....

2009-03-30T19:43:00.000-07:00

I'm never ever ever going to get over the regret and bitterness and nostalgia and beauty of school year abroad. It was an awful and painful year but everything had so much fucking meaning, every little thing.

music

2009-03-30T19:41:00.000-07:00

Pretty much every song on my itunes makes me insanely nostalgic for some period of my life. Even if it was, like, last week. (Or at least a few months ago.) I don't know what I'm going to do with myself.

this absinthe is bullshit!

2009-03-16T23:46:00.001-07:00

So on my trip I took Cara to the city I lived in for a year in France, asked directions from a hooker in Amsterdam's red light district, smoked some really good and totally legal weed in a cafe, forgot where the tram stopped and took a terrifying ride from an insane taxi driver who I thought sure was going to rob or stab me back to the youth hostel, tried flaming absinthe in the bar next to the moulin rouge, which made me throw up and didn't get either of us the least bit drunk, got my hair cut really short in Paris, and joined the mile high club on the way home.

I feel like a got a lot of life experience-y shit done like things to check off a list, but I wish I could have interacted more with French people besides like waiters and hotel owners. I know Cara was disappointed that I didn't talk to people in the bars, but my french is really bad now and I'm embarrassed to resort to English. It might have been a better experience if I'd had enough money to buy more than like two drinks in a night...alcohol really improves foreign language ability.

A thought I've had since the year I lived in Rennes: having AvPD and living in a foreign country makes me realize what it's like for people living with social anxiety. Every little task like going to the bank or ordering food is a big scary ordeal that you have to prepare yourself for every single time. I guess for normal people those things are hard too when you don't know the language, but I think most people in my school were pretty comfortable with it by the time we had to go home.

je vais au paris!

2009-03-08T09:31:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be in Paris/Rennes/Amsterdam for the next week...knowing me I won't be able to go without stopping in a few cybercafes though.

telemarketing for gay marriage

2009-03-04T17:31:00.000-08:00

So I did the phone banking thing last night and it was one of the most difficult things I've ever done, but I'm glad I did. I had to psych myself up before every call but I could usually find something to say once I started talking to the person. Most of them were aware of what was going on but when they weren't we were supposed to give this whole speech bringing them up to date so I half read off the script and half improvised for that, which I think will help a lot if I decide to do the door-to-door thing again. Most people were really nice and wanted to help even if they couldn't, but this one girl told me really rudely that people had been calling her every week and she kept saying she couldn't do it because she was in school all through summer. I told her I would make a note of that, but I don't know if anyone will make a note of my note, they urged us to be quite pushy. I might have gotten more results if I hadn't been too nice with people, but I did end up with a good handful of yes's and maybe's for both canvassing and phone banking which was in line with what everybody else got.

Oh and my girlfriend's mom is a complete crackhead. She friended her on facebook and told her that her dad isn't her real father, when it's quite obvious that they look alike, and strangers think that she and her cousin on her dad's side are sisters, plus she inherited his migraines. WTF.

jehovah's witnessing for gay marriage

2009-03-02T18:57:00.000-08:00

Somehow I got roped into canvassing door to door to protect the Cleveland Domestic Partnership Registry. I know that sounds like the most terrifying thing ever for an avoidant but I was under the impression that I wouldn't have to do it alone (they said we would do it with partners) and I figured I could do it with Cara. As it turns out, we had to do it with someone who's canvassed before, and your "partner" is just the person who does the other side of your street. At that point I wanted to run out of the room but they'd already paired me off with somebody and running away would have called more attention to myself then marching to my doom.

It was awkward at first but the guy, David, that I got paired with was really nice. He was like my parents' age or a little younger and he kept asking me about school, but we'd also seen some of the same movies and we bonded over trying to actually find where the houses were supposed to be. He also had a whole bunch of extra clothes in his car and he bundled me all up in them because he said I looked cold.

The street was in Little Italy, which has a lot of Case Western students and a lot of older, extremely Catholic Italians. The first apartment we did together and didn't get the people we expected to be there (we had a list of registered voters), but instead two students. We did the whole spiel on them anyways and they were really nice and supportive of our cause, but neither of them were actually registered to vote in Cleveland. After that we had to split up and do opposite sides of the street, and at the next like 12 houses I went to no one answered the door.

Finally I got to a house that had huge cross and a faded Cleveland Indians sticker on the door...and I associate both religious people and sports fans with homophobia so that house worried me but I banged on the door anyways. Somebody yelled something from inside but didn't come to the door. I waited a little bit because I didn't want someone to come out as I was leaving and think I was playing ding-dong-ditch or something. Just as I was about to give up hope a guy poked his head out of another door on the porch and told me the other door didn't open. The guy was wearing boxers and a wife beater and looked kind of annoyed but I went ahead and tried to say my speech, stuttering and mixing up a bunch of the words but hopefully getting my point across. As it turns out he said he always votes in favor of gay marriage...at least I think he did. The thought crossed my mind afterwords that he might have had the impression that I was campaigning to have the issue put on the ballot so the registry could be revoked. The whole thing was kind of a blur but I'm pretty sure he was on our side though. I could tell he was kind of annoyed but I still had to ask him if he felt strongly enough that he would donate time or money to the cause, which he didn't. I was supposed to get his phone number anyways but I was to scared to ask, I didn't want to bother him anymore. I thanked him like six times which was really embarrassing overkill.

After that I tried a few more houses but no one else answered. It was freezing and my knuckles hurt so fortunately it was time to go back to Arabica and discuss how it went. Most people hadn't had too much luck either with people being home so I guess my experience was pretty average. I signed up to call more volunteers tomorrow night to see if they can do the next canvassing session (I can't because I'll be in France!) Normally the phone scares me more than talking to people in person, but at least I'll be able to read off of a script, and we'll only be calling people who already said that they want to volunteer at some point. I kind of want to canvass again too sometime just because it was kind of disappointing (and relieving!) that nobody was home. Maybe I can practice my speech some more until then....

2009-02-26T09:02:00.000-08:00

Hello Hanna,

Thanks again for joining with ATI. Now, with the economic crisis in the USA, the programs are mainly being held in Tampa, FL. Is it possible for your to attend March 25-27th in Tampa? Any other dates in Tampa are fine as well.

Also, we provide volunteer teaching experience with the online program, so let me if I can arrange this in your area. I can also have yoru online instructor give you a call and help you get started with the online program.

As you may already know, ATI programs also include job placement. You can go ahead and forward me your resume and picture, and let me know more about the top five countries you want to teach, and when you want to begin. I am here to support you all the way.

Kindest Regards,
Jonathan Lazarus, Director,

American TESOL Institute, USA
8875 Hidden River Parkway
Suite 300
Tampa, Florida 33637
United States
Main tel: 813 975 7404
Main fax: 813 464 8032
Toll Free inside the USA: 1-877-748-7900
AmericanTESOLInstitute@hotmail.com

So it looks like I'm roadtripping to Tampa after all, but for three or four days instead of two, which is doable. He keeps pushing the online option, but I've never had good luck with online classes...I guess I just don't trust myself.

i might work at villa, but someday i'm going to live in a villa

2009-02-23T18:51:00.000-08:00

I'm so bored, even the internet isn't entertaining me. I always get sad on the nights before I have to go to work. I love school so much, next to work it feels like a fucking vacation.

vanity

2009-02-21T20:50:00.000-08:00

Why the hell not? I bet you're all curious. Ok so you probably weren't but that's ok.

i woke up with a mohawk this morning

2009-02-21T20:32:00.000-08:00

You know it was a good night when you wake up with weird shit in you hair and don't remember how it got there (fortunately it was just wax, my head wasn't shaved or anything). I also cut Cara's hair but I think my mad skills need improvement. We tried to teach Dessie how when you make a drug deal, you're supposed to say "are you holding" instead of "do you have any weed," and she was like "do you have any hold?" That was from earlier in the night, the part I can remember before she made me prove my beer chugging abilities.

I haven't actually had fun like that in a really, really long time. I'm feeling pretty good about life at the moment, except for one fly in the ointment that I won't talk about here on the off chance that the wrong person might read this public blog. The cats are doing well thank god...oh god I hope they make it through this fucking stupid mistake.

a real post

2009-02-20T17:09:00.001-08:00

I miss my kitties so much! I woke up this morning and found vomit with undigested red stuff in it in the bathroom, and after a second I figure it might be from the flowers that Cara bought me for V-tines day. So I looked up tiger lilies and found out that they're really dangerous for cats and can cause kidney failure. We had put them up on a high shelf because obviously we don't want the cats getting into any kind of plants, but as they wilted some of the petals and parts fell down on the floor around the bookshelf. So I took Josie and Smokey to the vet where they gave them activated charcoal to absorb the poison in case they hadn't already vomited it all up (to both of them of course because it's impossible to tell if it was one, the other, or both), and then I brought them to the 24 hour clinic for them to be put on IV fluids and watched over the weekends. The vet gave me a choice of keeping them at the regular vet with a pump that would give them their fluids when they need it and someone to check on them twice a day over the weekend, but WTF? That doesn't sound very safe at all. I guess that's the only option for people who can't afford the 24 hour clinic, which costs about twice as much. Luckily I had money in my savings account for spending in France...now I have less but it'll still be ok. I think I'll just sell all the stocks my grandpa bought me and buy them back if I have any leftover money after spring break. I know that doesn't sound like a very sound investment plan at all but I got all high on life when Cara started getting better and bought those tickets to France and now I can't stop spending my money...I can't stop the feeling that I have to make it up to her for not being able to turn off the stupid car alarm when it was going off in a car I was sleeping in because I'm so antisocial and get sapped of energy at parties. And now I feel terrible about letting my cats eat the lilies! :(

Also the class I was supposed to take next week in Cincinnati to get certified as an ESL teacher got canceled due to low enrollment. For awhile I had the crazy idea of roadtripping down to Tampa Florida because I thought they had a class in Tampa every time they had a class in one of the locations around the country (the classes in different cities are spaced out throughout the year). The dropdown list to choose a location said "[city] or Tampa" for each one so I thought it would be the same, a 3 day class from 9-5 each day. Instead, the Tampa classes are over the weekends so it would be two 12 hour days in a row. There's no way I could ever make a 17 hour drive, spend two days taking 12 hour classes, and then make another 17 hour drive back with no time to recover, even if Cara was helping me. So the next one in the near future that's anywhere near Cleveland is in Charleston, South Carolina exactly a month after the one that would've been in Cinci (it would even be on the same days of the week because Feb. and March have the same dates this year...and they both have a Friday the 13th!) That's only an 11 hour drive and the class is spread out over 3 days so with Cara's help driving, I can handle that.

OK HOLY CRAP! In the process of trying to find the SC location on Google Maps, I found they now have the highest quality satellite images of different cities yet. Someone on some message board from like, Australia, mentioned that awhile ago, but at the time I couldn't find any for my city that weren't really blurry and taken from a helicopter. But now they have them in Charleston (so I can see exactly what the place I'm going to looks like) so I had to check and see if they have them in Cleveland Heights, which they do!

The building on the right is where I live! I wonder how often they update these things, and who the random dude standing outside is.

So I moseyed on down the street and found my parents' house....

That one's a little bit harder to see.

There it is from the other angle...the monstrosity in the driveway is my parents' car. That would be so unbelievably weird if one of my family members were in that picture!

One good thing happened today (besides finding freaky deaky dutch pictures of my neighborhood)...I got my new RAM in the mail last night and today I actually managed to install it without breaking anything. Now my piece of shit computer runs pretty much as good as I'd like it to...not as good as Cara's mac of course but well enough that I don't feel like I need to get a new one. I might also buy another RAM chip like the one I got to put in the empty space, but to replace the original RAM chip that came with the computer, so it would run even faster (that sounded really confusing...basically computers come with two spaces for RAM chips, one of them filled, and then you can add another one and/or replace the one you have with a bigger one. I got the bigger one for the empty space but I can still get another bigger one and replace the smaller one that came with the computer, to make it perform even better).

25 facts

2009-02-20T17:03:00.000-08:00

I couldn't think of anything to say in my new blog, so I'm copying over the "25 facts" meme that I wrote for facebook a few weeks ago. So if there are psychforums people reading this I guess you guys can get to know me a little bit better!

1. ~~Nobody tagged me in any of these~~, but I've read everybody's even if I don't even know the person very well. I guess that sounds kinda creepy but afterall this is facebook!

2. I think the first blog I ever had was on blogspot, and after that I had a "blurty" which was one of those livejournal clones. How random is that? I used to write like every detail of my boring life when I was a high school freshman. They deleted that site or I'd go back and read it! I've written in my current LJ once in the past two years.

3. I've been to church (as in gone to a service, not just been *in* a church) exactly four times in my life. That was four too many! I went through a phase where I thought religions that didn't involve Jesus Christ would work better for me but then I realized they were full of just as much shit. Ok yeah people are going to get mad at me for that one, so I'll just say that I don't literally think they're all bullshit, they just...didn't do anything for me. Which makes me feel like there's something wrong with me sometimes.

4. I was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck and I had to be delivered with a big pair of baby head tongs (ok so yeah I know they're not called that). I used to claim that was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me and be proud that I have a sort of interesting medical story to tell, but now I'm glad that I don't really.

5. I used to hate my name because nobody can pronounce or spell either my first or my last name right. Now I think it's cool, especially with my first name and middle name (Mariah...haha firefox thinks that's spelled wrong) put together. It's like a form of Anna Maria or Ann Marie or like a million other names, but it's also unique. I also love that I have a Saint's day even though my name is only a form of the name Anne. My French host mother told me that (her name is also a form of Anne so we had the same day) and I thought it was really cool even though I'm not even remotely Catholic.

6. I have an unhealthy obsession with how I could have done things differently in high school...like I'm finally emotionally mature enough and I wish I could go back and do things over again. I had this dream a few weeks ago where I applied to do another year at SYA and I was making a bunch of friends at my school and getting along really well with my host family but then the night before classes started I realized the teachers would recognize me and I couldn't hide all year, so I'd have to run away. And then I scared myself so much that I woke up.

7. I can't watch TV on TV. My family didn't have a TV the whole time I was growing up (no I don't think this makes me better than you) and I guess I'm just more used to books and movies that you can read/watch from beginning to end without interruption or skipping around. I get really into a TV show and watch the whole thing on DVD or download them, but the concept of watching an episode here and there is foreign to me...it would be like reading random chapters out of a novel!

8. I have this weird thing where I get really sad about inanimate objects. Like I seriously cried one time when I bought a shitty cell phone and I had to return it because I hated it so much. I felt so bad that no one would ever want it because it couldn't take pictures or play real ringtones. But I told myself that some old lady bought it and used it to call 911 when she fell down and broke her hip and it actually ended up saving someones life! Yes I'm aware this makes me sound seriously pathetic.

9. One of my biggest "pet peeves" is the whole" girls who like sports are lesbians" stereotype. It probably bothers me way more than it should. When I was in grade school I was the only person (male or female) I knew who didn't play a sport, and I wasn't exactly made fun of, just...people gave me baffled looks and asked things like "so what do you do for exercise?" (Ok so that's actually a reasonable question....) So I associate sports with happy well adjusted all-American kids and me being a weird clumsy outcast.

10. This quiz is sooooo self-indulgent. I can't imagine anyone would want to read any of these facts about me. And I keep coming up with "facts" that are just things that I hate about myself. I'll just get it out of the way all at once by saying that I have a horribly low self-esteem. I always have, well at least since I started going to grade school. Ok here's a real fact: I have a really hard time forgiving my parents for homeschooling and sheltering me when I was little. It's really fucked me up in a lot of ways.

11. I call my car Gwennie but her full name is Gwennaig (gwen-ah-eeg). That's the name of a girl who was in my drawing class in France. It was the coolest name I could think of that I wouldn't want to saddle an actual kid with.

12. Speaking of kids, I really want some! My stupid hormones keep reminding me that I'm getting old and in my natural state I would have already had like at least six (and probably died in childbirth). I hate that me and Cara have to be like ten times more financially ready that anyone else before we have kids. Also I used to say I was going to adopt a kid but now I really want to carry some of my own for whatever reason, and I hate that I have to feel bad and conflicted about that when perfectly wonderful straight couples conceive their own children every day without a second though.

13. I bought a lottery ticket on the last Friday the 13th but I didn't win...I guess that proves I'm not evil, which was disappointing. :(

14. At the end of this month I'm going to Cincinnati to take a three day class and get my certification as a TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) teacher. I really hope this works out so I can leave my crappy job and get a job in another country or at least get a meaningful job in the US. I know not having a college degree makes it harder, but I'd love to work wherever I'm needed the most, not just in like Paris or wherever the party's at. Even though I love to party in Europe. I'm going to Amsterdam over spring break after all.

15. Speaking of spring break, I absolutely can't wait to show Cara France. It's going to be so amazing to see the places I love with the girl I'm in love with and yes that's extremely cheesy but whatever. It's so much fun planning a trip together and I've never been happier with anything I've purchased (except maybe my car because it's so damn nice not taking the RTA ever again). (Oh and I've never gotten to join the mile high club before...just sayin...)

16. I'm jealous of everyone who stuck with college for more than a year...it's so weird that I should be a junior now and a lot of people in my class are already graduating. I feel so pathetic and I don't know why I was the one who couldn't make it through.

17. I honestly don't think I'm good at anything, but I could accept my lack of artistic and academic talents if I could just be one of those people who's good at picking up on foreign languages. I've worked with Spanish speakers for the last two years and I still only know a few random words for different food products.

18. My boss Martin is seriously like one of my heroes for learning English "on the streets." He has the funniest stories about when he first moved to East Cleveland from El Salvador not speaking a word of English. Now his English isn't perfect but he's really funny and sarcastic in a way that you have to understand the nuances of the language to really get to. I'm going to miss him a lot when he leaves and I really hope whatever he does next works out for him and his family.

19. I could (and maybe sometime I will) write out a catalog of all the worst customers I get at work every day. The worst of the worst is the annoying middle aged "comedian" who says "can you not give me a receipt so I can get it for free?" (There's a sign on the register that says you get your meal for free if the cashier doesn't give you a receipt.) Followed closely by "working hard or hardly working?" I don't know which comedian said that the appropriate response is to strangle the guy and ask "breathing hard or hardly breathing?"

20. Other places I live on the web:
http://twitter.com/hannnnaa
http://hannnnaa.tumblr.com/
http://the--boxer.livejournal.com/
http://www.myspace.com/sweetnessfollows
http://www.last.fm/user/putainmerde
http://www.youtube.com/user/hannnnaa
I can't seem to resist signing up for these things. Seriously, what's the point of Twitter?

21. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed by all the things I haven't seen in my own city that I wonder what's the point of traveling.

22. I love reading maps and seeing how different places are connected to each other. I'm always like wow I didn't know that was there before or I didn't know that place was so close to that other place.

23. This list is really hard to do without getting too negative or too personal. I'm so close yet so far away! I remember once in high school I wrote one of these on livejournal but with 100 facts, and most of them were about how much I hated myself. I might still have a giant inferiority complex, but I'm no longer that shamelessly angsty!

24. Haha I just went back and read it and it made me sad. "10. I was bored and nostalgic the other day and I googled a bunch of names of people I was friends with in middle school, and they're all doing stuff like being secretary general of Model UN and writing all the articles in the school newspaper and starting anti-war demonstrations. I felt like a huge loser in comparison." How eerily familiar...except replace google with facebook stalking and replace all that high school stuff with going to Ivy League or good liberal arts schools, spending junior year abroad, and getting real jobs and shit.

25. Ok one more real fact...I wish my maternal grandmother had lived long enough for me to talk to her on an adult level, and one of my biggest motivations for doing things is to no longer be a disappointment to my father. And I'm out.