I remember quite vividly passing newYear's eve tipsy in my grandmother's bathtub in Phoenix where I was dog-sitting by my onesy contemplating what 2008 would bring my way. I remember confiding in my closest friends that if I survived 2008, I would look back on it as a mind-blowing, personally challenging, deeply enlightening year of international hijinx, mild debauchery, and epicurean gluttony.

Without shame or hesitation, that is exactly what this year has been.

And so, as a newYear creeps along the horizon, I find myself wondering what subtle expectations, personal goals and happenstance revelations the universe has in store for me in 2009. Will it be a year of normalcy, as I had hoped at some point during adventurous, turbulent 2008? Will it be a year of unprecedented hijinx and enlightenment? Will it be the year that darkens retrospect with irreparable mistakes and shoulda-woulda-coulda-but-didnts? Will it be a year characterized by sweet turnign points and waltz-like steps towards the life goals?

Who really knows. But in the meantime, a few newYear's resolutions...

If I had any doubt that the Royal Palace Nightclub was actually a strip joint, it was erased by the fact that the ATM outside dispenses singles. Resolution #2: Write more. Whether it's unleashing the mediocre fiction ansty to pour out at the wee hours of the morning, or quality blogposts that make people laugh and want to forward them on to their friends, or - heaven forbid - publishing something academic!

اوباما



America's Newest First Family
يبارك الله فيهم

Saturday Night Steak In.

redWine-stonegroundMustard-balsamicVinegar-Marinated Steak dressed with grilled onions and asparagus, served with buttery-basil-peppered mashedPotatoes topped with parmesanCheese.

  

Soy Parmesan Cheddar Macaroni

Ingredients: Macaroni Wheels, Butter, Flour, Parmesan, Sharp Cheddar, Soy Milk, Sea Salt, Black Pepper.

  

Tangy Tuna Rotini

Ingredients:  Rotini, White Tune, Olive Oil, Diced Tomatoes, Onions, Garlic, Cilantro, Soy Milk, Parmesan Cheese, Sea Salt, Black Pepper. 

Dare-Deviled Eggs

     

Ingredients:  Hard-boiled Eggs, Finely-chopped Onions, Red Bell Peppers, Cilantro, Stoneground Mustard, Olive Oil, Mayonnaise, Sea Salt, Black Pepper, Smoked Paprika.    

 

Beer-broth Pea Soup

Ingredients:  Sweet peas, potatoes, onions, butter, garlic, beer, and black pepper.  Topped with parmesan. 

So people have a lot of boring things to say about post-college life.  They bitch about the mind-numbingness of the  9-to-5, they remind you that you have to 'pay your bills' and they usually inform you that office jokes and happyHour become highly-valued forms of sustenance.   After only a few months they use phrases like, "God what I would give to be a student again" or "Whew...I gotta get out 'here'...back into 'the field'...I wanna travel".  Sure, all of these are true.  Especially the deep-seated insecurities that your degree is apparently useless and that a general lack of desired direction stare up at you from your second cup of mediocre coffee every morning.  But there's a few things that people don't tell you - or certainly never told me - about post-college life.

Firstly, it's all about pleasure and balance.  For the first time in a long time your life is punctuated by shifts. Yea, this is rotten considering the human body and psyche simply isn't designed for 8-hour shifts BUT it also means that from a bit after 6p until a bit after 8a the next day, you are more or less free from all 'work-related' responsibilities.  This liberation is intensified around 5p on Friday for what follows is usually a genuine weekend.  The key is filling those between-work hours with as much pleasure and balance as possible.  Which given your regularly arriving paychecks, is quite easy to do.

Additionally,

You get to feel calm and secretly superior when mid-October rolls around and it is simply mid-October and not midterms.

And even if you join the cattle heard on the daily 'commute', you get to pleasure-read while doing. You realize you haven't used the word syllabus in ages.  And you yet remarkably you STILL learn something  new - several things, actually, and they're usually quite practical - everyday. 

Ok. I lied.

The optimism and fresh-page feeling of the other night has dissipated into the reality that my blog will actually not become anything more than a glorified journal that serves as an outlet for idle moments. But hey – that’s OK too, I guess.

Highlights of this idle moment include:

* I still love my new job.

* I’m running a 5k.

* Aside from my family, I apparently only have 5 friends and they are all unreachable because they are (a) out-of-the-country, (b) extremely busy, or (c) incapable of picking-up their phone, making phone calls, or checking voicemails. Yes, you, Amanda Craig, do not pick up your phone. Ever. I figure if I type your name a google search might draw you to this page and you might, might, might find that worthy of a one-liner email in my direction :)

* I have recently developed a deep longing to be a squirrel. This one is totally new to me considering that previously I was most interested in being a fish or bird (or hermit crab, but that’s a long story) if I wasn’t blessed to be the complicated and irrational creature that I am… But now it seems this bushy-tailed rodent also has a place in my realm of escapist fantasies.

Yes, it's albino.

To new beginnings.

This evening, I’m enjoying a candle-lit celebratory dinner marking transitions of all sorts – at last! My goosebumps and quickly chilling lobster ravioli suggest that summer has finally transitioned into autumn and the cause for celebration – a ‘real’ job I actually love! – is confirm that I have transitioned into a young professional, for the time being, and am no longer placeless, purposeless and feening another place entirely. Akeed I’m still missing Egypt tremendously, but a steady paycheck means that that longing can be eased with a very nice little visit sometime soon. Wa akeed a little portion of soul is drifting around Brooklyn and still second-guessing the decision against finding a job in Manhattan but fantastic housemates, a quirky neighborhood, and new beginnings in a familiar place feel juuuuust right at the moment. This post will also mark a transition in my blogstyle: Good riddance with these journal-like, infrequent, long and uninteresting (ok, probably mildly interesting sometimes) posts… From here on, my dear little readers, prepare for hilarious highlights of my adventures on public transportation, and schizophrenic ramblings from my freshly found cubi-space at work, and a fair share of elaborate albethem slightly unrealistic plans for the ambiguous future that dances intriguingly on the not-to-close-horizon.

So, it seems that I have entirely disappeared from the blogosphere but the reality is I was initially too distracted by life to sit down and write about it, and following that simply uninterested in writing about it.  I have recently adopted a new modus operandi that involves neither flowcharts nor timelines and somewhere in there blogging also bit the dust.  I can confidently say that I haven’t flowcharted for months [insert AA-style affirmations and applause] and seem to be surviving just fine. Now, however, sitting down to write about the past few months seems not essential but still very worthwhile… Given that my currently life is teeming with possibilities but with few things of actual definition and that my daily rant consists almost entirely of job interviews, conundrums of the heart, and funny/racist/schizophrenic/enlightened eavesdropping on the D6 or X2, it’s seems more practical to simply begin where I left off and hope I’ve got something figured out about my currently life by the time I get caught up. 

[ Cairo Continued - LE Orientation ]

LE Orientation went off without a hitch (ok, DSS’s suitcase was mistakenly taken by Ahmed Somethingorother who also has a redSamsonite and another one of the fantastic volunteers seemed surprised that alcohol is less than ubiquitous in Cairo, but nevertheless…) and I wish that I had been around for a bit more of the Program.  Fabulous LE Egypt 2008 Volunteer Teachers at the Right. Highlights of our brief time together include…

A felluca that nearly capsized on the Nile; A sweet horseback ride in the desert near Giza (not to mention DSS’s backseat camel ride); A monstrously long but highly effective Orientation.

Ultimately I think LE Egypt went well in its second year.  The program has made leaps and bounds by branching off into two new villages at three new sites.  The continuation of the Program is currently in deliberation by the LE Exectutive Council and next year’s PD will be announced soon.  

For a recap of LE Egypt's adventures (and misadventures) this past summer check out their blog here.

Today was the best day of my year so far, which is impressive considering how phenomenal and frenzied 2008 has been... The exact details of why this was the best day of my year are not ripe enough to expose, but let's just say that on the taksi ride back from wast-elbalad, where I had spent an evening of good conversation with 3 of my LE volunteers at el-Horreyya, the driver played several BobMarley songs that captured my soul precisely.

To return where prior posts left off... After my misadventures in Menia and a couple weeks in Cairo, I ventured to the southSinai for week of... rejuvenation?

[ sharm ]

The nostalgia of sharm was a bit sharper than than the nostalgia of Cairo, but luckily I was distracted by a good friend and great diving. Hands down the highlight of Sharm was swimming with two playful mantaRays and an absolutely fantastic (read: my first) whaleShark with Eloise, Hadaba's resident cat-lover.

[ dahab ]

Dahab was, like Nice, another mini-vacation in solitude. I had never felt quite so alone and simultaneously so OK with it. I spent my first afternoon in Dahab snorkling at the Lagoon and somewhere between seeing familiar fishy faces and growing exhausted in the afternoon heat, I fell into a quiet stupor that lasted nearly my entire visit. Since arriving to Dahab the aforementioned 'unpacking' feeling has only grown more intense and more exhilarating. I actually feel like I am healing and repairing for the first time. Forgive this terribly mawkish metaphor, but I feel like my soul is a garden and these past few weeks I have completely uprooted it and slowly started to re-arrange the save-able seeds and bulbs and remove the necessary weeds or unsalvageable stems... I didn't even know I had so much tangled up inside me... I feel tremendously strong, balanced and like I don't have any loose ends left to tie up. It feels good to know what I want and that I am slowly (ok, snail-paced-ly) moving towards it.

The Dahab highlight: The 31 minutes between exiting the Chimney at Bells and crossing over the saddle into the Blue Hole. This is apparently where my soul feels the most alive.

An Autobiographical Soundtrack

[ Morning ] Gotta Get Up – Nilsson
[ Noon ] Come Around – M.I.A featuring Timbaland
[ Night ] Burning Man – Third Eye Blind

[ DC ] Malegria – Manu Chao
[ Cairo ] Crazy – Gnarls Barkley
[Milano] Thirty-Three – Smashing Pumpkins

[ On Love ] Ghost of York – Tall as Lions
[ On Betrayal ] Skeleton Key - Margot and the Nuclear So-So's
[ On Disappointment ] Paperbag – Fiona Apple
[ On Heartbreak ] The Blower’s Daughter – Damien Rice
[ On Regret ] In God’s Hands – Nelly Furtado
[On Happiness ] Sunshowers – M.I.A.
[ On Fun ] F.C. Internazionale Theme
[ On Hope ] Never Ending Song of Love – Delaney & Bonnie

[ The Only Advice I Can Offer ] Fast As You Can – Fiona Apple
[ The Part of Me that Will Never Change ] The Future Freaks Me Out – Motion City Soundtrack
[ On Work Ethic ] Sympathique – Pink Martini
[ Modus Operandi ] Paper Planes – M.I.A.

[ All My Emotions in 4 Minutes and 54 Seconds ] Max-a-million – Marc Streitenfeld

I'm disgruntled that muxtape.com won't let me compile a version of this because they are all mp4s, hence the links to youtube.com instead.

Since Nice, I’ve popped back thru Milan and now find myself in Egypt.

[ cairo ]

Returning to Cairo is a sensational bombardment. The taksi ride from the airport alone made memories of the full-fabulous-crazy-chaotic-surreal-serene year I spent here flood my mind: Certain streets, buildings, shops, even parking lots seemed to hold some nostalgic meaning as I drove passed them… It was overwhelming, almost depressing, but in a beautiful way. Taking the exit for Shari3 Mar’uf, however, I was confirmedly depressed by the inescapable sensation of elapsed time. No matter how similar the streets, it is undeniable that things – and I – have changed. As I laid in bed and heard the Adzan around 4a, it was also undeniable that I really love being here, quirks, occasional inconveniences and all.

My time in Cairo has been pretty low-key. It's absolutely fantastic to see Aly and Mohamed again. Refreshing to be staying with Edefe. Lots of excitement with the LE summer program, including my first trip to Menia and some cool connections with other Cairo-based NGOs (check out the Egypt Pilot Program Blog for more about Learning Enterprises).

(Above) With i ragazzi at Mu2attam Hills, in the midst of shouting Italian curse words and making wishes on rocks being tossed off the cliff. Meeting in Menia with Samia and Yvette, on an fantastic little house boat that practically functions as their third office. Edefe, having recently finished her MA dissertation, over Italian food at the Semiramsis.

[ menia ]

I think Menia might be Egypt’s best kept secret. The Cornish there is easily the most beautiful in the country. The people are particularly lovely. It’s like a cleaner downtown Cairo with less traffic. The one kink in my quick visit was that en route home, Farek, my odd but loyal driver’s car broke down. We sat in the Sahara in late-afternoon heat for hours, seizing the opportunity to unravel unnecessary details of our lives to one another and swap as many jokes and riddles as we know. About 2-and-half Sodoku puzzles into the Desert Adventure from Hell, the kindest man in the world (who, by the way, was wearing the sexiest galabayya I’ve seen) gave me a frozen Pepsi bottle of water and I am since that moment SURE that good men DO exist and they might all be Egyptian. A few more Soduku puzzles later we finally caught a lift back to Cairo, hilariously being tugged behind a flatbed truck by a rope which broke and needed to be re-tied approximately every 40 minutes. About 9 hours later, we were deliriously happy, shouting praises to God, to see the the silhouettes of the Pyramids at Giza in the distance: Al-Haram, alhamdulila, Al-Haram!!

Ok. I’ve had several requests to update my blog more frequently. I’m not sure how I feel about blogging at all at the moment, but nevertheless I’ll try to send something interesting out into the internet void for my readers (a.k.a.: My dad, brothers, and maybe jennPan and bMurray.)

It’s somehow June. Life since March, minus the beautiful birth of my first and fabulous niece, seems like an opaque haze with only fleeting moments of feeling alive. Nevertheless, these past few weeks have left me feeling like a weary but contented traveler unpacking and organizing baggage after a long and winding trip. Where to begin?

[ milano ]

For the first time, in my entire life, my little Treo360 jingled and reminded me that I was expected to be returning, as promised, to someone or somewhere and I was actually doing it. This alone felt fantastic. The familiarity of Malpensa, as familiarity with any other airport, brought me an interesting mix of travel-addicted comfort, slight depression, and beautiful nostalgia. My time in Milan can be summed up in three probably exaggerated and subjective statements:

1. Italian has forged ahead of Arabic as the world’s most beautiful language. Che lingua bellisima!
2. FC INTER is the world’s most fantastic football team. Bravo Inter, winners of this year Scudetto. Siamo noi i championi dell’Italia…
3. My short life experience has led me to believe that the worst of men might be Italian, Catholic, or simply named Alessandro Bellati.

[ nice ]

I escaped to Southern France for an extremely brief time. Despite the short, short, short duration of the visit, it was a most relaxing little adventure. When my dad travels to new places he seems to measure their worth by his ability to live there. For example, the clean streets and efficient street cars in combination with beautiful terrain and his highschool Spanish, lead him to remark, ‘yea, we could live here’ of Tenerife , Isole Canaria confirming that he likes this place. I certainly felt like my father’s daughter upon whisphering to myself, “Oh yea, I could do this place. I could do this place for a while. Maybe forever.” Nice is, without competition, the most lovely city I have ever visited. I was a bit nervous upon arrival having not booked a hotel only to find limited availability due to the Grand Prix in neighborly Monte Carlo the same week, but I wound up staying in this fresh, funky hotel on Via Durante: 30 Euro got me an impressively comfortable king-sized bed, two balconies, bright orange walls, and the sound of the waves in the distance. I was momentarily in bliss.

The only flaw of Nice is the prevalence of loud American accents at cafes. I remember one particularly obnoxious man visiting his daughter studying abroad who inadvertently informed everyone in the café of his preference for wheat baguettes, feelings towards this year’s election and own study abroad experience in Spain. Boisterous tourists aside, the people of Nice are warm and inviting and completely break the Parisian stereotype of French people being arrogant assholes and the Provencial stereotype of French people being incomprehensible oddities. The beach is marvelous.

Nostalgia is my favorite drug.

It’s funny how time and experience transforms us. I used to be a damn good writer. Now I barely pass for a native English speaker. I used to keep this document going on my computer called “Dailies”. The 250ish words a day that freed my soul from the melodrama and confusion of late adolescence. It’s incredible now when I look back at these “Dailies” – I have hundreds of pages of them – and how eloquent I was about my confusion or my appreciation of my youth or even my juvenile angst. I look at my life and my thoughts now and think they are infinitly more simple and probably far more exciting and yet I can barely find the words to express them most of the time…Pity.

Nevertheless, in dedication to my lost eloquence and the sheer passing of time…a worthwhile excerpt (below) and a link to the inexhaustible but unfortunately hopeless side-ambition of my life, Luc Poignet.

08.08.05
There is this point in life when you realize it’s a waste to not enjoy it. There is this fleeting moment during which you feel with every square centimeter of your body, every ounce of your soul, the passing time. Every little hair on your arm stands up and bows down like the ever-ending moment is an ephemeral God gracing it with presence but punishing it with impermanence. Life is cherished in the moments that take your breath away. You lose your breath and you don’t ever want to breathe again. Every breathe you take after that one gulp of blissful reality leaves you longing to reclaim the exhalations of the past, the tastes of then, the is that’s constantly suffocated by was.

Abby

This adorable little creature is my newest fascination...

Ms. Abigail Grace Negersmith.


My first, fabulous NEICE.


Born just after midnight April 23rd, weighing 8lbs. 5oz. and measuring 19 inches.

Français, North Africa, Pleasure Reading, Ink and All Things Below Sea Level
I am pages away from finishing the last paper of my undergraduate education, peeking over at my sweetly sleeping new niece, and counting down the days before my life again transforms into two-week stints in beautifully dirty and charmingly chaotic cities…Life is going a bit too fast to really contemplate things, but still slow enough to be aware of what is going on. It’s not bad, not bad at all.

I feel completely lost about what job awaits me this September, but luckily the next few months will provide enough distractions to prevent me from thoroughly stressing out about it. It will – as always – work out exactly as intended, ٳن شاﺀ ﷲ In the meantime, I’ve been thinking of a few must-do’s for the next few months or years or seasons or whatever or my life. You can consider this a sort of it a ‘bucket list’...

I want to start pleasure reading again. Really. I want to blow thru books like a voracious summer breeze. I want to indulge in a few pages before sleeping, escape for a chapter or so everyday on the metro, or at least steal some paragraphs between sips of espresso during my coffee break. I miss reading. I also miss feeling like a reader. I haven’t written in months, and part of the reason might be that I haven’t read for…wow…years? Impossible! Nevertheless, I’ve been seriously deprived of pleasure reads and I want to end that as soon as possible. First on the list… Alain deBotton’s Status Anxiety. For the bucketlist: Enjoy a pleasure read per month.

I got my first tattoo 4 years ago at a sketchy little shop in Philadelphia with the lovely J of the MajL crew at my side. It was intended to be the first of four, but since then my views on tattoos have been influenced by a couple complicated factors, so I’ve put all the thoughts of future tattoos on hold. I have recently decided, I am indeed ready, finally, for tattoo number two – in dedication to my past and inspired by my mum – discreetly tucked in the teeny-tiniest way imaginable below my hairline at the nape of my neck. Bring on the ink and all its problematic religious implications. For the bucketlist: Tat number two, soon soon soon.

As of late, I’ve been fantasizing about a job in Paris. Or Lyons. Or Nice. Or actually anywhere in France. I guess it’s rooted in the fact my French is pretty good and I feel like this is an opportune time to perfect it. Sometimes my soul just feels pulled places – Why else would I have lived the first part of this year in the grimiest, most over-priced, and disappointing city in Italy and loved it?! - and I guess I just feel pulled to the idea of France or something Francophone right now. I’ve toyed with the idea of Montreal or Tunis or even the Seychelles but for some reason I’ve got this hankering for Paris. The thought of returning to a life punctuated by the Euro and regulated by fashion is slightly nauseating, but it would be so refreshing to know a little corner of the city I have visited three times as a tourism in a more intimate, more native kind of way. We’ll see… For the bucketlist: Spend several months in France.

Perhaps the bigger motivation behind the recent France obsession is a desire to really explore North Africa. This was one of my lame goals before studying abroad in Egypt. I wanted to acquire a taste of North Africa; see and feel and hear and explore all the sensations the Sahara serves up. Retrospectively, that seems naïve, but in this moment it again seems like a realistic possibility. Whether this is a professional endeavor or a personal interest or a quirky mixture of the two, I’m not yet sure. Eitherway, I hope that Tripoli, Marrakech and every interesting city between the two decorate my path sooner than later. For the bucketlist: Grow intimate with a few cities in North Africa and pin a couple dozen towns across the map between the Red Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.

If there’s one thing I’m feening for it’s salt water. It’s the hum-and-bubble of my regulator. It’s the scent of wetsuits and BCDs hanging to dry. It’s the bumpy jaunt to the Blue Hole and the drowsiness of a post-nap briefing aboard a boat over Ras Mohammed. It’s the serene freedom of surrendering to the sea, making friends with fishies, and forgetting only fleetingly of all the responsibilities and emotions of life above the waves. In approximately six weeks my fins should be stepping into the Red Sea and I couldn’t be more grateful. For the bucketlist: Finish up that divemaster.

Also on the bucketlist is a decision about when I’ll dive into grad. school, a desperate need to be honest and mature and irrationally-dedicated to the man I love, and invest in some cookbooks and a kitchen to try them out in. But for now… I’m back to polishing and proofing this paper, coordinating flight times for all my siblings coming to town, fantasizing about Inter matches and May-time Milano, and growing increasingly more anxious about what direction the summer will offer.

Milano, Italia
Earlier this year I was living in Milan, Italy conducting research for my honors capstone project. While not related to my research whatsoever, I blogged intermittently. If you are interested in reading these posts, they are available here.