Passage to India via Diwali

I had such a great time last night at the Diwali celebration! It makes me wish I had gone every year in the past. I just love Indian culture so, it was a thrill for me. The ISA (Indian Student Assoc.) did an excellent job organizing and preparing everything. They had a nice dinner with: tandoori chicken, basmatic rice, vegetable marsala, naan, and a dessert of mango mousse and rice pudding. I used to be quite a frequent customer at the Cafe of India here in Morgantown until, sadly, they closed about this time last year. I was and am heart-broken over that. I wish (HINT, HINT BUSINESS PEOPLE OUT THERE) that someone would come to fill that hole because they were the only game in town. After the dinner, the ISA had a show of traditional dances, humorous skits, and fashion from India---so fun to watch. Finally, they cleared all the chairs out of the ballroom and had a open floor for dancing. And dance they did---for hours and hours while sweating incredibly without taking a single break. I was impressed. In American culture, men pretty much don't dance but, Indian men are truly the lifeblood of the dance floor. They are damn good and know it. I did ok, for a little white girl trained in Latin dancing. Some kind people took me under their wing and taught me some moves; by the end of the night, I fit right in. Along with Latin music, Indian music has got to be the most infectious, not to mention an expression of pure, unadulterated joy; hips wiggle, hands shake, arms flail, shoulders bounce, heads swivel and feet fly. By the end of the night, I was seriously wondering how much a ticket to India was (about $1,300.00) because any culture this fun is worth looking more into. People who know me understand I've always had a mild obsession with India and last night only added fuel to the fire. I woke up this morning sore and still exhausted but stupidly happy. So, who out there wants to go with me to India?? :)

Hurray for Dove! Death to the GREs!

Saw this on Erica's friend, Billy's blog and just had to have it for mine. I love Dove! It's oh-so-true. Makes me proud to use their shampoo...



Tomorrow morning I re-take the GREs...dun, dun, dun! I took them two years ago but, I figured that it would beef-up my PhD applications to improve my score a bit. So, hopefully, that's exactly what I'll end up doing; as opposed to wasting $130. Unfortunately, I don't believe I'll get my scores back in time from the practice test I took this past Saturday. Oh well, practice is practice, I guess. Wish me luck!!!

Total horse puckey but....

...it inflates my ego so, here it is:




Give it a try...you know you want to...My Heritage.com--Celebrity Look-Alikes

"A Visit from Aunt Mabel"...

...as my grandmother told me they used to say. Sorry to some of you to be so graphic and, well, girly but, periods stink---don't they ladies? I always get a wicked headache the day before and a killer lower backache the first day. Not to mention the fact that I blow up like a float for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. The fun just never ends; every month, for seven days, my life and the lives of those around me is hellish. It's funny how every woman has a uniquely torturous combination of side-effects--- headache, backache, irritability, bloating, cramps (thank God I don't have that one), etc.

Don't get me wrong, there's a part of me happy to see it come around regularly. It's a sign that nothing's wrong and nature is smiling upon me and my future progeny. However, I have always wondered why men were not blessed with some kind of little gift every month? There's a great essay by Gloria Steinem called "If Men Could Menstruate" that I absolutely love. I read it whenever I'm feeling particularly crummy and need a laugh. I have even gone so far as to write a story about menstruation---well, not about it, per se. More like how different women deal with it differently. My creative writing teacher thought it was hilarious and announced in class, "I've never thought of it, but there just isn't enough menstruation in literature." I couldn't agree more. After all, why is it such a taboo topic? It's an experience all (well, most) women collectively deal with. There's nothing abnormal or weird about it. I say, stop hiding who you are and be proud to be a bloody woman!!!

Wilco, Caminhando and Compositions

Sweet Jesus how I hate grading compositions! I've always wanted to be able to use this phrase and now I can: It is the bane of my existence. Ahhh...there. I feel better. It's always interesting to see how my students think (or fail to) but they take for @#$^in' ever to grade. Plus, this is only the first of two drafts. I know I shouldn't complain; it's part of the job and it could surely be a lot worse but, man, how it stinks.

I'm really psyched about Wednesday when myself, my new buddy Alison, my old gal Courtney and my better half are gonna see Wilco. I had no idea how many closet Wilco fans existed on campus until I bought my ticket. Once I began mentioning what I had planned for this week, a bunch of people popped up that were die-hard fans--who knew? In any case, it will be good times. Maybe I'll be moved enough to buy a t-shirt.

I am a highly musical person. I always have a song stuck in my head, literally. I must have about 10,000 song lyrics memorized, of all genres. It's crazy. I'm always humming, singing, tapping on something, or listening to music in some form. They say that music is a brain stimulant and the amount and variety you listen to correlates to IQ. Not sure if this is exactly true, but an interesting theory nonetheless. Regardless of the results, I love music. I can play two instruments and would like to have time to learn more. The song in my head today is Brazilian. The title is "Caminhando e Cantando" by Geraldo Vandre. It's a protest song from the 60's, when Brazil was under a dictatorship. Truly an inspiring song, not to mention HIGHLY charged with Communist rhetoric. Take a listen some time if you can, or ask me and I'll plug you in and translate. It just makes you wanna join hands and stare down a tank...or something like that.

Why am I so bored??

La, la, la ....I'm so bored. My office hours stink. People rarely come to see me so I usually catch up on my grading or lesson planning. However, I'm all caught up on my grading and I'm just recycling my lesson plans from last semester so, I really have nothing to do---for the moment. I SHOULD be studying for my Latin American Nobel Prize Winners test tomorrow (will do later) or reading for my 18th/19th century Spanish lit class tonight (not gonna go). More than anything, I should be writing for my thesis. I had a meeting with one of my advisors yesterday; yeah, I was a big freakin' ball of stress. I have plenty of research done but I'm completely paralyzed to write something---anything having to do with my topic. It's bizarre. I have zero problems writing for my short story class; perhaps because I'm only taking the class for fun so, there's nothing "riding on it", so to speak. I gotta get over my perfectionist tedency and fast. I don't want to write anything because I'm afraid it won't come out coherent and intelligent. So, I'm putting it off and putting it off as the pressure steadily mounts (because I always put more pressure on myself than anyone else).

I feel yucky. I'm not sick. I don't get sick very often; during the fall and winter I jack up my Vitamin C, water and garlic intake and I usually skate right through cold and flu season. I feel bad because yesterday was my last installment of the Hepatitis A/B shot. Now I'm totally immune for the rest of my life; I can go stomp barefoot on broken glass and rusty metal at a construction site and I'll be fine (thanks to a tetnus booster as well). This stupid shot makes my arm feel like it weighs two tons and it doesn't want to move at all.

Hmmm....what else...oh, Wilco is coming to WVU! Woo-hoo! I'm gonna buy my tickets today, I think. Love those guys. I'm probably gonna go to the movies with some girlfriends tonight...either "Little Miss Sunshine" or "Man of the Year". Man, I wish the weather were nice enough to still go to the drive-in. Love that place. Time to get some lunch...gazpacho anyone?

Musical Interlude

Well, here's the link I have been promising-- actual, live footage of the Brazilian concert here at WVU last weekened. I'm so proud of myself for uploading it (it took almost 24 hours total), formatting it, and embedding the player into this blog and my MySpace page.

Also, a little update from my last post.Mr. Frank Klepadlo (sophomore polysci major)wrote a wonderful letter to the editor in response to Ms. Feltzer's article about foreign language study. The title is "Foreign Language Requirement Appropriate, Useful" and it is in the Oct. 6, 2006 archive of the DA. As a result, I no longer feel compelled to reply myself. I suppose it's for the best; my reply would seem totally biased, which it naturally is.

This past weekend was a lot of fun. Friday night, Felipe and I went to a Brazilian couple's house to have an Arabic dinner--go figure. There were a few other Brazilians there and we stayed for about 6 hours just eating, chatting and telling funny stories. On Saturday, we went to another Brazilian couple's home to have a feijoada lunch (which lasted about 5 hours). Courtney and I went to a men's soccer game Saturday evening which lasted about two hours. All in all, I think I pretty much spent the whole weekend doing nothing but eating, talking with people and generally having a good time. It was wonderful but, I'm left a little behind schedule now. So, here I am blogging and procrastinating, again...ok, I'll stop now.

I speak American, duh!

I'm so incredibly pissed! The university newspaper "The DA" printed an op-ed piece that annoys me to the point of wanting to really give a good shaking to the stupid chick who wrote it. The title is "Foreign Language Requirement Unnecessary" by Martina Fetzer. In this article, she not only says why studying a foreign language is totally unnecessary, in her opinion (fucking idiotic English major!!grrr), but also why WVU teaches it unfairly, why it's a big waste of time, how it inspires racism, how it's unfair if foreigners come here and can't speak English and then we have to learn another language, and how if people are not "enthusiastic" about taking these classes, they should not be requirements. I MUST write a rebuttal--there is just no way around it. I mean, what an imbecile! Has she never poked her head out of Stansbury Hall (where Dept. of English is located) to look at the rest of the world?? Besides, if the university administration decided that students only had to take classes they "liked" nobody would take anything challenging at all or anything even remotely outside their major. What a lovely group of narrow-minded zombies we would be graduating every year in that scenario! I'm really surprised, honestly. I'm surprised someone can say something with perfect grammar and punctuation and look like such an ignorant, racist redneck.

You just gotta dance...

...when you hear these guys play! We went to a concert Sunday afternoon for ContraCantos-- a Brazilian musical/choral group from Recife. They were just plain awesome! The show was rather long (about 2 hours and some) but definitely worth the time. It made it even more amazing and fun due to the fact that we had met and talked with these people the Friday before at the feijoada (which was incidentally for them). One woman in particular, Anastacia, I talked with for about 45 minutes on Friday and had NO idea she was so incredibly talented. That woman can SAAANNNG. Not just sing, but SAAANNNNG. She's about as tiny as me and very soft-spoken. We had a lovely conversation (I was feelin' rather proud of my Portuguese skills) and she briefly mentioned she was a singer. On Sunday, she got up on stage and did a solo for an English song called "Old Time Religion". I was teary-eyed but the end, no lie. She has an amazing voice. It just seemed to explode out of her small body--you would never expect such a deep, powerful sound to come out of that woman. As you can tell, I'm still very much in awe. It was one of the best weekends I've had in a while. (Will add link here to a video clip of the performance soon!)

Now I'm heading into the middle of the week. I'm giving an exam tomorrow which I have to grade rapid-fire to be ready for mid-term reports on the 10th. I've also been studying like crazy for the GRE's lately. It's funny how advantageous knowing other languages is when you are trying to expand your vocabulary in your native one. "FACILE", for example means "something easy" in English and means the same thing (facil) in both Spanish and Portuguese. Only problem is I usually don't trust my instinct and over-think things--especially on standardized tests. The more I study for this, the less relevant it seems to graduate study. I mean, seriously, does it really matter if I know how to calculate the area of a sphere or the definition of "unctuous" if I want to study Latin American history? I think not. Granted, having a rich vocabulary and being articulate are important for my area of study but, using extremely rare and complicated words in academic writing only makes you look pompous and rambling. My personal opinion is that each field should have it's own diagnostic test or the writing sample that applicants submit should be composed of more examples; something like that. Even if I do well on this test, my results have no real bearing on my ability as a graduate history student so, why make me put in the time and effort? Just another rhetorical question to pitch out there into the bottom-less pit of universal experiences...