting my BFF in Atlanta, and buying a brand new computer (because during number 7, I left my computer on the plane. Sha-WING!). Other fantastic highlights: fall in Atlanta (WOW), trying every flavor at Wonderful World of Coke's tasting station (we made a suicide of all 60 flavors. YUM)

9. Finding a heart-shaped radish leaf.

I have pictures for all of these and I was going to post them, but man, posting pictures is a pain, so Imma just ...

10. go to bed before 10. It's what I do these days and boy howdy do I adore it. I will give you a much more interesting (and visual!) update soon.

Much love,

This Little Ray (of SUNSHINE! :D)