How’d you make your eyes blue?

I was going to do more posts about Tulsa, but today was the first day since I’ve been here (about a week) that Tulsa and I did not get along. I could list my grievances, and may at a later date, but for now I’m just going to write about something else. Some have heard this story already.

I spent the summer in Phoenix learning how to be a teacher and teaching summer school in the Roosevelt school district. I taught a class of kindergarteners, soon-to-be first-graders. My entire class was hispanic and they all had dark brown eyes.

I have blue.

During a small group session one of the girls turned to look at me. “You have eyes like my doll,” she told me. Amazed, she looked at my eyes some more and then got the attention of her classmates. “Look at her eyes. They’re blue!” After responding to various “Look at me”s and “I wanna see”s, one boy asked, “How’d you make your eyes blue?”

I told him I was born that way and my whole family has blue eyes. They continued to stare a bit, but we went back to our lesson.

A few days later I was working one-on-one with another student and he too noticed my eyes were blue. (He had missed it the first time round). He asked me the same question. “How’d you make your eyes blue?” I said I was born that way. “And they stayed blue?” he asked, amazed.

I was shocked by how surprised they were about my eyes, but it’s the kind of moment I expect to have a lot of during the next two years. There are so many little things that make up each individual’s life experience, it’s  just not possible to be aware of all your own assumptions,though I’m trying to get better at this.  I had assumed that everyone is exposed to eyes of various colors growing up, but such is not the case.

I guess I am one small bit wiser, but clearly in for many more surprises.

Initial impressions of Tulsa

I have not forgotten about my renewed committment to blogging, but I have been pretty busy moving to Oklahoma and all. Also, I won’t have internet in my apartment until next Saturday. With my phone about to die I may not even be able to tweet for a while.

But while I have a few brief moments, I shall share some observations/comments on Oklahoma and TFA in Tulsa so far:

• I don’t understand how no matter which direction I drive, morning or evening, the sun is always in my eyes. Is it somehow brighter in Oklahoma?
• TFA has, in a strange way, renewed the link I feel to journalism. It drives me crazy that we backwards plan and work towards our goals. Backwards and towards are not words, and in a room full of incredibly intelligent people, no one has expressed frustration at this. Also, during our session on how to interact with the media, I felt reporters were being unfairly represented. I took it upon myself to clear that up. In retrospect, not actually the best decision.
• TFA also rivals E-Flo for wanting to be “transparent” with decisions. For those familiar with the aforementioned reference, TFA is about as transparent as E-Flo.
• It is impossible to navigate the freeways in Tulsa. I have to get on a freeway to take an exit to drive through town to get on another freeway. The streets, however, are in a lovely grid so driving through town is easy to navigate.
• Tulsa is at least 10 times prettier than you would imagine.

Keep children supervised in Colorado

I have successfully driven 2,100 miles to Tulsa, Oklahoma. To clarify, I rode while my father drove but still. I tried to take some pictures of the different scenery in the different states but my camera phone didn’t work well from the moving car.

Instead I share these. They were also taken with my camera phone and so are not the best quality. They come from the Pizza Hut in Burlington, Colorado where apparently the small children have a tendency to break things.

I like the direct approach.

The warnings were not just on the hunting arcade games either.

Hittin’ the road

This picture was taken earlier this afternoon while it was still light. It is now dark and my father and I will be setting out down our driveway momentarily. The plan is for him to begin driving while I sleep through the night and we’ll switch in the morning, hopefully around Boise.

Onward to Oklahoma. Expect several future posts about home as I’m sure I’ll be missing it once I leave.

An open letter to my blog

Dear blog,

I must, as is often the case, begin with an apology. I have severely neglected you. I like to think you have perhaps missed the random pictures from my phone and my random comma splices, and I am sorry to have caused you any sadness from their absence. Quite honestly, I’m a little surprised to find you still waiting for me. I thought perhaps you may have given up all hope and shut down.

But exist you still do and despite my general distaste for interactions with technology, you do have a special place in my internetting, though I have failed to show this to you.

All I can say blog is that I shall try to do better. I have said this many times and my follow through really varies. But as I reflect, I am sad that you missed almost my entire senior year of college. (I shall try to remedy this as best I can.) I bring this all up now, blog, because I am about to embark on a brand new adventure and it would be sad if it too went undocumented through your posts.

I have joined TFA . I spent the last five weeks in Phoenix preparing to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma to teach Pre-K. I thought about writing this letter to you while I was in Phoenix, but I was very busy. I also didn’t want to begin renewing our relationship with somewhat unpleasant experiences (which means I must have some high hopes for my move to Oklahoma).

But I am going to try this whole blogging thing again, blog. I leave to go approximately 2,100 miles away from all that I know in a little more than 24 hours. I hope you will forgive me for my grave neglect and come with me, to be that connecting link to the places I’ve already been (though this is pending reviewing TFA”s media policy). Hopefully, I should be writing here again quite soon.

Best wishes,

Christina

What I’ve been up to

Two weekends ago, my room flooded while I was out for the weekend. Apparently a pipe between two of the suites got clogged, and so grayish sewer water came up through the drains. My roommates were kind enough to move my stuff in my room so everything survived.

This is Hubie, my de-humidifier. We had three of these monsters in the suite for more than a week trying to dry everything out. Our rooms hummed. Environmental Health & Safety kept taking wall and floor samples too. Now they want to entirely replace my carpet.

Last weekend, I drove out to Palouse to do a story on Haunted Palouse for one of my classes. I also ended up giving it to the Evergreen. How did I not know that Palouse was home to a printing museum?

I also got a tour of the whole town, which unsurprisingly, didn’t take very long. It was quite interesting though. The event is adding a Haunted Hay Ride this year. It’s going to run through Shady Lane (actual name of a wide walking path behind town). Shady Lane was Palouse’s red light district back when it was near a stagecoach stop, according to townspeople.

In addition to those adventures, I had my first CUB Advisory Board meeting, first President’s Student Advisory Board meeting (which I’m coordinating), Student Conduct training, two papers due, another article, a class debate and work at Ferdinand’s.

September was a very busy month. But now that I have survived, I hopefully won’t have to do another catch up post for a while.

I made the front page

The photo below is from the front page of Monday’s Daily Evergreen. Can you find me?

A forgotten overheard

Idaho bartender upon seeing my temporary, vertical, enhanced license: “Wtf is this.”

So I begin to explain. I get about four words in, “It’s a new enhanced,” and the bartender cuts me off. “Never mind. I don’t care.” He hands me my drink.

Overheard at CLR

I spent this weekend in Post Falls, Idaho at the Cougar Leadership Retreat. I got invited Wednesday afternoon and left Friday morning so it all happened pretty quickly. I didn’t have any weekend plans and thought it would be a good opportunity to network. It was your typical leadership camp, not particularly useful for anything except networking, but mostly enjoyable and a good time.

And just for fun, I have some overheards from this weekend. It was very obviously a camp full of college students.

“It’s like he roofies me for my flag.” – Oh the joy of camp games.

“Have you ever been blobbed? You totally have to be blobbed.” –  The camp promised to have a blob on the water for our enjoyment. Sadly, upon our arrival, we learned it had recently popped.

“Our administration is very receptacle to students.” – This is why one shouldn’t try to use words outside one’s vocabulary.

Person 1 – “Do you guys have an odd number of balls over there?” Person 2 – “Nope, that’s just you.” – I was person No. 2 in this scenario by the way. No. 1 was the student government vice president. In retrospect, probably not the best kind of response to someone whom it would probably be useful to be on positive terms with. The conversation occurred because there was a strange game at the camp. We dubbed it carpet ball. There were two tables, but sometime during the weekend a ball went missing, thus leaving one table with an odd number.

My final year in Pullman begins

It’s been a pretty busy last few days. I turned 21 and went from Spokane to Pullman to home to Pullman in five days. I arrived in Pullman for the second time yesterday and moved into my room.  I have unpacked some, but I hate unpacking because I know in less than a year I have to pack it all back up again. It seems inefficient. Perhaps it is because I am not fully unpacked that I cannot seem to locate any of my dishes, other than coffee mugs. I do love coffee, but forks, spoons, and bowls are usually pretty useful too.

I returned to work at Ferdinand’s today. I’m going to work through the fall and probably through the spring too. It won’t be many hours though, so I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do with all my free time. I guess I’ll read more and there’s always my thesis. My work on that will seriously begin this semester too.

I’m still working on finding other activities for this school year, which officially begins Monday, as well. One suggestion was to become a certain student government’s “Press Release Person.” I know I’m not exactly in a position to be picky, but I think I’m going to keep looking. I do have a few pretty good other leads so I’m hopeful.

Last random thought for now – I will make my second appearance in the Lentil Festival as a cheese-hander-outer on Saturday. After an unpaid internship this summer, I’m not in any kind of situation to turn down work, even if it means I will again have to wear a lab coat that is four times too big for me and run after a truck painted like a cow while carrying cheese in my pockets.