Alexandra!

Today Alexandra has made the trek over from snowy Boston (well, Concord) to come and see me in Paris!
I've finally made her mixtape (with help from my father, who was really lovely and offered advice on the order of songs) and though I have classes in the middle of the afternoon, we have a lovely day planned!  She's been to Paris before, so I want to do things that aren't so touristed - the things that I love.  I'm thinking Shakespeare & Company, Le Loir Dans Le Théière, walks in the flowering trees in the Jardin du Luxembourg, the winding streets of the Quartier Latin, ostentatious lions on bridges, the gargoyle collection at St-Severin.... is there anything I'm missing?  Alex?
The mixtape I made has an awful lot of songs that are really wanderlust-y (that's usual, I promise) and a bunch that I just like, the kind that are melancholic and lovely.  There's overlap there - I've also given her my favourite Bowie song, so I hope she likes it!  If you want, I'll post the list after I've given it to her....
Happy Monday, blog readers!  How was your weekend?

Wanderlust: The Netherlands Edition

Sorry it's late - I forgot to post this last night!
So, who else wants to go to the Netherlands?  How about Amsterdam, a city that multiple people have told me is one of the most beautiful European cities (and canals!)....

Image from here

Or the island of Schiermonnikoog (neat name, right?)....

Image from here

Or Utrecht, with more canals and lovely towers?

Image from here

Have you been to the Netherlands?  What was it like?  Happy weekend!

Amy Pond

The lovely Amelia Pond (or Karen Gillan, if you want to be technical).  From here.

I'm sorry I'm late posting today - I've spent the morning studying for a French exam...
Anyways, here goes.
If you are familiar with the classic British television show Doctor Who, you know that there have been 11 doctors, this last one being Matt Smith.  Most people I know think that David Tennant (the tenth doctor) was a superior doctor, but I disagree.  Matt Smith  - the youngest, most adorably awkward doctor yet - is my favourite.  And this is partly because of his companion, Amelia Pond (also because bow ties are cool).
Amelia Pond (or Amy) is headstrong and gorgeous and Scottish and basically just the coolest person around.  Everything I want to be, really.  But the point is, at one point she says "I got my spaceship, I got my boys - my work here is done."  And that I can identify with.  Not the spaceship part, obviously.  But the boys.  I got my boys, too, Pond.
"My boys" generally means Mike and Caleb - one of my best friends and my brother - but it can expand to mean the group of awkward and nerdy boys I hung out with in high school (the male contingent of our friend group).  They're generally lovely, often tactless, almost always funny.  If you weren't an overly bookish kid like me, maybe you don't know the type, but I spent four years proofreading essays (again, Mike, I'm really sorry about that Wuthering Heights essay) and they spent four years helping me with calculus (thank you, Mike, for explaining the chain rule the day of the exam).  They also do things like call when you're sick and talk to you late at night/early in the morning and yell at people for you.  They sit on the train with you for four years straight and occasionally play house, but mostly do the crossword and that morning's homework.
Brothers are a little different.  Brothers not only yell at people for you, they will occasionally make vague threats and glare at boyfriends.  My darling brother has sight-read the piano part for choral sheet music that I've brought home even though he has other work and last summer we spent five days on our own in Paris.  He is also an excellent judge of character, so um, if Caleb doesn't like you, it probably means we can't be friends (sorry).  We share a love of chocolate and good food, and even if he does mock my musical tastes, sometimes I mock his, so it's all good.
Amy Pond's boys were the Doctor and her fiancé - and mine are my best friend and my brother.  I think I won.

Christchurch

So on Tuesday morning there was a pretty awful earthquake in Christchurch.  Have you guys been following this?
I have family in New Zealand (hence, you know, the name of the blog and all that), but they live mostly in the North Island.  Still, the earthquake is absolutely awful and my heart goes out to all the people trapped and their families...
Search parties are still working to rescue those trapped beneath the buildings, but this morning the BBC posted this.  This is the most deadly natural disaster NZ has seen for 80 years.

It's been a while

I'm sorry for not posting sooner - I've been under the weather with a February flu thing and really haven't had time....  I'm not yet quite over it, but I'm doing lots better (unfortunately now my darling sister is sick).  In the meantime, what have you been doing all weekend/first part of the week?
Also, the website Flavorwire makes literary mixtapes of what your favourite literary characters might listen to if they were alive!  People like Hamlet, Little Red Riding Hood, Huckleberry Finn (I honestly really didn't like the book, but the music choices make sense), Alice in Wonderland, Ender from Ender's Game, Harry Potter, Humbert Humbert (and Lolita herself!), Holden Caulfield (one of my favourites), and Tintin. I'm excited to see who else they'll make literary mixtapes for - Matilda, maybe?  Dorothea from Middlemarch?  What would you like to see?

Wanderlust: South Africa Edition

When I was thirteen I went to South Africa for two weeks with my mother, and I loved it.  But that's not really what South Africa is about for me.  Have you seen Blood Diamond?  There is a scene in which Leonardo diCaprio's character visits a man in Stellenbosch who picks up the dirt in the vineyard and presses it into diCaprio's hand and says "the red dirt of Africa."  I don't know, it meant something to me, at least... lessee, where would you like to go?

You could go to Stellenbosch, wine country....

With the red dirt of Africa....

You could go to Cape Town...

And maybe even stay on the water!

Or you could go to Durban, where my mother and I stayed.  We visited hospitals and every day drove past places like this...

But what about you?  Where would you go?

photo credits from here, here, here, here, and here, respectively.

There Are Just A Couple Things I Want To Say

Before I start, I just want to say that I'm not trying to offend anybody here.  I just thought that these were interesting.
Part I:  Everyone should go read this post on Wronging Rights about Lara Logan.
Part II: Have you noticed that there are now further protests in Bahrain and in Libya?  What do you think of what's going on in the Middle East?  Is it good - these people are finally getting somewhat of a huge chance to speak for themselves after years of oppression and neocolonialism and pretty awful stuff - or is it bad - the stability of the region is at stake?
Part III: Do you get the New Yorker (I know I've asked this question before)?  Since we're living in France, our mail is taking forever to arrive and so I've only got the February 14&21 anniversary issue that my mother brought with her (I actually don't know if there's another one out) and they had two really great pieces.  One was a Talk of the Town about the unrest in Egypt (at the time of publication, Mubarak hadn't stepped down) that compares the situation to the uprising in Prague in 1989 and has great lines like "as Mubarak raged and played at conflagration (pg. 38, D Remnick)" and "in diplomacy, the tension between moral and strategic considerations is always acute and often shaming (pg. 38 D Remnick)" - just, go read it.  Now it's a little outdated, but it's still supremely well-written and brings up a ton of great points.  The other piece I suggest is long - it took me like an hour to read, and I read fast - and it was called "The Apostate: Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology."  I honestly understood nothing about scientology before I read this and, while biased, the article is pretty incredible.  So go get the New Yorker and read!