17 March 2013

The annual Bahá’í fasting period is now nearing its end. The fast:

“involves complete abstention from food and drink from sunrise till sunset. It is essentially a period of meditation and prayer, of spiritual recuperation, during which the believer must strive to make the necessary readjustments in his inner life, and to refresh and reinvigorate the spiritual forces latent in his soul. Its significance and purpose are, therefore, fundamentally spiritual in character. Fasting is symbolic, and a reminder of abstinence from selfish and carnal desires.”

From: http://info.bahai.org/article-1-4-7-2.html

It used to be hard, but now it is one of my favorite times of year. Here are just some of the things I love about it:

It forces me to slow down, think before I act, consider the differences between need and want, and weigh the importance of things.
It is a wonderful opportunity to break some bad habits (overeating, drinking too much coffee, etc. etc.)
It is an even better opportunity to build new good habits (prayer, eating regular meals, sharing meals with friends…)
(and a new one) It builds relationships with those who are fasting alongside us.

I am very happy that this year my aunt Susan is fasting with me. I had a lot of doubts as to how we would go about fasting “together” half a world apart. Technology makes that easier; still, I didn’t want to undertake anything too contrived, like forced daily “how was your day” check-ins. The way that things have unfolded, though, has been very natural. We just keep up a conversation about our struggles and our victories, and the prayers and passages that guide us through in our efforts to achieve our own spiritual goals during the fast (mine is to really focus on building spiritual habits like prayer and reading the Writings and making these a part of my daily life). Each fast I’ve done has been a little easier physically and a little harder spiritually than the last fast. And I think that means I really am growing.

I highly recommend it.

In my last post (ages ago, I know…I’m sorry!) I talked about starting a translation blog, thefaithfultranslator.wordpress.com. I’ve put up a few articles. Do give me a little feedback. I thoroughly expect that it won’t be very good from the beginning. But with feedback, maybe I can accelerate the process of making it interesting and useful to those who also take an interest in translation.

In any case, I created a bottom row of links I intend to eventually split off (assuming that the top row will become my professional translation website) and one is for creative writing. This week a group of writerly souls is getting together for a writers’ workshop and some of us will take on the challenge of writing a poem a day in April for (American) National Poetry Month. April may be the busiest month of my life to date, what with the Eleventh International Bahá’í Convention looming on the horizon of its end (see http://news.bahai.org/story/624 - the guy with the gray hair behind the computer is acting in one of the many capacities I will act in too…and hopefully the participants I assist will not look so confused after I finish with them). And in a sense, I feel that I don’t have time for writing. But “time for writing” will never come to me if I wait for it. Given I talk about writing much more than I actually do it, the coming month is a great chance to shut my mouth and pick up my pen. Particularly on the heels of the lesson that doing something in solidarity with others, singly yet together, brings energy and joy to the endeavor.

So, do stay tuned to the section of my blog thefaithfultranslator.wordpress.com titled “poems, stories and other writing” through the month of April, and I will do my best to produce poetry that is at the very least not sub-Vogon in quality.

(for reference see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogons)

After two extension of my service, and nearly a third (I played with the idea of staying on for a few more months, but dropped it due to impracticalities), I am finally getting ready to go once and for all. Obviously, after four years I have much to reflect upon. Either my reflections are still in their embryonic stages or they have been ongoing for the past year. Probably the latter. I have been a little frustrated with myself over the past year, slaving away over my future plans and withdrawing very deep into myself, sometimes dwelling on my limitations and imperfections. In a relatively self-contained community of around 6-700 people, withdrawing deep into yourself puts you in an awkward place which makes hard things even harder. But I think I’ve really grown on the inside. The greatest thing I’ve done is to finally understand that I should be, and ultimately am, in control of my own life. And I’m ready to grow more on the outside too. Just as an example, where in the past I had such fears of public speaking that I missed out on some great opportunities (like interpreting for pilgrim talks or guiding pilgrim groups at the International Archives building), now I’ve read before an audience comprised of almost the entire World Centre, and I’m delighted to be reading at a friend’s wedding this week. And I think the next phases in my life are good arenas to do some growing on the outside.

Life’s chess moves (combined with my toil) are playing out such that it appears I will complete graduate studies in Spain after all, with a little (OK, a lot of) help from my wonderful, extraordinarily supportive dad and Chris. I’ve been admitted to the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain. I have an office mate from Andorra who attended the very same school and studied translation as an undergraduate, and she is an excellent translator. From what I hear, Spanish culture is laid-back enough that I will have plenty of time to study hard, work, develop a freelance translation business, get involved in activities in the community (I’m trying to find a writers’ group to join, and of course there are always the Bahá’í activities, and simply exploring Barcelona and maybe beyond…wherever my feet and my limited budget can take me), and probably get moving around 10 in the morning every day (not that I intend to; I can never wake up that late anyway). As luck would have it, I know a smattering of people all over Spain, including a handful in or around Barcelona, and while none of them are my best friends, a start is better than nothing. I am sure that it will be hard sometimes, but it’s hard for growing to occur without experiencing some hard times.

And after Spain…I’m working hard on some plans. I was admitted to McGill to study library science. Montreal is the largest bilingual city in the world (not in a language I speak, but it would be a great opportunity to learn, since everything, everything in Montreal is presented in one language, then immediately, in the other), and I am interested in studying multilingual information access, under a certain professor whom I adore and whose research fascinates me…so given the circumstances, it makes a lot of sense to apply for a Fulbright grant, develop and state my case as eloquently as possible, with a little mentorship from my friend who’s a Fulbright scholar in London now, and the remote BWC librarian who has been in town for some six weeks and who is proving a wonderful and supportive mentor…and wait and see whether the Fulbright committee sees fit to give me a major grant…then…if I study there, make every effort to remain in this wonderful city I visited in 2009 and immediately felt like home.

Things are looking up.

In the meantime, I have to cut through all the red tape. So I’ll be applying for a Spanish visa from home, which means I’ll be spending three months most likely based in Madison, visiting people, putting things into place, with effort and luck, picking up some work, and God willing finding some time to just enjoy the lakes and trees and quietude of a non-middle-Eastern summer (middle Eastern summers are not easy) and beautiful fresh air. The farmer’s market. The Art Fair on the Square. The combined knitting and coffee shop on Lakeside Street. If I can stay long enough, the Sheep and Wool Festival with Susan, over my birthday weekend. I miss knitting quite a bit. I haven’t been doing it because knitting just doesn’t fit into the pace and style of my life in Israel. But I am eager to get back into it.

I looked into applying for the visa from Israel and going straight to Spain, but it’s not possible. So I have to go home for a while…and in the end, I think that’s the best way for things to be, because if money were no object, that is what I’d be doing! So if circumstances force me to follow my heart’s path, then so be it; I’m more than happy to go with the current. Interestingly, I have many, many reasons/requirements/excuses to travel to Chicago this summer: to drop off my visa application. To pick up my visa application. To visit friends who intend to move to Chicago. To visit the Bahá’í temple. To attend one of 95 worldwide conferences for Bahá’í youth. To attend the annual American Library Association conference in Chicago and do some preliminary networking. To go to the Art Museum, to go to Millennium Park, to walk Michigan Avenue and to do all the touristy things I used to love to do in high school when I was supposed to be perusing the paintings in the Art Museum the whole day (even now I find that tiresome…there is just so much art that somebody sometime decided was good enough to put on display in a really fancy venue for a really long time [my attitudes towards art have shifted substantially over the years…I still love it, but I’m a not such a fan of the passivizing society of the spectacle]). Quite possibly, to catch the flight that takes me to Spain.

11 January 2013

There will be a conference on interdisciplinary translation studies in Mashhad, Iran from 30 April to 2 May. And there are about 40 reasons I won't go, not least of which being that it falls entirely within what will assuredly be the busiest period of my life...OK, actually, that probably is the least among them.

I would love to go to Iran. I read books about it and from it and study the language even with the knowledge I will probably never go.

But you never know!

If you find a spare moment, please check out my new blog, thefaithfultranslator.wordpress.com, and please tell me what you think of it, whether your comments be good, bad or ugly. I want to hear the truth. You cannot offend me, you can only encourage me or save me from embarrassment. It's win-win. I assume (and hope) the quality of the content will improve or at the very least become less abstract once I get my feet wet in the business or just proceed with my studies. So for now it is just a testing ground. So far the only feedback I have to go on is the complete lack thereof, which is a bit discouraging...but this is something I love to talk and write about, so after all just doing it and keeping going is a reward in itself.

On life lately: work is intensifying, but I'm glad to be occupied with meaningful work. I moved into a new flat and while I absolutely love having my own place, and am extremely grateful, I feel a bit as though I live in a hotel, a temporary holding station, where I can eat and sleep until I go. My possessions are beginning to find new homes; projects are beginning to wrap up; I'm doing the last studies and readings I'll have the chance to do in the Holy Land; and I'm spending my last hours in the Shrines. Oh, and I've already made tentative plans to come back. I have some friends who were thinking of traveling to some combination of Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and Italy--all places I would have loved to visit if money were no object--next month, but they decided to save their pennies for the transition home. So, with any good fortune, we will visit some combination of these countries together plus Israel five or ten or so years down the road. But, first things first...such as enjoying our last months together--we're leaving in June. Oh, and visiting each other in Madison when we're back in our respective parts of the US, in, say, July.

7 December 2012

This is my second post in less than a month--I don't think I have been on such a roll since 2010. Maybe I am starting to earn and deserve my readership.

My stay-cation was good. I lodged one application to a Spanish graduate program, in Barcelona. As for the rest that I might apply to for now all I can do is prepare and wait. In Spain it is not uncommon for universities to do the same in March or April. One does not open until May. Talk about laid-back.

I have had the privilege of having a number of dear family and friends look over my materials and give me feedback. Some of the most valuable feedback I got was from a friend in Israel--she went through the whole essay I wrote for the school in Barcelona and cut out every instance of "I", "me" and "my" she possibly could--and there were quite a few. The end product was more meaningful, striking and to the point. Makes me shudder to think about going back and reading some of my previous blog entries.

In that vein, I have a friend, Sahar, who has been kind enough to lend me the netbook I am tapping out this entry on, who has a blog, saharsblog.wordpress.com. The title is in effect ironic, because the blog is about everything but Sahar herself--and that tells you a whole lot about her. She asks plainly on her blog's "About" page: "Let me start off by say that Sahar’s Blog is definitely NOT a day-to-day diary description of what I am up to – not only it might bore you to death, but what’s the point of everyone knowing what I am up to?"

It's a good question for anyone to ask. I write "Hacer el camino al andar" to keep my friends and family posted on what I'm doing on this side of the world, but wouldn't you come to know more about me, plus some other interesting and useful stuff too, if I used this blog to show you not so much the filter itself as the world through it?

With that I'll share with you another fruit of the labor I put in during my stay-cation: thefaithfultranslator.wordpress.com

The heart of it is a blog about translation issues. My intention is that the top row of links might become part of a web presence as a freelance translator; and the bottom row of links, when the time to professionalize comes, might be split off into a different forum. I began it before these reflections on ego had taken root in my head, so I'm still working on purging it of self and keeping the focus on translation. Any and all feedback is appreciated. I don't know what will become of this blog, but the title itself leaves the door wide open. It comes from this poem by Spanish poet Antonio Machado:

Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino,
sino estelas en la mar.

Soon I'll post a translation on my translation blog :)

18 November 2012

Let me apologize for the long delay.

Things are going well. My hare-brained (harebrained?) scheme to study translation in Spain and library science in Canada is actually coming together, despite months of feeling anxious that things wouldn't work out--and now I feel that whatever happens, I'll be satisfied, but the worst thing is to have a dream and not try to find the way to achieve it. Already, I know that I've learned invaluable things through the mere act of making the effort, such as: there are obstacles in your path that someone or something else puts there, and then there are obstacles in your path that you yourself put there (and can do something about), and there are obstacles that aren't real and exist only in your imagination.

And that it never hurts to ask a question.

And that some of the things left-field people say are actually right. Who would have known it?

I'm taking a few days off work just to have a break from the office and catch up on some personal projects, including:

Graduate school applications. Of course. This is a huge amount of work and I'm a slowpoke, but I'm getting there. An advisor at UWM (God bless her soul for helping me go somewhere else) told me to look at as many schools as possible. It's an exhaustive, exhaustive exercise, but in the process of asking questions and getting answers (often more promising than I expected), viable candidates are shaping up fairly quickly. A lot of things will become clearer in January. Besides that, I'm:

Writing: I hardly ever make time for this. Not long ago I issued a general appeal to all Baha'i World Centre writers to let me know who they are and what they write. In a couple of weeks I'm having a poetry-prose reading at my house and so I ought to have something to share. I've looked through some old poems and other writing and think I can do better. A lot of it feels immature. I'm going to work on writing something more sophisticated and if it works out I'll post it here.

Translating: A couple of months ago I had the idea to join the fascinating conversation online of translation bloggers and their blogs. I actually wrote down a number of themes and drafted about seven entries and then my laptop died. So, starting over. I'm also thinking of looking for a little freelance work, anything to start to understand how the field works and help me a little along the way financially.

Calligraphing: I don't know if I've ever written about this, but having visited all the Holy Places, whose walls are decorated with calligraphy and other items, a number of times, having visited the International Archives Building which displays some of the original Baha'i writings, rendered in calligraphy, having volunteered in the Conservation office for a year, and having had friends who are expert calligraphers too (one of my most prolific friends is a descendant of Mishkin-Qalam, a famous early Baha'i and calligapher whose best known work appears at the bottom of the page) I've been inspired to do some of this myself. It seems that most people love to have a piece of artwork that says something that has meaning to them, so I can't post any good examples of calligraphy I've already done, having given the good pieces away, but I intend to start taking pictures of things before I give them away, for the record, and the blog.

I can, however, share with you a picture I took yesterday around Stella Maris monastery and cathedral, a Catholic pilgrimage site, yesterday (I am sorry, I tried to upload a few more pictures but it took forever, then the mechanism broke. I am thinking of starting an Instagram account since I am pleased this company shares my love of square-shaped images [it only allows square-shaped images] and then I should be able to share a lot more pictures):

24 August

Apparently my blog has a small following in Italy, Japan and Latvia. Hello, foreign friends!

Today I went with a few friends to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in the new city of Jerusalem. I haven't been to the holocaust museum in D.C. to compare but those who have tell me that the American museum is far more focused on the actions of the Allied Forces whereas the one in Israel primarily tells the stories of Jewish communities, families and individuals and many non-Jews who risked their lives to save the Jews.

Yad Vashem is a huge complex with a number of outdoor memorials, set in gardens (and including a haunting memorial to the 1.5 million children who died in the holocaust - you walk inside and you're surrounded by darkness, a few candles and refracted glass that makes the candles appear to multiply). The main attraction is a museum shaped like a very long prism, set into a mountain with either end sticking out (to symbolize the moral darkness of the holocaust era). At the "beginning" end the prism is intact but at the "ending" end it splits into two. It's a really unique design feature, especially since both ends of the prism are off the ground. I think the split end is meant to symbolize the regeneration of the Jewish people.

Inside the prism is a zigzag path through several exhibits with tons of written information in chronological order. This way you can't skip around and you're forced to do what you probably wanted to do anyway, which is piece together the events as they happened. There's such information overload that by the time you reach the exhibits about the horrors of extermination campaigns and the brave efforts to save individual Jews or whole Jewish communities or populations within countries, which start coming about halfway through, you're fairly dizzy. I think if I were to go again I'd start halfway through...though I don't know if I would go back. I felt sick all day. Yet, at the same time I felt a certain distance from the events depicted. It is hard to imagine such a thing happening in the world today. Yet such horrible things do happen although on a smaller and less noticeable scale. I wonder how much time it will take for our consciousness as a race to be elevated to the point that such acts, whether on a small or grand scale, become totally unthinkable.

After leaving Jerusalem we went to Max Brenner outside of Tel Aviv. I thought it was weird that we planned to go to such a happy place after the holocaust museum (I didn't write up the itinerary) but I really appreciated it after feeling sick all day. It's a chocolate-themed chain restaurant with only a few branches in different countries around the world, and I think I know why it's popular in Israel--the country not being famous for its excellent chocolate, the stuff found here is generally low-quality and much too sweet. I had the banana split waffles with whipped cream, caramelized bananas, ice cream, a side of chocolate-covered crunchy things and another side of liquid chocolate to pour on top. I ended up wishing I were a bigger fan of chocolate (and giving half my plate to a bigger chocolate fan than I) but I hugely appreciated the presentation. Every dish was a work of art. If I were to open a chocolate-themed restaurant, or any restaurant (or do anything, really), I'd borrow its aesthetic.

9 March

It makes me laugh to see in my previous post that I thought then I was just under the four month mark...because now I am pretty sure I am just under the actual four month mark. So, naturally it feels like no time has passed at all. I was intending to leave in early June but since the best time to visit Jaime in Duluth is at the beginning of July, it seems to make the most sense to leave at the end of June, probably the 30th--that's a full 33 months anyway, which is the complete balance of what I promised (I remember that I arrived in Israeli on the 25th of September and started serving in my office on the 30th of September 2009).

I am sad to report I am finding it extraordinarily cold outside, and I bundle up every time I step outside, yet I am always amazed to see that these torturous temperatures are always somewhere in the 50's and 60's. I do not know how I will survive come fall.

I had my pilgrimage at the end of February, beginning of March. My whole occupation centers on bringing pilgrims to the Holy Land, and I know that pilgrimage is a source of great joy and inspiration for many people, yet I had a hard time enjoying it myself. One of my friends who was to have his pilgrimage at the same time as me ended up cancelling it altogether shortly beforehand and I couldn't really understand why at the time, but now I can. I think we are both the sort of person that would rather do meaningful work than just go on vacation. A pilgrimage does not equate with a vacation, it is not all sightseeing and self-indulgence but something spiritual, but there are parallels. You can't work, for example, and you get spoiled with people working for you while you...let them, and it is all entirely focused on the self. It's a reflection time. Actually, that part was quite intense. I tried to do as much reading and reflection as possible and I felt like that was a big responsibility (since I practically had people waiting on me to allow me to do this). I have to admit, though, that early on I thought of calling the whole thing off myself and going back to work. It was a bit harder for me to enjoy because I live here and I've seen and done everything, though not all at once until now, and because I was alone and I think it's more meaningful if you have family members with you. Or at least friends. Of course, I made friends on pilgrimage but I was sort of disappointed at the quality of the conversations I had with them. I don't quite know how to explain or justify that without being snobbish (or maybe there's no way because I'm being snobbish). But it seems like the quality of the conversations that I have with other staff generally far exceeds the quality of the conversations that I had with my fellow pilgrims. It could be that my expectations were too high. I expected that we would talk about matters of spiritual import on our pilgrimage but it seemed all they wanted to talk about were movies and popular fiction novels and linguistic idiosyncrasies and even politics. My patience was quite tried to hear some of my American compatriots lament things like smaller portion sizes at restaurants and the difficulty of finding peanut butter. I tried to connect with people, but ultimately it was my responsibility to try to connect my soul to God, so I tried to focus my energies on that.

In the middle of my pilgrimage began the yearly Baha'i fasting period, which is 19 days (today is day eight) of abstaining from eating and drinking during daylight hours (obviously this is a symbol of the spiritual component...like pilgrimage, fasting is meant to be a time of reflection, maybe a sort of spring cleaning of the mind). Somehow it is extraordinarily easy this year. I don't miss food, and I like the feeling of a little hunger, which feels like resetting my connection to internal rather than external hunger cues, which is good, because I feel that I overeat a bit ordinarily. I do miss water, but even that is a good thing since I drink water to the point of feeling bloated sometimes (the result of having a desk job and being constantly exhorted to drink more water). All in all it does feel like an external recalibration. With that being easy, I can try harder with the inner recalibration.

In light of the fast I haven't been doing yoga but I expect to get back into it at the end of March. If I maintain my expected schedule I'll be doing yoga right up until almost the end of June and that way, hopefully, I'll learn enough that I'll be able to sustain a yoga practice without a teacher (good, because lessons are expensive) or maybe with infrequent instruction when I get back. I expect graduate school to be stressful and so I am trying to line up my coping mechanisms now.

Speaking of graduate school, I've been told that I've been admitted to the Spanish translation program and to the library science program. Now all I'm waiting on is the graduate school, so I can't see why I wouldn't be as good as in. The fall timetable gets posted at the end of this month and I think registration begins sometime in April. Oh, and I haven't heard anything regarding my FAFSA yet and I don't quite know how long that takes. Now I'm a bit anxious because no news either means it's still being processed or something went wrong. I know it will be intense but I'm really looking forward to more higher education, particularly because this time my aspirations are much clearer.

10 February

Obviously, I'm back in Israel now. It hasn't changed much, except for the growing prominence of the threat of war between Israel and Iran. On one hand, it's a scary thought (and I seriously doubt that the Iranian government will make its decisions based on practical matters rather than ideology, so I don't know how optimistic I feel about the sanctions that are an effort to get Iran to halt its nuclear development program)...and on the other, I remember the threat of Iran being a big deal when I first flew into Israel in September 2009 (the same day, the Ahmadinejad was giving a speech at the United Nations and several nations walked out during his talk). This country has experienced relative calm for nearly three years. Considering there was a significant conflict in 2008-2009 (Gaza) and another in 2006 (Lebanon) and I'm not sure when the one before that was (the one I hear about most aside from those two is the Persian Gulf War in the early 90's), it's been an unusually long time since a conflict erupted. But it's probably not good to think then that a conflict must be overdue. Warfare isn't overdue anywhere.

I keep thinking I'm going to have a hard time getting people to understand that I lived in Israel for three years yet am not pro-Israel, pro-Palestine (let's face it, at this point in history they both have a good argument), Jewish OR Christian. I have yet to see which preconception will be the most common/hardest to disspell.

For four weeks I've been taking Iyengar yoga classes at a local studio twice a week. I think it's the best decision I've made here. Finally I'm meeting some locals and seeing what Israelis outside of the service professions are really like (granted, it can't be said it's not a very specific subset of Israelis...the ones who do yoga). My goodness, they're sweet. They'll do anything to help you. The classes are taught in Hebrew and some of them go out of their way to translate for me and help me. There is a very sweet Russian lady I see often named Nina who says she thinks I've been doing yoga longer than I have because I'm so flexible. I tried to tell her I was born that way. (It's definitely an asset.) In a way it's a chance to escape into a wider world and it's teaching me how to turn off my mind sometimes and relax. Since it's a style that's so focused on precision it makes me much more conscious of how I sit at work and walk and carry myself. But most of all it helps me to feel that I'm really living in a foreign country and this is real life, not some weird suspension of time in a bubble. I wish I had been willing to make such an investment sooner, but what can I do but relish it now?

As I hoped, I am gradually picking up more and more Hebrew and getting more and more courageous about using it...even if much of my vocabulary is anatomical and directional (can't think why).

Now that I'm likely under the four month mark (depending on when I choose to leave...I'm thinking early June) I'm beginning to think seriously about the process of relocating. I have a few possessions to sell, mostly books and art supplies, not many. I have a lot of heavy books to ship back (these are what I have accumulated the most of), but I get a free 40 kilo allowance and I think that should take care of that (and if needed I can always pay for more). And that's that. Just like that I'll wrap up my life here and it will be like I was never here except for my initials on a few logs in the pilgrimage database and a few paintings I may as well leave behind because I don't like them that much and they may as well spruce up a flat here like so many found objects. I'll take a lot more back with me from this place than it's going to end up with from me. I'm pretty small in the grand scheme of things.

The biggest issue regarding my departure on my mind is what traveling I'll do on the way back. I couldn't not go visit Jaime in Superior for a week or two since we've had the chance to spend so very little time together in the past three years (really, in all our lives). That's decided...I just have to plan it.

As long as I'll be crossing half the world, I might do well to think of it as my chance to see a little more of the world (though I definitely appreciate how much I've been able to see...I've been all over Israel [I might even go to Jerusalem for a third time next Saturday], and I've spent substantial time in two very different, fascinating European countries, plus I got to have a good visit home). Of course, I am also trying to bear in mind the fact that grad school is in no way cheap even when the goal is to earn only one master's degree, and I hope to study abroad in that period (and now that I have friends all over the world, that study abroad period could easily encapsulate more travel within itself [how much more travelling do I need to do?]. Sometimes I have to step back and remember that I've been very lucky).

In any case, the traveling I've done from here has always been with the goal of being with family or friends...honestly, I've done enough sightseeing that I'm not interested in it for its own sake (if anyone really is). So, if I don't see France or Italy or Greece or Turkey or God knows where, just to see them, I'm okay with that. If you have any thoughts on what you would do or what you think I should do, I'm glad to hear them.

And speaking of grad school...it would seem I'm as good as accepted into my desired programs. I think I must know for sure within the next six weeks because I believe course selection occurs in April but I would think I should know the final decision by the end of this month. I'm starting to get nervous about the practical reality of how it's going to be. It really sounds like you don't get a moment to yourself and I have to say I rapidly adjusted, quite happily, to not having any homework. But I'm really excited to have found a coordinated degree program that seems to suit my interests and needs so hand-in-glovely and I think I'm ready to make the most of it. I've got to talk to more people, though, to brace myself for the real reality of it. (Is there any point in saying "real reality"? For emphasis I suppose. It feels right.) In any case I'm sure I can do it. I feel confident that I've found the right field(s) and that I have a good vision for the future. Though I never thought I would be saying that, I'm so glad I'll be going back to Milwaukee. I miss people.