Setting: Evening, Alone, Lost in Tokyo

Apropos of nothing, I am restarting this blog (first a study-abroad blog, then a grad school blog before I realized I wasn't allowed to write about anyone I worked with). I've been traveling through Taiwan and Japan for the past month, and I will attempt to catch up on immortalizing my best stories. 

Tonight I attempted to find a dog cafe, got lost in Tokyo's largest metro station, and spent three hours there.  The station is so big that I walked for a good thirty minutes without finding the platform I was looking for or recognizing anything.  I'm misleading you a bit; I saw a sign for a local government building with free views of the skyline and did that, but it was only an escalator ride up from the station.  Afterwards I tried to find the line to take me to another sightseeing spot, got lost again, tried to find a sushi restaurant in the station, couldn't, and eventually staggered into a different sushi restaurant, sweaty and slightly panic-stricken. Not to say that I didn't have fun!  In the midst of the chaos of the station, I saw lots of vendors and hundreds of people weaving around each other seamlessly, all seemingly omniscient to the workings of the subway system. 

When I arrived at the sushi restaurant, a small shop with a bar encircling two sushi chefs, all ten patrons stared at me with obvious surprise. I pulled up a chair and managed to finagle a menu and some tea. The other patrons would, without warning, call out the rolls they wanted, with the chefs keeping up.  I felt acutely aware of my inability to perform this maneuver, but eventually drew enough sympathy from the younger chef to receive help ordering.  As one often feels when unable to communicate, I was positive that the two chefs were laughing about my order (not unpleasantly), prompting me to order an entire eel in order to show them my serious nature. I realized some deep feelings that I have been harboring for a long time: I LOVE unagi. It is hereby my favorite food. 

Following dinner, a common scene occurred on the metro heading home. I exited a kiosk at one line, entered another, realized I had wanted the first one, and tried to exit, with the kiosk prompting me to seek assistance. I couldn't agree more. The employee nodded uncomprehendingly at my explanation and swiped my card, instructing me, "Don't touch" [the card to the kiosk]. I did him one better and rammed my knee into the kiosk on the way out, which we both had a hearty laugh over, during which I ran. 

Tokyo is a wonderful city, clean and safe and possessing the UNESCO World Heritage acknowledgement for FOOD. That's right, Japanese food is on the Intangible World Heritage list, which means it's time for another round of karaage. Later!

'Twas the Night Before... Isthmus?

There’s something about the night before that is timeless, as fleeting as it is.  I still remember the night before my ninth birthday, the night before I moved into my freshman dorm, and the night before I gave my senior cello recital.  The heightened emotion, whether terror or excitement, keeps you lying electrically tense late into the night, trying to turn off your thoughts while helpless to stop them.  I have always imagined that the night before getting married, I would be unable to sleep and would finally crawl out of bed at dawn, merely grateful that the night was over.

Tomorrow I begin my first level-one field placement, shadowing an occupational therapist at an elementary school.  It is merely one full day of shadowing in and of itself, but from my late-night perspective, it is quite a significant milestone.  Tomorrow marks the first day of my career endeavors within the workplace.  Tomorrow I will leave the house at 7:00 a.m. wearing a badge that introduces me with the letters “OTS” after my name.  Tomorrow.

Well, let’s make it 7:15.

The Pupusa Ring

I have experienced the perfect Friday night.  It happened about a month ago now, after a grueling week of my summer session.  It was nine o'clock, and my housemate and I were hungry.  We decided to venture five blocks down the road to Scoops, the gourmet ice cream shop without a sign where you order a "single scoop" and receive two, an overt act of generosity every time.  When they’re open, you can recognize it by the sample spoon art in the window; when they've run out of ice cream, they pull down one of those metal rolling storefront gates that look like garage doors, and you would never know what’s behind it.  Last time I was there, I ordered lemon basil and blueberry rose water.

The defining moment came on our walk home, however.  A Hispanic couple had set up a small street pupusa stand with a stove under a canopy, and the wife was frying them on a stove right before our eyes.  We quickly joined the small crowd seated in the warm cloak of light and placed our order.  We sat there for fifteen minutes, just watching her cook, taking in the comfort of the pupusa community.  A family sat to our right, the bossy girl teaching her little brother how to dance to the music from their mom’s phone.  One couple retreated into the darkness to eat in their truck, but more stepped into the circle of light to bring back dinner for their families.  Krystina and I smiled at the dancing kids, listening to the constant background sizzle of the grill.  When the couple called us forward for our food, she chatted with them for a minute in easygoing Spanish, while I stood beside her, mute but grateful.  As we picked up our paper bags to leave, the husband smiled and said in English, “Have a good night.  See you soon.”

Intensive Adventures

I like to call myself an "academic pragmatist", or a "cognitive miser" on special occasions.  I learn for tests, and I read for papers.  (Well, generally speaking.  Of course if something fascinates me that's a different case.  Let's not go thinking I get no enjoyment out of learning.)  Grades are what drive me to learn, and that generally works quite well.  I should say that it generally worked quite well.

Six weeks into the program's summer intensive, and everyone holds such high standards for themselves.  Our classmates are too friendly and relatable for any antipathetic tension in the air, but I know many of us are feeling like we're running to keep up with a train that's just started to leave a station.  I am, anyway.  I guess this is what grad school is: successful, talented graduates with the same goals and interests, brought together and taught to excel.  The problem is that I'm trying too hard to be at the front of the train.  I am competing against myself, against my highest standards, and it's exhausting.

Comparison is the root of a good amount of evil, I'd say.  It's sucking the joy out of the B+ I earned in my first graduate school course.  The class average was an A-.  Honestly, being below average is not a situation in which I like to find myself, and historically I have usually managed to avoid it.  It doesn't matter that others have more of a background in the class material.  It matters that wherever I started, I ended the race a few breaths behind 50% of my class.  I don't like these thoughts, but they nag, and I don't want to be thinking them at all!

The other day, I was standing outside of the campus hospital, waiting for a friend.  It was bright, so I went over to stand in the shade of some palm trees and soon realized that I was waiting on the released-patient curb.  Aides brought out two begowned elderly people in wheelchairs, and we all waited together under the palm trees.  Suddenly I realized something: I had been focusing on the wrong population.  My classmates, as charming and intelligent as they are, should not be the people I use to measure my success.  The reasons that I'm studying aren't in my classroom; they're on the sidewalk outside the hospital.

I feel that God showed me this very deliberately at the beginning of grad school, so that I can have the proper motivation going forward.  It made me think of, "Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me."  My motivation is Jesus in a wheelchair.

Välkommen till Sverige

That's right, I will make you google translate the title.

I've officially been moved out of my apartment in Rennes for a week now!  Last Friday morning I caught the early train to Paris, took the metro to Gare du Nord, took the Eurostar under the English Channel to London, caught a train to East Midland Parkway, and caught a bus to York!  I spent a wonderful week (ish) with Lauren, a friend from Hope, sleeping on her floor, meeting her friends, and exploring the charming city.  I have two new loves: clotted cream, and a British show called "Miranda", which is on youtube if you're curious.  Start with season 1, episode 1, and do it right. :)

I arrived here in Stockholm, Sweden, yesterday evening, and I'm spending the next week (ish) with some relatives that I met three years ago when my family did our family-tree trip, who thankfully speak English.  There are two blonde girls, ages 7 and 9, who make me think of what it was like growing up with Gretchen.  (As in, awesome and really goofy.)  We've eaten a good amount of salmon so far (yay!), and this morning I took a bus into the city center and wandered around.  I was mainly concerned with rediscovering my memories from three years ago, like eating a shrimp and egg sandwich with lemon and dill, or those wonderful ginger cookies I can't spell.  My favorite part was when I turned a corner in Old Town and discovered the exact square that we'd seen last time on Swedish National Day.  It's small, but there's a grocery store, a little cafe where we ate, and a short statue of some poet or something, and last time I'd taken a picture with little girls with flags in front of it!  All in all, great fun.  The younger daughter and I have been engaging in sneaky tickle wars while watching TV, and the older one has started playing the cello and has a concert tomorrow on a farm!  Ja!

Well, I'm going to show my "aunt" Facebook, so I've got to go!  Until we meet again, enjoy summer weather if you have any!  It was terribly cold (12 degrees C) and windy today, but it's still light out, and it's 21:30.  Night!

I Am Channeling Rick Steves.

Dear blog readers,

Some days I go onto this blog just to stare at the statistics.  It doesn’t tell me who you are, don’t worry, but it tells me that I get over 2 views a day this month.  And it’s been a month since I’ve posted.  Got to love the internet.

Well, I’m back from my wonderful two weeks of break!  It’s actually kind of finals week right now, and I have tons of stuff to be doing, but I looked at the blog and thought, “If there are really two viewers checking this every day” (Hm, who could they be?) “…then I can’t disappoint them!  I’m going to write!”  So here is a very short summary of my vacation.  I have meticulous travel notes, but I can’t type them all up right now. :P

Ireland

I left on April 23 with 7 other friends for the far-off Ryanair airport in Beauvais, near Paris, and after a very long day of travel, Dana, Bri, Courtney, and I arrived at our destination, a monastery located near Moone, near Dublin.  It’s a small country town with lots of ancient ruins and cows.  I tasted the incredible Barry’s tea (I brought 158 teabags home), frolicked around with my friends, and celebrated Easter in the chapel with the monks (the sweetest, most generous people in the world).

We then spent a night in a B&B and saw Blarney Castle (kissed it!), then spent a night in Galway seeing Kylemore Abbey (awesome), and returned to Dublin for a night in which I got to see Jess, Leah, and Lauren from Hope, who were also in Ireland for break!  I ate lots of toffee and bought a wool scarf and ate lots of black pudding and generally loved it.

Scotland

Bri and I went to Edinburgh, missed our second train, and ended up stranded in Glasgow for the night.  It was pretty much heartbreaking.  Non-refundable train and hostel reservations.  We were crushed.  Neither of us had phones that worked there, and our iPods were dead.  We finally got walking directions to a hostel that were pretty vague, but on the way we saw an…

APPLE STORE

Can you hear that music playing? 

Yeah.  As much as I already loved Apple (which is a lot), now I owe my safety to…  Well, God’s using them to give us a safe place to stay, but still.  Awesome.  We went in with our backpacks and rolling suitcase and looked on hostelbookers.com.  We found a hostel, checked into the cheapest room they had (14-female dorm), and stumbled out to eat.  We found the Crystal Palace, a classy pub with a football (soccer) game on.  It was also curry night, and cheap.  The crumble was amazing too.  God can sure turn things around, can’t He?  I admit to having down some serious praying.

Anyway, the next day we camped out there again and watched the Royal Wedding, and then we went to Edinburgh and spent a few days there.  One day we took a bus tour through the Highlands (Loch Ness!), and we had a nice guesthouse to relax in for the evenings.

Italy

Then I went to Italy.  Our family is friends with an amazingly welcoming Italian family in Padova, near Venice, who picked me up, gave me an amazing room, and fed me and translated for me.  There’s so much I could say about that week (They’re such wonderful people!), but I guess for now I’ll just tell you where I went.  Venice, the Dolomites, a cherry orchard, lots of picturesque Italian towns…  It was fabulous.

And now I’m back for my last week and a half of classes.  There are tests and papers and teaching internships and stuff, but I feel so relaxed and energized after my trip that I’m not too stressed.  I mean, I’m also feeling that (although I am making an effort) the grades are such a small, banal part of this experience…  Well, I like it.  I’m also planning to spend some time in Sweden with relatives (I love it when people take me in!), and in London with a friend, and some other plans are shaping up.  My FAMILY will be here in 3 1/2 weeks to visit me and explore the country of France a bit.  Traveling the world is cool and all (really really cool), but that’s the trip I genuinely cannot WAIT for.

Please pray for my relationship with my host mother during my last week here.  Things are a little… stiff right now, and that makes things harder, and I don’t want that!

Brissac, Villandry, Chenonceau, et Amboise

I really like bullet points.  They’re neat, they keep me relatively concise, and I can spit out a whole bunch of information at once without scaring you away with large paragraphs.  Plus I haven’t started my homework for the weekend, and it’s 23:13.

My program went on an overnight trip to see the chateaux (castles) of the Loire Valley, which were really pretty and photogenic, if a bit smaller than I had imagined.  It was a fantastic trip.  It was fun to sleep somewhere different for a night, eat quality food paid for by the program, see everyone at once, and look at the gorgeous castles.  A few notes…

-Our bus was driven by Georges, a Frenchman with a semi-bald head and a ponytail in spite of that, who had spent five years in England and refused to speak French there.  He’s been driving this group-travel bus since 1988, if I heard correctly.  He was quite a character.  I sat next to him at lunch today, as well as Daniel and Staci, our program director and administrator, respectively.  Good times.

-Staci took two semesters of French in college, dated and got engaged to a French guy, and decided to move to France to get married.  She’s been living here for about 20 years now, has two  kids (and a husband) whose primary language is French, and thus fascinates all of us.  She told us that she didn’t speak very much French when she got here; now she’s fluent, but she doesn’t speak English on a daily basis, and she misses it so much that she dreams of going to England for a weekend to see a play en anglais.

-Another fun fact about Staci: she got married in a little church by the mountains, which was gorgeous but very crowded considering that they invited a standard amount of people.  She loved the location, but she didn’t understand all of the ceremony.  (DUDE.  This woman is intense.)  Their wedding cake was a French one, which means no tall slices.  All French pastries and cakes are no taller than a pie.

-The castles were really pretty, (I know I keep saying that), but after a while hearing about ceiling detailing got a little old.  We invented a human version of the board game “Clue” (Cluédo en francais) right at the beginning; I guess that shows our interest level in ceilings.  I got to be Mrs. Peacock, and among others, our director was chosen Mr. Green and murderer, and one of the French monitors was deigned Mr. Body.  We didn’t tell the program director, but we did tell the monitor, and he didn’t get it at all.  All I heard of the conversation was “OK.  You’re dead.”

-Five of us hung out in a room at the hostel last night and talked about our lives, and Courtney received her first back massage.  It was an interesting night.

-I recently discovered the Tenth Avenue North song "Beloved", a love song written from God's perspective.  It's in 3/4 (waltz rhythm), starts with a piano solo, and is really sweet.  It's been in my head all weekend, which just made everything better.  The best part was when I got to wander around the famous gardens of Villandry with it playing on my iPod and worship in the castle gardens.  Never thought I'd get to say that!

-Dana and I (among others) sang Disney songs for a large part of the afternoon bus ride on Saturday.  Funny how I can always find people to sing Disney songs with me…  I like what that says about humanity.

-I am totally getting better at speaking French.  Hooray!!!  However, I unknowingly traded in my efficacy in English to accomplish this.  Even as I type, French words are attempting to make their way into this blog.  Not in an italicized, let-me-teach-you-a-word sort of way, but in a random and confusing way.  For example, I typed the word “same” only after having thought “même" in my head.  Always an effort to be made in some form or another, I guess.

-On the bus back today, a few of us invented alter egos (as in total opposites) for each other.  It was really fun, and it also showed how well we've gotten to know each other.  I recently bought a little floral purple scarf that I wear in a bow around my neck (think flight stewardess), which makes Bri think of Nancy Drew every time she sees it.  Thus my alter ego is named Nancy, always wears scarves tied in bows, is always on time (no, early!), and has to plan everything in detail.  Watch out!  Maybe she'll post someday.

-We stopped at the same gas station that we went to on our first bus ride into Rennes, right after many of us had been told about our host families and others were still waiting to hear.  I remember feverishly demanding to know the housing logistics of people I barely knew, and being really nervous about living in a downtown apartment with only my host mother during the week.  The store had the Breton waffles in the same place (hopefully not the same waffles), which I had wanted last time and bought this time.  It was a very strange, mixed experience, in that it brought some closure to my semester here.  Not that I’m gone yet, but it’ll be here soon.  This time, though, I sat and talked with my friends, knowing where I was returning home.

I will be leaving for Ireland, Scotland, and Italy, respectively, in  6 days.  If I don’t post again, think of me on Easter weekend.  I’ll be in that Irish monastery.

Prayer requests:  God has been really present with me this week.  Praise Him for that!  It’s been amazing.  Please pray for safe travels for us coming up!  Also, my sister is in Mexico with her high school for the week.  Please pray for her (and their) safety, as well as God's intimate presence during the week.