Dorm Rooms, or Ikea is your friend

So when I moved into Reed my lovely parents and I spent a lot of time fixing up my room, and it was totally worth it.  I was lucky enough to get a single and as an introvert, it's really nice to have your own space.  My room was full of the things I like: I had hanging plants and a teapot and pictures on the walls and two very soft rugs and an armchair.
1) Rugs.
I got both of mine (the giant furry rug, kind of like this one, and the grey-and-white flowered one, kind of like this one) at Ikea, which was blessedly kind of near my college.  My parents stayed through O-week (Orientation) and had rented a car; they are among the most wonderful people on the planet and drove out to Ikea without me (being very familiar with my tastes).  My original floor was cold, kind of grimy lino, which is just kind of gross.  I layered my rugs so that most of the whole floor was covered.  It made my room much cozier.
2) Plants.
I love green things.  LOVE.  Plants just cheer me up - watering them makes me a little attached, and they brighten a space.  They also combat air pollution.  NASA thinks so, guys.  I had seven, which means that there was probably lots of oxygen in my pretty tiny room. Two of them were hanging from a pipe near the window.
3) Pictures.
Ikea is really really nice, people.  Specifically, they sell lots of little frames that are pretty cheap that you can put pictures in.  I framed the poster I pulled off the wall in Paris as well as a bunch of little prints I got at various thrift stores and Powell's (which is... literally the best thing ever.  Go if you are ever in Portland.  I'm serious.  Go.)  The only kind of strange thing is that their frames are weird sizes.
That's really all I can come up with at the moment.  Go forth and decorate your dorm rooms!

It's been a while!

Sorry about that, guys!  My summer actually hasn't been eventful enough to warrant me leaving for this long - but I will be talking about going back to school and the like because that's important.
In the next couple of days look for posts about what to bring and what to leave, about how Ikea is your very best friend, and how it won't matter if you have a bike if you don't remember the combination.
See you soon!

Summertime

The summer has been kind of strange for me so far.  After so much work at Reed and so much adventure to be had through France, I'm kind of unsure what to do with myself now.
I mean, I want to do something.  I don't respond well to too much downtime - I go a bit insane.  And I have stuff to do - theory and piano - but not really enough.  The obvious thing would be to get a job, but that's easier said than done.
It's a strange feeling, this lethargic uneasiness.  Hopefully I'll find something to do and it will go away.

Music

Hello, blog readers!  It's been quite a while, no?
I got home a couple weeks and have been catching up on much-needed sleep and seeing my family as well as my beloved Cambridge once again.
I am also playing more and more music now, taking piano lessons again!  In college, playing the piano was a way for me to de-stress, to get a little bit of a break from my schoolwork and the constant social life that living in the dorm turns out to be, but now I actually want to pursue it.  I have a fantastic teacher, Eyran Katsenelenbogen, and am actually learning how to properly play again.  It's fantastic.
Have a lovely day!

Aurora Borealis

I've travelled a lot in my nineteen years, but I haven't seen one thing I'd really really like to see.

I want to see the Northern Lights.

I've wanted to see them since I read Philip Pullman's incredible novel "The Golden Compass" as a child (and its subsequent sequels, "The Subtle Knife" and "The Amber Spyglass") - I've wanted to ever since I read out loud to my little sister from Jan Brett's picture book "Who's that Knocking on Christmas Eve?"

"High above the arctic circle in the land of ice and snow, the northern lights shimmer in the night like a curtain of color hanging from the sky," it reads.  

I have not been to Norway, or to Iceland, or to Sweden.  I have been to Denmark, but only in high summer when the bright Northern sky was bluer than anything I've ever seen; I have been to Montréal in the winter but the aurora never appeared.  

In the newest issue of the National Geographic, there is an article about solar storms - and one of the side effects of these huge solar storms is the aurora borealis coming as far south as Hawaii and Panama (well, once).  And it is the most selfish, but I would so love to see the northern lights - perhaps not enough to wish the kind of mass electrical outages on the world that come with such storms, but enough to at least think about it.

Have you ever seen the aurora?  Do you want to?

(photo)

Exam Week

It has been gorgeous in Portland for the last three days.  Chilly mornings give way to beautiful bright afternoons at about eighty degrees (F), the sun dappling through the leaves.  This makes it very hard to study, but I've been doing my best.  Biology is tomorrow afternoon, and then I'm done!
Exam week is always kind of strange for me, a liminal space between classes and leaving.  You still see your friends, though not as much - the girl you eat breakfast with every morning suddenly isn't up when you are - you sleep in or have an exam at eight; she does the same on different days.  Midnight Breakfast screws up your dining schedule so that you're not in Commons at noon with your friends.  People pack up and leave.  It's a period that feels transient, strange, lonely but also full of community, and on top of it, you have exams.
For those of you also in exams, good luck!
For those of you who aren't, have a lovely day!

The College Student's Guide to Surviving Reading Week

Hi guys -
It's been a while, but it's also the middle of Reading Week at Reed College, that lovely week when the library is open 24 hours a day, when you can't get "Eye of the Tiger" out of your head, and your dormies play really really loud music all night to help them stay up and study.  You can do what I did and get the hell out of Dodge and go stay with family for a bit, or you can brave the review sessions, Stim Table, and the inherent stress.
So, here are my tips.
1) DO NOT put liquid caffeine in your coffee (I'm talking to you, random girl on Wednesday).  Seriously.  The liquid caffeine that they offer up at Stim Table in the library lobby is super strong (like, a teaspoon equals a cup of coffee) and you don't need to mix it with coffee.
2) Sleep. Seriously.  Sleep is good; sleep makes your life a little bit easier, sleep means that you won't be tearing your hair out at four in the morning because you don't remember what mesoderm is.
3) While I am totally not condoning this for your only sustenance for the next week, chocolate-covered espresso beans are delicious, and dark chocolate has all sorts of antioxidants, okay?
4) If you're like me, and classical music helps you study, I highly recommend the Bach cello suites for the soothing, going-through-all-the-bio-notes studying.  And Beethoven's 5th and 9th symphonies for pump-up, going-to-get-everything-done studying.
5) Your friends are there for you.  You are there for them.  They're pretty excellent, I promise.
6) And if you're in Portland, the poutine food cart on Hawthorne is open really late.
Good luck!

A little stressed

End of term here is stressful.  More so than last term - I'm not entirely sure why, but this time around everything seems a bit more final, and everything is creeping up at exactly the same time.  A week from tomorrow the three-day end-of-year festival that is Renn Fayre starts (it'll be my first one!) and until then my life is PACKED.
It's okay, though.  All the work I'm doing - my ten-page humanities research paper on faith in Mark and Corinthians, playing the piano for a friend's composition in his final concert, the Mozart Requiem, the biology midterm - all of this is work I'm excited for.  Well, maybe not the bio midterm, but the rest.  I love the singing, the playing music in front of people is totally nerve-wracking, and the paper makes me think critically about Christianity and religion and history in a way that I find very valuable.
I know I haven't been posting much at all this term, and I'm really really sorry, but I promise that is going to change soon.  Reading week is coming up, and in between Seneca and Molière, I will find time to post.  Until then, thank you, and please be patient with me.
Love,
Me.

How Unexpected Classes Change Your Life

Today I registered for my sophomore year classes and changed my advisor.  These weren't the classes I thought I would take when I came to Reed; they weren't the classes I thought I would take in January.  I was a history-literature prospective major when I entered Reed; I flirted with French and English and Comp Lit (well, General Lit, which is as close as Reed comes).
I suppose I can blame (or thank) my friend Esther for what happened next, for taking me with her to go talk to the incredible Virginia Hancock about signing up for a JS Bach class.  And that class - that intimidating 300-level music class that I was barely qualified for (the prerequisite was sophomore standing) - changed the way I thought about college.
I love my other classes.  I love humanities and French and sometimes I even love bio.  But I am impatient for Tuesdays and Thursdays for the rest of the week.  Even today, I can't wait for one-ten to roll around so I can climb the stairs to the third floor of Eliot and talk about the B Minor Mass.  I love Ginny's teaching, I love the conversations we have, I love that my homework is listening to music and writing about it.
I have always loved music, but somehow in college that love got a little more serious.  I listened to a recording of Shostakovich's Eighth String Quartet with a friend and fell head-over-heels for 20th century composers.  I sat down at the piano on school breaks and late at night in Prexy and labored over Chopin and scales.  I went to every symphony concert I could.
So now I may be a prospective music major.  Maybe English still; I don't know for sure.  What I do know is that all of my classes for next year are classes I can't wait to go to - classes that will have me dancing out of them for joy, classes that require one to go see "Don Giovanni" and read about the history of Argentine Tango.
So, um, thank you, Esther.
And to those of you who are going to be in college next year for the first time - take classes that you don't expect.  It's exhilarating and you may find the thing you love best.

Thesis Trees

At Reed College, the cherry trees are in bloom.  They arch over Eliot Circle and are dense and flowering enough so that you only see portions of the sky when you stand directly below (the photo is from a couple days ago).  Walking from Commons to Vollum (the lecture hall) to learn about the Aeneid and to discuss Baudelaire is pretty incredible.
In between all of the work, in between the paper on French poetry and the six books of reading and all three hours of Bach's St Matthew's Passion, between the crossword with my friends and playing the piano and living my pretty excellent life of intellectual inquiry, I get to walk beneath those trees and think about it.  I live here.  I am so lucky to be here.


(photo by the lovely Alexandra, who visited me over the weekend)

Happy Birthday, Mike!

If you've been reading for a while, you know who Mike is - one of my best friends from high school, super-smart, pretty incredible....
And he is twenty years old today!  Or, I guess, one day older than he was yesterday...
I get to see him later today, so that will be lovely, and until then, happy birthday, Mike!

Barcelona and Beyond

Today my darling brother leaves for a two-month stay in Barcelona.  It's weird (and sounds silly, I know), but I thought that the first part of my break would go by a lot slower.  Instead I get important phone calls about exciting new progressions with certain boys from my best friends at college, almost no work done on my Cicero paper or my lab report, and now it's Thursday, the day that Caleb leaves.
He's going to go live with the girl who now definitely counts as a family friend, the girl who lived with my family the first two months of the autumn term.  He's going to get to go visit Paris and walk through the streets where we used to live, take coffee at tiny outdoor tables and people watch on Rue Daguerre or Rue de Turenne.  I am incredibly jealous - as much as I love my life at college, my desire to travel has in no way left me - and at the same time I'll miss him a ton.
Now instead of a three-hour time difference, we'll have a nine-hour one, but it will somehow be okay.
Caleb, darling, I'll miss you!

(the Casa Milà, in Barcelona, drawn by the incredible Zeljko Toncic, from here)

Spring Break

I have a week off from college that I'm currently spending with my family, and it's fantastic.  Reed is incredible, but very challenging, and it's really lovely to have time to breathe and relax and catch up.  

It's also incredibly nice to see my family again!

Who's Feeling Young Now?

Last night Gracie, one of my best school friends, and I went to go see the Punch Brothers at the Wonder Ballroom.  I think I've already talked about how brilliant the Punch Brothers are, but this concert....
Man, this concert was incredible.  The stunningly talented Aoife O'Donovan opened for them, singing, among other things, her songs "Red And White And Blue And Gold" (the most summery song I've heard in quite some time, reminiscent of New England beaches and long Tennessee nights by the lake) and another original song, "Beekeeper."
The Punch Brothers were on tour to promote their new album, "Who's Feeling Young Now?"  "Who's Feeling Young Now?" has a different mood than Antifogmatic - the songs are somehow a little more rhythmic almost, with a little more edge.  "Patchwork Girlfriend" is somewhere between quite funny and almost too close to home, "No Concern of Yours" is a little angry or bitter but quite poignant, "Hundred Dollars" is beautifully cruel, and "Soon or Never" is beautiful and quiet and true.  I could go on - tell you about the song "Who's Feeling Young Now?" and the quiet and lovely "Clara" and "Don't  Get Married Without Me," which contains the lovely line "Let's not fool ourselves, 'cause we aren't cowards, we aren't liars, we're just two people who are not in love... right now."
When I first heard the album, honestly, I was unsure.  In my defense, "Antifogmatic" might be my favourite album in the history of, well, ever - and hearing something from the Punch Brothers that was definitely different was kind of a shock.  But on hearing it in concert and spending more time with the record, I'm convinced.  It might (might) even eclipse "Antifogmatic" as my favourite record.
At the concert I went to last night, Aoife O'Donovan and Chris Thile (with help from the other Punch Brothers) performed their song "Here and Heaven" from the Goat Rodeo Sessions (another incredible album with incredible people that I cannot recommend enough).
This is one of the few (maybe the only band) whose concerts I go to with absolute elation.  This time around, I knew almost every word to every song and Gracie and I stood at the very front, leaning our elbows on the sold-out stage.  These guys are going to get incredibly famous sometime very soon, and it will be harder and harder to see them in small venues.  So go, while you still can.  Seriously.
(photo from here)

Have a lovely weekend!

Hi guys,
I'm sorry I've been so late on posting lately.  I've just had a ton of work - the life of a Reed student, I guess!  The best part, though, is that it's work I really want to do - I find myself excited to do my humanities and French reading, and I always look forward to the Bach homework.
I also find myself taking more risks this semester - while last semester I spent most of my time on campus and just hanging out with my friends on weekends, this semester I make an effort to actually do things.  I go to most of the concerts on campus every Friday or so, and this weekend I plan on seeing Giselle with friends.
What are you up to?
(blurry photo from Commons by me)

Developmental Biology

If you've been reading this for a while, you've probably picked up that I'm not exactly a scientist.  I write about books I love, about music and family and travel.
However, today was the last lecture of my developmental biology module at Reed, and I would just like to talk about my lecturer for a second.
Professor Steve Black is retiring this year, and he made biology fascinating for me.  He taught me about how masterful genes aren't always masterful, about the difference between radial and spiral cleavage, about how pharmaceutical companies are out to make money and not really to help you.  I learned that the surrealists were fascinated by sea urchins and about mosaic development.  He explained meiosis in the most simple and clear manner so that I finally understood what was going on.
I learned a lot of biology in the past so many weeks, but I've also learned to love biology.  I never thought I was going to enjoy looking at sea urchin eggs under a microscope - I was honestly just taking bio to get my huge science requirement out of the way - but somehow I do enjoy it.
Today Steve came in wearing a tie-dyed blazer and ended the lecture rapping about everything we'd learned.  I love my school.

Today

It is cold and grey in Portland today, like so many days, but beautiful, and I have a vase of flowers from a secret admirer to brighten the afternoon!
What have you been up to this Valentine's Day?  Every so often, in the middle of developmental biology or Aristotle or my absolutely incredible JS Bach class, I'll remember that I was in Paris this time last year.  It's hard to believe, and I still miss it all the time - coffee in the Pacific Northwest, while incredible, isn't the same as an espresso on my balcony at Place Denfert-Rochereau.
I'm also still getting over my illness, so thank you so so much for being patient with the barely-there posting!  I'll get better and post more often, I promise!
(the photo is of a bridge in Hampstead Heath, from the BBC)

Sick

Hello blog readers!
I'm sorry I've not been around - I've got tons of work and on top of that, I'm sick with something...
But in other news, have you seen these stamps?!  Is it impractical to send for British stamps to Portland?  Probably....

Happy Friday

Hello, blog readers, happy Friday!
I'm a bit sick today, but I'm still looking forward to the weekend.  This afternoon I'm going to a talk on Stravinsky, and tomorrow I'm going to the Oregon symphony!  I'm super excited - they're performing Beethoven's fourth, one of my favourites.  The rest of the weekend will probably be work and (maybe) a little Superbowl-watching - I have to support the Pats, after all!
 (photo of lost tourists in Paris by me)

Paris

One year ago today, I moved to Paris.  I got on a plane in Boston by myself, waltzed through Heathrow the next morning, and ended up at Charles de Gaulle, and, from there, to my lovely flat at Denfert-Rochereau.
The first couple days in Paris were scary - all on my own, with the wrong kind of visa and a sun that didn't come out until eight-thirty, an iffy-at-best grasp on the language.  But I loved it - I loved the bare branches of the square-cut trees in the Jardin du Luxembourg and my quiet cafés and walks down the river - especially in February and March, when the tourists hadn't yet arrived in droves, where some streets were still my streets and didn't belong to the millions of other people making Paris theirs.
Some streets still are my streets - Rue Daguerre with Thévenin's buttery croissants, or Rue de Sevres or Boulevard Raspail - those will always be mine.  And I know the code to get into a complex with a courtyard and gardens and a beautiful room with a piano that I visited to hear jazz concerts.  I know the code to get into the ancient building where I lived the last month of my Paris experience in the third, and I know the cool dark stairwell of the Denfert-Rochereau flat.
I miss Paris, but it will always be mine, and I'll come back to it soon.  That's a promise.
(rooftops from my window, by me)