So far, I have gotten to see Bre, Margaret, and Jana here in Eugene. Jana left today to head back up to Portland for summer nursing classes, and Margaret is now back in Cambridge (MA) to work at Harvard for the summer, but luckily I got to see them and/or have coffee with them both beforehand.
Pause: I just want to mention that a Christmas song just came on my shuffle right now and I am suddenly overcome with the desire for it to be December. I mean, it is raining here right now, why not just flash forward about six months?
One coffee date I had with Margaret a little over a week ago though, let me shed some light on, because it comes with some news that might actually be a little bit more exciting than I thought. Or well, I guess it just slipped my mind that I had this news when I first started writing this post. It's not really "news" per se, rather information that could potentially be exciting in the future, if it follows through. Anyway, I digress. This coffee date was with our former AP Euro history teacher from high school (that I dedicated part of a previous post to), Mrs. Alderman. Now neither of us had seen her in a while, but for me it had been over a year, so when I saw her of course hugs were exchanged, but all the while I was thinking OMGOMGOMG I HAVE SO MUCH TO TELL YOU I MIGHT EXPLODE. So it was probably a good thing Margaret was there to prevent said explosion. We sat in The Beanery in downtown Eugene for about two hours and talked about everything from how college is going (and during this time I took the liberty of explaining my move to Oxy in the fall...) to the issue of gay marriage...and don't even ask me how that last bit was even brought up. Honestly, I think Alderman is now taking advantage of the fact that Margaret and I are now in college and are apparently supposed to be exponentially more knowledgeable of societal issues. Yeah, that sounds about right. But the thing that we spent the most time talking about was actually Alderman's teaching position, or should I say positions. Now we had kind of gotten word of this beforehand, but apparently next school year our dear teacher is going to teach abroad at an American education style boarding [high] school in the country of Jordan. Yeah, Jordan...I was surprised too. I mean, I could always kind of imagine her teaching abroad, because she travels abroad just about every summer, but now that it's actually happening, I'm kind of surprised! The name of the school is King's Academy, and like its name, it's run by the monarchy itself in the city of Madaba. Here's the website for it:
And then of course Wikipedia:
Seriously though, check it out. It's like a freaking university (in part because it costs $36,000 a year go to there...) Alderman is going to teach both AP Euro and AP Psychology, which is awesome because she hasn't been able to teach AP Euro for two years now and she is amazing with that class. She said her contract is for one year as of now, but once that year is up she will make the decision of whether or not she wants to stay another. (I however think she'll stay more than one...I mean what an opportunity). What she also said was that her apartment in Jordan has an extra bedroom, which got Margaret and my mind to thinking. I looked it up, and all together it would cost about $900 round trip to fly to and from Amman, Jordan (the capital) during our spring break next March. Since I am transferring to Oxy and am now on semesters like Harvard, we can now travel together during spring break week, since it'll be the same week! Yay! Anyway, we got to talking and we kind of want to do a trip over there next March to visit our teacher. I'm really trying not to think too hard about it right now, since there's like a 90% chance going over there won't happen. It's really expensive and I would have to work really hard to get the money, but I was thinking with my birthday coming up and my summer job and Christmas and whatever job I'll be working at at Oxy...it could happen...maybe. What if we really did go? I have never really thought about visiting the Middle East, what with all of the wars and what not going on, but where Alderman is living it's really not that bad. According to her, she's living about "10 miles from where Jesus was baptized." I mean...holy crap, that would be so amazing to see, and since I'm not doing a study abroad anymore...hmm...but yeah that's the potential good news on my part. Here are some pictures of the town for your viewing pleasure:
Downtown
Madaba visitors center
Downtown shops
Archaeological Park
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Greek Orthodox Basilica of Saint George
6th century mosaic map of Jerusalem in Madaba
Thanks Wikipedia. So yeah, hopefully that trip happens, and I'm super excited for my teacher :)
As far as everything else goes, again my friend Andre came down to Eugene for a few nights last week, and that was pretty nice. I have only really done the "tour of Eugene" thing once before so hopefully I did it justice this time. Basically it consisted of Saturday Market, Voodoo Donut, Dutch Bros. coffee, UO campus, and my friends Bre and Jana. Oh yeah, and then we went to Florence (the coast) last Thursday and it basically looked like this the entire time:
But oh well, we ate some pretty awesome seafood and cookie dough ice cream. haha. Seriously though (and yes I know that's like the second time I've said that in this post), the ice cream was like one of those cookie sandwich things but mixed together...like it was layered...does that make sense? Anyway it was delicious and my taste buds were like, dying.
I should mention too that I am really grateful to have spent as much time with Bre as I have. Since I worked in Yellowstone and she started school almost right after I got back, I barely got to see her/spend time with her last summer. This summer we have thus far spent too much money on multiple shopping trips, gone to movies (like Brave, which we saw the other day and I totally recommend), and just hung out a lot. It's been nice.
Yay for super old high school pictures that I really felt needed to be in here!
That's about it for right now folks, not a whole lot else going on. Like I said, I really wish I got to go on a vacation during this time that I have off between school and work. I don't even care where just, somewhere. I brought up going back to Wyoming for a little bit to my mom last month, and she was like "are you crazy?!" So that was a no go right off the bat. I guess I'm just waiting for the day when my parents surprise me and say we're finally going on a family trip to Hawaii, or Harry Potter World, or even San Francisco, or some other place we've never been. Ha yeah right...but I should not be complaining at all, and I realize that. I get to go to Oxy in the fall, which in itself is a humongous blessing. I guess it's just all the stir-crazy and boring-ness in between that is really getting to me. I just wanna go...ADVENTURE for fuck's sake. Ah well.
I hope you all are having a lovely and adventure-full summer :) Now, back to my incessant listening of Fleetwood Mac.
~Erin
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