Sometimes it still surprises me that you can wake up in one place and after a train ride, two flights, and a drive, you go to sleep in a whole different home. And it's still the same day. I should be used to this by now, but I'm just not. It still surprises me.
I flew home through Minneapolis, and there were several people wearing masks, which seemed a little excessive to me (swine flu, swine flu, swine flu!). Even at the heart of the SARS situation I did not wear a mask while flying through Amsterdam. And then I sat down at my gate and started watching CNN and I remembered why I don't watch CNN: alarmist. Wolf Blitzer was sitting there saying dramatic things like, "imminent. this sounds very serious. they are saying a pandemic is imminent" and then I tuned him out. Listening to CNN can be exhausting. Everything is imminent to them.
So I'm home. Sans swine flu. Also, apparently, sans allergies. How can I be so allergic to spring in Gone West and just immune to spring in Michigan? When I whined about this last week in Gone West, a colleague said, "Do you know what the Native Americans used to call this place? THE VALLEY OF SICKNESS."
Hm. This post is going nowhere.
I spent 20 hours this weekend in the presence of university students from my alma mater who want to do international work. This reminded me of two things: 1. I need to get back out there, and 2. the people I met in university are still some of the most amazing people I know. I found myself saying this to the students: hold on to these people you are meeting now. In ten years, you will have met a lot of great people, but very few of them will be as truly worth knowing as the people you meet in these years. Few of them will share your history and your heart.
You may find yourself, six years after graduation, calling someone you haven't seen since graduation and saying, "Um, I'm moving to your city. Can I crash on your couch?" and they will take you in and become one of your closest friends.
You may also find yourself, eight years after graduation, meeting one of your closest friends from those years in a whole different city belonging to neither of you and wandering around a candy-sweet little downtown, admiring fair-trade products and daydreaming about the elusive "when we have money and we can buy these pretty little things to fill our pretty little houses" and then laughing about how you've been saying that for years and yet your broke lives are still pretty incredibly good.
I flew home through Minneapolis, and there were several people wearing masks, which seemed a little excessive to me (swine flu, swine flu, swine flu!). Even at the heart of the SARS situation I did not wear a mask while flying through Amsterdam. And then I sat down at my gate and started watching CNN and I remembered why I don't watch CNN: alarmist. Wolf Blitzer was sitting there saying dramatic things like, "imminent. this sounds very serious. they are saying a pandemic is imminent" and then I tuned him out. Listening to CNN can be exhausting. Everything is imminent to them.
So I'm home. Sans swine flu. Also, apparently, sans allergies. How can I be so allergic to spring in Gone West and just immune to spring in Michigan? When I whined about this last week in Gone West, a colleague said, "Do you know what the Native Americans used to call this place? THE VALLEY OF SICKNESS."
Hm. This post is going nowhere.
I spent 20 hours this weekend in the presence of university students from my alma mater who want to do international work. This reminded me of two things: 1. I need to get back out there, and 2. the people I met in university are still some of the most amazing people I know. I found myself saying this to the students: hold on to these people you are meeting now. In ten years, you will have met a lot of great people, but very few of them will be as truly worth knowing as the people you meet in these years. Few of them will share your history and your heart.
You may find yourself, six years after graduation, calling someone you haven't seen since graduation and saying, "Um, I'm moving to your city. Can I crash on your couch?" and they will take you in and become one of your closest friends.
You may also find yourself, eight years after graduation, meeting one of your closest friends from those years in a whole different city belonging to neither of you and wandering around a candy-sweet little downtown, admiring fair-trade products and daydreaming about the elusive "when we have money and we can buy these pretty little things to fill our pretty little houses" and then laughing about how you've been saying that for years and yet your broke lives are still pretty incredibly good.
1 comment:
You know... I think we've got it pretty good. (The more I think about it.) We're poor, but we're not really poor, not even close. I SO adored seeing you. I've missed you.
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