Peace

Alright, my goal is going to be to write on this thing at least once a month.  So since the last time I wrote was Jan 16, this will count for my February post.

I don't have much to update on.  I love reading Jordan's and Camille's blogs - I am so happy to see my dear friends out exploring the world and learning more about it.  I also love living vicariously through them!  Like today, Camille said that she is so over Europe because Latin America offers everything Europe used to: authenticity, diverse culture, and inexpensiveness!  I've been thinking about how Latin America needs to be my next travel destination.  One: because it's so close and inexpensive.  Two: because I really want to learn Spanish so that I can better communicate with and relate to my students.  And three: because I've only ever been to TJ and Tecate, which are really mini versions of San Diego, just across the border.  I'm thinking that my next time to travel will be next summer (2010) before I start teaching full-time in the fall.  I think it will be the perfect opportunity to go to Mexico and learn Spanish, since I will be in the classroom that fall.  Plus, I will need to finish my thesis, and what better way to write than in an exotic setting discovering new people and places and soaking in another culture?  Now I just need to find a friend to come with me... Camila??  :)

Lately I've been amazed at how much I am loving life out here in Oklahoma.  My roommate's brother, Andrew Kopke, told me I like it so much because I had such low expectations.  And maybe that's true.  But to give Oklahoma credit, I have really loved the people I've met here.  While talking to my CA friend, Sarah, on the phone the other week, she mentioned that she was really happy that I've met so many good friends so quickly.  I told her that it's been so easy to make friends because people are so friendly.  I know that people on the West coast tend to make fun of Southerners by saying that they are "fake" (even my friends in the Northwest would say that to me about Californians), but I don't see the southern hospitality as being "fake."  I truly feel most people here are genuinely hospitable.  I love feeling so welcomed into peoples' homes, families, and just their lives in general.  And not everyone in the South is ultraconservative.  And not every Christian is a bible-thumping bigot.  While those people do exist, I've met so many people who think on such an opposite scale - people who want to defy their stereotype and change their culture.  I'm finding a very nice mesh of my two favorite cultures here: southern friendliness and northern intellectualism.  Although this move felt like taking a blind leap of faith, I feel it couldn't have been more perfect to matching exactly what I wanted for this phase of my life.  And each week, it just keeps getting better.  Hopefully next blog I can be more detailed and give more tangible examples.  But for now, you (Jordan) can bask in my vagueness and abstract descriptions. 

Peace.