It's 3:30 and with the help of G's mom the house is in really good shape to pass back to its owners. These owners arrive tonight around 10:00 p.m. G's mom (and dad, brother, and nephew) are in a hotel.

But wait!, you might say, why aren't they in the house that you closed on yesterday. Your new house with three bedrooms and that unfortunate wall that previous owners painted black? You know the one!

Um, yeah. We didn't close on it yesterday. For whatever reason (it involves paperwork, and faxing between Boca Raton and Tucson and G's dad having power of attorney for his grandmother and omg I am so glad G's the one taking care of that end of things), we had to wait. So now we're hoping to close by Monday. It's (remotely) possible it will be done by Friday. It's (depressingly) possible that it will take all of next week and into the next.

In the meantime, G and I are hopping from friend's house to friend's house (thank goodness anthropologists do their research in foreign lands every summer) and blessing our lucky stars that we made some friends here. Also for the graduate student listserv.

I am taking the next few hours to catch up on some work taiwanese drama. I am so tired that I sort of want to cry. I feel like I should tell people I love (e.g. dad) the new state of things, but I really don't have the emotional energy to engage in conversation.

I'm sitting in Bookman's. A NEW Bookman's, with a much much smaller (but more manageable) kids section. I'm not actually here for the kids section, though. I'm here because I needed a place near campus to work where I wouldn't have to pay for the privilege. Mostly I've done coffee shops where I pay for coffee, which is usually much cheaper than paying for parking by the anthro building. But it's too tight for that these days, so I was planning to spend the day at the library. But it turns out that even the library downtown makes you pay for parking after an hour. Bookman's however, has Wi-fi and tables and chairs and outlets and is 100% free. I <3 Bookmans.

Today is a little scary. At 1:00 I am meeting with some top people at my site. I had an almost disastrous phone conversation with the executive director the other day where she asked me lots of detailed questions that I stumbled a lot trying to answer. I am determined to be more prepared today.

My We'Moon '09 Gaia Rhythms For Women Datebook is now full of meetings, and I'm beginning to really feel like I'm working on My Research. But I'm still moving too slow to be able to accomplish all the different goals I set for myself this summer. I'm not really sure what to do about it. I can't NOT do any of these things ...

One day at a time, I guess.

Okay, so there's like a million awesome school things to talk about today. So awesome, in fact, that I have to list them. (A great opportunity for a pretentious list, too! Can this day get any radder?)

(adviser) I met with SS today. She is a total beast. I've been wanting her on my committee but she's been in the field all year and wants to KNOW ME before she jumps on board. So, I'm taking her class on Women in U.S. Health next semester.
I want her because these are the research interests she lists: Identity, ethnicity and community in health care; United States; HIV/AIDS; governmentality; access to health care; social movements; gender and sexuality. Did I really not immediately identify her as THE NUMBER ONE PERSON I TOTALLY HAVE TO WORK WITH?
And I read one of her articles on the "Politics of Recognition" and she talks about getting away from bounded notions of identity and "cultural competence" in health care and towards a participatory model based on reciprocity and getting target communities involved in their health care instead of some hierarchical, "here's what your people need" approach. And, can we just review? Her work is totally theoretically grounded AND applicable in meaningful (politically engaged) ways! *dorky cry of glee*
And when I met with her? I was totally cogent talking about my research! 

(bootstrap bullshit) After that I went to a talk about welfare queens. That is, the scholar - a prof who opened by telling about her teenage pregnancy, domestic violence, and use of welfare - debunked a lot of the ideas held about what mothers on welfare look like. She presented all of these amazing women - most women of color - who fate had shit on, standing up and getting degrees and pulling themselves out of poverty. She challenged the problematic scapegoating of teen moms, and the awful oxymoron of saying teen moms are too immature to be welfare recipients (cuz they'll just spend it on fake nails) - it was all very relevant to the lit review I did last semester. The PROBLEMS were that she really didn't ultimately combat the problematic bootstrap myth, the neoliberal discourse of choice, that underlies all of this demonization of poor women. And she reinforced a couple of things about Latinas (specifically that Mexican American families don't want their daughters to be educated). But, she said some really important things about higher education as, economically speaking, the best route for gov't intervention for poor people.

(committee) THEN I met with SL, my prof in the History of Anthro Theory and told him about my secret intellectual idea about writing an article type of thing defending tenure. I have this whole thing in my head. With a little more cross-cultural research, I think it could be really good. And it would be very differet from my main research, which could be good for showing my depth down the line.

(dissertation) And then there was ANOTHER talk, this one about undocumented students, and making schools safer places. They basically compared the problem with "color-blindness" (that is, teachers pretending that their students "don't have a race" and thereby erasing their identities and their real lives) to the Don't Ask, Don't Tell approach to legal status. On the one hand, I'm with it. On the other hand, however, I think that community work has to happen alongside this, because getting kids talking about legal status with OTHER kids who might tell their Border Patrol mommies and daddies is not cool. Also, I have my doubts about school as a safe space for immigrant kids of color, regardless of this silencing of legal status. I mean, as long as gang involvement is linked to immigrant status and ethnicity, and as long as suspected gang members are being targeted for policing (e.g., "go home and change that shirt, there's too much blue on it!"), I doubt that creating spaces for students to talk freely about a (stigmatized) legal status is very helpful. HOWEVER, the idea that there should be an oath for teachers protecting them from having to share information about students that might incriminate them seems like a pretty good one to me, as long as it puts no other student in danger.

(ethnography) And so I've been thinking about my research again, and I'm pretty excited about it, but that will have to wait for another entry since this one's already too long!

1) As the Red Queen said, "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" When I got to sit in on a group of high school seniors in Rincon H.S. talking about body image, I was in total awe. They were talking about Bourdieu, habitus, and decolonizing language and body. They were doing surveys, taking field notes, and becoming involved in school policy-making. It was awesome. And there wasn't a blonde head in the room.

2) I'm getting really excited about Bakhtin. Especially the ideas that Kit Woolard develops about moving bilingualism to the center rather than relegating it to the margins. When I think about my own research, and why I want to be working with immigrant Latinas, this is a big part of why (metaphorically, since I'm interested more in expectations and norms and embodiment than language, and what I'm interested in re: language has more to do with stance than codeswitching).

3) I love this. I definitely want to be an anthropologist. I just wish that I could take the pace down a notch.

4) We may be buying a house much sooner than I expected.

5) Brain, Child is an awesome magazine, and makes me remember why - even with all it's massive problems - 2nd Wave feminism still has some good things to offer. (Which is not to say I identify as 2nd Wave, cuz there's just too much wrong there, but there's some lessons I think get lost in later iterations. I'm especially fond of the importance of over-representing in your personal life - and your teaching of children - what is under-represented outside.) I was especially a fan of the article on cursing like a sailor.

6) Ack! I have class in an hour and SO MUCH LEFT TO READ! LJ, you time-succubus.

As many of you know, I am very proud of my smart cat. He quickly learned to come, sit, lie down, scratch his post, and jump up. He never quite managed fetch, but I can understand how that would be below his dignity. When I walk in the house, he runs to his "training area." I used to think that he only did it for the treats, but now I am pretty confident he likes it for the mental stimulation.

Unfortunately, this week, he learned something outside of training. He learned how to open the door to our bedroom. He jumps up and pulls down on the handle and then walks right in.

This is bad. It's bad for a couple of reasons. 1) Because the bedroom is OFF LIMITS to him, it's even written into our contract with our landlords. 2) all the indoor plants have been moved to the bedroom because he EATS them (even with the yucky spray, he chomps away happily). And so every time he managed to do it, I have to stop my work and take him out of the room. He learned this quickly, and started zooming under the bed so that I couldn't get him. Then I started locking the door and staying in there so that I wouldn't be distracted by taking him out (sadly, because there's no key I cannot lock the door and stay OUT, which might actually resolve matters because if I'm nearby, he doesn't try to get my attention doing super destructive things). Today, after 6 separate, almost desperate, attempts to get in, he decided to claw the very nice chairs in the dining room.

There is no doubt in my mind that he's doing it to get my attention. There's no doubt that he's doing it because 1) he's bored and 2) he'd like me to be near him (though not necessarily touching him).

I have toys for him. Toys like the circle with the ball in it (which he liked until he got over it), mice, etc. But I think he very well might be happier as an outdoor cat. Unfortunately for him, he will NOT be an outdoor cat. My friend's cat was eaten by coyotes the first month she was here, and now there's the mountain lion big macho wandering around, not to mention predatory birds, foxes, etc.

I know there are cat people reading this lj, do you have any advice?

- Oh! Also, when I adopted him his foster mom said she thought he would be happier as an only pet, but does anyone think that this might be resolved by getting him a buddy? (It's a longer term solution, since we can't get any more cats while we're living in this house.)

I am, I must admit, a bit uncomfortable these days. I was accepted to grad school at least partly because I had a clear idea of what I would be doing with myself. I knew what I wanted to do my research on, the timeline for school, and the career trajectory. What I didn't have was the theoretical base.

After a semester and a half here, I am beginning to get a taste of what I don't know, which has had the effect of throwing my research questions into doubt. Then, on top of that, I've been going around and collecting advice from more senior students and professors. Here is a collection of some of the advice I've received:

• don't worry about your timeline, you don't know anything yet
• you need to have a clear timeline or you will never graduate but will spend the rest of your life in grad school
• you really can't move forward with your research until you have a theoretical base
• you really can't move forward with your research until you have IRB approval
• you really can't come up with any important questions until you've really been IN the field for a while, so you should do that ASAP
• you should stop having such a narrow topic and such specific questions
• you should know exactly who and what you want to study, and it should be something with lots of research already so that you can look at it with a new theoretical base
• you need to get IRB approval ASAP and you should really be publishing and presenting at conferences: publish or die!
• you shouldn't bother with the IRB for your Master's Thesis
• you will never get IRB approval for your topic
• it shouldn't be too hard to get IRB approval for your topic, even though you're dealing with kids and sexuality
• no one will ever do an Independent Study with you during the summer
• you should do an Independent Study with me over the summer!

In short, I am living in a Choose Your Own Adventure novel.

Beyond the advice of others, I am doing my best to be comfortable with my own feelings of uncertainty, to believe wholeheartedly that the discomfort I'm feeling is healthy and indicative of learning. I am trying to let go of my need to have a plan and to accept the lack of control.
I have made some mistakes, which helps me feel a little less anxious about making more. I've made some friends and found colleagues I deeply respect that are also trustworthy. In the end, those have been the only real lessons I can imagine being universal.

And now: I have a meeting with a grad adviser to try to put together an AnthGradAZ Wiki over the summer.

He is downstairs as I write this, making a sand mandala of peace on a platform in the main Bookstore of the University of Arizona. When I went down to see his work, there was already someone there, and two people came just after me. Another woman asked a question before I did and he answered her, but then, when I asked him another question about his colors, he looked at me and asked me my name. I told him, and he said, "Sam. Did I say it right?" I said yes, and then I asked him his name and he said, "Lobsang" and then I mispronounced it, tried again, and asked, "did I say it right?" He said yes, but I am pretty positive I didn't.

Then, slowly, we started talking. He asked me about Tucson, and I tried to answer but didn't manage to say much more than that the mountains are amazing. Tears came to my eyes. I asked him where he is from and he said Tibet, then India, then Philadelphia. He said that even though the mountains here are not big, he is glad to see them. I told him that they make my heart happy. I asked him if he had fled Tibet and he looked at me and said, "Yes Sam" and smiled a slow real smile.

At some point, he turned and gave me his hand and I gave him mine as if there were no one else there. And that feeling of warm dry skin on skin, of human intimacy, of friendship, made me feel deeply happy. I love him now.

And when he asked me if I was done with my study for the day, I had to admit that I wasn't, that in fact I had a meeting in another 10 minutes. And I left.

Tomorrow I will go back and see if he is here. And if he is not, I will still look at his mandala and think about peace. And healing.

You know, rewriting stuff doesn't suck as much as it appears to. The best thing about rewriting stuff, of course, is an improved grade, but that is not nearly as personally satisfying as actually getting closer to saying 1) what I intended and 2) something reasonably coherent and interesting. Relevant critiques make the rewriting process way better, too.

I wrote five essays this week (although four of those were rewrites). Now that I'm done, I have to switch my attention to ... oh. More essays. One of these already has a very thorough first draft and has been peer reviewed, so that will make it better. The other one, unfortunately, is about a topic I care only marginally about but is being cowritten with someone I like a lot. It doesn't have anything about sex and very little about gender (two things which I realize are pretty friggin' central to my intellectual interests tho not so much my politically active interests) even though it's got lots of stuff on undocumented students. Still ... not my favorite assignment thus far.


NEWS: I have a job. My first day is tomorrow. I make $9.50 an hour and work 19 hours a week. I secretly want to take four crazy hard classes instead, but that's impossible if I've got a job. But since my job adds almost nothing to my professional development ... well. We shall see. I suspect a lot of my reticence is just the fact that I really love my full-time student life right now.

BIGGER NEWS: Guille got a job offer today. His job offer is for a real job with benefits. This has a potential impact on above secret plan, but no decisions will be made immediately. Once we can afford to water the plants again that may change.

I voted last week at an early voting station here in Tucson. It was awesome.

Voting time is always a special time of year for me. It is, for me, a family tradition far far more than a civic responsibility. My parents separated when I was 9, and my memory is pretty crappy so the sense I have of my family (mother and father and me) before then is very limited. There are fragments, mostly, of climbing the doorjamb in the red-checkered wallpaper kitchen at 10424 Inwood Ave. while someone cooked, of walking to the bus-stop with Dad, marching around the neighborhood in commemoration of women's right to vote with mom, and lying on the yellowing carpet at the top of the stairs listening to the sound of grown-up voices downstairs in the living room when I couldn't quite fall asleep alone in the dark. And election night. Of all of these memories, election night is the only one that gives me a real sense of a WHOLE family. I didn't watch a lot of T.V. as a kid (we only had broadcast and my boobtube allowance was very limited) and I went to bed early and regularly, but all bets were off on election night. That night, there WAS NO bedtime. I remember Michael Dukakis. I remember the hope against hope, the dedication to the candidate that must have been like sports fanaticism in another family. I remember the graphs and charts, the coverage. I remember my family together.

When my parents separated, that sense did not go away. All of my parents cared very deeply and, in separate houses now, the late night election coverage continued. When I was finally on my own, that interest might have dissipated, but it didn't. In Puebla, Mexico, where I was living during the 2004 election, I stayed up all night watching the L.A. news, exhausted, but unwilling to allow myself to sleep. I had cast my absentee ballot in Ohio, but I was terrified that it would not be counted. I'm still unsure it was.

This year, however, my interest has been deeper, my commitment longer, and my sense of a family tradition renewed. I went last month to the Democratic headquarters and made calls to New Mexico voters, urging them to vote early. And Monday and Tuesday, although I have no time, Guille plans to canvas making sure that Obama voters are actually getting to the polls. Last week, Guille and I sat in the car for almost an hour reviewing every candidate and prop to make sure we made no mistakes before going in and voting ourselves. For the first time in my life, I voted for a Green party candidate over a Democratic one - over a Democrat committed to women's reproductive health, no less - for a state representative. It was not an easy decision, but the sense of satisfaction, of involvement, and of family strength was great.

I can't wait for election day. I can't wait to stay up all night and hope that, unlike the only other elections I've voted in at this point in my life, this one will go my way.

I admit it. It was dumb for me to have just come on into the library and hoped to check out or watch their a VHS marked "in library." What I should have done is filled out a recall form - even though it's not checked out - a few days before I wanted to watch it. Now that I am here, it has been explained to me, even though the VHS is IN the library, even though I watched the librarian put my request in for it, I cannot check it out or watch it here.

This is dumb. And I feel dumb for waiting until this point to try and watch a video ("Girls Like Us") that I suspected would have major relevance to my paper which is now due tomorrow.

I am a different student at the University of Arizona than I was at Oberlin.

There, I really didn't care too much what anyone thought of me or my work. I did research, took classes, did homework because I found it interesting and engaging. When I got stressed, or extenuating circumstances appeared, I slowed down. I was, to some degree, organized, but only so far as the end of that semester.

Here, what people think of me and, more importantly, my work is of utmost importance. Yes, people are awesome and supportive, but that doesn't change the fact that they are my colleagues, not just for the next few years but for the rest of my life. These people will review my books. Now I do research, take classes, do homework because I can see the direct (or occasionally indirect) impact it will have on my career. That I happen to find all of the work (with some very minimal exceptions) interesting and engaging makes that a hell of a lot easier, however. Now, when I get stressed or extenuating circumstances appear (or I need to insert a little social life back into my existence), I work through it. I CAN work through it. Although I learned a ton of great coping mechanisms growing up, one that has made a major shift has been regular meditation. I am organized, not just hour by hour in my Google calendar or week by week, but semester by semester and project by project.

And I love it.

I am balanced and bookish, professional and still a bit of a social butterfly. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

From My Bday Party

Okay, greenity I didn't ignore your comment, I just wasn't ready to answer it yet.

My information about them is so profoundly limited that I have trouble imagining how my observations would be of much interest. So if, for example, I seem to condone what appears to be heinous, take it to mean that I simply do not want to condemn what I know nothing about and vice versa.

The experience in Colorado City (back from that trip to Northern Arizona last month) consisted of the following:
1) about 15 minutes of background info from a professor who has worked in the area for years (with the Kaibab Paiute, not FLDS)
2) going and buying snacks at a grocery store manned (actually womanned) by FLDS women with long hair french braided in the back and poofed up in the front and wearing long simple dresses. Just like the women whose kids got taken, if you want a popular image.
3) eating lunch at a little dive that sold FLDS tracts next to the register, one of which I picked up and read
4) more conversation afterward in the car with 7 other anthro people.

The time in the store was the most interesting to me. I immediately walked away from my companions and looked through the aisles alone. It was obvious that we were part of the same group, because of our clothes and hair and manners we stuck out like sore thumbs. Apart from the women at the registers, there were a number of women with small children doing their shopping. Despite sticking out, I was not apparently the object of their or their children's attention. But whereas my companions, who walked around speaking loudly (I thought), appeared to be pretty much ignored, when I smiled at someone or greeted them, they smiled back and talked to me as well.

The girl who rang me up struck me at the time as pretty young, but on reflection she was no younger than girls who ring me up at the Safeway in back home. What was different was my interpretation of her working and her youth. I saw her as "of a marriageable age" and working to support her family in a system that seems utterly foreign to me, as opposed to the youth I'm used to who are NOT of a marriageable age, although they are certainly old enough to have children of their own and are part of a system that I'm far more comfortable with.

In the restaurant, a young mother with two children allowed her little daughter - 2 years old? - to run to the front counter. The little girl slipped right in front of me and nailed her face in the counter. She ran back to her mother and who comforted her. What really surprised me though was that she barely made any sound as she sobbed. I glanced to my professor who tacitly confirmed my question about whether the relative silence of the girl was cultural. I can't IMAGINE a 2-year-old in my culture having that occur in that particular way and staying so quiet. It disturbed me more than anything else I saw. Certainly more than the huge vans for families with many mothers and tons of kids or than the half-built houses everywhere designed to evade taxes. I would like to think that the little girl was "naturally" like that, but her excitement, her energy in her run, suggest to me that was not the case.

Finally, the tract. It was, undoubtedly, screwed up. It begins with an explanation of the sexual evils of woman and appears to be aimed at men avoiding them, then the main part begins. The story is of a woman, dying of a disease in the most abject poverty possible with babies all around (also, apparently, starving and dying) who explains that all this has happened because she cheated on her husband (she was a second wife) with a bad (young) man.  Yes indeed. It's almost comic. My only question is whether, by refusing to accompany the FLDS preacher back to civilization to avoid people's attention (scorn? pity?) she is considered to be atoning (even though it will mean the eventual death of her children by starvation when she dies) or she is considered to be beyond help. At any rate the preacher leaves her and the thing ends with another exhortation to women to stop being such big sluts. It is beyond doubt that this is related to community conceoptions of marriage, gender, and theology, but if my experience reading ancient Greek myths has taught me ANYTHING its that what the men write ain't necessarily what the women think or live. Another example is of the FLDS women going with their children to some of the reservation casinos in the area.

So, what do I think? It sure as hell isn't a life I'd want, and I strongly doubt that the situation allows for polygamy in a happy healthy way for anybody concerned. Furthermore, I am quite concerned by the idea that people need help from the FBI agents constantly stationed there to be able to escape. I sympathize with them because they are certainly persecuted, but living outside the law means that there is no protection for those powerless INSIDE the society, and that gives me the heebee-geebies.

Now I am very curious, greenity , why you asked.

Two days ago, as I was heading out to meet the people in my department for drinks, I realized that my bank card was missing. I knew I'd seen it since the last time I used it in a store, but that was pretty much it. I searched my car, my room, my clothes, my trashcans, my purse, my backpack and all to no effect. I was, as you might imagine, made anxious by this as it added to the general feelings of being "out of control." However, what I needed to do was quite straightforward: call the bank, cancel the old card and get a new one. Simple. Straightforward. Totally manageable. A couple of deep breaths later I was back on track.

Then, today, as I took a break from reading and grant proposal writing, I went out with Guille to grab a slice of pizza so that he could get out of the house (the stir-crazy appears to be setting in). It was there, at the restaurant, that I discovered that since yesterday, my two forms of photo I.D. (my Maryland driver's license and my UA student ID) were missing. Just, gone , from the plastic covered pocket in my wallet they normally inhabit. Again, I searched everywhere, and even managed to cut my thumb open on some glass left over from the accident last year hiding under the passenger's side seat in my car. I can manage the CAT card, but the driver's license means that I have to actually go take a driving test at the DMV here.

What is going on here? I'm about to cry. This is incomprehensible since I clearly remember when I last USED both the I.D. and the bank card. The only possible explanation is gremlins. Either that, or the coyotes here are playing tricks on me. I was just under the point of overwhelmed, but Tyche is determined to test my mettle.

EDIT: I found the latter offending I.D.s after hours of searching hiding in an obscure part of my purse. The bank card remains in the gremlin hideout.

I'm taking a break from reading philosophy to write this post. Apparently, for this class, I've got 1500+ pages of reading for this week. Now, that's not so bad, because we only have to choose one reading to really focus on and be prepared to analyze for class, but I really AM interested in Kant, and I wish that there weren't 900+ pages of him to read. I'm all about original sources, but this is a little more than I can handle.

On the other hand, all the reading for other classes seems totally manageable.

Things are going well. I've nailed down which classes I'm taking (History of Anthropology [required], Sociolinguistics, and Mexican Immigration) and am pleased with them. I'm on track to have papers that I can hopefully turn into articles or (at the least) presentations by the end of the semester. And this week, I've got to suck it up and really get down to business writing grant proposals. It feels like an utterly miserable thing to have to do, but it is entirely necessary both as a student and as a skill to perfect for my imaginary academic career.  So think of me fondly this week as I struggle to sell myself to the biggest names in the business.

Thusfar, I am learning more (Greek) philosophy than I ever did as an ancient Greek major and thanking my lucky stars that the Oberlin professors had the interests they did (philosophy, while at least indirectly relevant to most academic endeavors, is NOT my favorite flavor of academia). That said, it DOES seem like a good thing to have read and to know for a person with my particular goals.

I am also just as enamored of my Sociolinguistics prof, NMD, as I was when I visited and she rocked my world. The same can be said of my adviser, despite the fact that she is still in Indonesia.

And tonight? Well my friends, tonight I am going to finally escape the networking aspect of virtually every interaction I've had here thusfar and go to a bar called Gentle Ben's and drink with my new colleagues (about seven other new grad students) and not worry at all about anything other than the pleasure of their company. 

I promised tatterpunk that I would start posting more, so I'm trying, okay? It just may be boring ...

Classes start (technically) on Monday. But, thusfar, the only classes for which I have a schedule are on Wednesday. I have THREE classes, which seems like ridiculously few, but everyone assures me that I will be overwhelmed. I need to buy books. I need to publish by the end of the first year (on my own, so this helps me imagine what I'll be doing with my hypothetical free time). Also, even though I haven't been able to meet my assigned first-year-mentor (professor) and student-mentor, other students have been so amazing and supportive that I'm not sure I even need them! (Just kidding, I totally do, but still, other students are amazing.)

This is a relief, because grad student culture in this dept. is a significant part of why I wanted to come here. Thus far, people who have no reason to even talk to me have sent out emails on my behalf, invited me to lunch, and offered to sit down and give me the skinny on everything from permissions from Human Subjects on vulnerable populations to how to have kids in grad school.

Still haven't started classes, but I'm feeling pretty good.

Whew! It's been a full couple of weeks.

 The drive out from D.C. was actually considerably easier for me than I had anticipated, despite the last minute breakdown of Guille's computer which signified the loss of my nine books-on-CD I'd dutifully borrowed from the library and burned onto the computer in anticipation of the drive before we even left for Ecuador two months ago! But I still had a couple of lectures and my old friend NPR kept me entertained whenever we were close enough to civilization to hear it. Guille's car really struggled, I'm afraid, burning much more gas than we expected and eventually refusing to drive above 60 mph. It made us nervous enough that in Texas we stopped early and took it to a dealership. They advised about $500 worth of "necessary" work, but I called my old mechanic in D.C. and he explained that half of that wasn't really necessary while the other half was, but could wait until our trip was done as long as we didn't really mind the gas-guzzling or slower pace. We didn't, and continued on, only to have a terrifying clunk and hissssssss cause us to pull over to the side of the highway in Lord-knows-where West Texas. A big chunk of metal had inexpicably blown out of a piece of machinery we suspect might be the Mass Air Flow Sensor, but caused us no further problems and we drove on, arriving after a mere four days of driving.

We arrived in Tucson on the 9th and started unpacking and settling in. I've got a fantastic library/study with a view of the fruit trees growing all over the back yard. I've set up my altar here and even managed to meditate once, but I'm not quite settled in to a routine yet. I love this room and - complete with a delicious overstuffed chair and full-spectrum floor lamp - I can't imagine any problems spending huge chunks of time in here studying. Our bedroom is enormous, but comfortable, and includes a Venetian bath, the only sad thing is that we can't allow Nikos in there since the owners want to make sure there isn''t any lingering pet dander to make them allergic. We've got covers on all the couches, though, so he seems happy enough without our nocturnal presence. We've also started to get to know the area; I've got my Pima County Public Library card and have checked out The Count of Monte Cristo, The Left Hand of Darkness, and The Name of the Wind. Life seems very livable for me.

On Friday, I joined a bunch of other UA anthro students on a trip to Northern Arizona to see/participate in a Powwow at the Kaibab Southern Paiute reservation. I've seen powwow dancing on T.V., have heard recordings of drumming and singing, and have met a very few indigenous North Americans, but this was another thing altogether. However, unlike my time as a tourist in Misahualli, Ecuador, there was no sense that their cultural performance was for my benefit. Rather, the other students and I (and the professor) worked our tails off hauling trash, flipping Indian burgers to be put on fry bread (mmmmm!), selling raffle tickets and Paiute T-shirts to fundraise for next year's Powwow, serving food and moving the heaviest bleachers I've ever encountered from one side of the grounds to the other on our shoulders between sneaking off to watch the dance and drumming (singing) exhibitions and competitions. We ran/walked in their 5K. We even signed up for their 3 v. 3 basketball match, but got intimidated by the competition and backed out. It was, on the whole, another utterly new experience for me, and a wonderful one.  On the same trip we drove out to Colorado City, where I noticed we were all were far less comfortable with the community of polygamists rejected by the LDS church. That part of the adventure still requires a great deal more thought from my end, so not much to say about that yet, except that I'm very glad I saw it. On the way back home on Sunday we stopped and hiked about 3 miles along the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and that was also much more cool than I had expected. Despite the awesome stuff we saw, the best part of the trip was the chance to start to get to know some of the academic community I am joining. I remain optimistic that this is the best place for me.

Also: I got my hair cut off again. It's nice and cool in the heat.

Also: Guille's doing well and has made me a number of delicious meals since getting here. Also his computer is finally set up and he's beginning to settle into the job search. Life is good.

Yes. I've made it. I've registered for one class. I'm going on a three day camping trip to a powwow or something in Northern Arizona with the applied anthropologists. I've vacuumed the pool and watered the houseplants. We've been grocery shopping. My books are on the three shelves in the MY library/study. In other words, things are going well.

More later.

Guille and I have been in Tucson since Saturday, and the trip has been very successful. When we drove in from the airport we drove through the ghetto and Guille (and I, even though I was here before) had a rude awakening about the depression that this area is experiencing. Later, we drove through another section of town looking for apartments and found nothing but the kind of shitty broken down undergrad housing that we really don't want to be a part of. Thank goodness things started to turn around later. We began to see nicer and nicer areas, well landscaped (yes, desert can be beautiful with strategically placed cacti) and well kept.

We went out for lunch with one couple, then tea with another, then dinner with a third - all from different sorts of jobs, but all well off - and despite our intention to invite them (after all, they were doing us a favor!), they all ended up treating us. It was very unexpected and just so nice to know that we're gonna have at least a little bit of a safety net (one family even offered us a place to stay for a couple of days if we haven't signed a lease by the time we move here!). 

The job thing for Guille - the secondary goal of our trip - has gone pretty well, too. We've learned about a couple of areas that could be very interesting to him. One we heard about this morning sitting in a coffee shop next to the anthro dept. and Guille thinks he could do some consulting type work/volunteering for them (depending on what they can afford) even while we're in Ecuador. It's a microcredit borderlands small nonprofit startup. Probably not a long term job, but maybe a way to break into the scene here.

I'm feeling ambivalent still. Perhaps even more than before I visited this time and it became a manageable reality. Nonetheless, this has been a very good trip.

I'm making ThePioneerWomanCooks' favorite salad ever for dinner tonight. A dinner that may involve the presence of wonderful friend Yoli who gave me the coolest Arizona-appropriate gift ever: cacti. Here's a photo from above including the names I decided on. In case it isn't obvious, the two twin cacti have two versions of nicknames from the same name. (Chuy and Chucho are from Jesus, Pancho and Paco are from Francisco, Teto is from Hector, Lalo is from Eduardo, and Nacho is from Ignacio.

Also, I am going to start working part time fo' real this time. Starting tomorrow. Doing office work. It ain't much, but it'll help with getting stuff ready for Arizona. And it's a five minute walk from Guille's job!

I'm gonna have to reschedule the Spanish tutoring I've been doing (volunteering) for this middle school kid, but her schedule seems pretty open, so I'm not worried.

And we are going to meet with a financial planner FOR FREE!! Exciting, right? Shut up, I'm totally excited.

Oh yeah, and I heard back from NYU and I didn't get in, but it doesn't matter because I'M GOING TO ARIZONA, BABY!!!