Drove to Chicago

So, one would assume that the lack of posts on here means that I have been engaged in some serious business to keep me away. No such luck, though things continue to get more entertaining here every week.

Last weekend MNSU hosted the first annual Progressive Educators Networking Conference. So a bunch of us the the program worked as volunteers for the weekend so we could attend the conference sessions for free. It really was a cool conference. It consisted of schools like Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound (ELOB), Wisconsin River Academy (WRA), EdVisions Schools, and a whole bunch of other Charter schools that are all working on how to best impliment project based learning into their classrooms and school systems. It's really cool to sit and see so many people coming together that are all passionate about students, though we teach in different settings. We share ideas, we troubleshoot, we brainstorm, we work together to reform public education so that we can better meet the needs of students. (soap box)

Also last weekend was Jeff's birthday party. Jeff isn't in the ExEd program, he just used to date a girl who is in the program, and as a result is friends with people in the program. I have never actually met Jeff, but was invited, so after the conference Tasha and I walked over to his house to see what the deal was. I kid you not it was your typical college keg party, except everyone is sitting around talking about ropes courses and educational theory. (Or at least they were when the keg was still mostly full). Andy and Sam weren't satisifed with the fact that I was drinking wine and Sam offered to hold my feet if I'd do keg stands. I politely refused, but thanked him for the offer. I think around midnight some guys dressed as cowboys showed up, so a bunch of the ExEd crew left to go to the Sugar Room to listen to some folk music. I think we got home around 3.... I think.

All in all being here has gotten better every day. The community of students in this program, for the most part, is really great. The second year students have been really supportive in wanting to spend time with first year students and show us around. And I think all of us newbies have gotten to the point where we are putting our guards down and opening ourselves up to new relationships. It's funny, Tasha and Andy and I were talking the other day about the first night that we all went out to drinks at BW3's. I said that I went out that night just because I couldn't take being alone in my apartment anymore. Andy said that was the same reason he went out that night too. I guess when you are in the midst of it you think you are the only one that is tired of being alone all the time and just wants to be around people. When really, everyone else is going through the same thing. We are all new in town, we all have no idea where to go out for dinner if we want to, and we all still wonder if the way we drive to campus is really the most efficent way to get there. It's a part of the transition, but Mankato is starting to feel like home, at least for now.

Logistically, Gina and I decided to drive to Chicago today so she could go to her college reunion and I could visit with my dad. Yay for travelling weekends. So if you're in the Chicago Metro area give me a hollar, I'm here until Sunday morning.

the year of the dance

I never really understood what David meant about turning our mourning into dancing until now. I mean, I understood how it could happen, but its different when you actually come to that point. There comes a moment where you are so sorrowful that you ahve to just start moving one step at a time. You move your heart and your left foot, then your mind and your right, and you lift your hands with your sorrow and you find yourself listening for the next beat, the next movement. You start to pattern yourself in the rhythm of God because you are so tired and weary and empty that you are straining to hear through all the other noise and emotion for something consistant and strong. Something steadfast. Its then that you realize that you are engaged in a dance that is messy and painful, but so beautiful all the same. It's beautiful because its your story, its your life, and you are falling in love all over again with the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe. There is incredible power in that.

It's amazing to me how life seems to always come back on itself. I wrote this on my birthday last year.

It’s the morning of your birthday, I guess the year isn’t so much important as the fact that it’s just been another year in that crazy time where you have no idea who you are, who you are going to be, or where on this huge planet you are going. This morning though, that doesn’t so much matter. You grab your cup of tea, and head down to the water, knowing that in a house full of people that is the only place where you are going to be able to free yourself, even if only for five minutes. You stick your headphones in your ears and start down the wet stone path, one foot in front of the other down to the water.

You have always loved the water, for some reason it feels like home to you. Its not as if you were raised on it, or really near it, but there is something about the movement of the waves, and its depth and fluidity that has always calmed you. Regardless, you find yourself on the dock that due to the high tide has almost risen over the land platform that it rests on. The clip falls out of your hair, but you figure its better that way and let the wind that is steadily capping the water have its way with the remnants of your bed head. The dock moves slowly under your feet and you can’t help but get lost in the music that is pumping through your head, and your feet start to glide along the wet planks under your feet. One step, and then two, slowly spinning, tea still in hand. It’s times like this that you wonder how you ever lived without being able to dance. The movement of the water, and the sound of the piano and you, somehow that feeling is so familiar to you, but you can’t place it exactly. Nor can you see anything but the river, carrying off in all directions. One movement carries you into the next and you are totally lost. Suddenly you remember why this feels so familiar to you, and why you can’t help but be happy in this moment, because the water, the music, and the dance are home. They are that place where you feel alive and free. Everyone always talks about freedom, but until you are there, you really don’t have any idea what they are talking about. It’s moments like this that you realize that home has absolutely nothing to do with location. You’re not smiling, but you’re happy, maybe happier than you have been in a long time, and you stand with your face into the wind, your hair flying in a tangled knot, and both your hands clutching your tea to your chest, because that is the closest you can get to holding yourself. And in that one moment, for a reason you can’t understand or explain, you are completely satisfied and content. For those few minutes you know that if this is all life ends up to be about, you’ll be ok. And if in the last days of your life, you are standing on the water, clutching your tea to your chest and dancing with the north blowing wind, then maybe you will have done alright. (9/17/05)

Oops!

I just realized that only members could leave comments. silly rachel. i fixed it. comment away.

Photo Tour: Mankato and North Mankato

Eric had this brilliant idea that I should post pictures of a tour of hot spots around Mankato. So being that its friday and I didn't feel like doing work, I rode my bike all over town taking pictures. Very productive, I know, but there was nothing else to do, and who knows, maybe someone will appreciate it. (Let's be honest, I just wanted an excuse to go visit the buffalo.) Anyway. From North Mankato, over the River to Old town Mankato, up the hill to campus and back again.

Downtown North Mankato. Laundry, Pizza Shop, Post Office, Bank, Bar. You know, essentials.


Over the river: into Mankato. (The Minnesota River divides North Mankato from Mankato. Also a county boarder, which being that I live only 3 blocks from it makes the whole tornado siren situation a little interesting.)

Downtown (lower) Mankato. This is Riverfront St. Really cool antique shops, small independents, coffee shops, etc. Also the closest building with the white corner on it is the Wine Cafe. Love that place.

One of the local lawyers is a Bluth. (thats for Lex and Devon)

The Carnige. (Local Art Gallery)

Main Court yard on Cherry and Riverfront. Where most of the bars are. Occasionally the ExEd crowd hangs out at the first one in the picture, Blue Bricks.

My new McSwiggins

Pub 500. Rated the best bar in Mankato, and its pretty nice. It's where we go for Happy Hour on Fridays after work.

up the hill to campus!!

Mankato has two sections, Downtown and "The Hill". Downtown is super cute and where are the bars and cool stores are. "The Hill" is where campus is and all the undergrad crappy apartments and all the chain stores you could ever wish for. This is part of the nice bike ride up the hill to campus, the only place were you can see through the trees to see that you're actually gaining elevation, and you start to wonder where the hell this huge hill came from that is kicking your ass when the rest of Minnsota is so freaking flat!

Fountain outside the Union

This is the center of campus, on a Friday at noon. Notice anything strange? It's empty, no one here likes teaching on fridays so there aren't any classes, so no one comes to school. So odd.

The Student Union (Cennetinal Student Union to be more exact)

Inside the union.

I know, its just a bell tower, and its not even attached to a building or anything, its just this big square thing in the middle of the Alumni Mall on campus. I've never heard it ring either. But I guess its super important because they put the pictures of it all over the promo stuff.

You know your student center is too big when it has its own Barnes and Noble.

My Favorite grocery store! Open 24 hours, full pharmacy, natural foods section, and a huge produce section. Seriously awesome. (plus I can ride my bike there.)

Viking Dude outside the BlueEarth Public Library (downtown Mankato)

The Buffalo! He's my favorite part of Mankato. I ride my bike the long way home just so I can ride past him. Only in Minnesota would we have a giant buffalo downtown.


Cross Street!

The House! I have the whole building to myself because the downstairs is still being renovated. I have these sweet back entry stairs.

Smoothing Out

I'm finding its getting easier and easier to be here every week. Thursday night, this girl Tasha and I got to talking at the weekly ExEd pub night. She is living and working up in the Cities, since we only have classes two days a week, but decided to come down on Thursday night just to meet some people. I went out for the same reason. Her and Andy and I got to talking about ropes courses, and their functional applications and the changes going on in the industry. It was fabulous. Anyway, long story short, Tasha is now my Monday night roommate, so she doesn't have to drive back and forth to the cities every week between classes. And I really enjoy having the company.

This week we were walking out to our cars after Philosophies with Scott on Monday night and she said, "So, your sure that we've never met before? I think we must have been really good friends in a former life, or something." I concur. We stayed up way too late that night, knitting and talking, which made me cronicly tired when Tuesday rolled around, but I really needed the girl time.

Classes are amazing. Truely Amazing. I leave every class thinking to myself, "I have got to remember to share that with my students whenever I start teaching". With the 3 hour seminars we can really dig into the material and we can pull some amazing stuff out of it. Take Jasper's class for example. He usually has us reading something really heady and intense for class. (Like next week, we need to have read The Prince by Machiavelli.) Then he'll spend the first hour giving a lecture on what the hell the philosopher is talking about, and drawing attention to what makes it relevant. Then he breaks us into groups and we go somewhere on campus for an hour and talk about it, and the last hour we come back and as a whole community draw the learning out of the material. And for his class we are reading everything from Plato to Into Thin Air. So fantastic.

And Devon called today, which was stellar, as did Eric, and Bridget, and Matt. It was so good to hear their voices. It's nice to be meeting people here and getting involved in a new community, but the people here don't really know me. I was talking about this with Devon when she was catching me up on what everyone was doing in MA. I realized how out of the loop I was with alot of people. I'll be honest, I'm kinda disappointed. There were so many good friends of mine that said not to worry about moving to MN, that being far away wouldn't change our friendship, that we'd still be close. But I've been here for a month and some of them still haven't picked up the phone or returned an email or anything. It's hard missing people you love and care about so much and being confronted with the possibility that their life isn't any different without you there. That they don't notice something missing from their life, when you notice so much missing from yours. I don't mean that to sound self depricating, but it's honest.

First Fall Night

The temperature has dropped down to 60 tonight, so I got to curl up in fleece pants and the hooded LaVida sweatshirt that Alison gave me. It's strange, but it feels so good to be cold.

Today was our first committee meeting for the URC and it went pretty well. Gina's convinced that it wasn't that great, but we got through the whole agenda and ended on time. She said that she felt bad that I didn't have a chance to really say anything, but I told her that I had nothing to say really, I was just there to listen, so she settled for taking me out for happy hour to make up for it.

Happy hour turned into hours. We met up at Pub 500 with the English department faculty, and this guy Brandon from the philosophy department. (Gina told me later that she purposely sat between me and Brandon because he's a flirt and she wanted him to keep his hands to himself. She's so cute.) So we sat and chatted with the English faculty about the responsibilities to the truth that fiction writers should assume when they tell stories.

Then Gina, being the good art prof that she is, needed to go to an art opening, so we left the pub and hopped over to the venue. She walked me around and introduced me to all the faculty, and for some reason that neither of us really understood, 4 of the 6 deans decided to come to this event, as did the vice president. I know for Gordon that's not such a big deal, because everyone knows the deans, and the facutly is pretty small. But here, there are 6 colleges at the university and they have this big wig deans that everyone gapes at when they walk in. So the fact that I met the dean of the Education department tonight.... kind of a big deal, or something. I still don't totally understand these big universities, but I'm learning. I can't tell if Gina lets me tag along because she feels bad because I'm new in town or if she genuinely appreciates my company, but I'm not going to put too much thought into it just yet.

And two random side notes: I'm now a WEA instructor and I've been listening to Nizlopi non-stop for 48 hours. You need this music in your life. Seriously.

Nice Peter

So there are a few perks to working next door to the President of the University. One of them is that people assume you are important by association. I was walking into my office yesterday with a guy from one of my classes when Dr. Davenport walked by and said, "Hey Rachel." The person I was with asked who that was and I just said "oh, President Davenport." So much for getting in and out of this place unnoticed.

So today as Dan was driving to campus listening to KDOG Mankato radio he heard this guy named "Nice Peter" playing live on the radio, and "Nice Peter" said he was going to be playing at McGoffs tonight. So Dan told his chem buddy Trent, who told Becky, who told Gina who said I should come along. So, i went out with 2 chem profs and 2 art profs to go see this guy play at McGoffs. I know I'm supposed to be making other graduate student friends, but I just really like hanging out with this group of friends, they are so fun! I'm sure they'll get sick of the grad school tag along eventually but for now I'm going to just accept their pity on me being new in town and take all the invitations I can get to go out. I do like the other Ex Ed students, but it often feels like out of the classroom their one objective is to get smashed, like life is some big frat party. C'est la vive.

In other news aparently I am doing too much work at work and I still can't fill my week. Shoota. I'm going to have to find something else to do here, or I'm going to be really bored really fast. To bed for now.

Orinentation to the Secular World: Part II

So there are some things that I love about MNSU. On Friday Trent invited me to go out with him and the english facutly (even though he works in the chemistry department) for happy hour just because he wanted to be able to introduce me around to people because he thinks I'm cool. I'll admit, its nice to be thought highly of.

But Friday night I went to an Ex Ed (Experiential education) potluck and it felt like a regular college party. I mean these are all graduate students, and professionals in the field and they were just getting plastered. I did have some good conversations, and I met some really cool people, but at the end of the night the object was alcohol. So I left. I don't mind it in moderation, or in small groups, but 50+ people all getting slammed was too much for me. It would be so great to be a part of a community again, and to have that connectedness with people again, I crave that, but I wonder when the night desinigrates like that if our values are so out of alignment that I'll never really feel integrated.

So I came to the lake this weekend, and have been hanging out with my dad and Nancy. It's been great to relax, and read and just catch up with them. Today we pulled out the shore station and most of the water crafts and so Brian and Nick and their friends came over to help with some of the heavy lifting. (Brian and Nick Earnest have lived nextdoor to us for 16 years. Brian is 24 and Nick is 26, I had crushes on both of them for years growing up.) So today they noticed that the long lost blonde daugher was back and invited me over for a few drinks tonight. I said thanks and I would catch them later, with no intention of going over there. Well, then after dinner Andrew and Chris showed up on my front doorstep with a beer and an another invitation to come over, so I went, it was either that or more Hume.

I'll spare you the details of the evening, but most of it sounded something like this.
"Hey Rachel!"
"Yea?"
"I made a shot, special for you"
"How sweet of you, but I don't do shots."
"Oh come on, don't you know we're trying to get you drunk so we can take advantage of you?"
"Admirable gentlemen, really it is, but its not going to happen, sorry to disappoint."
"oh sassy.... i like that.... come take a shot with me."

and so on, and so forth.

At some point I tired of being fed shots and of boys being flirts and looking for excuses to touch me (the only other two girls there were Brian's and Nick's girlfriends). So I waited until no one was really paying attention and left. And my aunt wonders why I insist that I will be single for a long time. If this is the lot that I have to choose from outside of the small sheltered Gordon world that I have become an adult in then screw it, I'd rather be single. Seriously, these guys don't care what you think about, what you have done with your life, what your vision is or how big you can dream. They don't care where you will be in 10 years, or that you want to have your PhD before you are 3o. They just want to know if they give you enough jack hidden in coke will you disappear to the back of the cabin with them so a buzzed furvor you can stroke their egos. No thank you.

And people wonder why I'm not chomping at the bit to make new friends..... seriously.....