Lovely last two weeks but somewhat stressful with school work. Last weekend my parents visited me and dropped off so many delicious goodies (including smoke Gouda and ripe pears) that I am still not done with all of them yet and I have a college student's appetite. My mother made Julia Child's Beouf Bourguigon, my favorite meal in the world and reheated it in the tiny adobe my parents had rented. It was also her birthday that Sunday so we went to Mass at the cathedral and afterwards bought fancy, horribly expensive chocolates. But Dad is never happy visiting his girls until he buys them something to make sure they have everything they could possibly ever need so we went grocery shopping. On my mother's birthday. We had fun though because Whole Foods, which is not present in my town, is amazing and a lot of fun to wander around in. We even found a beautiful little lemon cake with birthday candles so we were able to have birthday cake with a homecooked dinner back at the adobe. During this lovely weekend I managed to get my math paper written and turned in on time without feeling like it was a horrible mess. I still haven't gotten any feedback yet on it so wish me luck.
This week I'm working on my first rough draft of my seminar essay. It has to be on one of the books we've read in seminar so I'm writing it on the Oresteia, the only tragic trilogy of plays to survive ancient Greece. I love it because it's reads like a soap opera. Day time television could learn a lot from this. In it Atreus (Agamemnon's father) feeds Thyestes (Atreus' brother) Thyestes' own children to teach him a lesson for betraying him. Next generation, Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter, Iphigenia, to the gods in order to get good winds so the fleet of Greek ships can leave to fight the Trojan War. When Agamemnon comes back from the Trojan War his wife Clytemnestra kills him to avenge Iphigenia. Clytemnestra is also carrying on an affair with Aegisthus, Agamemnon's cousin, who is the last surviving child of Thyestes and is getting his revenge on Agamemnon for Atreus killing his siblings. And finally, Orestes, the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, kills Clytemnestra for killing Agamemnon. Orestes gets away with it even though the Furies are chasing him because Athena decides that a mother is not a parent, only the father is, therefore Orestes did not really commit a crime. That's Greek tragedy for you.
So I'm writing about a Greek soap opera while I'm sinking into greater levels of Nerdom than I thought possible. I thought I was a pretty good nerd before I got here. Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, etc. But now Gabriela has shown me the magnificence of Doctor Who and the guys downstairs have roped me into a Dungeons and Dragons game. I feel that it's inevitable like a moon being trapped by a planet's gravitational force. I'm in close enough proximity with such powerful nerds that I can't help becoming like them. But I'm having so much fun that I can't complain. I get to pretend to be a ninja/demolitions expert on the weekends and I get to explore the universe with the adorable Matt Smith. No problem there.
I miss home but I'm not terribly homesick yet. I miss my dogs a lot even with Seymour and Lucy, the on campus dogs. I miss running into old friends and my local library and my book club. I miss mindless fun novels. I miss fresh fruit runs to the orchards on the weekends. I miss visiting my sister in Denver. I miss couches to lounge on in living rooms at home or friends homes. I miss microwaves. I miss my parents. I miss cooking for myself. I miss having dirt under my fingernails and helping harvest over 50 lbs. of potatoes from my gardens. I miss hearing the train cars crash into each other at night when the train operators are careless. But I do get to hear the coyotes yipping at night. And I get to see amazing sunsets off my dorm mate's balcony. I get to write about Greek soap operas. I like to watch people tease the koi fish in the pond. I get to watch the woodpeckers tap on the pinyons and the resident murder of crows growl at each other. I get to share emergency snacks with friends after an exhausting, frustrating seminar. I get to wander around beautiful buildings much older than anything I've lived around before. I miss home but I'm enjoying my time enough to make it more sweet than bitter.
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