Passion

I have come to a more tangible realization that one of my passions is learning about other cultures. I've always felt that it was important to understand and learn about the cultures of our neighbors. After all, we do have to share this planet. But, I've come to understand lately how much I actually ENJOY it. One of the biggest factors in this realization has been my humanities of Asia class. I never really felt much interest in learning about Asian culture, but my eyes have been opened. It is fascinating, and inspiring, and incredible. It is so different and foreign, and so much can be learned from it.

For a project in that class, I watched two Chinese films by a director named Zhang Yimou. The films were House of Flying Daggers and Raise the Red Lantern. Zhang Yimou is a fantastic director. Both films were visually stunning. Flying Daggers was lacking in plot, but Raise the Red Lantern is a fascinating film about a girl who becomes the 4th wife of a rich man. All the wives live in a compound where each has their own apartment. Every night the husband hangs red lanterns outside of the apartment where he will sleep that night. You can imagine the rivalries that develop under such a system.

Anyway, I love my major.

Progress

My exciting news for the week is here. I talked to a professor the other day about opportunities for an internship in Deutschland. I told him that I was planning on going in to the foreign service, and he suggested an internship through the German government's language institute--the Goethe Institute. They have institutes all over Germany, but the one that would suit me best would be in a little town called Schwäbisch Hall in Southern Germany. I would go there at the end of August (this is next year, by the way), spend a few weeks taking some German classes and preparing for the internship. The internship would only last about a month, after which I would go back to the institute and do some follow-up work. I would be all done by the end of October, and be free to wander aimlessly around Europe. Isn't that awesome? Es ist wunderschön! Es freue mich so viel! Ich kann nicht warte! So, I finally will be able to fulfill at least one life goal by next year. Europe, here I come!

Feeling Better About Life

I went to a lecture on Wednesday. The presenter was John Dinkelman, U.S. Consul to Nogales, Mexico. His topic was "A Career in the Foreign Service." He assuaged a lot of my fears about being too inadequate and under-qualified to ever make it into the foreign service. He took the Foreign Service Exam several times, and failed several times, and even when he finally passed, he wasn't hired. It wasn't until the 2nd time that he passed that he eventually was hired as a Foreign Service Officer. I felt much better about the fact that I still have time to prepare, and that even if I don't make it the first time, I can just try again.

I also discovered that BYU has a "global diplomacy" study abroad program. And, get this...the program goes to New York City, Paris, Geneva, Brussels, The Hague, Vienna, and Istanbul. I nearly had a stroke when I found this. I could do that, and an internship in Germany, right? I suppose I could, if I could just garner enough financial aid. Why not, right? I mean, the foreign service has a program where they will pay you extra money to pay off your student loans, if you go to a really crappy post. So, there we go. Its a plan. I'm also going to talk to a professor on Monday about an internship in Deutschland! I can do this, see?

The Low-Down

There's a lot going on. There's only 6 weeks of school left. While, that may seem like a happy thought, its not very exciting to think of all the things I have to cram into those 6 weeks. However, there seems to be a rather strange academic urgency creeping into my mind. I went to the library every day last week. If you don't know me, let me tell you, that's unheard of! I have this feeling that I'm behind in life. I'm 24, and I'm going to be in college for another 2 years, if not more. I want a career in the foreign service, and I feel like I'm behind in preparing to be a viable candidate for such a career.

Evidently, I have a torn disk...in my back, that is. Its a pain. Literally. Especially when the chiropractor wants $85 to fix it. And that's a discounted rate! Lame.

I guess I haven't blogged about my awesome Disneyland trip with my AK buddies. About two weeks ago, some of my Juneau friends and I all took a roadtrip from Provo to San Diego to stay with my parents and go to Disneyland. There were about 12 of us, all told. It was a blast, to say the least. We spent a day at the beach, lounging around, playing in the waves, and even getting a game of football going. And YES...I actually played! The next day was a 16 hour marathon of non-stop Disney MAGIC! It was great. Anyway, we all had an incredible weekend.

Classy Film List

In yet another effort to accrue more classiness into my vast inner-archives set aside for the purpose, I, along with several co-conspirators, have created a classy film list of movies I have yet to see, which I feel would add greatly to my process of enculturation. Some of these films we have either already watched and felt they deserved another viewing, or we recently watched them in our eagerness to get to work. Here she be:

1. Memoirs of a Geisha--the first movie to be crossed off the list. It was breathtaking.
2. Casablanca
3. Lawrence of Arabia
4. Out of Africa--seen it, exudes classiness.
5. Ben Hur
6. Citizen Cane
7. Rainman
8. Great Escape
9. Spartacus
10. An Affair to Remember
11. Life is Beautiful
12. Dail M for Murder
13. Vertigo--see picture above. Oh, Jimmy Stewart.
14. Babbette's Feast
15. The Choir
16. Amelie
17. Twelve Angry Men
18. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
19. The Color of Paradise
20. The Duchess
21. The Queen--seen it. Helen Mirren is perfect.
22. The Lives of Others--just watched it. INCREDIBLE movie. Highly recommend it.
23. The Merchant of Venice
24. Bon Voyage
25. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

That is the extent of our list so far. BYU also has an ingenious program called International Cinema. We've gone almost every week now. The one we saw this past week was called "Il Divo." It was about an Italian politician named Andreotti. I was confused much of the time, due to my unfamiliarity with Italian politics, but it was an incredibly engrossing movie. The style was very attractive and exciting, and the main actor was enthralling.

If you have anymore suggestions for the list, please comment. Or if you've seen some these, tell me what you think.

Rainy Day People

On our long road trips when I was younger, my mom and dad would make tapes to listen to on the way. My sister and I abhorred these tapes. They would have some good music on them, and then there would be these weird songs in which we would take much delight to mock. One such song was Gordon Lightfoot's "Rainy Day People." That infernal song has been stuck in my head all day. The reason: it has been pleasantly rainy today. Yesterday, and the past few days for that matter, have been in the mid to upper eighties. Personally, I was tired of sweating. So, today has been quite refreshing.

Despite the liquid rejuvenation, I still feel exhausted today, and can't seem to find any motivation to do anything except update my blog. I really resent my German class for keeping me on campus much later than I would like to be here. I would love to be at home right now, baking something warm and autumny, and listening to some Ella or Frankie. I should be using this time right now to be getting something academic done, but it just doesn't seem to be happening.

Sometimes I feel like a hedonist. Really, I'm just lazy.

Spaghetti-O's and C.S. Lewis

I couldn't sleep last night. I have been filling in for someone at my old job at the Residence Inn, so I got home at 11pm. I thought I was tired, so I hopped into bed. After about 30 minutes of shifting and staring at the ceiling, I realized that I hadn't had any dinner, and I was STARVING. I didn't really want to eat anything. I just wanted to go to bed. But, I decided that maybe I ought to listen to my body and perhaps it would finally let me sleep. So, I gave it a granola bar. Evidently that wasn't enough. At about 2am, I got up, frustrated, and went into the kitchen. Earlier in the evening I had downloaded the audio book of C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. My dear friend, Greta Ballif had recently invited me to join BYU's C.S. Lewis society. For those of you familiar with dear Greta, this will make you smile. Anyway, The Great Divorce is the book we've chosen to discuss for our next meeting, so I needed to read/listen to it. I popped in my headphones and sat down to a bowl of microwaved Spaghetti-O's. Mmm.

Well, 2am eventually turned into about 4:30am as I became completely engrossed by this story. It gave me some great new perspective on different issues in my life right now. The basic premise behind the book is a man in hell, who hops on a bus with many other passengers for a visit to the outer reaches of heaven. While there he observes different conversations between individual passengers and angels, each of whom are someone from that individual's life who are now in heaven, who have come to greet the passengers and take them to heaven proper if they wish to go. It is a GREAT book, and here are a few favorite quotes:

"[Mortals] say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. What happens to [the Saved] is best described as the opposite of a mirage. What seemed, when they entered it, to be the vale of misery turns out, when they look back, to have been a well; and where present experience saw only salt deserts memory truthfully records that the pools were full of water." "

"There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "Thy will be done.""

"Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him."

"'Oh, of course. I'm wrong. Everything I say or do is wrong, according to you.'
'But of course!' said the Spirit, shining with love and mirth so that my eyes were dazzled. 'That's what we all find when we reach this country. We've all been wrong! That's the great joke. There's no need to go on pretending one was right! After that we begin living.'"

"I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) was precisely nothing: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in "the High Countries."