Aub's Blog
Retail Therapy
Haley from Florida: Hey, how are you doing?
Depressed Aubrianne: Well, um... I guess I'm alright.
...
Haley: This is the part where you are supposed to ask me how I'm doing.
Aubrianne: Oh. Um... so... how are you doing?
Haley: Fine.
Another Conversation. Still in February.
Haley from Florida: Hi! What's up?
Aubrianne: Not a lot.
Haley from Florida: How are you doing?
Aubrianne: I'm fine.
(a beat. Haley gestures in such a manner as to indicate that I should continue)
Aubrianne: How are you?
A Third, More Recent Conversation
Aubrianne wearing a nametag: Hello.
Random OfficeMax Customer: Hi.
Aubrianne wearing a nametag: How are you doing today?
Look what I drew!
What's what
Jim
Whether he is named after my imaginary boyfriend Jim or else is said boyfriend, I leave for you to decide for yourself, dear readers. Take into consideration, however, that Jim is my new tablet-style laptop.
Also, this is my hundred and first post. I've been at this for a while now.
l am currently getting ready for fall, applying for a job at Office Max hawking notepads and pencils and the like to pay for Jim and my expensive (despite the scholarship) education and trying to get my schedule in order in time to register for classes in the morning. Adultish-hood is not all fun and games, it seems.
l am very much looking forward to fall. lt's strange, but Jim, via his handwriting recognition software, made it known that he feels the previous sentence could be better phrased," l am very much looking forward total!"
Oh, Jim. You crack me up.
These days
To some slight degree, I feel bad about being so happy with my life back home. After all, the long gray winter can never compare to the living green of summer, and foreign lands can never hold the same place in my heart as home. Home! How I dwelt on the word until it seemed to have a meaning beyond what any dictionary would tell you.
All that is to say, Rotary, you were totally wrong about "reentry" being a challenge. How much of this is my fault for not making Slovakia a kind of home? If I'd been a better exchange student, might I miss Slovakia? I do miss some of my friends (not Slovaks so much as Americans and moja mila Australcanka), but frankly, I'm having too good a time being back here to devote much thought to it. Sorry, guys. As good an experience this year was, I didn't engage and, as a result, I didn't really get much out of it. I am glad it's over, but simultaneously guilty for being glad, if that makes any sense. I spent all year whining about it, which probably didn't help me get past it.
Answer me one thing, though; I made it through the whole year, thus qualifying my time as a "successful" exchange. How can it be successful if I personally failed so miserably?
Anyway, to bring it back around, my life is friggin' sweet these days, with kind of the vibe of a mellow acoustic guitar accompanied melody in D major being played under a tree in the park while passing around a jar of lemonade on a pleasantly warm day in mid-July. Close your eyes and picture it. There. Just thought I'd bring that back up here at the end and end this puppy on an "up" kind of note.
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgment #2: I ought to have posted something here at least saying I made it home.
...
I'm home!
Slovanglish
All the exchange students, including myself, developed a strange little jazyk all our own. Dubbed "Slovanglish" or "slovangičtina", depending on who you're talking to, it's basically angličtina, but about half the slovos come out po slovensky, which could be a maly communication problem when I get back home. The nouns are the worst, besides those funky little words that you just toss out into the sentence. I'm going to be saying "No" a lot, but what I'll mean by "no" is generally "yes". I read that it takes at least two weeks to stop saying "yes" and "no" in your adopted language, but that seems a little kratky to me. You should have heard us all spolu. It was a little scary. If you'd stranded us all on a desert island somewhere, it would only have taken about a rok and we would have had ourselves a full-fledged jazyk all our own. I have here appended a maly glossary for you in case any of you want to študovať up a bit before I get there in case you find me yelling for you to "podˇkaj a second" or asking you to pomôc with my počitač. I'm sure it doesn’t even begin to cover the immense confusion we'll have, but sometimes a little confusion is fun too. Add to the mix the fact that I've been chilling with my Australčanka with all her fun australsky words, and my vocabulary becomes a very very zauimave place.
Bez
Without
Podˇkaj
Wait
Trošku
A little bit
Spolu
together
Dˇakujem
Thank you
Diki
Thanks
Australčanka
Australian chick, more specifically, Ellie.
Autobus
Bus
Pozor
Watch out, pay attention
Angličtina
English
Australsky
Australian
Americky
American (adjective)
Laska
Love
No
Yes
Hej
Yeah
Daj mi
Give me
Však
Something along the lines of "eh?"
Viem
I know
Zauimave
interesting
Čaj
Tea
Muž
Man
Počitač
computer
Mobil
Cell phone
Pomôc
help
Maly
Little
Vlasy
Hair
Domov/doma
Home
Nie
No
Notebook
laptop
Strašne
Horrible, horribly
kratky
Short
stači
enough
Kufor
Suitcase
Potraviny
Convenience store
Pivo
Beer
Pes
Dog
Po Slovensky
In Slovak
Po Anglicky
In English
Jesť
Eat
študovať
study
Jazyk
Language, tongue
Slovo
Word
Môže byť
May be
Rok
year
Journal Entry May 12 2008
35 days to go. It's such a strange thought-- that I will be home in 5 weeks. 5 more Mondays will see me on an airplane leaving for home, where my family will be waiting at the airport to take me back to my house. I smelled a campfire two nights ago and my mind jumped to Blair Lake in August. "It will be so good to be home," I thought. I have spent the whole year, or very nearly, elsewhere. Not physically, obviously, but as this flesh and blood and bone and skin sat in class, my mind was wandering the strange paths of dreams, either losing itself in someone else's preprinted fiction or constructing its own reality on, or perhaps in, which it could dwell. This construction sometimes bore the label of HOME, but whether the reality of home will compare to these idealized versions is one of my chief worries at the moment. I have changed. I can't quantify it, hem my differences into a tidy little box, a list of updates for the perusal of any interested party. They said tat the start of this that "reentry", as they termed it, presented a very real challenge, rivaling that of the year itself. On the other hand, it wouldn't be the first time they'd been totally wrong. Still, I'm anxious. Over the course of the year, I have forgotten somewhat how to engage people. I have been floating along in my bubble, watching myself fall into the old familiar trap of ME. I have a long, hard struggle ahead of me to get out, but I don't want to use my acquaintances here as the social lifelines on which I lean to pull myself out of the comfortable pit I have fallen into, as I do not want to form attachments to these people whom, in all probability, I will never see again. Why start making "goodbye" harder to say now? It's too late. The monkey wrench in my logic is that I said the same thing in September. A year, it seems, is not sufficient return on my investment to warrant the risk inherent in putting myself forward. I recognize this thought for what it is-- a horrid, unhealthy view of my fellow humans and a pathetic excuse to justify my insecurities. However it's taken such a deep hold on my heart… a creeping, insidious vine slowly choking the life out of me, a fungus on my soul, a deadly cancer growing in my thoughts, it's hard to see how deep we'll need to cut to get it all. My greatest fears are human interaction and loneliness, others and myself. I know what I need to do, but it's so hard to kill that needy beast in my chest that wants nothing but to sit in a corner and gnaw at bones, whispering the lie, "I am enough." There is so much more. I have tasted it.
I know what must be done.
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