Circle of Life

My good friend Jennifer just sent pics of her new baby, Kate. It's overwhelming. The cycle of life is starting all over again--Jen and I have baby photos together, with our moms, when they were young like we are now. I remember what Jen and her brother Scott looked like when they were tiny and now Jen's own daughter! I can't believe it. Can't believe we're old enough to be moms! Just overwhelming. Tears of joy relieve my drought. I can't wait to meet her; I just can't figure out when I'll have time to ditch my leash at school and go down there; I have two papers due on Monday and a midterm and another paper the following week, with news reviews due each week for the next three in "Developing Nations." Oh, and lots of reading. But life is too important to miss out on; they're only young once, and I've never met a really young infant before. So special.

Finale of "Project Runway" is tonight; I'm watching just because it's so popular here that we all pile into the rec room and give our opinions to no one in particular of each of the outfits and the gossiping and back-stabbing.

Was a beautiful day today; perfect weather. Mr. Lawson was wearing a rainbow-like striped tie with his usual khaki pants and corduroy jacket. Love it. We learned about Saudi Arabia. Yesterday we saw a (was it yesterday? the days are all blending together) really depressing video about poverty in the Third World...wait, no...today we saw a really depressing film about AIDS orphans in Africa (Zimbabwe, I believe) in our "Women Writers from Africa" class. Ghastly. Several class members were crying.

I "should" be writing my Egypt paper (well, I will be now that Mr. Lawson made it much easier for me to start it by "OK"-ing one of my ideas) but I have no downtime these days and just need to let my brain matter settle a bit. Sierra is laughing with Josh in the next room, Lorien and Halie were making plans in the hall; we're all going to the rec room at 10pm for the final showdown on "Project Runway."

Tonight at dinner we talked about institutional unfairness here at Mills and abuse of authority, we briefly touched on stoning women (for some reason our discussions always end up on very depressing subjects) but moved on. I had my usual busy day, which I'm getting used to. We're talking about Reagan in US/Latin American relations, which is good because I was a kid during the Reagan years so I'm pretty fuzzy about what actually happened.

Then we saw the film "Everyone's Children" or "Everyone's Child" about AIDS orphans, then a rushed lunch (ridiculously large salad), French class at 1pm where we saw a film on Frantz Fanon and the very depressing French colonization of Algeria. Then, off to "Middle Eastern Politics" with Mr. Lawson, where we learned about religious opposition in Saudi Arabia.

I'm finally learning my "Shi'i" from my "Sunni"! More violence in Iraq today. It's time to leave.

Oh! And I'm reviewing the ballot for elections next month; lots of stuff to study up on. AND I submitted my article translation to Mr. Lawson tonight; I hope he likes it.

New tires on my car have been ordered; I'll have to go home to Costco to have them put on and then to my favorite service station to have them balanced and my battery cleaned (or something). Yikes. And I guess we'll be signing up for classes soon, or I'm just jumping the gun in all of my anxiety to get stuff done. My op-ed piece may finally run in the paper this week; they'll have to cut lots of it to make it fit but that's fine. I think I want to work in the international arena. Must go see what the rest of the world looks like and see if there's anything I can do to make it better.

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