International Student Retreat 2010

In the craziness of the past few weeks I have woefully neglected my little blog.  But I have accumulated many great stories to share in the process.

Here's a snapshot from my mom's and my trip to Nashville, where she helped me move into my new dorm and, more importantly, enjoyed her first outing to Pancake Pantry, Nashville's all time favorite breakfast joint.

Munching away with my cousin Kelsey and her roommates.

Another of the highlights of the past few weeks was Belmont's International Student Retreat that I helped out with last weekend.  We drove down to White Bluff, TN -- about an hour south of Nashville -- and spent a day and a half at a "camp."  It's not proper camping, by my standards, since we sleep in cabins and eat every meal in a mess hall....but there was a low ropes course, volleyball nets, a pool -- plenty of fun opportunities for teambuilding and getting to know all the new exchange students.

We have five German girls this year: Senta, Svea, Cindy, Yana, and Elisabeth; three French students: Arthur, Laure, and Chloé; two from Hong Kong: Jimmy and Cherry; an adorable girl from Japan: Nozomi; a guy from Denmark: Ali; a girl Sydney from Canada; another guy named Jimmy, from London, and four other students from Moldova and Brasil that are in their second, third, or fourth years at Belmont.  The international student community at Belmont is small, but tight-knit.  I love having the opportunity to learn so much about different places and cultures through my foreign friends, and reciprocating in showing them America - our many cultures, traditions, and values.  I know exactly what it's like to enter a new school or country knowing nobody and barely knowing a few phrases in the local dialect.  Most of the foreign students who come to Belmont speak English quite well, but I know quite well the implications of the lost, dazed look on a few of their faces.  So reaching out and befriending them - especially those that are struggling with the language barrier - is a huge goal of mine.  Since coming back from the retreat last weekend, I don't think I've eaten a meal in the caf without at least one of them in tow :)

Belmont International Student Retreat 2010

Sometimes, in life, you meet a person who shares the same enthusiasm and passion that you have for a particular topic, goal, or hobby.  I've learned over the past few years to really treasure my time with these people, because you never know when a change in circumstances might see them drift right out of your daily life.  I recently met one of these people - Jimmy, from London.  We must have spent over 20 hours talking this past weekend on the retreat.  We've discussed traveling, religion, politics, philosophy, history, languages, cultures....the list goes on and on.  Our beliefs certainly differ in many ways, but I think it's our shared enthusiasm for learning and exploring, as well as a genuine respect and eagerness to understand each other's beliefs and values, that makes our friendship work.

It was really hard for me to make friends during my first semester at Belmont, back in 2008. The last few years of my life I had spent overseas, and during that specific period -- age 16 to 18 -- is when you really start to solidify who you are.  Thus, your experiences during that time become wholly integrated into your personality and the way you understand the world.  So, naturally, every new experience is going to be judged or compared to a recent similar experience you've had.  For me, the new experiences I was having in Nashville all related back to people, places, and events I had encountered during my time overseas.

Americans don't have as many opportunities to travel internationally as many citizens of other countries, so our slightly isolationist attitude can't be judged too harshly.  But with this lack of travel and exposure to other cultures comes a sort of fascination mixed with jealousy of people who do travel often.  I've found that this reaction is especially pervasive among young Americans.  And so by simply trying to find common ground and share my life experiences in the process of making friends, I found that some students here at Belmont were a little put off by my lack of "American-ness."  I felt that some were jealous that I had gotten to travel, and others were tired of hearing about my life experiences in other places and cultures.  It was just difficult.  I had become so much a different person than I was when I had left Oregon at age 16, so it's not like I could just try to remember and pull out some experiences from back home that would aptly describe my interests or personality.  My character is a conglomeration of all these different places and cultures; it's not a fad - it's just me.

So, with that in mind, imagine how I felt when I met Jimmy, whose first words to me were, "Wait, so you're from Oregon.  So why are you on the International Student Retreat?"  Of course I had to explain, and of course we discovered in about ten minutes that between the two of us we had covered every continent and most of the countries on them.  He had even more exotic stories than I did...I think I was listening to one about monkeys coming down out of the Amazon trees and drinking his beer when I decided that we were going to be very good friends.  It was like I was free again to be myself, to share the stories that are a little too "out there" for most American students.  All in all I had so much fun that weekend, and my days are now full of fun new facts that I learn from my foreign friends!

No Time to Blog!

In the past seven days I have:

• Driven to Boise for Chason's graduation from Northwest Lineman College
• Spent way too much time (approx. 49 hours) studying Accounting...it's a full-time job
• Had a complete car makeover in preparation for the trip to Nashville, and because my daddy loves me so much, he doesn't want me to ever break down. (New timing belt, serpentine belt, transmission fluid & oil change, new freon...the works!)
• Stocked up on all the no-sales-tax dorm snacks and school supplies my car can hold
• Hung out with family in town from San Francisco....saw a cousin I haven't seen in 10 years :)
• Successfully navigated six restaurants and party events without getting sick from gluten!
• Got dropped from all my Fall semester classes after a financial aid crisis, but enlisted the help of some great Belmont administrators who are making it possible for me to go back to Belmont this fall
• Not been to the gym nearly enough to relieve all this stress
• Downloaded a few audiobooks for FREE! for the drive to Nashville (www.booksshouldbefree.com)
• Received the 19 textbooks I ordered online for this semester
• Swapped crazy European travel stories with some family friends that just got back from a 3-month Euro tour in an RV
• Completed mid-terms for my two online Accounting classes
• Celebrated Raam's 10th birthday with a big family ice cream party
• Started packing my car...ETD is 4am tomorrow!

Summertime

I marvel at the carefree summer days my youngest siblings are enjoying and every now and then I get a glimpse of what that used to look like for me.  It's been a while; that's for certain.  I can't help but reflect on how my view of summer "break" has changed throughout the past several years.  


Up through elementary school and junior high, my summers were filled with trips to the beach and public pool with my mom, siblings, and fourteen additional neighborhood kids in tow.  I survived on red licorice and trail mix, and cherished the long afternoons that I could lay on the couch with all the doors open and a breeze blowing through the house and loose myself in a book for hours at a time.  


As a fourteen-year-old, I was going into my freshman year of high school and excited about having made the school's Dance Team.  Summer was still fun, but not nearly as relaxing.  I was still competing in gymnastics, so my morning practices would get out and then I'd have a few hours to do all the things fourteen-year-old girls love to do before Dance Team practice in the evenings.  It was everything I could have asked for.  I thrived on the hard work, constant movement, and physical exhaustion.


Everything changed right after my fifteenth birthday.  I left high school and started attending the community college.  I transitioned from a happy-go-lucky child to a young woman with serious goals.  I decided I wanted to study abroad for a year, and knew I would have to work almost every day of the next year and a half to earn the money for my trip.  But my eyes were set on the prize and I happily took up three jobs that summer, waking up energized every morning after dreaming of sipping latte's on the French Riviera all night.  I was going places and life was more exciting than ever.


That enthusiasm carried over through the year and into the next summer.  It was June 2007 and I had just finished an amazing school year in Brussels.  I loved my host family and was cherishing the last weeks I would get to spend as one of the kids.  I left for Bosnia with my scout pack and learned while I was on the trip that I had been hired to work for a prestigious political think tank in D.C.  Summer felt so good!  I was charged up with anticipation for everything that was to come.


The summer I was eighteen I left Australia and headed to China for a month.  The travel bug lived on and I had a bad case of it.  That might have been the most humid, sticky summer, but nevertheless full of fascinating adventures. 


Last summer was just plain exhausting.  I didn't feel like I even got a summer at all.  Probably because I didn't.  Just two weeks after spring finals, I left on the 40 States in 40 Days trip.  When I returned in July, I had just two weeks to write six 2,500 word essays before moving into the dorm and starting training for my job as an RA.  That summer was mentally and physically demanding and I was exhausted before the school year even started.  


This summer is a conglomeration of everything that came before.  It started with an amazing month-long road trip (which you'll hear more about soon).  Although it was a bit tiring, this blissful 28 days left me with the impression that I had really "lived it up" this summer and had me eager to get back to work.  I have an ambitious but exciting thesis to work on this summer; the usual gamut of internships, scholarships and study abroad programs to apply for; two online accounting classes to get out of the way; a new gym membership; and a plethora of French and Russian novels calling my name.  I started to get bogged down yesterday by everything I hope to accomplish by the end of the summer, but woke up this morning thankful for the eight weeks that remain free from the constant deadlines and meetings that clog up my semesters.  


So I'm enjoying the warm weather and chugging on....I think I can, I think I can, I think I can....

40/40 Revisited

I found this today while reading back through my journals from the 40 States in 40 Days trip last summer. I think it perfectly conveys the nostalgic mood I was in, and reflects all that I was taking in as we traveled from coast to coast.

The lyrics to Guthrie’s “This Land” first caught my attention as a sixth-grader in Mrs. Hamilton’s music class.  “This Land is My Land/ This Land is Your Land/ From California to the New York Island,” we sang, as we strummed the very basic chords of this song on our half-size Yahama student guitars.  “New York Island?” I kept thinking, “I’ve never heard of New York having an island.”  I was lost in thought, pondering Guthrie’s descriptive phrases of America’s landscapes as we finished the abridged version of the song that we had learned, consisting only of the refrain and first two verses.  “This Land” was part of the school’s repertoire of patriotic music.  It was sung every year during our Spring Fling concert alongside classics such as “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” “Fifty Nifty United States,” and “America the Beautiful.”  I never took note of who wrote the song, what kind of life he led, or what inspired him to write.  From my perspective, whoever the author was, he was no doubt a great American hero, like Francis Scott Key, who wrote our national anthem in the midst of an attack on his battleship.  “This Land” has always been a purely celebratory hymn for me.  From sing-alongs with my siblings to school performances, singing this song was to paint a most beautiful picture of America.  Several years have gone by since my elementary years, and “This Land” had been filed away in the depths of my cranium, along with memories of lunch boxes, playground competitions and colorfully illustrated maps of our fifty states.  But this summer, as I entered northern California’s redwood forests for the first time in a long time, a wave of nostalgia washed over me as a mental video clip from my childhood started to play: I watched my family pull up to the same redwood forest nine years ago, singing “This Land” repeatedly as we jockeyed for a prime window spot from which to look up at the ancient towering sequoias.  From that moment on, and throughout the rest of our trip—as I looked out over the rocky Oregon coast, rafted through swift waters in Yellowstone, drove through miles and miles of South Dakota’s badlands, stood on one of New York’s islands while staring up at our Statue of Liberty, walked among the graves of a generation that gave everything to secure our freedoms, and as I looked down under the bridge in South Carolina at the Gullah harvesting sweet grass—Woody Guthrie’s most celebrated song was on permanent repeat in my head.

Shepard Fairey: A Powerful Dissident

In “The Declaration of Independence,” Jefferson wrote about citizens’ duty to dissent—in speech but also in action: “…Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” Write about a time on this trip you have noticed dissent as a powerful force in American life.

This prompt has been weighing on me for a while now. I feel that mere complaints are too often mistaken for dissent, and I wanted to find an example of what I think is intelligent dissent—not just the regurgitation of a vague, generalized, partisan opinion which requires little to no understanding of the issue at hand. I'm interested in specific, creative, alternative ideas as a response to what the dissenter views as flawed.

I found an example of the powerful dissent I was looking for in a location and medium I least expected. When I think of dissent I think of speeches, books, and articles. I think of two opponents in a verbal duel. I do not think of framed pieces in the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art. When I hear 'dissent' I do not think of murals on brick buildings in poor neighborhoods, bumper stickers, or reinventing propaganda. But then Shepard Fairey came along and my perspective on dissent was quickly challenged.

Even though the picture I would paint of America would differ from his, I appreciate the beauty and straightforward style in which Fairey communicates through his art. It is obvious that a lot of thought goes into his work; each word and each square inch of his pieces are intentionally symbolic.

In this re-creation of the One Dollar Bill, Fairey implies that the American people are pawns, forced to participate in an unethical capitalistic system, and subject to a government who's ultimate goal is to take over the world by way of a 'new world order.' By making this a 'ransom note,' Fairey challenges viewers to consider who/what really owns them.

I see elements of truth here: I think there are quite a few Americans who walk around uninformed and ignorant to the political, economical, and social systems that they subscribe to. But they're not victims. They will only fall prey to 'lesser gods' if they allow themselves to.


In the left circle you see a hand (adorned with dollar sign) reaching for the world. Around it is enscribed 'Hostile Takeover. New World Order.' Earlier this week, during the G8 Summit, Obama supported giving the U.N. more power. Perhaps Fairey is on to something; I wouldn't discount the possibility of the U.N. ruling the world some day. And the scary part is that some people think it's a great idea.


Across the bottom we see written, 'Indiscriminate Capitalism.' A group of us were sitting in the back of the bus when I started to work on this article, and I put this phrase up for discussion: What does Fairey mean by 'Indiscrimate Capitalism'? The consensus was that it's supposed to convey the absence of ethics in capitalism -- that the capitalistic system pays no regard to its effect on the environment, other people, etc.


"But wait a second," I'm thinking, "capitalism was never meant to be an ethical authority." That's what religion is for. I'm all for ethics, but if capitalism involved the dictation of ethics then it would cease to be capitalism -- it would become something like socialism or communism, where everything is "fair" (i.e. everyone gets the same thing no matter how much or how little they work.)


There's something beautiful about reaping the rewards of work in conjunction with productivity. And I'm all for sharing the wealth, but I want to share my wealth on my own terms and using my own discretion.


Mr. Fairey has the right to be frustrated if the people/businesses around him are not living up to his moral expectations, and I understand that his work reflects that frustration. But I wonder about how most viewers interpret this phrase. I see a common trend: Americans blame the government for some businesses' low ethical standards and feel that the way to fix it is for the government to enforce some kind of rule about how and where businesses acquire their products, manufacture their products, market their products, and distribute their products. When really, it's not the government's job to supervise any of that -- each company must set their own ethical standards and moral aspirations; and in turn, each customer must set their own. I hope viewers realize that "Indiscriminate Capitalism" doesn't reflect any failure on the part of our government; it should make them reflect on our decisions as individuals--as individual consumers and individual merchants.


I like that Fairey goes for shock value and is clear but not exhaustive in his message. He leaves a lot up for interpretation, forcing the viewer to think through what they see.

To read more about Shepard Fairey, click here.

40 states in 40 days

Wow, it's been about two weeks since I've had a chance to post anything! Busy busy! But a lot of things have come together in the past few days....one of those is the solidification of my participation in a domestic "study abroad" program this summer with classmates from Belmont.

So get this: 11 students. 2 professors. 1 sleeper bus. 40 states. 40 days. It's going to be an amazing trip.

Here's a visual... (click on the picture for a bigger view)
Some of the highlights include:
- New Orleans
- Overnight stay on a Native American Reservation
- 3 days at the Grand Canyon
- Las Vegas
- 3 days in LA
- San Francisco
- Seattle
- Salt Lake City
- Yellowstone National Park
- Mount Rushmore
- Chicago
- Indianapolis
- Detroit
- Cleveland
- 3 days in Boston
- 3 days in New York City
- Philadelphia
- 3 days in Washington, D.C.
- Williamsburg, VA
- Savannah, GA
- St. Augustine, FL
- Montgomery, AL

So it's going to be quite the trip! Belmont is putting together an online blog for us, so you'll be able to follow us as we discover America from sea to shining sea!