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Name: Kendra
Country: United States
State: Virginia
Metro: Harrisonburg
Birthday: 10/2/1984
Gender: Female
Interests: cross country. running. Germany and the world. candles. photography. writing. being with people. nature. reading. my family. learning. laughing.
Expertise: blowing spit bubbles, speaking bad German, procrastination in all of its ugly manifestations, being me, living life, playing piano for old people.
Occupation: Student
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  MISSinterpreter7
Member Since:
7/27/2004
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| The closest I ever manage to come to religion, or to what/whom I'd like to identify as God, is from perched atop my bicycle. At least these days. Last year this time I would have said running--which still is my first love, don't get me wrong! but it's a little harder to have a spiritual experience with all that jolting around sometimes. Biking on the other hand... yeah, much more conducive to spirituality, in general. My kind of spirituality, I mean.
Tonight was such a beautiful night: 60's, cool, not too humid, t-shirt weather even with the wind chill that's generated by 10-20+ mph speeds, but only just barely. As the chilled air flowed gently over and around my body, some of it seemed to seep into my skin and breathe new life back into me, restoring all my jumbled thoughts, feelings, and emotions back to their proper places. Putting me back together. I sighed in relief; it'd been a long time since I felt this good, er, this... un-bad. Funny how long I can go without realizing something is wrong, until something finally feels so right again that I can suddenly notice and appreciate the difference.
Like I said, whatever/whomever I identify as God envelopes me in those moments, and I can understand why so many people think it super-important to be religious, if this is what they define as religion. I certainly wouldn't want to go without it for very long ever again, either! It helps give me a certain clarity to my life, as everything that is good and important to me rises to the surface, and I am filled with longing to be where I'm needed, with the people I love. To go home, go to Germany, sit on my back porch with my family and drink a root beer float, walk the streets of the Altstadt and have Eis or a drink with my American friends, bike 85 miles and then pitch a tent somewhere in the middle of Wyoming. But I'm doing none of that. I'm here almost wasting away with boredom and the lack of much company or friends.
My 23rd summer, I'm realizing, isn't fitting the mold of any I've experienced yet. But somehow I still need to make it good, too.
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| I ran into my (former) boss's wife at the Daily Grind today, and she gushed all over again about how beautiful she thought I looked at Cheryl's wedding on Saturday--especially my eyes. She just couldn't get over my eyes, and of course I just soaked it up. I mean, I have never had anyone gush about me like that before (though people have definitely noticed my eyes plenty of times already)...
Monday at my family reunion, my Aunt Lois mentioned the same thing: that my eyes looked SO blue. I told her that someone always makes the same comment every single time I wear my contacts, without fail. She asked whether I was sure that my contacts didn't enhance the color in any way? I told her I was sure, having asked my optometrist that same question, and being told that no, regular contacts don't affect eye color at all, so I could take all the "credit" for comments about the blueness of my eyes. The concept seemed weird to me--to take credit for something I have done nothing to earn--but then again, isn't that how beauty usually works? So ever since then, my eyes have been one of the few things about my appearance that I allow myself to unreservedly, genuinely like. Aunt Lois almost threatened that security when she asked on Monday, well couldn't contacts at least affect the appearance of my eyes, making them seem more strikingly shiny and noticeable, or something?
I told her I didn't know. And then that night, I dreamt I read the label on my contacts which confirmed Aunt Lois's suspicions. And woke up realizing just how important it really is to me to have beautiful eyes that are all natural, and all my own.
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| I had been feeling grouchy all last night and then again today, despite having gotten plenty of rest all weekend. Indeed, my bed at "home" was very soft and conducive to the sleep I needed in order to beat this cold, BUT this had also been my second weekend away from EMU in a row (for Jenny Horst's wedding/Kyle's district track meet/visit to my old HS)--and I was SO sick of being away, to the point of severe irritability. I thought it was the forced immobility of vehicular travel that was driving me insane--and that very well could have been playing a part, knowing me. But tonight, after scouring my apartment yet again and settling my gerbils in, and then finally touching base with some SPI people again... the irritability was gone. I'm back to normal. <sigh> What a relief.
...Eh, but not really. While I'm sorta glad to realize that Harrisonburg was the fix I needed ... that also means I'm in trouble in five weeks, at which point I'm anticipating having to leave it, more or less for good. (Unless I come back to work here, which is an option I'll always leave open.)
Maybe I should be more serious about this supposed job search I've been conducting in the Shenandoah Valley.
I had been planning to watch the movie put on tonight for SPI-ers, starting @8...but it was Blood Diamond. No thank you. No matter how educational a film is supposed to be, there's no way I'm gonna learn anything from it if it's also violent, because I'll have my eyes closed too much of the time to actually know what's going on. After five minutes, I got up and walked out, then wandered around campus for awhile to see what other people were doing.
Not much. I ran into Ionka from Ukraine, who I always forget to intentionally start conversations with, because she looks like she's one of the Americans. Whenever I do talk to her, though, I like her; she's old enough to be my mother, and is indeed one. When I told her I was coming from the movie that she was en route to go watch, and that it was too violent for my sensitive sensibilities  , she said, in that case, that she might not stay for the whole thing either. She hated violent films so much that she'd told her kids not to watch Passion of the Christ. In the Ukraine, she said, people were converting over it, which she couldn't understand. Violence, inducing piety? But she wouldn't judge them, because she could not put herself in their shoes enough to understand how their minds worked. She only knows that her mind does not work that way. 
After that, I walked around and enjoyed EMU @ sunset, before crashing in Roselawn's lounge and channel-surfing until I found a re-run of Deep Impact currently in progress. I settled in and thought I would get my numb tv-time tonight, after all. But right when it got to the most suspenseful part, this guy walks over and asks if he can join me. I say yes, thinking he means to watch tv, too. But he introduces himself--as Rizvan, from Azerbaijan--and from there just doesn't stop talking. I try not to care as the world is coming to an end in my peripheral vision, but it doesn't take long before he gets my full attention, and I no longer care about the television. Rizvan talks in a very thick Russian accent; he claims his English is not very good, but, for all the interest he seems to express in me, and for all the reservations he supposedly has about the English language, he barely ever lets me get a word in edgewise!
He asks me a few questions about my personal life, tells me I'm beautiful, wonders how I can still be unmarried at the age of 22. I can see where this is going. Though an Azerbaijani would be an impressive addition to my list, he doesn't attract me in the least, so I avoid his line of questioning, and deflect the flow of conversation back to him and his country, accommodating his talkative nature by making him do all the talking. He seems only too happy to oblige.
And so that's where the history lesson comes in. Russian is Rizvan's first language, since he grew up in the Soviet Union before its collapse. Now, of course, he is a citizen of Azerbaijan, but he holds a three-month visa to the US and seems to be hoping not to return, even once that has run out. Azerbaijan is an increasingly authoritarian, Islamic state heavily influenced by its southern neighbor, Iran, and he feels religiously and politically oppressed there. All people, especially women, have been losing more and more rights these days . In 2003 the people of Azerbaijan elected the opposition leader by 70% of the vote, but the incumbent president still declared himself the victor. People took to the streets in protest, of which Rizvan was one; the police dispersed it, and told him that one more demonstration would get him arrested. The government won't let him travel because he is not "loyal to the state", but apparently Russia will--so he arrived here by way of Moscow.
He wants to be baptized as a Christian, he said--anticipating my nod of approval, but I merely act interested. The Mennonite Church attracts him more than the Muslim faith; in Islam, Allah tells you what to do. You are a servant and not a human being. (This is his perspective.) He wants to be a Christian. If he goes back as one, however, his ex-wife might report him. She knows these wayward religious leanings of his, and has threatened to go public with it before. If he never returns, his main concern is not for her; the two are, I guess, happily divorced. His concern is for his eight-year-old son, who he would also like to see become a Christian once he is old enough to know the difference. But he mainly communicates with him now via telephone, and, when home, can't see him more than once a week.
Ask me now which countries I would like to visit most and in which order, and I will say India, then eastern Europe... then Russia, as of tonight's conversation with Rizvan. Germany, Rizvan maintained, is boring, while Russia is beautiful. Then again, he also said that water is boring--offering to buy me a soda, but I wasn't tempted--so maybe I should take his opinion with a grain of salt. Germany may be "boring," like water, but at least both are healthy. Russia, on the other hand, sounds like it's struggling. Prejudice is on the rise there, he said, and Jews and Americans bear the brunt of it because the former are seen as the cause of the Soviet Union's collapse, while the latter are resented collectively for remaining an "empire" while Russia could not. Apparently they're not over losing their status as a world power yet, and Rizvan thinks they're doomed to repeat past mistakes, if they could but regain that power once again.
Rizvan seemed anxious to continue our conversation, but I managed to make some lame excuse about needing to go to the grocery store before it closed, and said good-bye. By now the world had been saved from its impending doom on television, or so I assumed. I turned it off and left for home, without really knowing for sure.
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| So I made good on my threat: I am now the proud owner of two two-week old (more or less) female gerbils, fresh from the pet store as of this morning. I picked them out quickly, randomly pointing at the brown one and the lighter-gray one before I could let myself sit and stew about the decision, as I knew I could. It wasn't until I was out in the parking lot with my new purchases before I started second-guessing myself: should I have gotten a black one too? What if these two missed their other siblings? Shouldn't I go back in and get another one? I got myself out of the parking lot before I could spend another ten dollars, but I'm still considering going back. After all, aren't three more fun than two? What if one of them dies, and leaves the other one all alone? Kind of the same logic that goes into having three, instead of two, real biological children. 
So! That means I have at least two gerbils, for now, that need names! Like I said, they're both girls (hopefully), and one's a light brown with dark brown underside and feet, while the other one is a light gray/dirty white, with red eyes. Hurry up with suggestions before I accidentally start calling them something, and it sticks. | | |
| There's a family reunion in Lancaster, PA, on Memorial Day. If I don't find a ride--or maybe even if I do--I think I'll try some kind of alternative transportation.
Like... a bike? 
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