two weeks

Walking home from grocery shopping today, I said that I was sad we only had three weeks left. Joe said that at this point, it had to be less than three weeks. "What's the date?" he asked.

June 23. Exactly two weeks from our departure date. At this time in two weeks, we will be checking in at CDG, ready for a two-hour flight & a night spent in the Dublin airport. [Pause for heaving sobs.]

I'm not really sure what to say after that. I've stopped reading & writing. I've begun watching loads of movies. I don't leave the apartment much due to the rain. I eat through my feelings–mostly brownies & crackers. I've become completely worthless, & I think it's only going to get worse.

It's amazing how quickly time passes, & I'm trying to see our return to the States as another countable period before the next trip to France–or who knows? Some other French-speaking country... (Honestly, we're not even that particular about it being a French-speaking country, though I'd come back to France permanently if flights back to Ohio were a reasonable price & not such a disaster for the environment.)

It's hard for me to think through everything that will happen between tomorrow & the end of August, especially since I'm used to having my to-do list finalized weeks in advance. I'm trying to focus on the little things–talking to my goddaughter, not paying six dollars for salsa, painting my toe nails, exercising with my sister, waking up early, chasing my pet rabbit around.

The days will be full. It will take us a while to start missing this place, but when the distance sinks in there will be a hole in my heart as big as the hole in my cheese variety. You can't talk to France on the phone like you can talk to your parents.

Still walking home, after Joe asked the date, we passed a group of boys. One of them was wearing a t-shirt, saying something to the effect of "I was born here by chance." There is a pride that we are expected to be born with, a love of our country & its history that is supposed to come naturally to us.

I've spent a year answering questions about California and SUVs and New York and Obama's blackness. I've spent a year explaining to people that we do not all live in Orange County and that there are forty states in between the coasts that also have beautiful histories. I've spent a year realizing that the image foreigners have of America & its glory is neither an image I share nor an image I'm apart of.

The fears I have about the health of my home culture, society & government do not–and indeed cannot–exist here. Citizens of France do not worry about how they will pay for their cancer treatment or how their food has been genetically modified. There is corporate influence, but there is still the sentiment that the government is for and OF the people.

I will miss that most. I bring this up now because when I think of my future in the States, it is these fears that dictate how I see my life playing out. Will my time here push me harder & faster to a position where I can affect changes that will begin to eliminate those fears for Americans? Or will I become so discouraged & even more afraid than I am now–until I feel that I must flee to give my children the kind of society I feel most natural in? According to Winston Churchill, "Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all other possibilities." I find myself wondering if this is the point we are near, if I'm meant to be a part of our moment to finally do the right thing.

But for now I have plenty to distract me. Soon, these thoughts will float not only through my mind but through my course discussions & career focus. Today & tomorrow, there are cell phones & utilities to cancel, laundry to do, showers to scrub. There are friends to hang out with, school programs to attend (where Joe will be leading the little ones in English songs). There are jobs to apply to, for both of us.
 
Enjoy what you're reading? I'd love to know that we're on track. Click Follow on the right side of the screen to stick with us.

an education

Okay, let me just break from my real thoughts by saying...

I'm eating a baguette for breakfast. Not a whole one. Just a big chunk of one. It's a day old, and it's HARD. I keep smearing a drop of real butter on each bite. I eat this for breakfast most mornings. But for some reason this one is so hard that it's hurting my lips when I try to bite it & cutting the inside of my mouth when I chew. Just the outside is hard; the inside is still wonderfully spongy. I am eating through the pain, & it is worth it. I will miss the eating injuries when we come back to the States.

Now I return to the regularly scheduled post.

There are classes at the university that don't follow the 12-week semester & instead run only for ten weeks. One of these is my most difficult class, one that requires students to spend two hours watching a five-minute video clip & answering questions. This class started two weeks late, thus ending its semester with the rest of the university.

The other class, a continuation of a one I taught last semester, ended two weeks early. Tuesday. When a friend said he needed someone to cover his last session with the same group of students, I jumped at the chance. Because while I've been helping them correct their English, they've been teaching me a lot of things. Like what it's like to have a serious disease; what your countries civil war was like; how to make traditional Algerian & Vietnamese dishes. Like if you let 12 people talk for long enough, they will become friends. They will open up in ways you'd never imagined–become bold enough to have class discussions going in directions you'd never have been comfortable pushing them.

When class ended, I was asked for my address. I was asked if I had Facebook. I was invited to visit them in their home countries. I was asked if I was positive I wouldn't stay in France another year. "Will you ever get back?"

We hope so. I hope they'll still be here; I hope that this is what they were looking for.

My students were what Americans would call "non-traditional". They had other jobs–working on PhDs or as engineers or veterinarians. They come from Rwanda, Syria, Vietnam, Cameroon, Algeria. The list goes on.

The first few weeks were spent giving presentation–how we were supposed to spend the whole class. They each gave their required presentation, & then we just couldn't take it anymore. We moved onto debating topics. "We get much more out of this," they told me as we sat in a circle getting increasingly impassioned.

It didn't seem appropriate at the time to say, " I do to." To explain that, in the States, we don't often get a chance to have these conversations with so many diverse stories & backgrounds. The country is so large that at times it seems easy & obvious that so much of our news coverage should focus only on our news & how the world–the disaster in Japan, the revolutions in the Arab world–affect OUR country & OUR lives instead of the lives of these nations.

For the last week, I wrote several topics on the board. Home schooling, intellectual property, evolution, human rights. We jumped into human rights & didn't leave it–didn't even have a pause in the conversation–for two hours, struggling with a big question.

How do we make the world fair & just when we have so many definitions for "fair" and "just" and "justice"? When does the U.S. entry into Libya stop being a UN mission & start being another attempt to make other cultures work like we do? And what IS the role of the U.S. in the world? What IS our obligation as a world power, as a pool of many resources, as a symbol of democracy for the world (even though, as I tried to explain to them, I don't SEE us as the most democratic or the best way to do democracy)?

"You need to start with yourselves. Your poor. Your health care," one student told me. I wanted to put him on the big news channels that we cling to, to tell his story & remind us that we must fix ourselves before we fix others. We must loves ourselves before we're good at loving others.

I want to fix the States, & sitting in that hot classroom with those 12 eager faces will change the voice that is in my head when I begin my graduate studies. I won't forget them, & I hope they won't forget the American that admitted we don't have it all together either.

Enjoy what you're reading? I'd love to know that we're on track. Click Follow on the right side of the screen to stick with us.

it's the end of the world as we know it...

When I was in eighth grade, I was still taking religion classes. Our teacher that year decided to focus (exclusively) on the book of Revelation–the one in which John uses his dream to tell us how the world ends. After a lot of lessons, I came home crying. I didn't feel bad about this; I wasn't embarrassed or alone in it. Sometimes, even the cool guys–the football players or the ones mocking religion–cried during class.

"I know it will happen in my lifetime," our teacher would say. He would show us newspaper clipping of events that correlated to the passages we read. He would warn us not to get microchips put under our skin–the sign of the Beast.

I have a tendency to look for signs of the Apocalypse anyway. I spend a lot of my time convinced that the world is a horrible place to bring children. I imagine what I'll do when our way of life crumbles and we're forced to survive in a scene like "The Road". I tell Joe that I want to get out of the U.S. as soon as possible; I mean this. Sincerely.

Writing this is making my heart race; I get to the verge of tears & begin to panic.

When I saw what had happened in Japan, I felt that–after Australia, after Haiti–is a continuing sign that we're on the wrong path. Is God warning us? Is this it? With each disaster, I get more afraid. With each disaster, I blame God less–because we're still not listening.

We still haven't adjusted our energy consumption, haven't started looking at seriously limiting our use of finite energy sources. We still haven't re-evaluated our use of nuclear energy, though there are 23 reactors in the U.S. that match the models melting down in Japan.

I've stopped at this point. I've started typing the other arguments I always give–the war o women; the attacks on the middle class; the U.S.'s unbelievable resistance to the idea of global warming (or science in general). But I can't go into them again...because it will bore you; because it is breaking me down. And I'll be honest, I don't know where to go from here.

In all aspects of my life, I have a tendency to feel obligated. My decisions are made less for myself and more for how I predict people will respond to them. So now I'm left wondering, can I make a difference? Can I stick with public affairs and speak to the U.S. as they give our country to corporations and remove our elected officials? (Forgive the very liberal slant to that piece; it's the shortest, most comprehensible article I could find.) Can I make them listen–can I reach those middle class folks who feel that the Democrats are not trying to help them? Can I convince them? What could I possibly say that could be any different?

How can we finally start making a difference? I'm only 23. And then I look at Wisconsin, where even after a law was passed (though the legality of the passage is being contested) 80,000 citizens continue to protest*. I look at Egypt, where people my age organized a peaceful protest that changed ended the government of their nation. I look at Tunisia, at Yemen. I look at Indiana and Ohio, where people are trying (though in smaller numbers).

So, it is the end of the world as we know it... and while I wouldn't say I feel fine, there are signs that things might, just might, start to look up. Will my generation, we radical hippies, get to the government in time? Or will states follow Michigan's lead? Will we rely even more on the banks and businesses that we bailed out when they robbed us?

It's up to us. But if Wisconsin can speak out, if Egypt can have a nonviolent revolution for their entire country, then we can begin making changes. We can change what we buy; we can change the way we speak to our government (or START speaking to our government); we can change where we shop. We can change what we're willing to tolerate from our country.

Enjoy what you're reading? I'd love to know that we're on track. Click Follow on the right side of the screen to stick with us.

what a feminist looks like

I'm very excited about Feminist Coming Out Day, an event to raise awareness & help us realize that all of us–single, married, all genders, all races, all political parties–are feminists. (Learn more here.) We support the rights of women to choose their career, their role in the home, their interests. We support, with that, the rights of men to do the same. We need to break the dichotomy. We need to learn to live together & respect each other. 

Feminist Coming Out Day is featuring pictures & snip-its by self-proclaimed feminists, showing us that we are feminists in our own way, by our own definition. I finally worked up the courage to submit my tiny two-cents, & they posted it! They're incredibly kind, & I encourage you to do the same. They make it very easy when you click here.
Their work couldn't come at a better time.

There's a lot going on for women's rights in the States right now, & I can't get my mind off of it. I've been concerned about women's issues since I realized that I would not grow up to be a member of New Kid's on the Block, that I would grow up to be a woman. I knew words like Glass Ceiling and Second Wave, but I never could have imagined, after we saw ourselves as so past these things–though admittedly still struggling–that I would learn words like Stupak Amendment or Justified Murder of abortion doctors.

I never thought my country could take actions to stop women's rights to an abortion in cases of rape or dangerous pregnancies. I never thought the country would seek to redefine rape & say the victim didn't try hard enough. I never thought we would try to stop Planned Parenthood, a program that provides not only abortion, but exams for cervical & breast cancer; stopping Planned Parenthood is stopping the health care of three million women. (For more information, watch or read about this Democracy Now interview with PP's president.)

I never thought I would be truly & deeply afraid to live in the United States. To have a daughter born there. To ask for birth control when it is for my mental & physical health and NOT FOR preventing pregnancy. I never thought we could try to move back so far while saying, so often, that the fight is for God.

Change.org, a site Joe introduced me to, collects petitions for various causes. They have several successful petitions going to work to stop this legislation on their Women's Rights page. It costs nothing, takes almost no time & helps us speak to our government.

If you're even ballsier, contact your representatives (whom their page still refers to as "Congressmen") or e-mail your Senator. If you don't, who will?

Keep yourself informed with two easy articles:
What stopping Planned Parenthood means for low-income women
And on a tangent... we pick NOW to argue about breast feeding?