Some thoughts from the Cleveland airport

Some thoughts, live from the Cleveland airport as I try to figure out when my flight is leaving... it was supposed to be at 8:30, it's looking closer to 11:30 now.

- I'm glad this airport has free wi-fi.  The Atlanta one only let you go to Atlanta tourism sites, which was kind of annoying.  And I wasn't going to pay for internet.  I feel like for the amount of time you could potentially spend in an airport, they should have free wireless.

- I saw someone calmly walk through one of the new airport scanners in Atlanta, and no one threw a fit or got molested.  Just for the record.

- I grabbed dinner a few minutes ago in a sports bar and watched Ben Roethlisberger shove someone after a play and then get knocked flat by the other guy.  I might be a bad person for laughing at this.  However, he's not exactly been campaigning for ideal citizen lately, so maybe I'm not a totally bad person.  Don't question my sleep deprived logic there please.

- It's weird to be flying home for Thanksgiving.  I think this is the first time my destination is home, versus flying home after flying somewhere else. 

- I have learned today that Cleveland is in the very northern part of Ohio, on lake Erie.  I did not know this.

- I watched a guy in his 30s stand up from a table and his chair launched backwards with the weight of his backpack hung on the back. My generation, we're going to have some serious spinal cord issues in a few decades.

- Continental gets some points for giving us food vouchers to compensate for being stuck in the airport several extra hours.  Granted, it would have been better if they did this earlier before I ate dinner, when there were actual restaurants still open, but I got $11.50 worth of dunkin' donuts for free, so its not all bad.  The grad student in me is perfectly okay with being compensated for my time in donuts.

- In the future, I'm going to educate myself on the kinds of planes available to fly on so I choose something slightly bigger than today's 'bird', as the stewardess said, than 1 seat on the left and 2 on the right.  I should at least be able to pick out something with overhead luggage compartments on both sides.

- I also feel like it would be useful to know where the plane I choose to fly on is coming from.  But then, I suppose no one would choose to fly on a plane coming from Chicago or a bunch of other places, which is my current problem.

- I looked at a airline brochure and it looked like this airport is huge.  Um, it's not.  Everything shut down at 10pm and I think the only reason people are still here is because we are waiting on our late plane and like one other late plane.  Nightflights, apparently not big here.

- I'm going back in forth between listening to bad Mariah Carey Christmas songs on the loudspeaker radio, and getting the theme song from the Drew Carey show, 'Cleveland rocks, Cleveland rock!' lodged and dislodged in my head.

- It's too bad I'm so exhausted from keeping a messed up sleep schedule the past few days, I probably could have gotten a lot of work done :P

7 Quick Takes

1. I’ve found a church that’s pretty awesome, and one reason is because it has a lot of young adults.  Don’t get me wrong, I love all ages, but it’s important to have friends that are in my stage of life as well.  I’m in a small group that meets once a week, and we have really good discussions.  We also laugh hysterically about a LOT of things, biblical and non, as well as carve pumpkins, snack on chocolate, and pack Operation Christmas child shoeboxes.  This group is a huge blessing in my life J

2. My mom is currently on a mission trip with my home-church to Tennessee to help with the areas that flooded so badly in Nashville.  She’s been on about 10 of these trips to New Orleans.  My mother is awesome!

3. The weather here is really nice.  It’s mild during the day and cold at night, which means that aside from needing lots of covers on my bed, it’s wonderful.  I think I also don’t realize that Thanksgiving is in two weeks because I associate it with much colder weather.

4. I’m going home for Thanksgiving!  If you will be in Maryland the week of thanksgiving, facebook or call me, we should hang out!

5. I still like my classes, but they are coming to that end of the semester crunch time where they take over my life.  I’m really only worried about our project for my global health class, but theres lots of work in others as well.  Less than a month of class left :O

6. I went to trivia sponsored by a student group at Rollins, the Emory Global Health Organization (EGHO), and it was really fun.  One of the groups was named ‘we are not global health’ and another was ‘proc freq all night long’.  Did you know that cholera is in its seventh pandemic?

7. I’m volunteering with Refugee Family Services in their afterschool program, and the kids are a blast.  We tutur, assist the teachers, and play with the kids.  On Monday a group from Georgia Tech came and donated several new soccer balls and goals, which led to utter pandemonium as about 14 different games happened at once on the blacktop- multiple games of soccer, catch, basketball, tag, Frisbee.   It was awesome to watch, and I’m surprised no one got a ball in the face.  Helping kids be happy is the best feeling ever. 

Conversation overheard in a restaurant

Sitting in a cafe-type restaurant on campus at lunch, I overheard snatches of a conversation behind me.

Girl: We think we might be going to Peru next spring because (couple that I don't remember names) is getting married there.  Except that she can't make-up her mind about it and has had several break-downs and blow-out fights about it with him and threatens to call it off and yeah... its not a great situation.

Guy: Are they from Peru?

Girl: She is, he's not.  We don't think this is the best idea for him (to marry her) but... what can you do?

Guy: Yeah, that's hard.

Girl:  We've already made up a schedule of whose house he'll go to when she kicks him out.  I'm first because I'll be the most sympathetic apparently.

Guy: Wow.... that's... not a good sign.

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Maybe you had to be there, but I had to restrain from laughing at his statement, which might be the understatement of the year.  When your friends are already making contingency plans for your marriage -that hasn't taken place yet- to fall apart... that's not a good sign :P

7 Quick Takes

7 quick takes: 
1. I think I need a tape-recorder for my brain.  I think of all of these good ideas for posts, and then I forget to actually write them.  Could someone please invent that for me? Thanks :) 
2. I survived my first round of mid-terms in Grad school, huzzah.  Of three tests, I did great on one and so-so on another, with another not returned.   For my 4^th class, I actually have received no grades yet even though I’ve turned in two papers.  So really no idea how I’m doing in that class.  But I still really like my classes, so all is well. 
3. I need to get on the ball in finding a job.  I’ve sort of neglected that, but I really should try to obtain some income :P 
4.I have to pick classes for next semester soon, and so I’ve chosen a concentration (infectious diseases) and have an appointment with my recently assigned advisor.  Here’s hoping I can figure out what I’m doing soon.
5. Mom came and visited me two weeks ago and it was a lot of fun!  We talked and ate a lot, went to the Greek festival, and hung out a lot between me trying to study for midterms.  There will be some pictures of the Greek festival at some point. 
6.  Over fall break I went and visited my aunt and uncle and cousin and sweet dog in Columbia for a long weekend.  It was nice and relaxing and fun to welcome my cousin home after he just completed the entire pacific crest trail.  I’m sure impressed!
7. Last weekend I went to my friend Katherine’s house Friday night and Saturday we hiked for several hours in the North Georgia mountains, on the approach trail to Springer mountain and the Appalachian trail (which said cousin also hiked all the way through in 2001).  Pictures coming soon of this as well.

I'm not a fan of tests...

Okay, I'm pretty sure no one is a fan of tests.  Mostly because of the grade-obsession I think my generation has, at least that's my theory. 

But I also feel like they aren't really practical.  Most of the stuff you have to learn for a test, you promptly forget.  And most of it you can look up if you need to know it.  Unless you are going on a quiz show or want to rock trivial pursuit, you life will be okay without being able to diagram the Krebs cycle or list all of the major baroque composers.  No one has ever stopped me on the street and demanded dates of World War II battles or a plot summary of The Odyssey.

That being said, I'm a huge proponent of education.  I feel like it can be the great equalizer.  I happen to love school and learning. ( I'm a nerd, its okay- I came to terms with that a long time ago.)  I think that education can be the solution, or at least indroduce you to possible solutions, to so many problems in the world.  But that's another post for another day.

I do however, enjoy things that I feel are useful learning tools.  This includes writing, and projects, and some test-like things.  For one of my mid-terms next week we can use a page of notes.  I really like this idea for several reasons.  One, it takes the pressure off of studying, so I feel like I will actually study better.  Two, making that sheet of notes is actually a great way to study.  Three, I feel like its more like the real world.  When I said above that you can look up information that you need, the caveat is that it's impractical to look up EVERYTHING.  That just becomes obnoxious.  But to have a reference sheet that you can quickly use means that you are familiar with the subject enough to reference it if you need it, especially where there are formulas involved, yet it's okay that you don't have the field memorized.  And I feel like that's like the real world.  I used wikipedia to look up a lot of structures and molecular weights at my old jobs, because memorizing all of that information for every chemical I worked with would be... well, impossible without a photographic memory.  But I could calculate what I needed to pretty easily, and that's a combination of access to formulas and experience with the material.  I think a lot of people feel like if you can use some notes during a test, anyone can ace the test.  That's not true with a well-designed test, and its not true in life either.  Sure, you can probably figure some things out on the fly, but mostly, a notes sheets helps the prepared student.

I'll muse on papers and projects another time. Ta!

Wordless Wednesday

 These are some pictures of a mural I helped paint at a professor's lakehouse about a week and a half ago :)

 The theme was mother and child since he focuses on maternal and child reproductive health.

Indigo Girls

This past weekend was homecoming at Emory, something I never would have known except that someone mentioned it to me in passing. Not only am I not an Emory alum (yet) but being a grad student, I really have no idea what goes on in the main part of campus- I pretty much stay in the health quad.

So last week my friend Meghan mentioned that the Indigo Girls were playing a free concert for part of the homecoming festivities, and was I interested in going? I was like, heck yes! Free concert for a band I like but don't actually know too well, yes please.

So we heard the concert was starting at 3, and got there a few minutes before after grabbing lunch at a Greek place in town. There was a huge carnival like atmosphere with free food, beer, random stuff (squishy balls, key chains, pens, etc), lots of tables from the different schools and alumni groups, giant trampoline with harness, etc. An Emory band opened for the Indigo girls until a little after 4. They were pretty good, but it was HOT outside. I was like, would it disrespectful to pray for rain? But around when Indigo Girls started playing it clouded over a bit and there was a breeze, which was fantastic.

The concert was awesome. They played a lot of their newer stuff which I really liked, and several of their classics that were basically a sing-a-long with the audience. I like how comfortable they are with themselves. They weren't super dressed up on stage, didn't make a whole lot of nonsense smalltalk between songs when they were switching guitars.

I really enjoy their music as well. They have a rare harmony blend that is simple in some ways, but beautiful and sometimes haunting in unexpected ways. I also really like the lyrics to a lot of their songs- its one thing to write a catchy tune, and another to write poetic lyrics, but its much harder to make them work together. 'Power of Two' is a great song.

After they finished they did an encore of a song I didn't know and then 'Galileo'.

Part of the cool experience of the concert was listening to everyone around me sing a lot of the lyrics, sometimes even harmonies. There were times when the Indigo Girls were like, you guys sing this verse, and everyone did. It's cool to see such a loyal fanbase.

So in conclusion, an awesome concert, and I think I might get some of their newer music on itunes :)