A Conversation. February.


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?

Ok, so I sorta traced, with Jim's help, one of Tanner and my baby pictures, circa 1995. (Tanner's and mine? Little grammatical help?) Whatever. It looks cool and styley and artsome; Junoesque, l'd like to think, but that is praise too high to give oneself. Shoutouts to Jeff and his fellow Harris family peeps for the sweet softwares! Let me know what you think, but only if what you think is that it's good.

Just a quickly quickly update on my life for anyone who might be interested. First off, this week will see me teaching a more advanced class that ever I've taught before. I'm maybe a little worried, mostly because my students for the week have been my classmates in the past. More excitingly, I just got a call from Office Supply Store saying that they want me to work for them, so as soon as I come in and pass the criminal background check and the drug screening, I will be a bona fide member of the work force. Technically, I've been employed since I was 14, but it was all dance teaching, which, despite paying $15 an hour now that I'm all experienced and grown up, was a) too much fun to feel like work and b) only a couple hours a week. So this is my first for real job. I figure I've spent enough money on pencils and notebooks over the years that I might as well start getting some of that back. School starts at the end of September, at which time I move in to Trinity house and start sharing a room half the size of my current room with a stranger from Corvallis. That's about all I can think of just now.

Jim and l are very happy together.

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.

For those of you hasslin' me about this nigh-on-a-month-long hiatus, I offer you a) my sincerest appologies and b) the following excuses: I am crazy busy just now. I have been taking this Tchaikovsky dance camp with good ol' JKD, so that fills up my life from 9:30 to 1:00, after which I take a bus or otherwise get myself to the U of O for this amazing Linguistics class about different varieties of English. So that takes us up through about 5 pm, after which I have to get all the homeworks in order and fit in all the screwing around and goofing off I couldn't do earlier. Besides, now we have a pool and a hot tub, so that takes time, too. Oh, and these days I have friends with whom I actually hang out, which is new and exciting for little old homebody me. In case that's not enough reason, consider that now I'm back, I can't rely on being exotic and foreign to buy me readers. These days, I actually have to come up with some content.

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.

Acknowledgment #1: It has been a long time since my last blog post
Acknowledgment #2: I ought to have posted something here at least saying I made it home.


...

I'm home!

One week from now, I'll be on an airplane.

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

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.

I'm not exactly sure why, but there was no school today. Thus, seeing as I'd been up 'til 2 last night teaching myself to sew, I slept until noon, rolled out of bed (literally), ate spaghetti for lunch, and went into town for a dance class. I was almost ten minutes late, but it proved moot as the doors were locked and no one seemed to be there. Thinking maybe it was supposed to be at 2:30 rather than 1:30, I wandered into town, where some sort of a cycling race seemed to be going on. Two scoops of ice cream and an hour later (green tea and strawberry, incidentally), I wandered back to the still-locked-up building, then went back to the house. (I don't call it home because it's not. I haven't done that all year, so no disrespect to this family.) I ate some yogurt and pretzels, then plugged in my lappy, cracked my knuckles, and started typing. Later, I'll probably meet Ellie for some vodna fajka, since we all got our allowances Monday and all that money's just sitting in my wallet.