summer in the city.

After some Franzia last summer, Sara, Claire and I decided it would be a fantastic idea to make a list of our goals for the summer. Some were brilliant, some were ridiculous, some were unrealistic (such as 'learning Meg and Sara the domestic nonsense') and all made me extremely happy when I randomly discovered this list on my computer today. My favorites are in bold. The list is as follows:
(I would like to give our scribe, Sara, a shout out for her use of such colorful language.)

Bobby – the movie
Adventure Nature Hikes
Call Sara’s mom to find out cool Minneapolis places to go. Like lakes and shit
Picnics outside
Michael’s house (slash Loring Park and free concerts)
Pewaukee for Linda Steve drama
Lake of the Isles
Aunt Mary wants to show us around
Wayzata
St. Paul downtown = real cool man
Minneapolis Public Library = free music
Farmer’s Market at Guthrie
Giant Cherry In A Spoon
Summit Ave
St. Paul in general
White Bear Lake
Dude, Canada
Lake Minnetonka. Network = get onz boat!!!!!!
Gay 90’s
Michael’s boat in redwing
Michael networks with rich friends
Make megan friends.
MIA!
Say “all up onzies”
Dresses allllllllways.
Fresh flowers yo
Good food
Wine nights
Hot TUBBBBBBB
Biking!!!!
Downtown bike riding. Please learn
Bike riding during sunrise
Sunday morning brunch
Teach Meg and Sara how to cook. Please learn us the domestic nonsense.
Walker Art Museum!!!!
Science Museum yo
Barnes and Noble by IDS
Music festivals
State FAIR
Lollapolooza
Camping Trip
Camp on a beach
Camping in Boundary Waters
Nature Hikes to prepare for Boundary Waters
Emo dress up day
Indie concertzzz
Rilo Kiley May 22
Kate Nash May 5
Steve-Linda-Betz visits MPLS!
Ok, but Chicago
Hot Library make out. Pushed up against the book shelf wall. Hottay

Some were accomplished, some were not, and some had no chance from the very beginning.

Methinks the list needs to be expanded for this summer. Suggestions?

there's a storm gathering.

"The clouds are dark, and the winds are strong, and I am afraid. Some who advocate for same-sex marriage have taken the issue far beyond same-sex couples. They want to bring the issue into my life. My freedom will be taken away."

Advertising fail by the National Organization for Marriage, a group opposed to same-sex marriage.

Not only did the organization succeed at making itself look ridiculous, this ad inspired a whole slew of parodies on YouTube and received media coverage galore, none of it positive.

I prefer Mr. Colbert's version:
(Pretend that response is spelled correctly in the title)



There are approximately 30 lines I could quote here. Just watch it.

slaughterhouse 90210

My favorite interwebz find of the week is a tumblr site that mashes up TV stills with quotes from famous literature. Pure brilliance. Some of my favorites are as follows:

“It seems to me if you add music (and books, probably, and films, and plays, and anything that makes you feel) at the center of your being, then you can’t afford to sort out your love life, start to think of it as the finished product. You’ve got to pick at it, keep it alive and in turmoil, you’ve got to pick at it and unravel it until it all comes apart and you’re compelled to start all over again. Maybe we live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as a consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship.”
— Nick Hornby, High Fidelity




“All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I’m not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are.”
— Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time




“It was not the passion that was new to her, it was the yearning adoration. She knew she had always feared it, for it left her helpless; she feared it still, lest if she adored him too much, then she would lose herself, become effaced, and she did not want to be effaced, a slave, like a savage woman. She must not become a slave. She feared her adoration, yet she would not at once fight against it.”
— D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover




“I hate how I don’t feel real enough unless people are watching.”
— Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters




“Strange children should smile at each other and say, “Let’s play.””
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night




“Alice wonders if other women in the middle of the night have begun to resent their Formica.”
— Barbara Kingsolver, Pigs in Heaven




“There are white folks, and then there are ignorant motherfuckers like you.”
—Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father




“Maybe the first time you saw her you were ten. She was standing in the sun scratching her legs. Or tracing letters in the dirt with a stick. Her hair was being pulled. Or she was pulling someone’s hair. And a part of you was drawn to her, and a part of you resisted—wanting to ride off on your bicycle, kick a stone, remain uncomplicated. In the same breath you felt the strength of a man, and a self-pity that made you feel small and hurt. Part of you thought: Please don’t look at me. If you don’t, I can still turn away. And part of you thought: Look at me.”
— Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

dónde el corazón es.

I might just be overly emotional from watching Rachel Getting Married and listening to too much Bon Iver, but I'm ready to come home.

I somehow skipped the standard homesick stage the first two months of my trip. This is probably due to my general flexibility and ability to accept change, but a feeling's been creeping up on me the last week or two. It feels like I've done my Argentine thing and that now it's time for me to get back to my city and the people I love.

The Spanish language is beautiful. It's far more melodic than English, and it suits how quickly I talk but I'm ready to be able to communicate with others without having to translate in my head first. Saying something in Castellano correctly is gratifying, but my true love is always going to be the English language. I miss having conversation skills more advanced than a 3rd grader. I find it hard to establish an actual friendship with Argentines beyond small talk because both sides lack the skills to talk about more than where we're from and what we're studying. I miss having the ability to be sarcastic. I miss wordplay and puns, as my English is so frequently peppered with them, whether they're bad or good. I miss analyzing the small nuances of language because here I'm preoccupied with just trying to figure out the language as a whole. I miss understanding everything I read, see and hear. This may just be laziness, but it's hard to go from being extremely capable at everyday interactions with others and the world around me to being an infant who still gets excited when she manages to get her point across the way she wanted to.

I miss my family so much. The dysfunctional family interactions in Rachel Getting Married, not being home for Easter and an hour long Skype chat got to me a lot today. I miss calling my mom to talk about nothing. With the difficulty of communicating frequently from South America, it feels like every phone call has to have a purpose -- I have to fill them in on exactly what I've been doing, where I've been, how school is, and other black and white details of my life. I miss being able to call just to tell my mom about a cute kid I saw, or to text my sister about something stupid that made me laugh, or to call my dad every single morning, just to have someone to talk to while I'm walking to school. I want to be home to see my sister go to prom for the first time, and to convince her that her hair really isn't as bad as she thinks it is. (It won't be, El. Everyone's hair looks terrible for prom.) I want to continue my mom, sister and I's tradition of drinking coffee, eating cookies in the front row and becoming overly emotional as we watch my dad finish the marathon, something that's so important to him. And yes, we're very aware of how ridiculous it is that we sit and eat cookies while we watch him run. I want to wake up, drink coffee with my mom and do the crossword, while we both pretend to be gracious about the other one doing it. I want to sit and watch TV with my dad, while he falls asleep and then pretends he didn't, because it's so incredibly comforting and peaceful to just be with someone.

I want my fantastic network of friends to play a more prominent role in my life again. Two line messages on Facebook and Twitter only get me so far. I want face to face conversations, and I want wine nights where everyone tries to sound smarter than they actually are, and I want physical human contact. God, I miss hugs. I've met some amazing people on this trip, but it's a group of individuals who were smashed together in a foreign country and almost forced to be friends. It took me about 20 years to find friends that I work with, and now that I have, I am so so grateful for them. I want a repeat of last summer. Sitting on Claire's couch at UC and drinking wine on Sara's porch seemed like the most natural thing in the world. After only a few months of friendship, I felt more comfortable at their respective houses than I did at my own. Granted, Melrose wasn't exactly a palace, but friendship that you fall into that easily doesn't come around very often. I am so excited about living with them this year because that too feels like the most natural thing in the world. I can't really imagine not doing it. I do, however, miss my roommates right now and even the high level of energy that goes along with them. I miss making a giant pot of coffee and sitting on our shitty couches watching Sex and the City in the morning. And then making another pot. And another. I want to have another Norwegian Potluck with Claire, Michael, Nick and Corey. I might even bring something other than Swedish fish. I miss making indie jokes. A girl on my program asked me what indie meant a few days ago. I want to be able to text John every little thing that pops into my head, just because I can. I want to have game night. I want to take too many pictures at Pink House, which will now always be referred to as La Casa Rosada after this trip. I miss Wednesday nights. I want to eat too much Chinese food and pretend that I'm going to do homework in a litttttle bit, as I soak up my best friends instead.

I miss Minneapolis in the spring. Campus gets a different air about it -- a feeling of freshness and excitement that I love. I want to see people wearing shorts when it's 45 degrees out, as only Midwesterners can, because they're so thrilled about the first signs that the eternal winter is over. I want to go running in the slush, and when it warms up, I want to sit in the grass outside the Alumni Center, doing absolutely nothing, just being and observing and enjoying. I want to ignore the bus and walk to school from my house, just for the thrill that listening to my iPod on a crisp Minnesotan day brings me.

I miss being able to walk into a restaurant and being able to order a glass of water, without having to buy a bottle of it. I miss cups of coffee that are bigger than 'an ant's ass,' as Calla so eloquently calls the thimbles that pass for coffee cups here. I miss being able to walk into a Barnes & Noble and waste the day away in my favorite way. I'm so deprived of US media that I almost bought a Vanity Fair magazine a few days ago for US $25. I miss knowing about and somewhat understanding pop culture. I miss the food. Oh god, I miss the food. Argentina has incredible pizza and steak, but other than that, you can basically either have a ham sandwich or a ham and egg sandwich. Going into an American grocery store for the first time is going to be a very overwhelming experience for yours truly.

I'm listening to all 146 songs on my iTunes that involve the word 'home' in the song or album title. This has to be healthy.

This post has the potential to seem whiny, but it isn't...it's nostalgic. I love Argentina and have learned so many things on this experience -- about this culture, about the United States and the impact it has on the rest of the world, and about myself and the way that I behave when I'm placed in a completely foreign situation.

But most of all, I've developed a new appreciation for where I'm from and the people I've surrounded myself with. So here's to the city that I love and the people that I love even more.

And here's to attempting to write my actual thoughts down on paper more often. It's so much easier for me to just comment on other people's thoughts.

I love you.
Megan

just workin' on my fitness.

I think I need to start actually writing about Argentina.

Today I bought a membership at a gym called MEGATLON, which for some reason is a name I feel like I have to bellow. This expense derived from a desire to actually do something good for myself after sitting dormant for two months and a desire to combat my diet that has consisted almost solely of pizza, McNuggets and cerveza. Evidently that's not fantastic for your body. Who knew?

I awkwardly fumbled through the actual purchase of the membership, informed the people at the desk that yesss, the United States is actually having economic trouble right now and wandered into the most intimidating gym I've ever seen. 6 floors of perfectly thin, non sweaty people working out greeted me. Argentines are notorious for their ability to look calm, cool and collected in any situation and somehow after 5 miles on the treadmill, none of these girls' hair had even moved.

Anyway, the point of this entry is to describe the instructor of my 'BODY PUMP' class. This 5'2" stocky, muscular woman marched around the room in a pink dress bellowing in Spanish at people. On second thought, she may be the reason I feel like I need to say MEGATLON and BODY PUMP in a thunderous voice. She was teaching her third class in a row, was not fazed in the least bit, and did Tarzan-like screams (AIIIIIIIIIIIII!) every time a song hit a high point. In other words, she scared the shit out of me. And I loved every second of it. My not calm, not cool, not collected self danced around awkwardly with all the other Argentines, exchanging eye rolls when we were tired and didn't feel like a foreigner for once. Exercising doesn't require any conversation..it's mainly based off of body language and gestures, which I have become an expert at here.

they're barbie girls, in a barbie world.

An interesting article on The Washington Post examines Mattel's efforts to reach out to other economies, in light of lagging sales in our failing one.

This international toy manufacturer has its sights focused Eastward, toward the 1.3 billion potential consumers in China.

Trying to find a new consumer base didn't surprise me at all, with the current financial situation. What did make me pause, however, is the age demographic that Mattel is targeting.

The manufacturer of Barbie is trying to seduce 20-30 year old urban, professional women to their sparkly, rose-colored world. The new six-story flagship store in Shanghai has accessories, upscale gourmet chocolates and a wedding dress designed by Vera Wang.

"Chinese consumers barely know anything about Barbie except that Barbie is a pretty doll," the general manager of Barbie Shanghai was quoted as saying. The notion that Barbie is only a play thing for young girls has been left behind in North America, and Mattel is attempting to rewrite her story.

They're targeting girls of all ages, from wide-eyed 6 year olds to their more jaded mothers with the idea that Barbie-land is paradise. To do this, they've included a spa and a restaurant along with pink everything in their brand new, overwhelming (to me at least) store in Shanghai.

25 year old Cui Xiujao says "Barbie attracts me because she's very feminine and independent. She's in charge of her own life. And she has many different roles. But most important are her pretty clothes."

The store seems to be a success so far, as mobs of young women have been flocking there every weekend. If Mattel can pull off marketing Barbie to 20-somethings, I'm going to be more than impressed. Barbie's been around forever with few changes, and the brand needed some major revitalization. Changing their target market from 8 and younger to 20 and older takes the company in a completely different direction, which was necessary after Mattel's sales were down 11% in the fourth quarter of last year. If the company succeeds in getting 30 year old women to buy into their glitzy, pink, princessy world, more power to them.

you have the most beautiful face

do you realize that you have the most beautiful face
do you realize we're floating in space
do you realize that happiness makes you cry
do you realize that everyone you know someday will die

you realize that life goes fast.