Christmas in Costume

I know mine's not much of a costume, but I'd been looking forward to wearing my new salvation army-find dress and red heels.

Tegan's costume cracks me up every time I look at a picture.

NC trip

It's been 3 years and I finally made it back to NC to visit the family. I saw almost all of the relatives, and 3 out of the 4 new baby cousins on the Pennell side of the family. Having little kids makes everything different, but in a good way. I was tired out after a short visit, I don't know how their parents survive full time. I drank all the sweet tea I wanted, had my fave southern foods (biscuits and gravy, fried okra, hush puppies) and had a great time. Next time it won't be 3 years, I promise!

Pennells and Leonards

With Peggy and Grandaddy in Boomer













Holly (my chauffeur) and I before a night out













Nash- future race car driver













Holly, Barry, and Noah


















With Uncle June and Aunt Virginia














Dean and Carolyn's lovely home













Carolyn, Grandaddy and Charlie














Bonita, Matthew, Holly, Nolan, and Nash. I don't know how Matthew and Bonita do the parenting thing all day, way too much work.

Blackburn/ McCann clan

With Grandma at Stone Mountain















Stone Mountain


















Jed with his girlfriend Jade



















Grandma and her tree


















Denise, Luke, and Grandma- will have to photoshop Pat in later

Thanksgiving- in costume

Tegan made impromptu costumes for everyone- here are the results

Random Pictures from NW Portland

I prefer my swings to be throne-like.














Forest Park, right in the the city.

















More Forest Park.













Poor squashed pumpkin.















Cool sculpture thing in someone's front yard.

Halloween!

Halloween with Team Folklore

pre-Halloween weekend in Portland

I'm taking a little break from transcribing interviews- a very tedious process- to post some pics. Since I didn't get to celebrate my favorite holiday last year (stupid Vietnam) I did it twice this time. My costume is Melon Panna-chan, one of my favorite Japanese cartoon characters, she is so awesome! Some of my team folkore constituents wanted to see some documentation so I brought along my Melon Pan toy and Anpan Man where's waldo-esque book for show and tell. Yay Halloween, I love it!

School and such

Here's a picture of my roommates on one of the rare occasions we were all home at the same time, of course we planned this dinner or it would have never happened. From the left, Linda, Margie, and Maria. Maria also has a love for dance movies like I do and we had planned to go see one but sadly it wasn't playing around here, clearly not everyone appreciates dance movies like we do.

Anyway, school is going well, I'm feeling back in the swing of things now. It's great to be in grad school where everyone in your class is motivated to be there and is excited about what they're doing, so much more stimulating than undergrad!

There are 10 other first year MA folklorists, and everyone is pretty diverse in their interests so that's great cause we'll always have things to talk about. Don't think I've really blogged about my classmates, but they're all good people, so I'm looking forward to working with them over the next couple of years. We had a faculty/student meet and greet a few weeks ago and it was great fun, free food and wine, talking with my classmates and profs, awesome.

I'm taking 3 classes and one workshop thing that takes place over 2 weekends, this weekend is the first one. Its on financial management for arts non-profits. Will probably be a bit tedious but useful. It's tied to my cultural administration class which is labor intensive but interesting, we had the director of the Eugene symphony and their board president speak in class today, good stuff. I'm also taking the foundation class for 1st year folklorists, which is a bit schizo as we only meet once a week for 3 hours which is not enough time to discuss everything, so its a bit of a whirlwind. My favorite class is called folklore and sexuality, its so interesting, I love it! I had my first folklorist moment earlier today when I interviewed someone for a paper I'm writing in that class, I felt so official!

Anyway, Halloween is coming up, I'll post some pictures of that. I'm going as Melon Panna-chan, my fave Japanese cartoon character. Shes so awesome, no one if going to know what I am but I don't care. I missed Halloween last year (stupid Vietnam!) so this year I'm ready!

Gamelan!!

I went to a gamelan practice last night and it was so awesome! This picture isn't from last nights rehearsal but from when I was in Indonesia. The gamelan is the traditional Indonesian orchestra, with a lot of percussive instruments in varying octaves, it has a bit of a trace-like sound, I really like it. Very brassy, but in a good way. So one of my professors told me to contact another professor in ethnomusicology, who gave me the contact info of Qehn, an American guy here in Eugene who loves Indonesian culture and does gamalan and wayang (the shadow puppets I love). This was the first time I've ever tried to play any of the instruments, and I was just thrown into it but it was a lot of fun. The sheet music looks nothing like western sheet music, but is fairly easy to follow. I was playing a serah (no idea if that's spelled right) which kind of looks like a xylophone, it has 7 aluminum keys, different in tone to western instruments. I'm sure theres a technical term for this, but I don't know it and I'm sure no one really cares anyway. The group was a very diverse mix of people, I'm very curious as to how they all came together- some older women, a woman about my age, and 3 guys that look like they're around 20 or so. I plan on going back next week, soon I will be a master gamelan member!

Latrinalia- my new favorite term

So I've just had 1 class so far, but I need a reading and job hunting break so blog time!

Latrinalia is an academic term for the writing on bathroom walls. I love folklore!

After my first class I'm feeling excited again about school, I was getting a bit panicky and second guessing my decision over the weekend, but now I'm back to remembering that I do like this program and I am interested in doing my research, so good times! Tomorrow I have an arts and administration class, and I already know 2 people who will be in the class with me which is exciting. And I'm going to add another class as I realized I'm not taking a full load this term, and I'm not on the long-term track, I want to be done in 2 years. So I'm either going to add a folklore and sexuality class or try to see if I can do an independent study Indonesian language thing, either way I've got to figure it out tomorrow morning so I can get going.

I'd kind of forgotten how much work school is. Grad school is way more with the insane amount of reading you have to do. And I forgot how school makes you have this weird schedule and you can't work a normal job with it, so today I went to the strip mall down the street and filled out applications at some retail places, woohoo! We'll see how that goes, man I hate retail but I gotta pay the rent.

p.s.- The picture is of the back deck of the house I'm living in, I love it!

Eugene- bicycles, hippies, friendly people!

I officially moved to Eugene on Sunday, into a house that's about a 20 minute bike ride from campus. I bought an old cruiser style bike from a hippy so I'm all set to join the Eugene bike culture. There's tons of people riding around, and lots of bike lanes and bike paths, so the drivers are used to watching out for you.

My roommates are Margie, the lady who owns the house, and 2 other women who are also grad students. Haven't spent much time with them yet but they seem like nice people so I'm sure living together will work out fine.

I'm nearly mentally prepared to start school, this afternoon I went to the general orientation for all graduate students and to the bookstore to pick up the rest of my textbooks. It feels weird to be on a campus again and I keep saying UW instead of U of O but I'm sure I'll get used to it soon enough. Friday I have the first Folklore departmental meeting followed by a potluck at the park where the picture above was taken, so I'm looking forward to meeting everyone. Due to the magic of Facebook, I already found a new folklore grad student, and we went to orientation together today, so it's nice to already know someone. I'm hoping it won't be too hard to meet some cool people, I only have class twice a week but I'll check out some other stuff around campus.

Eugene is pretty small- while doing errands the past few days I've found that everywhere in Eugene is no more than a 10 minute drive away. If you go more than 15 you're lost. They have several beltline loopdy-loop highways which seems a bit overkill in such a small area, but at least its easy to navigate.

I rode my bike to orientation today and took a bit of a convoluted way to get there but it wasn't back. On my ride home I was debating which way to turn at an intersection when some other bikers came up behind me so I asked for directions, and one was going my way so I got to follow him, so friendly! And nice that bikes are so popular, this will probably help me from getting too twisted as I find my way around the bike paths.

I'm sitting on my back deck right now, gotta take advantage of it while the weather is still nice. Tucker, the younger of the 2 cats here is sitting beside me. I'll write more once school starts- I still have this idea that school isn't going to take up too much of my time, we'll see.

Beach!

Ruth and I went to the Oregon coast for a night, staying in Manzanita. It's one of the smaller of the small towns along the coast, not super touristy like Seaside or Canon Beach, so it was nice. Of course the water up here is freezing so no swimming in the ocean unless you're insane and have a full body wetsuit, but our hotel had a heated pool which was nice. I hadn't been to the Oregon coast in at least 3 maybe 4 years, so I was really excited! The Oregon coast is so beautiful, it nearly makes up for not being able to swim in the water.

It was really foggy Monday morning

View from highway 101














Back there in the gray is the ocean somewhere

Manzanita

Seaside

Haystack Rock

All you Goonies fans, recognize this?

New York Baby!

I spent 2 weeks in NYC for a mini Osaka reunion with Lisa and Sam, we all worked at the same school in Japan. (In the top picture, its me, Sam, and Lisa). It was so great to see them again- been a bit over 2 years since I've seen Lisa and a bit over 1 since I've seen Sam. It was like old times! Though I got made fun of because my tolerance has gone down since the Osaka days of going to izakayas and nomihodai kareoke. It was nice having a long time in one place as Sam and I did everything on our lists, though our lists were a bit different. I wanted to see 5 art museums, and Sam wanted to have chinese take out and ride in a yellow taxi :-)

Highlights for me were definitely the MOMA- if pressed I'd have to say that was my favorite museum. And wandering around the city is always fun, Sam and I walked a lot around Manhattan while Lisa was working.

Sometimes we'd forget we weren't in Japan, since thats the last place we saw each other. Lisa would start to give us detailed directions somewhere then remember that we were still in the US and would be able to read all the signs and ask for directions with no worries.

The typical touristy things we did were Central Park, Soho, Chinatown, Little Italy, Greenwhich Village, Times Square, Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, took a boat ride and saw the Statue of Liberty, and of course all the museums. I kind of enjoyed the general narkiness of New Yorkers, so different than the trip to LA! A bit more real seeming, no fake smiliness. Even the tour guides were jaded and snippy, hilarious. All 3 of us took a double decker bus tour around Harlem and upper Manhattan, and straight away the guide was berating people for telling him they couldn't hear his mic clearly when they really could. That and his unforgettable 5 minut speech about bedrock and building foundations, priceless!

The pics below are in no particular order, tried to put up some pics of all the different things we did, and we did a lot! Fun times.

Washington Square Park

Times Square

Its like a mini Japan

Top of the Rock

Central Park

I love these signs

So funny how they combine no parking with a don't litter logo.