Sing America

So, having a great time, Melbourne is awesome, Australia is all sorts of complimentary adjectives, etc. etc. I'm almost reaching the half-way point, though, and I've found myself occasionally hit by the most incredible sense of homesickness. It doesn't help that I'm not exactly doing anything fun right now - having to study for midterms here just reminds me of studying for midterms at home, only here I don't have Taqueria del Sol or waffles to cheer me up. (Okay, so yes, I eat my feelings, DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THAT? Jeez.) I'm sure that when I get on the plane for New Zealand (yeah, thats right) I'll suddenly be all, "America? Yeah, WHATEVER."

Right now, though, I've been thinking a lot about home. I've never been so aware of my American-ness. Obviously, one is more atuned to one's nationality when one is abroad, but I guess I just didn't expect to feel such a connection to the States. Especially now, with the political climate, I was happy to get away from everything "American" for a while. Here, though, I find myself searching out reasons to be connected. Meeting Americans who have moved to Australia is always exciting - their eyes brighten and they start talking about Democrats vs. Republicans, driving on the right side of the road, real ketchup, meritocracies, and so on, and I alway get into it with them. Its strange to suddenly miss something that I took for granted for my whole life.

The point of this speech, though is to explain that I've been mainlining music that makes me think of home for about a week now. When I'm studying, walking to class, or just hanging out in my room, I like to play these songs and think about what I miss: television shows, checks and balances, black beans, rudeness, the phrase "how are you?", The Daily Show, the bill of rights, waffles (its a problem, okay?), and what I don't: Fox News, arena rock, jingoism, American cheese, and poor public transportation systems. And now I'm going to share the nostalgic, semi-nonsensical wealth with you.


I Sing America: A Mix for the Weirdly Homesick

For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti - Sufjan Stevens
http://www.sendspace.com/file/d2mw7n

America - Paul Simon
http://www.sendspace.com/file/2b90ua

Young Americans - David Bowie
http://www.sendspace.com/file/m298l4

Son of Sam - Elliott Smith
http://www.sendspace.com/file/olkzey

The Ghost of Tom Joad - Bruce Springsteen
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ww6jn4

Homeward Bound - Simon and Garfunkle
http://www.sendspace.com/file/l0e5jp

The Presidents of the United States - Animaniacs
http://www.sendspace.com/file/zkoczz

I've Been Everywhere - Johnny Cash
http://www.sendspace.com/file/3tq4jy

Sweet Baby James - James Taylor
http://www.sendspace.com/file/205se2

Take a Walk on the Wild Side - Lou Reed
http://www.sendspace.com/file/837r74

Ring of Fire - Johnny Cash
http://www.sendspace.com/file/wzqk4j

Wayward Wind - Patsy Cline
http://www.sendspace.com/file/m7yqdf

P.S. the interwebs have a full-on hate for me again, so I can't make the links active—cut and paste them into your browser bar and it should take you to the site where I uploaded the files.

Snap, Crackle, Shoshi and Pop

I know its been a long time and the last post was more of a rant than any sort of informational missive about my time here, and for that I apologize. This time, however, y'all are going to get a message chock-full of details, if only because I have eight million papers to write and absolutely no desire to work on them. This is me in panic mode, people.

ANYWAY: we're going back in time a bit here, because, while it has been almost a month since my birthday, I had a pretty kicking time and I figured you might want to partake in that. We started at my apartment - my awesome pals made a goat cheese salad and nachos in my honor (trust me, they go well together). They also crafted the single most amazing cake in the history of the world:



It was essentially a carton of ice cream scooped onto a plate and supported on the sides by timtams and mint slices, the two most amazing Australian food products EVER. Seriously, I almost cried.

There was, admittedly, some drinking (21!), which is probably what led to this:


Next to me is previously mentioned Roommate Lauren Keiling. We were comparing velociraptor dances. The picture captures hers better, but I still maintain that mine (learned at the feet of the Master, Isaac Resnikoff), has a certain undeniable grace.

After dinner, cake, presents (four packages of timtams and mint slices, which is as much a curse as a gift) and more wine, we made our way down to a pub called PJ O'Brien's (very fake-irish) where the live band very nicely wished me happy birthday, we danced a lot, and generally good times were had by all. All the pictures from that leg of the night came out sort of... smushy, so you'll just have to imagine it.

Classes, classes, classes, and then the next weekend I was off to the Grampians National Park for a Butler orientation reunion thing. There was rock-climbing, boomerang-throwing (I didn't get a picture! Sorry!) and hiking. The hiking is what killed me - we basically hiked vertically for three hours. Here I am at the top with some lady friends (you all will probably recognize each of them by the end of this semester):



I'm having difficulty finding any pictures that show exactly how high we went, so I'll give you this one:



The thing is, we took this picture at a rest point HALF-WAY up the mountain. We weren't even at the "abrupt" part of the hike. That is a downward shot, too, so just imagine that after climbing that thing we still had higher to go. It wasn't the hardest hike I've ever done, but it certainly wasn't a walk in the park.

Okay, so thats it for now - I need to go back to my regularly scheduled freak-out. Hopefully soon I can get some photos around Melbourne, so you guys can see just how beautiful it is here. Also, the weather is turning, which I'm psyched about - no more sunburns!

I leave you with this little tidbit: typing in www.shoshanimal.blogpsot.com gets you somewhere distinctly different than this site. Check it out - I think you will get a kick out of it.

Rage Blackouts

This is another quick post (I promise that a real one is coming) to say that I AM FURIOUS AT EMORY HOUSING. Seriously. We're talking fury of one thousand burning suns, Mike Tyson biting off Evander Holyfield's ear angry. Angry the likes of which has never been seen before.

On a separate but connected note, does anyone know anyone who will wants to rent a house in Atlanta to four responsible liberal arts students? I'm kidding. Except for the part where I'm not.

Its 10:17 AM, do you know where your 21 year old is?

Just a quick post to wish you all a great day on MY BIRTHDAY.

Everyone should go to a food and drink establishment and purchase the alcoholic beverage of their choice to commemorate this event. Unless you are underage in your respective country, in which case you should follow the law of the land and abstain from inebriating liquids. Unless you get your kicks with kool-aid. Knock yourself out then.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

So a certain brother of mine demanded an update and I'd hate to ruin his recent run of good fortune by denying him, so now you all get to benefit.

Now that the first week of classes has come and gone it has finally hit me that I actually have to go to SCHOOL here. Until now I'd just been wandering around the city, eating and wearing away my money and generally acting like my life was one extended vacation. Well, no more. The dark reality has hit - I have to do huge amounts of reading, write long papers, attend lectures; essentially, behave like a student. BOO. However, this chilling realization didn't stop me from going on a winery tour on Friday. A few American friends and I toured four wineries in the Yarra Valley, where a large number of Australian wines are made. I don't know that I learned much about wine, but I can definitely PRETEND to know what I'm taking about ("it has a light blonde color and a woodsy, full-bodied flavor with undertones of asparagus and old sweaters"), and I can certainly drink it with pleasure.



Before classes started I took the tram down to Acland St. in St. Kilda to see the Postcard Show at the Linden Gallery. They were displaying hundreds of submissions of small paintings, usually postcard-sized or slightly larger. Its a nice space - an old two-level mansion with wrought-iron railings and a lovely balcony. I liked some peices a lot, but they had so many it was difficult to make my way through them. Still, I enjoyed myself. I think my favorite part was when a woman brought in a large group of eight-year-old kids to show them the gallery. They wandered around in groups of three or four, freaking out about the art. A lot of them just thought the peices were ugly and had no problem expressing their dislike at the top of their lungs, but a couple of the girls really couldn't stand all the nudity. My favorite was this little blond girl who kept shrieking, "how can they show that! Those are her private parts! You can't paint private parts!" It took me a few tries, but I managed to snap a picture of them without looking like a stalker.



My classes are all engaging and don't seem to involve TOO much work, which is a relief. American Politics and Society, however, is proving to be interesting. At first I was concerned that the professor would be boring (his voice sort of lulls me to sleep), but not to worry - the way he represents American democracy is more than enough to keep me alert. Its not that he says anything extraordinarily outrageous, but he makes statements that just feel off. I can't totally pinpoint why, though, because I don't have the breadth of knowledge or factual information like he does—all I have is my anecdotal experience.

He criticizes the constitution and the American governing process a lot, and while his opinion is certainly legitimate, I wonder at the point of doing that in a class where the majority of the students know very little about the system he is judging. Its important to point out flaws in the system, but when the people you're showing the flaws to don't even know how the system is put together, it seems like you're showing them an innacurate view of that system. He makes weird comments too—he said that in the parliamentary system, the fact that you elect the party means that your leader is guaranteed to have experience by dint of having fought his way to the top of the party. In America, however, you can (and often do) elect leaders based on their ability to campaign and not on the basis of their experience. He was obviously refering to Bush, and he's right that Bush didn't have experience. However, when he refered to Australian party leaders, he made an aside about a couple of poor leaders they had elected and awknowledged that he was making a generalization, but still felt that generally speaking, Australia had elected solid leaders. He was obviously generalizing about America as well, but didn't mention that, or any other shoddy presidents we'd had. So the whole point of his argument was to show that Bush wasn't a strong leader with experience, but in making that point he also made a sweeping claim about the American election process (that we tend to not elect experienced leaders) and didn't back it up.

He made a lot of comparisons between the Australian and American governing systems, with America usually losing out. At one point he even said that Bush was inexperienced because the governorship of Texas was largely ceremonial and had very little hands-on action involved. Now, I am the first person to say that Bush administration has NOT been good to my country, but I find it hard to believe that the position of governor in the LARGEST state in the union is an empty honor. In fact, I know Texans who probably wish Bush's position had been ceremonial, given what how he lead the state. The class should really be called, "Why The American Constitutional System Doesn't Work and Isn't As Awesome As the Australian System, So There!"

Okay, so I know it sounds like I hate the class, but don't. When the professor isn't weirding me out with his out-of-left-field comments, he's actually quite informative, and I like hearing the reactions from the Australian students as well as their random questions about Hilary Clinton's chances or Barak Obama's "blackness." (Don't ask.) The professor is also witty in a dry sort of way and always willing to answer questions or open up the class for discussion, so all and all it really isn't that bad. Also, this is only the second week—I think as we get further into the course we'll be able to stop comparing the systems and just examine American politics on its own merit.

I leave you with a random picture from the adventure that Theresa and I went on to that amazing Swedish land known as Ikea. We needed apartment stuff (pots, pans, decorations, sheets) and the Swedes were happy to oblige. Of course, then I got caught up in the kids section and it all went south. Theresa had to drag me out before I bought a bright red pup-tent.