in the beginning.

I will be departing Austin, TX for New York on July 1st and then late the evening of the 2nd I will be making my way to Sana'a, Yemen by way of a 14 hour lay-over in London. After a couple days of sleeping off my jet-lag and the change in altitude, I will begin a course in colloquial Arabic and a little bit of research--taking oral histories of women.

I shall return around August 20th. I will be in Austin until that time and around campus helping with the UT Arabic Summer Institute! So much to do, so much to look forward to, SO EXCITED!!

sentimental.

**********************************************************************
^this is where i'm going this summer^

i'm feeling really sentimental like i sometimes do at the end of things. end of the semester, classes i like are over, friends i like are graduating or traveling, books i enjoyed, i'm finished with them. its simply sad to say goodbye to some things and some people. other things, i will hesitantly put behind me becasue i know it is best for me, not beause i want them gone. and still even other things i am ready to throw into the wind and hope that they have to at least make their way all of the way around the world before i ever run into them again. right now i cannot say which is which, but shit is good. shit is really really good.

how was your day?

the best fucking day of my life!

really?

yeah, really.

why?

i don't know.

is every day the best fucking day of your life?

yeah, maybe.

HALAS!

Or almost halas that is...

I'm living in the PCL and Epoch again, as is usual at this time of the year. Writing papers on theories of virtual pilgrimage and Hamas, preparing for arabic exams and presentations... I've become a lot more active in PSC (www.utpalestine.org) recently, and I hope it stays that way. I should be deleriously tired but I think my body magically adapts to this kind of sleep schedule when things need to be done.

Not only do I want to make it through this week, but I want to kick so much ass this week that I will be able to easily justify the 24 nap I'm going to take when it is over.

Why are my footnote numbers in arabic? cut that out!

My most recent frustration: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/world/middleeast/10jerusalem.html

20.

This coming Friday is my 20th birthday. I'm not sure I have any particular feelings on this occasion, but whether or not I do, the birthday will still happen. There will be a Big Lebowski themed party at my home (Eden @21 and Rio, ATX) Friday night, wear your bath robe, come drink white russians.

My friend Peter fractured his spine in a few places Sunday evening, which led to an interesting string of events. Including meeting an unimaginably stoic man in the ER parking garage named Herb Washington. He zip-tied my under-car bumper back to my car after a huge speed-bump dismembered my vehicle approximately 50 ft. from the garage's exit. You should just take my word for it, Mr. Herb Washington is a character, and I hope you are equally as lucky and may meet him someday when you least expect it.

Must finish essay on Ruzbihan Baqli before classssssss.

the box.

even after this series of repeated assaults, my morale will someday recover enough to actually appeal to someone again.

Eden house + garden

EDEN HOUSE:tv/video game room.


living room.
one corner of my room.
my bed.
desk, strange elevated closet, and bag of trash?

=my room!

As some of you may know, it is the beginning of planting season and here are some adorable baby vegetable plants.
in this garden there is currently roma tomato, cucumber, okra, red bell pepper, and yellow squash, not to mention every herb you can think of. Oh and lettuces!!
baby yellow squash plant.
row of baby yellow squashes.
BASIL!! oh man, pesto all summer long.
baby baby roma tomato plants.

love.

recently.

I really need to decide a few things in the next few weeks. I need to decide whether or not I'm dropping my Islamic Studies major, what to do about my incomplete from last semester, if Yemen will be too dangerous to travel to this summer, and if I don't go to Yemen, what will I do?

Also, I need to sell or give away or throw away a bunch of my shit. I have too many clothes, too much furniture for my small ass room, high heels??, tons of film and random other things like inkjet photopaper (like 300 sheets!!!!) when I don't even have a photo printer! Also, a plethera of photo chemicals, some of which I plan to keep, but everyone in my family had the same idea as far as christmas presents went, and now they're going to go bad far before I can get to using them.

I'm hopeful that everything will work out for the best, but I need to take some initiative on these things. Also, I did some good at our house meeting tonight (hopefully) and now it is mandatory that there be a veggie present at every dinner. This seems like not a big deal to most, but we've seriously been eating only starch for the last month. Also, the house is now giving me $50 a month for the garden!! That means more vegetablesssss and herbssss and fruiitttssss!!! YAY!!! AND reimbursement for obtaining vegetables for free by volunteering at Johnson's Backyard. Woo! I love home improvement! I'll try and get some pictures up over the next weekend of the garden and my new home and my bike and all of the lovely new people in my life.

SO, in conclusion, this month has been particularly heavy emotionally, but there are so many other wonderful things to keep me busy and distracted and if I can only hold out long enough those shitty things will pass and I will be left with wonderful new friendships, a garden full of delicious things, and a tidier simpler life.