Nineteen Minutes

I read Nineteen Minutes along with My Sister’s Keeper, and now I never need to read another book by Jodi Picoult again. Each novel has an interesting ethical dilemma (one about a highschool shooting, the other about ethics in health care and preserving life), but here is what to expect:

1. Strong & sexy woman protagonist who drinks a lot of coffee, and will find love by the end of the novel with older man, also a coffee drinker.

2. Rotating points of view; each vignette ends with a “deep” comment about relationship or the novel’s ethical dilemma.

3. The entire life story of every single character in the novel.

4. A twist at the end of the novel that makes you angry, even though you saw it coming for the previous three chapters.

5. Unsatisfying resolution with unnaturally happy characters.

back to work

*taken from abeautifulrevolution.com

Winter fun

Our first Christmas tree.  We’re a little bit short on the lights, but Merry Christmas anyways!

This was epic.

But we finally found some dry rock!

“If we held rocks in our hands instead of cameras…”

“we’d look like revolutionaries.” I don’t think anyone would ever put me in the hipster category, but this author challenged my own self-absorption and inability to create powerful art anyways. It’s a good, short read.

Hipsters=The death of Western civilization?

the race card

This article is totally worth checking out.

Do McCain’s ads contain racism?

Go Oranje!!!

Holland dominated Italia tonight! When I played soccer on my school team, my dad had this huge plastic orange trumpet that he brought to play-offs and tournaments. My adolescent self almost died with embarrassment, but now I see that he was far more football-savvy than the other parents. Tonight, my friend Kellie and I watched the game in town, and it was packed. The bar got crazier and crazier with air horns and singing. Fire codes were broken. Glass bottles were banned. We even sang “We Are the Champions” (American fetish? Can anyone explain this?). And then out on the street, there was a big party… with lots and lots of plastic orange trumpets. I can’t wait for Friday!

Myspace or Facebook?

Some of you may already know all about Part 2 of my reason for being in the Netherlands, but for those of you who don’t, I am reading up on the online practices of migrant youth, analyzing social network sites used by Mexican-American (sketchy term?) youth, and then comparing my analysis to that produced by two Dutch students on Dutch-Moroccan teen sites (to put it all into a nutshell).  Maybe later, I’ll get really nerdy and post the social implications for my research.  But probably not.

I found something along the way, however, that I think any user of Myspace or Facebook would find interesting. danah boyd (whose name is legally lowercase) is one of the most published researchers of Myspace, Facebook, and other social networking sites.  In a blog entry, she describes the class division she has found among teenage users of Myspace and Facebook from her research of three years.  It seems that Facebook is preferred by the middle-upper class college bound, while Myspace is used by the ‘working classes’, the marginalized, and the alternative to the mainstream… in addition to all the bands, musicians, and promoters, of course.

Urban kayaking

I never turn down a chance to go paddling, so when I first saw a kayak floating down a canal in the Dutch countryside, I knew I’d find a way to do the same. I talked it up to some friends on a sunny day, but instead of taking on some North Carolina rapids, I found myself taking on the overpasses, motorboats, and pigeons of downtown Utrecht, a city older than your American great-great-grandma. Urban kayaking is not for the faint of heart. You may think that class 5 takes technical skill, but so does appropriately responding to people shouting at you in other languages, avoiding children throwing sticks, and maneuvering around tipsy boaters. And yes, a few Dutchmen asked if they could hitch a ride.

It was all rather unsanitary, but beautiful. On this lowest level of the city, stained glass windows, tiny doorways, and countless sculptures depicting famous Greek myths hide behind trashcans and birds’ nests.

Dutch retro manprops

Pretty fantabulous.

An American in Paristerdashvegas

My recent trips to Amsterdam and Keukenhof gardens reveal a simple rule: tourism transcends all boundaries. The gardens were breathtaking; Amsterdam was beautiful. However, most Dutch students I have met never visit the “world-famous” Keukonhof! Why is this?

Keukonhof makes an attempt to display the “Dutch” identity (see the picture above with the two patient Dutch women, complete with jovial organ music in the background). However, my Dutch classmates do not necessarily include these aspects of Dutch culture in their own social identities. Looking at Kuekonhof’s clientele, I would guess that the gardens do not educate foreigners about the Netherlands as much as they reflect the foreigner’s already held perception of reality. For example, there is a miniature replica of the Statue of Liberty in the gardens with U.S. flags around the base. This is not part of the Dutch identity, but the American tourist likes to believe that everyone loves the U.S., right? Walking down the aisles of plastic “wooden” shoes and collectible windmills made me feel like I was at home on 2nd Ave. in Nashville. I am a novice when it comes to travel, but I have quickly learned that you could travel the whole world and never have your perception of reality challenged, thus rendering those experiences useless.