Job hunting

Dear President-elect Obama,

Please, please, please hire me to be your speech writing flunky. I'm young, blue, secretly sappy, play well with others and only rarely run with scissors.

Thank you.

Do I sound cynical yet?

If you want a practical education, replete with all the realism and moral compromise that entails, go to a developing country.

I mean it. Go South, young man, and stay awhile.

Be sure to bring a copy of Heart of Darkness with you.

P.S. I suspect that there are rich and varied allusions to be made here...that or a tremendous cultural gaffe. Unfortunately, it's been almost 10 years since A.P. English and a solid five since my Comparative Literature degree. Thus, I am grossly out of touch.
P.P.S. Thus I am also getting old.
P.P.P.S. *shudder*

Sunset at Mar Saba

Stalker-ish or Southern?

Today I debated the relative creepiness of adding random other internationals who seem interesting as my facebook friends. I haven't done it yet, added people with whom I have no real world contact. The trouble is it seems 1 part pathetically friendly and 1 part webstalking...in the absolute best case scenario. I suppose I have to grow a pair and track down the crazy expat parties instead.

Making web friends does seem far easier, though, not to mention incurring far less transportation cost.

Care to weigh in?

The Birmingham series

Some friends here visited the states at Christmastime and visited some of my favorite cities, including the one in which I lived for 4 years. By and large, they were underwhelmed, and my theory is that they simply didn't know where to go.

Thus, I've decided to start posting favorite places on occasion in the hopes the future visitors will heed my excellent advice.

This inaugural set of photos is from The Garage, one of Birmingham's premier bars that was supposedly voted one of the 10 bars worth traveling for by GQ magazine. But who knows, that might just be an urban legend.

Regardless, it's the perfect place to sit and chat with friends; engage in cute, flirty conversation or climb a tree, Zaccheus-style. However you choose to enjoy it, don't you dare miss it should you happen to pass through Birmingham, Alabama.

Life lessons

Of course it was never going to be that simple -- coming home and NOT crying. As Gloria would say, I'm one of those people who "has lots of feelings", and I was never going to be cool enough for a graceful transition into "just friends".

I appreciate that he's trying, but I hate him for making it seem so easy.

He told me before he left the first time that he'd end it if things got too hard. I should have ended it then, as that is clearly the wrong attitude for a successful long-term, not to mention partially long-distance, relationship. Instead, I cried.

In his arms.

I am SUCH A GIRL.

Eid al-Fitr

taken in al-madbasa and in the old city of bethlehem, 2007.

feeling oddly intact

it's strange feeling happy again and thinking about being with other people. i'm starting to back away from all of those inherent questions about relationships and expectations and what you thought you had versus what actually was. at the end of the day, i think we loved each other, but love didn't exactly make us perfect partners. and whether it's a matter of timing or of me just not being that extra special person, i can't know.

as the great justin bobby is wont to say, "truth and time tells all."

but in the meantime, i'm not really a masochist. not even in the service of love. i want to be happy, and that may mean being happy alone or happy with someone else. either way works for me.

say it with me, for justin bobby...

what i've gotten used to, is that, for the foreseeable future, i won't be happy with him.

and that's surprisingly okay.