i went to vancouver yesterday because:

(a) kelsey was going to be there with paul so that paul could go to a dentist there,

(b) i try to get out of victoria as much as i can, and

(c) vancouver has cheap and delicious food that victoria does not have, and i have been living on a diet of toast, pasta, oatmeal cookies, orange juice, and rice for far too long.

low points of the trip include:

(a) the six early-twenties assholes on the ferry on their way to a gwar concert or something (or at least, that's what shelby and i deduced after seeing them pose together while yelling "gwar!" in unison outside of the taxi van they were getting into), who were loud and obnoxious during the ferry ride while shelby and i were just trying to get some reading done for school.

(b) waiting outside in the rain for an hour and a half in the morning because kelsey and paul are not good mass transit navigators.

(c) the 150 junior high school kids on the ferry back to victoria, who (1) were running and shouting all over the ferry, and (2) were the perfect captive audience for some guy with pouffy red hair, who played interactive songs on his mandolin, singing in an accent that was a mix between pirate and english soccer player, getting the kids to yell things in unison and jump up and down to the rhythm of his music.

(d) missing one of my connecting busses in victoria by seconds - and only because i couldn't cross the street in time because there was traffic - and having to wait an extra half hour for the next bus, making my total traveling time from downtown vancouver to my home total 5.5 hours.

highlights of the trip:

(a) seeing kelsey.

(b) talking with kelsey for four hours and not running out of things to say.

(c) eating $2 pizza from uncle fatih's - the best pizza place i've ever been.

(d) getting lamb roti wraps from east is east, which, to my surprise, included side salads (i got two orders so i could take some home, so i ended up with two salads) AND the tiniest side soups ever. see picture. i wish more places would give me 2-ounce side servings of soup more often.

(e) this isn't part of my trip, but my landlord just said he'd knock $150 off my december rent because i'm leaving halfway through the month. best landlord ever! if you ever want to live in this city (although i don't know why anyone would), let me know and i'll put you in touch with these people. seriously, they're the best. they were the best even before they gave me a sweet discount on my rent.

i've realized that most of my posts recently have pretty much entirely focused on justin, and how handsome and wonderful he is, and what sorts of things we do together. i guess i should remember that most of the people reading this (if anyone actually reads it anymore) do not know justin yet, and they are maybe tired of reading about someone they don't know.

okay. so here are some things about just me:

i am pretty much hating it in victoria. i really hate my program and the classes i am forced to take through it. i should probably not be posting this on the internet, but... i dunno. i wanted to do a master's in museum studies, and i was also very interested in indigenous language revitalization. UBC offered a museum studies master's in anthropology, but since i didn't get in to that (and neither did any of the other students in my program, except for one, who for some reason chose here instead), i settled for anthropology here. that was a mistake. anthropology is not the right discipline for me. i minored in it during my native studies degree, but managed to avoid most of the theory and history of the discipline. i guess i assumed that it was pretty similar to native studies. nope. it seems like all we talk about is foucault and discourse and power/knowledge and bullshit academic concepts that either (a) don't actually matter to people in communities, or (b) could, and should, be rephrased in more accessible language. i feel (and am) obligated to continue this degree because of my funding, so my mild acts of resistance include posting this on my blog, complaining to my classmates, and being dismissive of academia in class. i am entirely unsure of whether i will be able to get funding for next year, which means that it is very likely that i won't be able to afford to finish this degree (since the major scholarship i have now is only available for one year of a student's life); i have hardly been able to speak with my supervisor, so i have no idea where i should go with my thesis or if it would actually be useful for communities at all; and i am not able to take classes i am interested in. however... next semester should be better, at least for the classes. i'm taking kwak'wala (a language spoken by the kwakwaka'wakw in northern vancouver island and the mainland near there) and minority language maintenance, both of which are through the linguistics department. and i just found out that i may be able to take classes at UBC through the western deans' agreement (which allows graduate students to take classes at universities other than their home institutions, but pay tuition only to their home institution). i spend ALL my time here reading and writing, so i haven't had any time to join any activities (for example, i really wanted to join a rowing club), and my classmates and i want to meet up regularly for crafting, but we all have too much homework to even allow ourselves to meet for a few hours each week. blah.

however... there are a few highlights:

1. i have been knitting. it's a sweater for justin, and it's about halfway done. i'm hoping to have it done by christmas.

2. i am really, really looking forward to christmastime. justin and i are both flying into edmonton on tuesday, december 14th, and we'll be staying for three weeks. i can't wait to see everyone and for justin to meet everyone i love (and for them to meet him)!

3. i'm living by myself for the first time ever, and it's awesome.

okay, so i am realizing that updates that are 3 months behind aren't really updates. i'll try to be more up-to-date, and i'll fill in the missing parts later.

justin was just visiting me in victoria for 2.5 weeks, but he left yesterday morning. boo. (either i am terrible at using blogspot, or it is a terrible program; in either case, i always have trouble getting my photos to line up the way i want them to, so i am going to separate my justin-visit post into several different posts so that i can put the pictures in easier.)

we have both been feeling sort of sluggish and out of shape lately - he has been spending most of his time working at the studio and not messengering, and i have been spending most of my time sitting and reading or writing inside, so one of the first things justin did when he got here was exercise by doing handstands.

the second day he was here, we went to the butchart gardens. my parents had taken me there when they came to visit over thanksgiving, and although i am pretty disinterested in gardens in general, the butchart gardens were amazing. i told my mom that justin would love seeing them (he has a fondness for flowers), and so she offered to give us a trip to the gardens as an early christmas present to us. so, we rented a car from the car share cooperative i just joined (!) and drove out to the gardens. the weather was sunny and warm and amazing.

(<---this picture is of justin with his rose thorn horn)

in case you don't know much about the gardens, here's the important information. the gardens used to be a limestone quarry and cement factory owned by a guy named robert butchart. once the good limestone had been quarried, his wife, jennie butchart, decided to turn the whole thing into a garden. the picture at the bottom of this post is of me and justin with the sunken garden in the background. the mound in the middle is a giant lump of limestone that wasn't a high enough quality to be quarried, apparently. this was my favourite garden, followed closely by the japanese garden - lots of bamboo and moss! anyway, if you happen to find yourself in victoria at some point, even if you are ambivalent to gardens/flowers like i am, you should totally visit the butchart gardens.

days 7-10 of being in love

whoa, i am really behind on this.

on monday, july 19th, after i got back to new york from my weekend in DC (i took megabus, which is definitely my top-recommended way to get between the two cities), justin met me at the smith-9th streets subway station with his friend josh's vehicle, because it was easier to drive my big backpack and my other two bags than carry them. that night, like every night (unless i mention otherwise), we just ate at fairway and hung out at justin's and fell more in love.

on tuesday the 20th, i got a hold of emily (who had been in turkey for a ukrainian dance tour for three weeks), and got her permission to change our flights from miami (where we had planned to meet during the last week of july and vacation there together for a week) to new york, so i could stay with justin for almost two full weeks and she could meet him. justin and i also had a super fun shopping date at home depot, where justin bought a bunch of stuff for the studio.

on wednesday the 21st, we went to ikea (which is, like, 10 blocks from justin's) to buy hangers and a pillow for me to use at his house. we also shared some surprisingly delicious torte there.

on thursday the 22nd, we were hanging out on justin's bed and talking about indian food. i was talking about how much i love butter chicken, and in the middle of it, justin said, "i fucking love you." and that's how it happened. that was the 10th day we were together. (i mean, the 10th day we were physically present. we have sort of been keeping track of our relationship in terms of the days we've spent in each other's physical presence. on those days, we usually tend to be with each other for about 22 hours out of the day.)

in the afternoon we went to ikea park to try to fly justin's kite. it wasn't so successful, but it was fun and colourful. we also went for butter

chicken and AMAZING samosas later at kinara.

so... the bamboo bike studio was not the end of anything. it was the beginning.

justin and i spent the morning of monday the 12th together, and collectively decided that i should not go back to DC that evening - as i had planned - but instead stay with him a few more days. and so i did. we went on bike rides. we hung out at the studio - he worked while i messed around on my computer and did some editing (i was still doing work for a civil engineering doctoral candidate). we hung out on his rooftop, overlooking manhattan and the statue of liberty. we met up in manhattan, after biking through a big rainstorm, for lunch at a coffeeshop and cuddling on a bench in a park. we did laundry. we played with jenga blocks with one of justin's friend's sons at a bar in the middle of the day. we explored each other. and then i left. i had to go back to DC on wednesday the 14th, in part so that i could finish up the last two days of my internship, and in part so that i could pack all my things up and prepare to leave DC. my chest ached. we both felt like we had vacuums in our chests. the missing was terrible. i spent thursday and friday at work, and on friday night, i biked down along the capitol crescent trail to meet up with my friend michael at the rosslyn film festival, where we watched "what's eating gilbert grape" and talked all about this new, wonderful thing that was happening in my life. on saturday, i biked downtown and went up the washington monument to look around (it was kind of a letdown), and then biked around a little more before the chestache was too much to take and i went home. i packed. on sunday, fortunately, i had a little bit more of a distraction: my friend bryson met me at my place at 4:30, and i took him through rock creek park (which he had never been through) on our bikes. we finished our ride earlier than i had anticipated, so we went to sweetgreen on M street for frozen yogurt, and then i took him to the old aqueduct bridge, so we could enjoy some nice scenery before our next activity. at about 7:00, we walked down to jack's boathouse, and we started our twilight tour of the potomac at 7:30. he was a very good listener as i rambled on and on about how wonderful justin is. after canoeing, i suggested he bike with me up to adam's morgan, because i usually stop in at amsterdam falafelshop there any time i am riding home from downtown DC, and he had never been there before. he loved it! and for good reason. it's delish. i biked home, and without any distractions, i ached some more for justin. ugh, i know that makes me sound pathetic. oh well.

you'd ache for this boy too if you knew him. (thanks to max breslow for letting me use this photo of justin!) anyway, i packed some more, and justin gave me a call later in the evening. he and some of his friends had been in philadelphia for the weekend, biking around with some other people. it was really great to talk, but we had a little bit of an unnerving conversation about how maybe we should keep this an open relationship, largely because it all seemed too good and too simple and too quick to be true and that therefore, we should maybe test things out and see if other people would be better for us. we talked things through until we both felt good about it all - our best feature is our communication! - and agreed that we didn't have to force ourselves to be skeptical about us. the next morning, as i was back on the bus to new york, i found the whole conversation laughable. i told justin later that after really thinking about the issue, if either of us really thought we needed to see if other people could be better partners for us than each other is, then... good luck! good luck with that search! i'm just so confident that we are a perfect match for each other, that i am not threatened whatsoever by other girls. of course, there will always be girls who are prettier, or smarter, or better at biking, or more sociable than i am. but i am 100% convinced that there aren't any girls who will be a better or more satisfying communicative, physical, emotional, and mental match for justin, and he is the best match for me. it's actually pretty amazing to feel so peaceful about it. anyway, i should just finish by saying that my pal bryson generously offered to help me bring all my bags from my place in DC to the bus stop, which was hugely helpful, so i bought him a smoothie at union station (where the bus stop was) to say thank you. it was also really nice to have someone send me off from DC. it's a little thing, but it's nice.

okay. the next post will be about my time in NY.

so… the weekend of july 9-11^th was sort of life-changing. i built a bamboo bike in brooklyn. i fell in love.

a few months ago, jenni posted this article on facebook (or her blog, or something. i’m sure it was she who posted it, but i can’t find it now.) about the bamboo bike studio. it all seemed pretty amazing – learn to make something neat with my hands!? help support a program that builds sustainable economies in developing countries!? invest time and energy into building my own form of environmentally friendly transportation!? perfect. and seemingly unattainable for a broke albertan. …then i found out that they were offering ONE class while i was on the east coast for my DC internship, around the exact same time i found out i was awarded that handsome $17,500 scholarship. so, since i had already decided to spend about a grand on a new bike once i got to victoria (thanks to my scholarships), i decided to splurge and register for the workshop.

like i mentioned a few posts ago, i went to the studio about a month before my class, because i was in brooklyn at the time and wanted to talk to someone in person about all the things i wanted for my bike. sean, the boy i had originally been in touch with, recommended i talk to a boy named justin, explaining that justin “is the most empathetic bike designer i’ve ever heard of; in all our years together, I've seen him make countless great matches between people and bikes.” so i did. justin talked about the geometry of my bike, the issues with shipping the bike to victoria, and the possibility of building up an 8-speed internal hub (this becomes an important issue later in my story). i was really impressed by the boys’ combination of knowledge and unpretentiousness. they all just seemed really radiant (and handsome), which made me even more excited to build my bike (and steal glances at handsome boys). i continued to hassle sean with endless questions in between that visit and my actual workshop, and he was always very helpful.

okay. then, on friday, july 9^th, at 5:30 p.m., i got on the bus in DC for the 4-hour ride to new york. i arrived in NY around 10:00, and in the meantime, started having massive cramps. you know the kind. mine are debilitating. since it was late-ish and i had to be up early and didn’t have enough energy to go looking for acetaminophen or something, i just went to bed at the hostel (on the upper west side) as soon as i got there without taking anything. bad idea. for three hours, i couldn’t fall asleep because my cramps were so bad (and so bad that i couldn’t even get up to go downstairs to ask the front desk for any medicine). finally, around 1 a.m., some french girl came into the room and since she was the only one awake, i asked her if she had any medicine. she didn’t, but she VERY graciously offered to go downstairs to ask about some. she came back with some acetaminophen, and within 20 minutes of taking it, i was out. i was pretty thankful for the kindness of strangers.

i woke up at 6:00 the next morning so that i could shower and then take the train/walk to the bakery we were all supposed to meet at in brooklyn at 8:00. we sat around and waited for everyone and ate a bit of breakfast, and then headed over to the studio at 8:30 to get to work.

when we arrived at the studio, each of the six participants had a jig set up with just a seat tube, and their name written on masking tape on the jig.

our first task was to gluegun the top tube, bottom tube (not sure if that’s the right term), chain stays, and seat stays to the foam lugs. don’t worry—my bike is not gluegunned together. we just did that to hold the pieces in place while we did some other things.

after that, we spent maybe an hour shaping the foam lugs. that was the most fun and satisfying part of the whole process, i think. i was really good at it, if i do say so myself. there were four lugs to shape: (1) the one at the headtube, (2) the one at the bottom bracket, (3) the one joining the top tube to the seat tube, and (4) the one joining the seat tube to the seat stays. the headtube one was the most fun of all. we just used metal files to file away the extra foam. all the foam grit that came off got all over us, and worked like a pumice stone, making our skin super soft afterwards.

the combination of the final shape of the lugs, plus all the touching and feeling of the shaping and filing, made the process feel super sensual—something i was not really expecting. i make lots of things withmy hands, but none of those things have felt that sensual.after that, we used epoxy to cross a few pieces offiberglass over some key points on the lugs. an important, but not necessarily fun, step. i

THINK that after that, we went for lunch so that we could get some energy and let the epoxy dry a little bit before the next step. my workshop-mate dale invited me to eat lunch with him at fairway (a really fantastic nearby grocery store, next to the water and overlooking the statue of liberty), which was really nice. dale is an american who has been living in bangkok with his boyfriend for the last few years, and he was really easy to talk with and listen to.

when we got back, we started wrapping (i don't have any pictures of that, because it was too messy). ugh. wrapping lasted about six hours. the wrapping step consisted of first donning an apron, blue plastic shoe protectors, and latex gloves, and then creating a mix of… mmm, i think it was resin and hardener. i know the words “resin” and “epoxy” were thrown around, but i don’t really know the difference. anyway, the two things we mixed together started heating up very quickly after being mixed, so we had to be careful not to burn our fingers if we left our mix for more than 10 minutes or so. we created a lot of garbage with all our changes of plastic cups (to hold the epoxy) and latex gloves, leaving me wondering how “environmentally friendly” the process really was (upon further reflection, though, i concede that a few plastic cups is still mountains more environmentally friendly than other forms of transportation). anyway, we spent those six hours coating carbon fiber with the epoxy,

following sean’s four commandments of wrapping: keeping the carbon “wet, wide, tight, and crossy.” i decided early on that i didn’t like the look of the black carbon on the bamboo (it seems too jarring to me), so i chose to wrap some cotton twill tape over top of the carbon. that meant that the whole wrapping process took me considerably longer than it took anyone else.

fortunately, the studio boys were patient and helpful, and offered to do some of my wrapping for me so that i could keep up with everyone else. even still, i ended up finishing maybe half an hour or an hour after everyone else. it was 10:30, and i was exhausted and didn’t relish the thought of walking through a strange neighbourhood after dark with my laptop to get to the subway, so i sort of dropped some hints like “hey, does anyone know the number of a good cab company?” so that maybe someone would offer to walk me to the subway. justin one-upped me: he offered to let me stay at his place, a few blocks from the studio. even if he hadn’t been a handsome, fun boy, i would have still taken up the offer, because i was exhausted and my subway ride back to the upper west side would have taken at least an hour. before we went to his place, though, we went for a quick bite to eat with some of the other studio boys at a bar on his street. i think justin bought me a beer, and i tried my best to drink some of it without making a face, because i appreciated the gesture, but i could only finish about 1/3 of it before offering it back to justin. someone also bought me a sandwich, but i am still not sure if it was eben’s dad (who had offered to do so – oh, and eben is one of the other studio boys) or justin (who, if i recall correctly, was the one who brought the sandwich over to me). hmm. i sort of tried to half-thank them both, without it seeming weird in case either was NOT the one who bought the stuff for me. eek. anyway, after that, justin and i went to his place and i told him i would be happy to sleep on the floor in the living room, but he insisted i take his bed, partially because he had another friend coming over to stay the night, and she would be sleeping in the living room, and he thought it made more sense for him to sleep out there too. it was a very kind gesture, and that, coupled with the french girl who brought me acetaminophen the night before, made me very appreciative and mindful of the kindness of strangers.

the next morning, i didn’t see anyone sleeping in the living room, and justin had said right before he went to bed that he would probably sleep in his friend erik’s room, but since i saw some small shoes in the living room, i sort of assumed this friend he mentioned earlier was with him in erik’s room, and that they were “together.” i was a little bummed out, but there wasn’t much i could do about it, so i slipped out at 8:30 and headed to the studio.

my workshop-mates and i spent the morning filing and sanding the epoxy we had put on the night before, to make it rough for a second coat. that was the first time in the whole process that we could actually sit, and we all took advantage of that because we were so tired. my feet ached from so much standing the day before. after we put the second layer of epoxy on, we broke for lunch. everyone else sort of left as a group, and i was left alone, which is something i would usually seek out but for some reason it bummed me out that day. when we came back, there were some new people at the studio, and they put together most of our components for us. i was a little bummed out about that – i had sort of imagined that we would be more hands-on in that part. oh well. it probably would have taken an extra-long time if we all learned how to add all of our own components. oh, a very important thing to mention here is that somehow, the studio boys had forgotten (despite some e-mails with sean, and a face-to-face conversation with justin) that i wanted to put an 8-speed internal hub on my bike. as a result, they didn’t have all the parts available, and i had to choose between a singlespeed freewheel and a fixed gear.

earlier this summer, i had asked kelsey (my best friend, and a bike mechanic) what she thought i should include on my bike, and she enthusiastically told me i should make it a fixed gear. i sort of resisted the idea, saying that i would rather have this one be an 8-speed for victoria’s hills, and that i could always build up a fixed gear at a bike co-op later if i wanted.

however, due to the circumstances, i decided to try out the fixed gear, and we also made it a flip-flop hub so that i could use a freewheel if i wanted to. sorry if those aren’t the right terms for all that, err’body. i also told justin that one of the reasons i had been interested in putting in an 8-speed was because he had said – when we met in june – that he could teach me how to build the hub into the wheel, and i was very interested in learning that. he said that if i had time the next day before heading back to DC, he could teach me how to do it so that i could build one up myself in victoria if i wanted. he also offered to let me stay at his place again, i think because he knew how much of a hassle it was for me to get back to and from the hostel on the upper west side.

once most of the things were in place (i mean, like, handlebar grips were still missing), we took our bikes out for test rides. marty (one of the studio boys) seemed especially nervous that i had decided to go with a fixed gear, despite having never ridden one before. the boys gave me lots of good tips on what to be aware of, and so i took off… and fell in love! i had not expected to love my bike so much, and i had certainly not expected to love fixed gears that much. my bike is light, but it feels very strong and it doesn’t wiggle or squeak like many other bikes i’ve ridden.

the geometry on mine puts my body in a more upright position than the other boys’ bikes, and i love it because it is very comfortable. this bike is the smoothest i have ever ridden, even though it has skinnier tires than any other bike i’ve been on. the thing i like about the fixed gear is that, as i described to my friend joe, it feels like the bicycle equivalent of walking barefoot in the forest. i like that it makes me more aware of what my bike and my body are both doing.

after falling in love with my bike, i dreaded the idea of having to pack it up to ship it to myself in victoria, and not being able to ride it for the six weeks between that day and the day i arrived in victoria. i wanted to ride it as much as possible, so i asked justin and another shop boy, josh, if they wanted to go on a bike ride with me. my inaugural ride on my new bamboo bike was across the brooklyn bridge, up lafayette (stopping briefly at a bar where josh and justin’s friend works, so they could visit with him – justin and i shared a cranberry juice, and we left josh there with their friend), around central park – stopping at my hostel nearby so i could pick up my few things that were there and check out, down along the hudson river, and back along the brooklyn bridge. we talked about a mazillion things, but i think our best conversation centered around anthropology (justin majored in it in his undergrad; i minored in it in my last undergrad and will be doing a master’s in it in the fall). right around here, our conversation about native studies/anthropology became the point at which we now both agree we started falling in love with each other.

when we got back from justin’s, i was exhausted, partially from all that hard work making the bike, and partially from trying very hard to control my bike using only my pedals and not my hand brakes. i fell asleep on the kitchen floor while justin was showering, but he woke me up when he got out so that i could shower too. as i was about to go to sleep, he said something to the effect of: “i had a really nice time talking, and i’d like to talk some more, if you’re up for it.” so we stretched for a little bit in his room, and then we just spent the whole night lying on our stomachs on his bed, with just our shoulders touching, talking until the sun came up.

so. that’s the story of how i fell in love building bamboo bikes in brooklyn. more to come on the love part later.

(also, if you’re wondering about the girl who was going to sleep over at justin’s – the one i was worried he was “together" with – well, they’re not together. she likes girls, and i don’t think she even stayed over that night.)

also: here are some links, in case you'd like to learn more about the bamboo bike studio, build your own bike, or creep justin:

bamboo bike studio blog

video from CNN

so... there are much more interesting things than what i'm about to write about, but i like doing this chronologically, so there are some things i need to write about before i get to the really good stuff.

between june 22 and 24th, i was in st. louis for a conference this bureau was putting on. they're the ones that my work project is funded through. my main task there was to take notes during my coworker erin's presentation on language revitalization. i ended up having not much time at all to myself, though, because i was sort of required to be at all the breakfast/lunch/supper meetings that my boss went to, and all of them lasted between two and four hours. ugh. it was really nice to talk so much about something that i am so interested in, but... i definitely realized that that was NOT the kind of life that i want. in the little bit of time that i had to myself, i managed to sneak over to the gateway arch to check out the museum of westward expansion and the mississippi river. those are all pretty big (as in important, but also as in size) things. first of all, the gateway arch (that's a different link than the previous one): it's this giant steel arch, created to be a monument to westward expansion. (my coworkers and i thought it was pretty ironic that the bureau would choose to host its conference in the city that celebrates non-native people pushing into the west.) they offer rides in these scary little pods that take people up to the top, so you can see a view of the city. (and of course i did it. the view was mediocre, but the technology was neat.) at the bottom of the arch is the museum of westward expansion, which i thought would be way worse than it was. they did an okay job with the content, but i was really impressed with their layout. the museum was set up in a semi-circle, with visitors starting from the centre of the circle. from there, visitors could make their way around various circumferences of the circle, which each represented different decades, or could move outward from the centre, following one specific theme at a time. it was probably the best layout for a museum that i've ever seen. mmm, finally... i saw the mississippi. it was super flooded. i hope to spend some more time with it in the future.

anyway... the next day, my friend/former intern crush enrique texted me to say he was free. we hadn't really hung out at all since i got to DC this time, partially, i think, because things were a little awkward when i left, and partially because he has recently acquired a new girlfriend who didn’t feel good about him hanging out with me. i was a little nervous, because the last time we hung out, it left me feeling really deflated, but when he showed up at the museum to meet me, he gave me two giant hugs, which made me feel better about everything. we biked around downtown and he took me to amsterdam falafelshop in adams-morgan for my first-ever falafel. it was incredible! how have i been missing out this long? after that, we biked back to the mall (i.e., the national mall) to pick up his truck because it had to be moved, and we threw our bikes in the back so we could drive over to georgetown. he had never been there before, so i showed him around M street and took him to the aqueduct bridge, which would have made for a really romantic night if we were still into each other. haha. but it was nice to have the company anyway. as we were biking back to his truck in georgetown, we came across a car that was completely upside down on a super narrow street. apparently some 15-year-old girl was “drunk as a skunk” (to use the EMT’s words) and had crashed the car. good lord. it’s pretty lucky that we weren’t biking that street just a few minutes earlier. anyway, enrique offered to drive me home, which wasn’t necessary but was nice because it was late and i had to get up early the next morning, and my ride from georgetown to home usually takes about an hour.

the next morning, i woke up at 7:00 so that i could eat, get ready, and bike down to the mall for 10:00 for my volunteer shift at the smithsonian’s folklife festival. this year, they were featuring mexico, asian pacific americans, and the smithsonian itself. i was put on “recycling/sustainability,” which meant that i spent the entire day going through garbages with my bare hands to pull out recyclable pop bottles. yeesh. it wouldn’t have been so bad, except that there was no running water and soap on the mall, so any time i wanted to eat or use my hands, i had to walk over to one of the museums and stand in the bathroom line. blah. i left early and biked home for a shower and a nap. later on, enrique texted to invite me out to some bars in adams morgan with him and some of his friends from his hometown. since i had heard a lot about them, i went, and ended up staying out until 2:00, which is pretty much unheard of for me. it was pretty fun, and i really liked enrique’s friends, but man, i sure do hate bars and being around people who are drinking. i biked home and got back around 3:00, only to find that the front screen door – which is usually not locked – was locked. i didn’t want to wake anybody up, so i hoisted myself up over the back fence and crawled in to the backyard. it made me realize that i really, really like scrambling/climbing things, and wished that i did it more often.

blah, this is getting long and i am losing interest. okay. a few more things:
-i’ve been doing a lot of editing for civil engineering doctoral students. it has sort of been a pain in the ass, but it pays well.
-i went for twilight canoe tours on the potomac two separate times: once with my edmontonian friends brianna and julie; and once with my coworkers erin and sandra, and erin’s husband mike. i like canoeing. i especially like canoeing in the dark.
-i watched “don’t tell mom the babysitter’s dead” with brianna and julie at the outdoor rosslyn film festival. fun.
-i volunteered a second time at the smithsonian folklife festival – this time, counting people coming in to one particular entrance. i used the day to write letters and take advantage of the free food the smithsonian offered its volunteers. oh, and there was also this pretty amazing dance group from mexico, who performed one of the most joyful dances i’ve ever seen. here’s a video that totally doesn’t do it justice. apparently, the dance was started when indigenous people started to stand up to the spanish in mexico by dressing up like them and dancing a silly dance with their hips. cute.
-canada day: my favourite day of the year. i had to work, and i couldn’t be with any canadians i loved, so i biked down to the canadian embassy to hang out with the spirit of haida gwaii.
-4^th of july: i watched the fireworks with brianna and julie from the key bridge, and picked up a falafel on my way home. falafels on my way home quickly became a pretty integral part of my DC experience.

i found him.

some things that have got me feeling like a champion lately (in no particular order):

-i was biking past the sand volleyball courts that are down by the potomac river, in between the lincoln memorial and the kennedy centre, when one of the volleyballs started bouncing in big bounces over to me. while still biking, i kicked it perfectly back towards the people who were playing, and they all cheered for me. haha. it was awesome.

-my former coworkers at the museum were telling me about how there might be non-native people who will be trained to give tours at the museum. my coworkers said they were dreading it, but had specifically agreed in a staff meeting, and told me later, that "if someone like you were doing it, it would be okay. we love you!" that was probably one of the biggest compliments/validations of my life. confirmation that i can be culturally sensitive without appropriating anyone else's culture! that's exciting!

-a dreamy boy has been sending me lengthy letters lately.

-my core team at work now consists of four people: one full-time girl who just earned her ph.d., after spending a couple of years working with a language revitalization program in the northwest coast; and two other interns. one intern in a navajo woman working on her m.a. in social work, i think (i can't remember - she just arrived last week); and the other is an undergrad student who has been working with language revitalization programs with the passamaquoddy (an algonquian language - like cree!). we are a pretty awesome team. our skills are really complementary, we all have the same hopes for this project, we can voice our opinions and disagreements with each other without taking any of it personally, and we just laugh together a lot. i am bummed that i only have 2.5 more weeks left to work with them. we would be such a force if we worked together full-time. anyway, i've been walking on clouds because ALL those girls, whose work and perspectives i really admire and value a lot, have told me that they are very glad i am here and don't want me to leave because of what i bring to the project. wow! they are these bright, sensitive, hardworking women, who really understand the work that i want to do, and they see value in me! that's amazing!

-my boss, the full-time core member of our team, and i met the bureaucrat--who is actually a really neat, bright guy!--in charge of the project we are working on for this bureau (i don't like writing names of organizations, in case people do internet searches for them) last week, when we were in st. louis for the bureau's annual summer conference. we spent a considerable amount of time with him during breakfast/lunch/dinner meetings, and had really amazing conversations about language revitalization and education (he wrote his doctoral thesis on the boarding schools, and he's one of the top dogs in that bureau). it turns out that the guy really likes us and the work we've been doing, which is nice because: (a) i guess i never really consider myself that "fun," but he told us numerous times that hanging out with us was super enjoyable for him; (b) i think his support of our work means that he will continue to push the bureau to financially and... what? morally?... support more culturally-appropriate language revitalization in the states, which will likely trickle over to canada, and all of that is great in a myriad of ways; and (c) i think he will be a great contact to have for the work that i'm hoping to do for the next two years with my master's. it seems like sometimes the bureaucratic parts of his job really bog him down, but he was super interested and animated when we talked about our project. he didn't grow up speaking much of his family's languages (michif and ojibwe), so he's quite passionate about making sure that kids today have the opportunity to learn their heritage languages. that's exciting. i'm glad that there can be something in his job that he can be really passionate about.

-i came up with this really awesome rating scale/template thing for my job, to be used in assessing individual and class proficiency in oral language skills. it is awesome and (i think) culturally appropriate, and i feel really really good about it. everyone that we've shown it to seems to really like it too. i hope teachers and assessors will actually use it! let's talk about it in real life!

-my boss gave me a raise today, because he has been impressed with my work.

-friends have been kind and generous with their words lately, which is pretty special because my friends are amazing people.

in conclusion: i am a happy little clam.

here are some things i've done in the past few weeks:

-i went to new york (again). bus tickets are between $1 and $20 from here, so i am just trying to not pass up opportunities to go there. i found a place to stay in brooklyn, through

airbnb.com. basically, airbnb is a site that pairs up travelers with people who have a couch or air mattress available for travelers to stay on, for a price that's usually cheaper than a hotel

or hostel. i had a really good experience with the girls i stayed with, and i will probably do some

more accommodations arrangements through there in the future.

while i was in new york, i found an AMAZING stationery store (their website doesn't show their best stationery, but trust me, it's great); ate fruit and granola and yogurt for breakfast at my new favourite new york breakfast place; rented a bike and biked down broadway from central park to the brooklyn bridge, then across brooklyn bridge, then up along the hudson river; and visited the bamboo bike shop (more on that later).

-i've been playing kickball every wednesday on a league that plays in columbia heights. i joined it because I LOVE KICKBALL, but pretty much everyone on my team (and in the entire league) is more about the drinking afterwards (and even during the game) than the actual kickball. some of the girls just sit around and don't play any innings and just drink beers. ugh. by contrast, i keep begging my team to keep playing for fun even after the 5 innings that make up each game are done. yeesh. i'm planning on hosting some kickball games when i get back to edmonton, so hopefully they will be more kickball-focused than these ones.

-i've had some good hangouts with various new-ish friends, including:

1. a boy named joe, who i met over craigslist before i came to DC the first time, because i posted an ad there asking if anyone would be willing to write letters with me before i arrived in DC, and then be friends when i got there. so we hung out a bit when i was first here in the fall, and then we hung out again a few times. he's neat. he works in sustainable energy, and he's really bright and kind.

2. a boy named bryson, who i met over craigslist when i posted an ad for a bikeriding partner. he's probably the person i've hung out most with in DC. he's in the military - coast guard, i think - which is preeeetty strange for someone that i would associate with. but he is very bright, and a critical thinker, and he likes doing a lot of the same things that i do (biking, canoeing, going to airshows, and eating indian food), so he's good company.

3. my coworker lauren and her husband. they invited me over for dinner one day, and usually dinner parties make me pretty uneasy, but this one was really enjoyable. another older couple was there too, and we talked a lot about the american education system, which is pretty fascinating.

4. my former coworkers sharyl and adrienne, from the museum i used to work at. i met up with them and their boyfriends at the rosslyn film festival, where we watched cry-baby outside in a park. nice.

5. my coworker erin and her husband. we met up at the rosslyn film festival (on a different friday than the one i just mentioned) and watched mrs. doubtfire. ha.

6. some edmontonian girls named brianna and julie, who just moved to DC to do the same smithsonian internship program that i did the last time i was here. i hadn't known either of them until a really random connection a few months ago, but brianna and i have been facebooking each other so i could help the two of them get prepared for DC life. now that they're here, we've hung out a little bit, and i'm really glad to have them here. i'm hoping we'll get to hang out lots before i leave DC, and then lots again once we're all in edmonton. interestingly, my love jessica just got a job with them at blackbyrd (where they work when they are not in DC). neat.

i also had some good skype talks with nathan and claire, which made me feel not so alone.

i'm still biking a lot, which feels good but makes me constantly sweaty. that part makes me feel not-so-good.

i watched micmacs (which was directed by the same guy who did amélie). not quite as good as amélie, but it was still pretty visually pleasing.

here are the ways i've been spending my free time in DC:

-bike rides into downtown on the capitol crescent trail, which is about 20 kms each way

-visit to some of the european embassies when they all were having their open house day

-airshow! a few weekends ago, the nearby air force base put on an airshow, and i went both days. and it was so awesome. i love airshows. fighter jets (when they're not actually fighting anything) and magic shows are the two things that make me instantly giddy. i know it's trashy. the people narrating the performances made a TON of super pro-american, pro-military, crazy statements (like a pilot, saying over the radio from his cockpit as he spun through the air, "i'm about to say the three best words in the english language: god bless america!" and the woman narrating a helicopter demonstration saying (in a thick southern accent), "these, folks, are the people who protect our great american way of life"). good lord. i think there needs to be some deep, critical thought about whether the "american way of life" is even worth protecting. but i've got to admit, the rhetoric was almost convincing when it was coupled with the awesomeness of some of those jets and little planes. have you ever seen or heard about a harrier jet? it can STOP in the air, BACK UP, turn 360 degrees while hovering in one spot, and glide from side to side. i know it's MOSTLY just a useless trick (unless, of course, they have to take off and land somewhere that there is no runway... and a helicopter isn't around to do the same job...) and a huge waste of fuel, but... it was totally awesome. i went by myself the first day, and i met up with my new friend bryson there the second day. i ate hamburgers and drank coke and got a sunburn and just had a good time being a little more irresponsible (health-wise and intellectually) than normal.

-film festival! there's a place in arlington (just across the river from DC, and still easily accessible by metro or bike) that is showing 90s movies for free on an inflatable screen in a park on friday nights. i've gone once so far--to see "wayne's world," which i had never seen before--and i've been meaning to go since then but it keeps getting rained out. i'm hoping the next few fridays will be sunny so that the movies can be shown.

-new york trip! there are a couple bus companies that sell $1, one-way bus tickets between DC and new york. i went two weekends ago to hang out with my friend robin, who was leading RDC students on an art tour there. i mostly hung out in chelsea, but i did manage to sneak in a bike ride around central park. i'm going back to the city again this weekend, so hopefully i'll be able to spend a bike more time biking around manhattan. oh, and i also watched exit through the gift shop. it was really good, but also sort of

made me feel yucky in my stomach. you should watch it.

-tours of the capitol building and library of congress! at the latter, i saw one of the only three remaining full copies of the gutenberg bible printed on vellum (there are a number of other ones that are printed on paper). at the capitol building, the tour guide talked about how the painter of one of the murals on the inside of the dome (just under the windows in this picture) slipped while he was painting, and managed to grab onto something as he slipped, but had to just dangle in the air for 15 minutes until somebody saved him. yikes. he quit after that, and somebody else had to finish the mural. that day made me feel kind of strange, though. it's funny (in a strange way, not a hilarious way) to hear perspectives on "freedom"/democracy/history from some of these "official" institutions. the more i think about it, the formation of governments in "the new world" was just so ill-conceived. i mean, i don't necessarily think people had bad intentions (although some did). it just blows my mind that a bunch of men, with not much of a common background or a ton of knowledge/experience with how people work, just got together and decided how things would be run. someone has recommended that i read eric wolf's "europe and the people without history." i haven't read it yet, but i'm going to go ahead and recommend it to everyone else anyway. i think the western world's lack of a common history is probably what has created many of our biggest problems. ugh, that's so vague. let's talk about this in person instead. but on a similar, mind-blowing note, it was interesting to be in the library of congress and be re-immersed in a place that had such reverence for the written word. my native studies degree, and the work i've been involved/interested in regarding indigenous languages, sometimes really questions and even criticizes the value of the written word. my two degrees - english and native studies - sometimes feel conflicting. it was just nice to be back in the mindframe i was in when i did my english degree, i guess. i don't read a ton of books, mostly because i am too restless and because i just read so much academic lit. that i don't have the mental energy for more reading, but i miss talking/thinking about how wonderful literature is. hmm. i might edit this post later, because i am tired and this is not expressing exactly what i mean for it to say. but i thought i should post anyway, because i haven't for a while.

i'll write more tomorrow (hopefully), but the biggest, bestest recent news is that i officially found out yesterday that i was awarded a pretty substantial scholarship by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada (SSHRC). i was ALSO told that i would get to keep the money that UVic has already offered me. together, it's more than enough to cover my tuition, accommodation, food, and travel (including a few trips back home to edmonton) for the next year. PLUS... i think i'ma treat myself to a brand new bike with some of the leftover cash. i haven't picked one out yet, but i'm dreaming of having a super light road bike frame, about 10 speeds (leila recently scoped out victoria for me, and said that's how many speeds she would like on a bike if she lived there), hybrid-style tires, hybrid-style handlebars, and a back rack with panniers. i think that would pretty much cover all of my biking needs for commutes to school and possible weekend trips on paved trails. i guess i'll have to figure out if all those things are doable/practical/desirable. is there anything that you have or do not have on your bike that you wish you did (or didn't) have?

so... DC is awesome. it's better than i remembered it, and as you may recall, i had some pretty strong feelings for it when i left last time. but my experience this time is a LOT different. i'm living in a neighbourhood called friendship heights in the far northwest quadrant of DC. it's the furthest neighbourhood you can go in the NW before crossing DC's border into maryland. i'm working at a place that writes testing materials for second language assessment, and the project i'm working with has to do with developing an oral test for speakers of the lakota language. the lady i'm living with (i'm renting a room in her house) has very graciously offered to let me use her 21-speed bike for free while i'm living with her, which is AMAZING. i have been biking like crazy. seriously. i bike to and from work every day, which is a little over 25 kms, round trip. then, on the weekends, i usually bike around 40 kms (20 kms into downtown DC, along the georgetown branch bike path, and 20 kms back) every day. today i'm not going downtown, though, because i went on friday and yesterday, and i just want to stick around home and knit. so that equals around 175-200 kms a week! my thighs are hard proof of that. it feels really good to get out and see the city and use my body so much. however, using my body so much means i have to eat a lot more, so my pants are feeling a bit tight around the waist. eek. i've gotten pretty good at riding without my hands, a skill i had developed when i was young but lost during that period of 10 years or so when i wasn't biking. i've also developed a few bad habits, namely, listening to my ipod with earphones and eating tortilla chips out of my back basket. also, i've been finding that DC drivers are crazy/assholes. i almost got hit once when i woman was pulling out into an intersection (i had the right of way), and another time, i accidentally ended up on a parkway that i couldn't get off of, and so i was trying to pedal as fast as i could, but the drivers behind me still got agitated, and one lady leaned out her window and yelled "bitch!" at me as she passed me. yeesh. people sure don't like anyone slowing them down, even for a second.

other than biking, i spend a lot of time knitting. i'm finishing up yet another icelandic-style sweater for myself. i made a ton in the fall/winter (maybe 5? that feels like a ton), but they were all out of really bulky wool. i mostly prefer the look of the very first one i did, with much thinner yarn and smaller needles, so that's the kind that i'm making now. i'll post pictures when it's done. this one is taking a lot less time than that reddish one i made, because last fall i got really good at knitting without looking at what i'm doing. now i can go into a movie theatre and knit in the dark, which is a pretty handy skill.

every saturday, i've been going to the museum i used to intern at to visit my former coworkers there. man, i love that place.

i've been watching more movies than normal. i went to see greenberg, oscar-nominated animated shorts, and toe-to-toe (shot in DC!) at various nearby theatres; wayne's world at the rosslyn film festival (they'll be playing movies from the 90s every friday night all summer, on an outdoor inflatable screen, for free!); and i just watched the blind side on my computer. i've also gone through all the episodes of glee. i don't even like it all that much, but it's nice to have something familiar to watch.

my work has been... frustrating. everybody's pretty nice at my work, but a lot of what i am doing involves reading articles and writing abstracts and an introduction/description of methodology for an annotated bibliography and literature review. we're in an early part of the project, so this is sort of foundational work that needs to be done before they move on to the stuff that i am really interested in. the topic (aboriginal languages) is interesting to me, but when i agreed to the position, i guess i hadn't been under the impression that i would be doing so much academic writing for such little pay, and without much direction. i guess that's the way internships always are, though. i should know that by now. i'm really excited about the possibility of HOW this project could turn out, but i'm not entirely convinced that it will turn out the way i envision it. i mean, it's exciting to have an opportunity to actually put my native studies degree to use, and try to do things that have historically been done in a bad way, in a good way. i'm just grumpy because i'm so sick of writing. i hate writing. i would much rather be editing. (and yes, i know that this blog makes it seem like i would be a terrible editor. i'm not. i just write the way that i would talk on here.) once in a while, i get to do some editing, and i am a happy little clam.

it's mostly sunny here, and two weekends in a row i have gotten little sunburns. it's nice to be outside so much. i think this is the first summer than i have been outside so much.

hmm. what else. i've been taking advantage of the multitude of frozen yogurt places in DC. i've said it before, and i'll say it again: frozen yogurt is the new cupcake. so hip. so good. (there are lots of cupcake places in DC too, and luckily, my favourite one is in my new neighbourhood.) i would split yogurt places up into three categories: "normal" places (like dairy queen or yogen fruz) that sell standard frozen yogurt, sometimes with frozen fruits blended into the yogurt; european-style places (which serve tart/tangy yogurt - which is apparently european (?) - with a choice of fresh fruit or candy toppings, for a fixed price for each topping); and self-serve pay-by-weight places (which usually have between 6 and 20 different flavours of yogurt (vanilla, birthday cake, tiramisu, red velvet...), plus about 20 kinds of toppings to choose from (fresh fruit, oreo pieces, nuts, candy, fruit loops...)), which are pretty self-explanatory. the latter kind is my favourite, and luckily, there's a really good place that sells yogurt that way right in my neighbourhood. i like to load up on a bunch of different fruits with some vanilla yogurt.

on a related note, companies in DC sure know how to market to the hipster crowd:

(this is a "company bike" (like a company car, i guess - you can see the name on the frame) parked outside the company's salad/frozen yogurt place in dupont circle.)

that's enough detail for now, yeah?

hey friends.

i should post about my last few days in edmonton before i tell you about DC.

well, in the last days of march, i spent most of my time sewing. nathan came over to the studio a couple of times to keep me company, and on one of those days, we went over to the downtown theatre afterwards to catch the late showing of tim burton's alice in wonderland. i love tim burton, and i love alice in wonderland in general, and i loved johnny depp, so it was mostly pretty good. there were a few things i didn't like though, like all the jabberwocky business. come on. i just wish all movies would cut out action scenes. they're a boring waste of time, and i like my movies to go no longer than an hour and a half. although nathan and i just biked to remedy to pick up wraps and ate our wraps on the northwest side of the high level bridge overlooking the river valley and hung out at the studio and then watched that movie and then biked home separately, it felt like a really, really fun/nice night.

on april 1st, sid (the designer i had been sewing for) showed his collection at western canada fashion week. i was more than a little bummed that absolutely none of my friends bothered to come (but thankful to bri, who sent me a nice little note at least mentioning that she would have liked to have been there, but couldn't), but my sister came with me, and her company was good. it was pretty exciting but mostly surreal to see the things that i had made up on the runway. i will miss working for sid. we didn't work together much in the studio, because he was gone on his internship in NY most of the time, but when we were working together, it was really silly and fun. we laughed a lot, and laughed really hard. he's just such a good, humble guy. plus, he taught me how to put in a zip fly! i will forever be indebted. oh, anyway, after his show, emily and emily's best friend aidan and i went to some bar in northern edmonton to watch christian hansen and the autistics, largely because at the last show i had seen them play, they played an amazing cover of r. kelly's ignition. seriously. it was so good. they played it again at this show, and i danced my face off.

i spent the next week working on stuff for my faculty's cree language project. on the saturday of that week, i drove my mom and my littlest sister to the airport for their weeklong vacation in turks and caicos. then i met up with kaylin at café mosaics for breakfast, and then we wandered around the provincial museum, thanks to the free passes i had for there. we had some really great talks, and i love that she thinks really similarly to me on some pretty controversial/heavy issues. robin came over in the evening and we hung out. it was nice to have his company.

i spent the week after that helping the boy i tutor with his human ecology final (it was a take-home essay - we wrote about gangs/warrior societies). i also did a lot of visiting and packing, and i drove to vermilion and back with emily to drop off some of my stuff at my parents', since i had my mom's car while she was on vacation.

i wrote my FINAL undergraduate exam (for advanced cree) on friday the 9th, and i'm pretty sure i aced it. kelsey bussed to edmonton from calgary the next day, on a greyhound bus with a broken window next to her. she also got sick and puked on the bus on the way back to calgary. thanks for coming, KDS. on saturday we went to the handmade mafia, and then went for lunch at block 1912 (which is really a great place, and i've known that for years, but i hardly ever go there for some reason. i'ma try to go more often when i'm back in edmonton in august). then we went to united cycle so i could try out a bike i had had ordered in for me (but i didn't buy it, because i'm not living in edmonton anymore). we also stopped at EBC so i could show kelsey around. she wasn't all that impressed (she's a mechanic at a bike shop in calgary, which is apparently much bigger). then we were both tired, so we went home, and had the longest talk i have had with anyone for probably... ever, maybe. we just sat on my couches and i knitted and we talked for six hours straight. it was nice. then we walked around and tried to find somewhere to eat, but it was 10:00 and everywhere had just closed, so we settled for delicious/stomachache-inducing wendy's. the next day we went to café mosaics, and then i bought some cuuute short shorts at bamboo ballroom, and some coloured tights to go with them. i think that short shorts with coloured tights are one of my favourite looks, coming in just behind jumpsuits. now i just have to gather up the confidence to actually pull those looks off. oh, we also drove to the airport to pick up my mom and sister from their trip. maybe we did something else, but i forget. kelsey got on the bus at 4:00, and then apparently puked a bunch. i'm not sure why her experiences on greyhound are always so bad. mine never are. soon kelsey is leaving on a biking/wwoofing trip around alberta/b.c. i hope she packs warm socks and isn't too cool to wear a helmet when she's on the highway and doesn't freeze when she's camping in the mountains and doesn't get too sweaty when she's going uphill.

between kelsey leaving and me boarding my plane to DC, i tutored cree a couple more times, packed up my place, cancelled my kickball party because of the gloomy weather but was still fortunate to have many of my favourite people (in order of appearance: jordan, emily, aidan, jessica, bri, joel, bethany, leila, kim, nathan, patrick, and rob) join me at remedy for wraps, borrowed a sweet camera from my friend kevin so i would have one while i'm in DC, and... that's about it. so that brings me up to my first days in DC, which i will write about next time.

sorry this is so long and not very interesting. this really is a journal for me, though, so i'm more concerned about keeping a record for myself of what i did than entertaining you. sorry.

we must evolve towards each other

the top highlights of these last couple weeks have been the conversations i've been having with people. these sorts of things are one of the top most nourishing things for my spirit. in no particular order, here are some of my favourites:

-talking with nathan, becky, and "the car boys" at natasha's about christianity and "being jesus to people." i mean, that's kind of what it was about. (some backstory: i've been attending this thing that natasha and nathan host weekly, which is basically a small group affiliated with their church, and although i definitely don't identify as christian anymore, i like having conversations about the sorts of things that come up in christian small group settings, and i like hanging out with natasha and nathan.) anyway, the conversation made me angry in the way that i love being angry, when my whole body shakes and my voice gets really low and quiet and shaky but calm. i think it was a particularly hard conversation for nathan and me (we didn't get in a fight, that's not how it went at all - it was just really difficult, i think, for both of us for different reasons), but it felt really good to talk things out. and i especially loved being able to talk/think critically with nathan about ways that we (as christians (although i'm not identifying myself as one here), as allies, as whatever) can positively affect change in our communities without being colonial about it. one of the reasons i got sort of emotional about it is that, like i mentioned before, there's sort of been some shit going down in one of my social circles concerning this sort of thing, and i think we (again, as allies/christians/whatever) need to be really conscious about our motivations and assumptions and methods in the things we do. that's sort of vague. ask me about it in person and we'll talk about it. i like talking about things like this.

-talking with bri, bethany, karen, nathan, and kim p. (in separate conversations) about church and community. bri and i talked about how king's became our church/community when we went there, and how we both felt sort of lost once we graduated from there and lost our "communities." however, we've both since built up some really nourishing, healthy communities around ourselves with really lovely people. later, when i was talking with bethany and karen, i think they both agreed that the same had happened for them. but then a few days later, when i was talking with kim, she pointed out the difference between church communities and the communities we build up by ourselves. although it's really nice to have the "community" that i feel like i have, with all these amazing, politically/socially/environmentally sensitive people, the communities that we build up on our own are sort of flawed because they consist of hand-picked community members. by contrast, church communities consist of people that we may not necessarily get along with, or have very little in common with, but the one thing that ties us together is a commitment to working through tough shit together, presumably through a broadly agreed-upon perspective or set of assumptions. which, i think, is pretty neat. and which brings me to nathan, because i think he is a pretty shining example of someone who tries really hard to work through tough shit with people.

-talking with leila about gender, ethics, and polyamory. you can ask me about this one in person, because it's the internet and i just don't want to get into on here or misspeak, but i'll let you know that it was informed by a lecturer (janet hardy) we both heard speak (although not at the same time) and a film (red without blue) we both saw (again, not at the same time). anyways, one of the highlights for both of us, i think, was recognizing that leila's self-proclaimed "immature" masculinity (marked by curiosity and a need for adventure and mischief) is balanced in a really healthy way by incredibly mature femininity (marked, i think, by pretty overwhelmingly nurturing, loving, and graceful qualities). i'm also learning a lot about my own fear of/contempt for more... how should i say... advanced?... forms of masculinity. at least, masculinity as i understand it.

-talking with leila about how we both feel the 40-hour work week is bullshit, and our shared impatience for people who work jobs they hate.

-talking with some of my classmates about reconciliation. i want to be part of communities that recognize that people hurt each other, and commit to working through that shit together in a good way.

-talking with kaylin about a mazillion things, from the wonder of evolution to healthcare to the ways that we love people. man, she's incredible.

so, in conclusion: this is what i'm going to miss most about edmonton. these kinds of conversations with these kinds of people. i know there are probably neat people who live outside of edmonton. but i'm not sure if they're THIS neat.