Even More Important Photos

Lisbon is facinating, but here are photos of my host family (some of the only ones I ever took) and of Montpellier in mid-December.

(Figures 1-8: Statue of Louis XIV and the Chateau d'Eau; Louis XIV, the Arc de Triomphe and the Eglise Saint Anne; the Arceaux aquaduct at night; my living room looking right with Tannhauser on the couch; my living room looking left; my walk to Paul Valery each day; (L-R) Arthur, me, Timothée, Luc-Amaury, Véronique - a silly pose; (L-R) Arthur, Timothée, Véronique, Luc-Amaury - a formal pose)

Fotos de Lisboa

Over the course of six months, I managed to accumulate approximately 24 rolls of film, totaling around 500 photos. I am just now started to get those photos developed and uploaded into a digital format. Much to my chagrin, the scanners at Mac do not resolve colors as well as I would like, and so the prints of the photographs are a good deal more vibrant and clear than their digital counterparts. So, to put it quite simply, here's what you've all been waiting for.

(Figures 1-3: (L-R) Vilja, Vilma and Ricardo at Ricardo's Apartment, where I couchsurfed while in Lisbon; the highway that passes beside Ricardo's apartment; the walk to the metro station from Ricardo's)

(Figures 4-6: The Torre de Belém; the Monument to the Discovery; the Geronimite Monastery)

(Figures 7-11: A fountain in a square whose name I no longer remember; calçada portuguesa - Portuguese mosaic sidewalks; a view of the Castelo Sao Jorge from Chiado; some king of Portugal, again don't recall the name; the Baixa from Chiado)

(Figures 11-15: looking out over the Tagus River to the east from atop the Castelo hill; the Ponte de 25 Abril and the statue of Christo Rei from the Baixa; I know this has a name, but I'm not remembering it - right outside the Praça de Commercia; another view to the east from the Castelo hill)

(Figures 16-23: Flags at the Park of Nations - where the Worlds Fair was hosted recently (I forget when); the cable cars, same place; the Lisbon Oceanarium; the skyline of the Park of Nations development; the Vasco de Gama shopping center; a reflection of the Oriente station; the Ponte Vasco de Gama; me near the same)

(Figures 24-29: The Rossio Train Station; the Sintra Train Station, looking up at the Castle of the Moors; Sintra; looking west out over the hills of Sintra and to the Atlantic; Vilja and Vilma at the Castle of the Moors; the Castle of the Moors)

(Figures 30-36: One of the hills of Lisbon; looking at the Baixa, the Ponte de 25 Abril and Christo Rei from the Castello Sao Jorge; peacocks at the Castello; same; the flag of Portugal; a view down a street and up a hill; the Marquês de Pombal (Hah! I remember one!))

Okay, I most certainly need sleep now, and putting up all these pictures has been extremely annoying. I've gotta find a better way of uploading photos to this website.

Time Doldrums

It is the fifth(?) week of school now. I am now getting into my rhythm of classes, work, and homework, now mixed in with cooking for myself and other chores. It has been a slow and arduous process. When I got back from Europe, I had no idea at how hard the transition back into serious academic life would be. It has been hard. For most of last week, I wasn't sleeping well so I ended up missing my morning classes - nothing terrible, but something distressing nonetheless. Today has been the first day in several weeks I haven't needed a nap halfway through the day. My semester is reading-heavy, with tests and final projects coming almost exclusively at the end. While I am looking forward to all of them, I certainly would be screwed right now if I had anything major to accomplish by say, Friday. Even my style of writing right now is somewhat chopped. My brain feels like it fell out of my head and got ran through the wash. Now, I bet a lot of you might say "Oh, you have to do your work, otherwise XYZ bad things." I know that, I know that. I find myself asking "Why, though?" a lot. Why am I studying geography? It seems like everyone I know is either better at it or far more knowledgeable or just plain more interested in it. I am still interested in it, but I don't know what. Urban planning? Well, that's interesting. So's cartography. So is regional geography. Everything is still interesting, but I'm just not feeling things right now. Dad and Grandma Anne and Judy have all been pushing me to ask about grad school. Well, what if I don't want to go to grad school? How can I answer the "why" of it all? Hmmmmm.

So that was last week. This Monday, having had the weekend to veg out and reach a point where I've now been wearing the same clothes for five days (still don't smell though - I am showering regularly and changing my underwear) I was woken up by my boss calling me to remind me not to forget to come in to work. She is 46 with kids of her own and of course knows the tendencies of college students to not care about anything at 8:30 in the morning, which for us is like an hour before sunrise. Woke up, rushed a breakfast, and drove to work (when I am late like that, it's just the most expedient thing to do), got everything done having found the office already in decay in my absence, and scrambled to class. It really sucks not having Microsoft Office on my computer as Excel is an integral part to this class - Disciplines and Methods. It makes everything a lot easier. So, I basically have to make sure to do all my homework on campus. Which I hadn't. It got turned in this morning instead, with an apologetic note attached. After class, went home and napped. Did I mention I had stayed up until 3AM on Sunday night, foolishly and for no apparent reason? Yup. Go figure. After the nap, it was time to go back to work (Mondays I work the morning and afternoon shift in the French Department). After work, it was time for... oh right, reading all of Machiavelli's The Prince for my evening class. Whoops! Did that with half an hour to spare, wolfed down a dinner during which we discussed the imminent extinction of bees, the banana and possibly human civilization. Not the most exciting stuff. After that, rush to class!

My Monday night class is the one class for which I am never unprepared. That would be even more terrifying that missing work, failing a test or burning my laundry. Professor Samatar's class has six people in it, myself included. He knows when you haven't done the work, and quite frankly he isn't happy. That happened once when I took his class last year for the introductory course to International Studies. He had a way of mixing disappointment with anger in a way that none of us misunderstood him. It was more like he drilled into your own head and yelled at you from your own point of view. Good teachers do this. Good parents do this, too. Then again, good parents are good teachers. So, luckily none of us have been unprepared for his class so far this year. In fact, I currently have an A- in his class (which is a sign of considerable favor, as there are only 100 points in the semester and we've only had one paper due, an 8-page essay on what leadership means to us. I got a 13.5 of 15). I like this class, and Professor Samatar usually has a way of inspiring me to do things that are completely unrelated to class. Like, y'know, get my life on track. As much as I'd like to say I immediately went home and got to work, I instead had to go to the library to finish my late geography homework. The problem with procrastinating is, ha ha, it catches up with you. And then beats you savagely. So, after getting all that done, I talked to a couple of people about necessary items of life - some of which had been contributing to my previous week's lackluster self - and then went to sleep.

Today, I woke up less tired - although still tired, as is my wont, went to class, and started to feel that familiar feeling of "Oh, your train completely derailed recently, and now you have to get it back on track so as not to be eaten by the wolves that are coming down from the hills." Luckily, Tuesday is my least busy day and I have the most ample opportunity to relax. I have a considerable amount of reading to do for my other IS class tomorrow evening, but I will have that well in hand by tomorrow afternoon. It's only various Marxist treatises on economic imperialism. The usual. Tomorrow, I also plan on going around to a couple of professors with a two-by-four to see which one of them can hit me in the head the hardest. In the effort of getting me jump-started. You see, Professor Samatar in class on Monday gave his roundabout way of saying "You're smart, but you're lazy - you all are. Go and do something with yourselves, come back next week and don't disappoint me." Not only do I not want to disappoint him - or by extension my family and friends - but hell, it sucks feeling like you're the dumb kid in the class. I need to get my act together. I may not have a Rolls-Royce engine of a mind, but it certainly isn't a two-stroke lawn mower engine either. I am not a Trabant! So, with that in mind, I have to run. But! Peter is on the upswing. And it seems to me each time this happens (and it's been happening since like 8th grade), the apogee gets further and further up there. Here's to seeing the tops of clouds from above.

Best Idea Ever!

So I bet $1000 that the Steelers would beat the Cardinals, but only on the stipulation that Pittsburgh would win 49-0 (five touchdowns, each with two point conversions, plus two field goals) and that they would reach this score by the 3rd quarter. The Vegas bookies said they'd give me 10 to 1 odds too! I'm gonna get $1010 if I win! Yeahs!!!

Day Three, Seems like Day Twenty

It is unusual for me to be awake for as much of day as I am, and especially to be awake and having things to do. I am presently at my job in the GIS Lab of the Geography Department (it is my first day, but since the labs for the classes haven't started yet, there is nothing to do and no one here). All I have to do is work through the first lab by two weeks from now to make sure if any of the students need help and if the lab instructor is not here, I can at least help them and show them how to do things. It is a fairly simple job, but pertinent to my major, and I get a couple of three hour time blocks in which to sit and work otherwise uninterupted. I plan on looking to it as a useful way of getting reading out of the way. I've found when employed in separate 1-hour time blocks versus a single multiple-hour time block, I am much less productive. Also, here at the GIS Lab, I get to listen to MPR without distraction.

My first couple of days have been long! I just finagled with my French Dept. boss, Theresa that in exchange for working the 8:30AM slot I can pick out the other hour I work there at my choosing. I also work there Monday from 2:20 to 3:20 and the same on Friday. Following work, I have Disciplines and Methods of Geography at 9:40. Then I have a three hour break for lunch - I'm considering getting the commuter meal plan, which will allow me a certain number of meals on campus so that I won't need to go home and cook for myself. However, it also allows me the flexibility to choose which meals I eat (bfast, lunch, dinner). I think I'll pick the 3:30 to 4:30 slot to work, just to round out my day. Following that, I have class again at 7PM with Professor Samatar. There are only seven people in the class, including myself, and I am one of two juniors (the other is my friend Soukeyna from Senegal). It is the sort of class that I like very much, because the professor is both engaging and well organized. He lectures in a way that lends itself very easily to taking notes. We are reading five books, three of which I've already gotten from the library, and the other two I plan to purchase off of Amazon. Ain't no way I'm going back to buying the godawfully expensive books at the Macalester Bookstore. What a ripoff! My Monday night class ends at 10PM, at which point I go home, relax, do what work needs to be done for Tuesday, and go to sleep.

On Tuesday, I wake up screaming in a cold sweat. Wait, no I don't. Scratch that. I am at the moment reading the November National Geographic, and I just read a snippet about how the Cavendish variety of the banana, the most ubiquitous variety of the popular fruit is being ravaged by a Malaysian fungus that threatens to wholly wipe out the plant. There is no cure to the fungus, which causes the leaves to wilt and die and subjects the rest of the plant to a lethal dose of sunlight. Since all Cavendish banana plants are genetically identical, there is nothing to stop the fungus, except through the efforts of scientific cross-breeding. So, eat your bananas before they're all gone! Okay, I have to finish this post before I leave, so here goes.

Tuesday, I have Urban GIS, which is a class of about 15 people. We don't have any texts for the class, and it is entirely practical. We are acting as a research firm for the Folwell Neighborhood of North Minneapolis and the Federal Reserve Bank to essentially study and put together in map- and related-data form whatever they want us to look at. Past classes have studied spatial mismatch (i.e. the distance between where someone works versus where someone lives), the foreclosure rate of homes in the Twin Cities, and even the density of Mac Alums in the immediate area around the college (it is shockingly high). It should be a neat class. Following that, I have nothing to do for the day until Trads at 10PM. We have three new members, two freshmen (Chaz and Rob) and a senior (Matt), and whilst I was away, the group received rave reviews. Yeah! After that, I fall asleep. Because I have such a wide gap in my day on Tuesday between class and my next obligation, I might be getting a radio show, like what I had last year, again with Carl and possibly with Ian Noble. Depends on what Ian says. No idea about themes yet. I am open to suggestions.

My Wednesday is still in progress, but I suspect it will be when I spend the most time on campus, as I have class from 9:40 to 10:40, then work at 2:30 til 5:30, and then class from 7:00 to 10:00. I think it might be best to eat dinner here on campus for Wednesdays. Thursday and Friday remain to be seen, and likewise the weekend. Other than that, nothing much new. Toodles.

Since I Know So Many of My Bibliophile Relatives Read This...

I sat down tonight, thinking, "Oh, I've got some time, and nothing really to do, since I can't read my texts which I haven't bought, and I don't want to go to sleep yet," and I went to go get a book. I have a whole stack of books in a box I had with me this summer, and in looking them over, I realized just how boring my summer reading list must've been. Books I've found in my box:

1: The Bottom Billion - about the poorest 1 billion people in the world
2: Universal Universalism - a book from my International Studies class that is 80 pages long and Heart-of-Darkness dense. You could stick a spoon up in it.
3: The Patterns of Human Rights Violations Among Illegal Immigrants in European Cultures - I got this book from the 'Free' section they have at the Library from time to time.
4: Third World Crap on a Stick - Yay!
5: Page After Page Filled With Boring Proselytizing By That 93-Year-Old Professor Who Refuses To Die and Open Up Another Tenure-Track Position

And so on and so forth. I haven't wanted to read for the last six months, in part because I've been in places far too interesting to stay put for more than twenty minutes. Now that I finally do, I have nothing to read! Grrrrr... Books that I want to read, and wish were here on my bookshelf:

1: The Silmarillion - I've read this book like 3 times already, and I want to get a fourth time under my belt so I can finally start quoting Elvish epic history. Yes, I am a total dork.
2: The Amber Spyglass - I read this book last year in two days. They were the most awesome two days of the winter.
3: Robert Heinlein - not a book, but an author. I need/want to read more by him.
4: The Mars Trilogy - Kim Stanley Robinson's most famous works. Two of them won the Hugo Award, and they seem quite interesting.
5: Where's Waldo? - A classic of the interactive detection genre.

Of course, I will not have any time to read literature after like, Wednesday. But, I want the option to have things to read, should a rare spare minute fall into my lap. But, now it is sleep time. Zoom!

My First Day of School! (For the 36th Time)

Hurray! School! Learning! Copious amounts of debt! Yay!

Today is the 26th of January, and I have officially begun my 6th semester here at Mac (I like to put it that way because it distracts me from the fact I'm almost a senior. Jeez.) My schedule is still in flux because I can't decide if I want to be an International Studies major (I've taken 2 of 5 required classes, along with all the required secondary classes - fulfilled by my Geography major and French minor (which I supposed have)). At the present, I am signed up to take:

Disciplines and Methods of Geography: Taught by Laura Smith, Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays from 9:40-10:40. This is required for all Geography majors, and it is mostly about the mathematics behind geographical knowledge, like "What does it mean when 57% of the population has cholera?" or "How do you figure out if this housing development is, in fact, dilapidated and should be demolished for the good of humanity?"

Urban GIS: Taught also by Laura Smith, and Birgit Mülenhaus, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:40 to 11:10. Not required, but I like GIS, and it is an enormously useful skill to have. It's how geographers earn money. It teaches you things like how to make maps, and interpret them. It's much more difficult than it seems.

I have to digress at this moment. My housemates just read me a quote about Warren G. Harding, regarding his many cronyist scandals while in office:

"I have no trouble with my enemies. It's my friends that keep me up walking the floors at night."

He also popularized the word 'bloviate', and gambled away the White House china.

Culture & Global Capitalism - Past and Present: Taught by visiting professor Amanda Ciafone, Wednesday night from 7:00 to 10:00. I have no idea what this class will be like, but it sounded cool, and I need to cover my bases for the potential IS major.

Now, my other class is a choice between the extremely easy, but creatively engaging Intro to Creative Writing, or the extremely difficult, but intellectually rewarding Paradigms of Global Leadership. The former is taught by Steve Healey, a man I know nothing about, and by whom I was not super impressed. The latter is taught by Ahmed Samatar, a man that at once frightens and inspires me. He's the sort of professor with whom that if you don't do the work, not only do you fail, you lose his respect, and that's even worse. My dilemma is that I don't want to shovel too much work onto my plate. However, I don't want to find myself halfway through the semester saying "This is boring". And, Professor Samatar might be on sabbatical next spring when I would otherwise take this class. So, I'm planning on going to the class this evening, seeing how it goes, and asking the professor what I ought to do.

Other than that, I am getting settled into my house. I have so far unpacked my clothes. That's it. Oh, I also filled out a request to have my work study award increased by about $400 so that I can work for both the Geography Department (as a GIS Lab Assistant) and the French Department. We'll see if that flies. I've been told it ought to. Other than that, I am getting settled. My housemates are all nice people. There are seven of us - Nick, Kai, Jeremy, Peter, Andrew, Max and myself. It is a quite large house, and my bedroom is in the basement - fully finished and well-heated. So, that is all from my end of town. I'm off to go look for cheap furniture, like bookshelves.

In the Land of Barack Hussein Obama

This morning, I woke up in my own bed! What a novel concept.

Today is January 22nd, and I have now been home for just over three days. I've had Mexican food, drank milk, and experienced the wonderful joy of having to help Dad dig the car out of the snow - he was backing it out of the driveway without realizing he was doing it crooked and managed to slide partially onto the lawn. The culture shock so far has been limited to saying to myself "Oh, the cars are big" and "Gas is so cheap!" Beyond that, it's mostly the little details, like having bars, restaurants and shops ad nauseam in a twenty foot stretch of road, and being able to walk everywhere. I guess I'll just have to hurry up, become an urban planner, demolish large sections of the Twin Cities, influence immigration policy so hundreds of thousands of Europeans can come here, and then rebuild everything in a more convenient fashion. That's for tomorrow.

I start classes on Monday. I am taking two geography courses, Urban GIS and Disciplines & Methods of Geography, as well an International Studies (IS) course on Capitalism, and either Creative Writing or an IS seminar on Paradigms of Global Leadership. They will all be exceedingly difficult, but I have made certain they are all instructed in English, and I'm sure I'll cope somehow. Also, tomorrow, I move into my spring housing. I will be living with a bunch of friends in a seven-bedroom house off of Ashland Avenue about three blocks away from campus. I've only been in the house once, in August, so I can't recall where I'll be living in the house or what the layout of the place is. I can only hope I will be comfortable and warm. Other than that, I've been sleeping well, eating well, and enjoying the sensation of not having to worry about catching a plane or a train or a bus. It's a quick vacation, but an enjoyable one all the same.

Montpellier me manque, but home is where the heart and college are.