Happy 4th of July!

Hi everybody! Sorry for neglecting my blog – I blame it on my transatlantic move. I’m home sweet home in the US now. What better day to write a blog than Independence Day when I’ve just come home from the UK? Never fear, Alex says it’s a good day for Britain, too…Can you imagine all the trouble we’d have put them through for another few hundred years? Smile!

As you can see from my photo, Rebecca and I had front row seats to the fireworks…from our apartment window!!! The show is continuing even now, with popping and whistling fireworks all around us. We love where we’re living, not far from town and well connected by all the bus lines in a newly renovated apartment that is only lacking in a few items of furniture at the moment and is still in need of decorating with our Japanese, Mexican, and now European collections of belongings. Yesterday we did some proper garage-saling and each found ourselves a “good $10 buy,” in my case being two glass-topped coffee tables with dark wood frames that we bought from a church rummage sale and in Rebecca’s case, a gliding-style rocking chair that we found at one of the local goodwill shops.

As I’m writing this there are small children shrieking and laughing in our parking lot with sparklers, and the neighbors across the street definitely just sent up a massive illegal firework…oh, make that two…

Yesterday we held a tea party with all the children in our apartment complex using the little trays I bought while I was in the UK. The kids actually did want to try drinking tea, so we sweetened it a little with some sugar and then they got to choose between apple juice and pear tea! They were all brave and tried both, and even liked the tea! We put graham crackers in the trays and all sat together on the steps outside our apartment, sipping and munching away. The boys did some arm-wrestling to try and prove which one was stronger, but it turns out they were evenly matched, so then we all resorted to thumb-wrestling, with Rebecca winning out over me in a duel to the death.

Needless to say, we’ve made some little friends…

We also yesterday got to run around and see many friends whom I haven’t seen in a year, so that was just wonderful. We had a picnic, wandered around the thrift shops, and entertained a couple guests (Miguel & Roberto) in our apartment. Miguel was good enough to demonstrate the “duranguense” dance…which he claims can be danced using the following directions:

1. Take your shoes off.
2. Put rocks in each one.
3. Put your shoes back on.
4. Jump up and down.

And…you’re on your way…I know, we asked him to demonstrate but he was very cheeky and wouldn’t do it. Boys. What can you do.

Rebecca and I made an all-American meal of (vegan) beanie-weenies, peas, apple sauce, and (Mexican) strawberry water to celebrate for the evening (okay, sort of all-American…). We stopped by our favorite taqueria a couple days ago, too, and had some fantastic chavindecas, which are, for the ignorant (like myself), sort of like quesadillas only with meat inside, unless you’re Rebecca and you’re being a vegan…except for the sour cream, so actually we’ll just say vegetarian this time. Can you tell Rebecca is sitting next to me while I write this and correcting me as I go along?

Well, the neighbors are seriously scaring us with their illegal fireworks display. As much as we appreciate the show, we’re hoping we won’t be moving out again already when something catches on fire. LOL Oh, how nice it is to be home! Bye for now!

Gifts and Goodbyes Today

I had a really, really nice day today and the last few days, really, saying goodbye to many friends!! I’ve received small gifts from people including a funny little Japanese character from Jen, the book I’ve already read and loved from Ali called Our Search for Happiness about understanding the Mormon church, The Hidden Words of Baha’U'llah (a Baha’i scripture) from my dear friend Erfan, and Truth Will Prevail: The Rise of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the British Isles 1837-1987 from the whole Lancaster LDS ward. These are all wonderful gifts!! I’m planning to read the two books that I’ve not read already while I’m on my seven- and six-hour flights home (I love transatlantic travel followed by transcontinental travel), so thanks for that, friends!

I actually already read a bit of the Baha’i book and found this quote, which I really liked:

I created thee rich, why dost thou bring thyself down to poverty? Noble I made thee, wherewith dost thou abase thyself? Out of the essence of knowledge I gave thee being, why seekest thou enlightenment from anyone beside Me? Out of the clay of love I moulded thee, how dost thou busy thyself with another? Turn thy sight unto thyself, that thou mayest find Me standing within thee, mighty, powerful, and self-subsisting.

Thanks for this, Erfan!

As you can guess, it’s pretty much coming down to the day for me to leave (tomorrow!) and my room looks empty except for one suitcase that required me to sit on top of it in order to zip it closed, another bag that wasn’t much easier, and my trusty backpack that has traveled all around Europe with me. John Denver says it best, probably, when he says…

All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go
I’m standin’ here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye

But the dawn is breakin’, it’s early morn
The taxi’s waitin’, he’s blowin’ his horn
Already I’m so lonesome I could die

So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you’ll wait for me
Hold me like you’ll never let me go

‘Cause I’m leaving on a jet plane
I don’t know when I’ll be back again
Oh, babe, I hate to go…

Right, so, now that I’ve gotten that song stuck in your head (and mine), it’s time to ‘jet off’ – ah ha ha, that was a horrible pun! I need to get out of the UK before I’m tempted to take up crossword puzzles next…

2 Conferences, 2 Papers, 2 Days

I’m finishing out my year in the UK the way a marathon runner might, with one last big push at the end! “Run as if you’re late for your train,” I say! Anyway, what an incredibly validating last few days I’ve had! I attended two conferences, gave papers at both, and they happened one right after the other! My visit to York literally lasted less than 24 hours before I had to turn around, take the 2-3 hour journey home to Lancaster, and then kick off another conference this morning with another paper.

For both papers – which were different from one another – I got very positive and useful feedback. That is always a nice feeling! Along with that, one of the best things about conferences in meeting and networking with people who care about similar subjects. My most passionate interest (the study of religion and culture, and the impact that has on pedagogy in religious studies) isn’t particularly common, which is a good thing when you’re trying to make claims about new scholarship(!), but at the same time it can be a little lonely because people don’t hear it and automatically know what you’re talking about.

I got some excellent advice from one of my tutors (which is what people call professors in the UK, in case you’re not familiar with the different vocabulary). He said that when you’re thinking about selecting a PhD program, you need to keep in mind three things:

1. What precisely you want to study – start with this because that’s what’s going to keep you motivated through years of research!
2. With whom you’d absolutely love to study – search in a variety of places, not just university websites but also places like Google Scholar, which tells you useful information like how many times a book by a certain scholar has been cited. The reason you shouldn’t just concentrate on a university, he said, is that if you do good (relevant!) research and get a lot of publications to your name, you will find yourself a home without too much trouble! The most important thing is to find a supervisor with whom you can really work well.
3. Finally, you need to think about where you want to work and live for the next 3-7 years. In the UK, PhD programs usually last 3-4 years and are very independent in nature, while in the US PhD programs are often 6-7 years long and incorporate a lot more courses into their program. It really is up to you on which one you prefer. In this category, of course, within reason, you’ll want to think about if you really want to live in Chicago or Berkeley for 7 years, for instance, or London for 4 years! That may sound like a little thing, but if you’ve ever lived in a place that didn’t suit you, I think you know that it deserves careful consideration just as much as everything else!

I’m still working this out for myself, but one thing I have observed is that it’s no easy task to find PEOPLE who study the same subject as you, especially when you come up with something innovative! In fact, the very validation I got at the conferences this week was also unnerving in that experienced lecturers were asking my opinion about something and I was standing there thinking, “Am I really (becoming) an expert on this?!”

Then I realized, I very well could be. And I liked that idea!

So, lots of things to mull over in the next few months while I write my dissertation before I have to start submitting applications to PhD programs and funding. We’ll see what happens with it!!

If You’ve Got to Go, Go Out with Style

In other words, it has been a hectic week. Should I begin my blog with a monologue on existential crises, research ethics, romance, finances, or – oh, right – trans-Atlantic flights? Because all of the above could be used to describe this girl’s week. Fortunately I could also monologue on the blessedness of friends and family, too, because in all seriousness having all of you dive in to save my life has been much appreciated (and you probably didn’t even realize that’s what you were doing).

What’s that got to do with amorphous jellyfish, you say? Nothing in particular, except that I feel like one this week that was tossed on the beach by the tide and then saved by a sneaker wave! Wasn’t that clever? Actually it’s just because I love this photo from an aquarium in a random snow-bound town in Aomori prefecture (Japan) that I visited with Hiroyo. Yes, I am aware that’s a bit like learning a new vocabulary word and trying to sneak it into the next conversation (think Joey from Friends trying to use “acrimonious” in a casual sentence).

ANYHOW, I’m flying home to the U.S. next week, officially leaving behind my Fulbright year, and this week has been absolutely insane as a result. Without going into details of my life that you don’t really need to know anyway, suffice it to say that I had a few surprise costs (such as, ahem, a whole summer’s rent) appear that I simply don’t have the money to pay (but am working on solving that dilemma), and that whenever you move away from a place that has become home to you, inevitably there results much questioning about what I’m doing, why, and how. Thus, the existential crises. LOL

Don’t even get me into the situation in Iran (reflecting my inner turmoil?) because if Ahmadinejad, Khomeini and I got into a room together, I’m pretty sure they’d be running for the door. One of my dear friends is from Iran and I’ve actually learned a lot about the situation there over the last year, not the least of which has been learning how remarkably similar values are shared between the Iranian and American people despite our rocky history together. I admire them very much already for their history, and they are living up to their heritage now in amazing(ly brave) fashion. I hope you’ll do something to support them if you haven’t already!!!

Sorry, side-tracked by a political (but still personal) rant. All I really want to say in this blog is that through this stressful week, I’ve been reminded of what a blessing it is to be in a community. I move around so much in the world, I’m always afraid that I don’t actually have a community as a result, but I’ve been proven entirely wrong in that fear. I have such amazing friends around the world – the U.S., U.K., Japan, and so many other countries, especially considering that even my religious studies department is made up of students from China, Mexico, North Korea, Slovakia, and many more countries, not to mention the fantastic mixture of religions we represent!

So…just wanting to say, I love you guys!!

Letter of Support for the Iranian People – Please send to your representatives!

Dear all, I’ve written this letter to my US government officials to urge them NOT to recognize Ahmadinejad as the winner of the election in Iran.  This is absolutely vital to supporting the Iranian people!!  If you can, please copy and send the letter below to your government officials, too:

Dear [name of your elected representative],

I have been paying close attention to the situation in Iran and am deeply concerned about the ambiguity of the election results. Through whatever avenues possible, particularly through largely peaceful protests and social media, the Iranian people have voiced their concerns loudly and clearly about their right to have their votes properly counted, acknowledged, and respected. Their government has an obligation to respect the wishes of its people.

I do not wish to interfere in the decisions of the Iranian people. Indeed, I want to leave the decision-making in the hands of the Iranian people who know what is best for the good and well-being of their own nation. I further do not wish to assert that any particular person was the winner of the election, which is also in the hands of the Iranian people.

However, in solidarity with the Iranian people, I am urging you NOT to recognize Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the winner of the recent election. To confer such recognition on someone without the confidence of the Iranian people regarding the legitimacy of their presidential election results is to undermine the democratic values which the people of our two nations share, including freedom of speech, freedom from tyranny, and justice for all.

I urge you to act with conscientiousness on behalf of all American citizens to do anything you can to support the voice of the Iranian people.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]

If you don’t know how to contact your representatives, you can type your zip code here on the White House website and it will direct you to the appropriate site to email them!  Contact your senators here.  And, finally, contact President Obama and V.P. Biden here.

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to speak out in support of the Iranian people!!  If you don’t think it makes a difference, just remember that when Nelson Mandela was imprisoned in South Africa for fighting apartheid, it was INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT that kept him alive!  Don’t ignore the people of Iran!  They are depending on you!

Informed Comment: Class v. Culture Wars in Iranian Elections: Rejecting Charges of a North Tehran Fallacy

Informed Comment: Class v. Culture Wars in Iranian Elections: Rejecting Charges of a North Tehran Fallacy.

I’m so in awe of the Iranian people right now getting out in massive numbers to demand their voice be heard, and I’m equally appalled at the Iranian government’s attempts to downplay the reaction.

The blog above explains the situation well and the comments from readers also show a variety of other opinions (some more or less polemical).  His blog is a response to claims such as this one by Abbas Barzegar in The Guardian that suggests Ahmadinejad may very well have won and the rest of us are only paying attention to the well-to-do middle & upper classes in Tehran.

Cole disagrees with that claim.  After explaining that in the years leading up to Ahmadinejad’s victory, reformers faced a huge amount of obstacles such as having their candidates struck off the ballots, the shut-down by the hard-line government of reformist news outlets and media, etc, Cole says:

Ahmadinejad’s 2005 victory was made possible by the widespread boycott of the vote or just disillusionment in the reformist camp, meaning that fewer youth and women bothered to come out.

So to believe that the 20% hard line support of 2001 has become 63% in 2009, we would have to posit that Iran is less urban, less literate and less interested in cultural issues today than 8 years ago. We would have to posit that the reformist camp once again boycotted the election and stayed home in droves.

He goes on:

Mir Hosain Mousavi was a plausible candidate for the reformists. They were electing people like him with 70 and 80 percent margins just a few years ago. We have not been had by the business families of north Tehran. We’ve much more likely been had by a hard line constituency of at most 20% of the country, who claim to be the only true heirs of the Iranian revolution, and who control which ballots see the light of day.

I think if we look at the massive turn-out in Tehran (see photos of it from the Boston Globe) and consider that there were no huge announcements of any boycotts on the news or in social media, we can certainly tell that the people of Iran fully intended for their voices to be heard in the election.  When the results came out with such massive numbers for Ahmadinejad, plenty of people could see that the numbers didn’t add up.

I think in the West we have a tendency to assume our vote is heard — after all, that’s one of the reasons we don’t have much voter turn-out even for important elections compared to countries who still have a fresh memory of fighting for a democratic form of government.

If you knew that by saying nothing, things would just get worse, wouldn’t you take to the streets and protest?  I know Iran seems far away, but even by shouting out on blogs, twitter, facebook, and other social media, you’re showing your support of the Iranian people’s rights to:

1. the confidence of knowing their votes were properly counted, announced, and respected
2. having the leader they actually elected into office assume that office

To be honest, we don’t know who won the election — the results were predicted to be fairly close.  The important thing to emphasize is that the people of Iran set up a democratic government of their own with distinctly Iranian aspects to it, and that government is required by the people to respect the people’s wishes.  At the moment it is not doing that by failing to respond adequately to their concerns.

Interiority and Christian Spirituality – Owen C. Thomas

Hey everybody! If you’re interested in inner-life forms of spirituality and the differences between ‘religion’ and ’spirituality’, you might find this blog interesting today. Even if you’re not Christian but fall perhaps in the category of “spiritual but not religious” – which, I confess, is often more similar to my form of Christianity in emphasizing that the sacred is “within” us somehow — the article I read today is an insightful critique of that point-of-view that is worth reading.

Right, so, that said, I found this article by Owen C. Thomas really interesting — “Interiority and Christian Spirituality,” published in 2000 — and I thought I’d share my reactions!

What’s it about?

This article is a work of theology critiquing the emphasis in Christianity on the inner self over against outward practice (including both communal worship and sociopolitical involvement), a mistake which he pinpoints as beginning with Augustine and philosophers like Descartes. Thomas says the following:

The step [Augustine took in making the 'inner light' the focus in Christianity] was a fateful one, because we have certainly made a big thing of the first-person standpoint. The modern epistemological tradition from Descartes, and all that flowed from it in modern culture, has made this standpoint fundamental — to the point of aberration, one might think (45).

This “aberration” according to Thomas is not that we care about having an inner sense of spirituality, which he asserts is still important, but that:

1. We see it as completely separate from our outer experiences, like a world all on its own, and
2. We see it as superior to our outer experiences.

These, he says, are a big mistake. Relying on Taylor (1989) and the philosophy of Wittgenstein, Thomas makes several really interesting critiques of inner-life spirituality within a Christian world-view.

So many interesting things I could cite but here’s just one:

[T]he emphasis has almost always been on the centrality of the interior life at the expense of the outer life. My judgment has been confirmed in a recent and well-researched study by Michael Downey. He argues that whereas in the early centuries, the Christian tradition of spirituality continued in the biblical tradition and can be described as holistic and integrated, it gradually became more and more narrow. It tended to be elitist, other-worldly, and focused on the interior life, the way of perfection, and the mystical graces, which were pursued mainly by the monks and the clergy (54).

Owen is actually in agreement with many spiritual practitioners these days by asserting the above—the body is not something to be overcome or debased, but rather something deeply tied to our inner state. By divorcing the inner life from the social world, people have retreated from their responsibility to others by claiming an emphasis on their own spiritual development.

But how should we balance it? Well, there are lots of different opinions, but Thomas summarizes them nicely:

1. There is no inner; all is outer. Talk of the inner is illusory (behaviorism, materialism).
2. The outer is primary and the sole source of the inner. The inner is an epiphenomenon of the outer (Wittgenstein?).
3. The outer is primary and the major, but not the sole, source of the inner (Wittgenstein?).
4. The inner and the outer are equiprimordial. There is inner as well as outer causality, mutual influence, and reciprocity (Strawson).
5. The inner is primary and the major, but not the sole, source of the outer (Christian tradition).
6. The inner is primary and the sole source of the outer. The outer is an epiphenomenon of the inner (idealism).
7. There is no outer; all is inner. All we know is our own experience (solipsism)

 

Owen puts his weight behind the third option above, asserting along the argument of William Temple that Christianity is uniquely or at least strongly focused on the material aspects of being (”The Word was made flesh”), concluding, among other things, that:

The traditional emphasis in Christian ascetical theology on interiority has led the Church in its mission to focus primarily on private, emotional, and family life to the exclusion of public, work, and political life. This should be reversed (59).

Defining religion in response to his conclusions, Owen cites George Lindbeck:

“…[A] religion, including Christianity, is like “a set of acquired skills…. Like a culture or a language, it is a communal phenomenon that shapes the subjectivities of individuals rather than being primarily a manifestation of those subjectivities…. In the interplay between ‘inner’ experience and ‘external’ religious and cultural factors, the latter can be viewed as the leading partners.” This view “reverses the relation of the inner and the outer. Instead of deriving external features of a religion from inner experience, it is the inner experiences which are viewed as derivative (60).”

He goes on to make this rather defiant claim in the face of social tendencies otherwise in the West(!):

The priority of practice suggests that formation in the Christian life should focus on the practices of the outer life, such as public worship, the building up of the community, the service of those in need, and participation in the struggle for justice and peace, rather than on the disciplines of the inner life, such as silence, meditation, and contemplation. It is not that these traditional disciplines should be excluded but that they should take second place to communal and public practice…This will involve an emphasis on the outer life as the major source of the inner life and, thus, a renewed stress on the body and communal and public life as well as a renewed focus on participation in the reign of God as the center of the Christian life…(60).”

 

The most interesting critique he offers is that it is unethical to overemphasize an inner form of spirituality. Though Owen’s critique is aimed internally at Christian theological discourse, it remains a strong assertion against the forms of inner spirituality by critiquing the “selfishness” of the practice over against political and social expressions of action.

 

So, what do we think??

 

Well, not to let this blog drag out, here are three thoughts/questions from me today:

 

1. People who embrace an “inner life” form of spirituality would probably be more likely to claim opinion #4 above – a balance between “inner” and “outer” – and defy the philosophical arguments by Taylor & Wittgenstein that suggest otherwise. After all, doesn’t the mind/spirit/soul do some pretty powerful things in the face of bodily weakness? By Thomas’ own evaluation, Wittgenstein’s philosophy suggests that language takes on meaning above and beyond expressions of bodily sensations like pain. Who’s to say that the origins of our language in such expressions (in contrast to the newer, more complex meanings) should have more weight in our theology?
2. In agreement with Thomas, I’ve definitely worried that “inner life” spirituality (whether within a religion or standing on its own) can tend toward the selfish. This makes me think of the people who actually buy grocery bags that say something like “I recycle” on them instead of just using bags they already own. LOL (Okay, to be fair, I also criticize my own inclination to buy all the yoga gear instead of just doing yoga). That said, one of my friends is doing a really interesting study of the ethics of yoga in the West to demonstrate that inner-life spirituality can be a platform for greater social action! That ought to be an interesting response to Thomas here!
3. Does spirituality need religion the way the definition by Lindbeck suggests? I’m still unsure about this one. I’ve asserted that I feel the need to belong to a religion and not just sort of go with the flow on new spiritualities…but I’m still in “seeking” mode, trying to decide what I believe and why, so I’m not going to make any set-in-stone assertions about this one!

 

Right, that’s enough philosophizing from me tonight. Hasta!

Oh dear, the drama has begun…Big Brother 10 (UK version)

Argh, somebody save me from my impulse to watch reality TV!

You would be amazed by the differences between the US and UK versions of Big Brother. It’s freaking me out, especially the fact that the UK Big Brother actually has a voice and reassures the housemates when they go to the Diary Room. There’s a whole lot more manipulation by Big Brother as an entity into the relations of the housemates compared to the US version, in which Big Brother only swoops in to interfere by setting competitions with clear boundaries and rules.

Two examples:

1. Sree goes into the diary room because he’s feeling emotional and doesn’t want to cry in front of the other housemates. When he walks in and sits down, a female computerized voice that sort of sounds like your mother says, “How are you, Sree?” As he pours his heart out to the screen, Big Brother occasionally asks questions like, “How did you feel when so-and-so left?” Then, when he finishes saying whatever it is he wants to say, Big Brother reassures him by saying, “Big Brother wants you to know that it closely monitors the well-being of everybody in the house.”
2. Sophia and Saffia get into a massive argument in the garden. Even though they had basically reached the end of their argument, Big Brother announced on speaker-phone, “Sophia, please come to the diary room.” And when she arrived there, Big Brother said, “Sophia, you have been called to the diary room to help you calm down.”

If you compare the second example with the most infamous US show-down between Evel Dick and Jen (when he burned her with a cigarette after Jen yelled at him for blowing smoke in her face, among other things), the argument between Sophia and Saffia was pretty tame. They never touched each other and never got beyond a few hisses!

Differences in set-up between the US & UK

The US version of Big Brother is oriented entirely around strategizing, secret alliances, and competitions. The house is designed to allow for as much scheming as possible. The main source of the audience’s enjoyment comes from trying to figure out which alliances will survive to the end, who will double-cross whom, and who will win the competitions that determine the power dynamic each week in the house. In the US, the winner of a competition becomes the “Head of Household” and gets to have their own private room, along with the important power to nominate two fellow housemates for eviction. A couple days later there is a “Power of Veto” competition in which the two nominees and other members of the house compete to win the veto. Whoever gets it can choose to remove one person from the chopping block that week, forcing the Head of Household to replace them with another person. At the end of the week, the housemates (not the audience) vote to send somebody packing.

In the UK version, it is absolutely forbidden to discuss nominations! Last night, Big Brother gathered everybody today and punished three housemates by repeating word-for-word everything they tried to say in secret to one another about nominations, then increasing the price of all their food!! The competitions in the house are just for food and luxuries, and at any given moment in the house something strange might happen to throw everything out of balance. Housemates must nominate 2 people WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE who they’re going to vote for or who they’ve voted for in the past. Yikes! However, they don’t get to choose who leaves because the audience votes on the two nominees instead! Yesterday when Sophia left the house, the audience actually booed her as she left (she was voted out by 91% of the public vote). Painful! In contrast to the US, it appears that the audience gets its main enjoyment out of watching how the people in the house deal with being enclosed in a small space with people very different from themselves.

While both the US & the UK versions have a balance of competitions and interpersonal interactions, the emphasis is on different things.

So what’s the moral of the story? Well, seriously, in the UK version the housemates may want to keep in mind the advice from George Orwell’s 1984:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

There are two ways to win: make your housemates like you too much to nominate you, or make the public like you so much they’ll never vote you out! It’s absolutely a popularity contest, but the nicest person doesn’t always win. It could be the person who is simply so cringe-worthy you can’t help but keep them in to see what they do next…

Nature, British Preschoolers, and Another Beautiful Day in England

What a bittersweet day today! I spent a lovely few hours on the coast but also had to say goodbye to the children who have reminded me that life is not all about academics – mostly by chasing me with superhuman powers that strongly resemble those of Spiderman or the Incredible Hulk. Never underestimate the power of a 4-year-old’s imagination!

Preschool

Unfortunately my final visit to preschool also coincided with a scare in the U.K. about a preschool employee who took indecent photos of children, which means it would have been awkward for me to take photos of the kids, so all I get to ‘take home’ with me are my memories and stories with the kids. I know that ought to be enough, but I am disappointed not to be able to show you some of the kids who’ve made me laugh over the last year. Just a few highlights (without real names):

• Ahmed running up to me every time I showed up to demand, “What are YOU doing here?” I always answered, “Well, I thought I would play with you today if that’s alright!” Then, inevitably, he would ask, “What’s YOUR name?” and I would make up something silly like ‘Fred’ or ‘George’ that would make him pause suspiciously before exclaiming, “No it is not!!”
• My first introduction to Noah: Upon observing that he was wearing a pink tutu with a police hat on, I asked if he was a policeman, to which he corrected, “No, I’m a policewoman.” My second encounter with him (similarly attired), he announced he was “a naughty fairy” and sprinkled fairy dust on my head to spirit me away to a scary land of monsters. Don’t let the fairy dust fool you, though – when Noah means business, he announces it to all the children and they know when to listen! He’s the only kid I know who can single-handedly usher twenty 4-year-olds into a group and coordinate them with almost as much ease as the preschool teachers…
• Making rain with Laurel by banging on chairs with the palms of our hands. Normally she’s so shy, but she really let loose on this activity! Later, I taught her how to say “peek-a-boo” in Japanese: inai inai…BA!
• Lucas, perhaps the sweetest tempered little boy I have ever met in my life, is the only kid I’ve met who would actually sit through not one, not two, but three readings of the same story, just because he likes it so much. The innocence of his imagination astounds me constantly, as he never doubts the relevance of my imaginary questions (”How do you kill monsters?”) but answers them with complete sincerity and creativity. He’s the boy who will still suspect Santa Claus actually exists even when he’s adult.

I will really, really miss the women who work at the preschool, too. We had some great conversations about British culture, and they welcomed me like one of their own even when I was still freaking out about things like missed buses (”Sorry!!!”), the constantly changing and therefore unreliable schedule of a university student, and the challenges of deciphering the strange words used by British pre-schoolers to explain things (prams, cheeky monkey, and a few *ahem* colorful words – to share the most memorable!).

My one consolation about not getting photos with the kids was that, on the way to preschool today there was a pair of swans with a little signet swimming in the canal. They were so beautiful!

Arnside

Following preschool today I took advantage of the beautiful weather to meet my friend Brian and take a little trip to the coast. This is part of my commitment (settled in the last week) to let go of any unrealistic expectations about the brilliant academic feats I’ll be managing before returning home. Instead, I am trying to concentrate on saying goodbye to England, especially my friends here but also the beautiful landscape that has inspired me on so many levels. It would be unfair to rush my way through that process.

So, keeping our usual rule of not deciding where to go until pretty much we arrive at the bus station, Brian and I hopped on a bus and wound our way through the English countryside, seated on the top level of a double-decker bus in the very front (excellent view of oncoming tree branches — ouch!). Embarking about three miles south of where we would eventually end up, we walked along the coast of the river, able to see the peaks across the water, clouds in amazing shapes, and – oh, right – green estates with public footpaths criss-crossing them in true English fashion.

The weather was beautiful and the people lovely as always. My favorite moment today was coming across a heron just down the path from us in a small tributary. It took off and flew gracefully along the coastline while we watched.

I am going to miss these random outings so much!!

Musings about the End of My Fulbright Year

The next 20 years days (whoa, Freudian slip) are going to be absolutely insane as I wrap up interviews for my Masters, pack my belongings, write an essay, give two conference papers, and then *drumroll* fly home. Didn’t somebody tell me this year was going to fly by? They were so right!

What’s unfortunate in some ways is that I’m going to be so busy I probably won’t even have time to process the fact that I’m leaving, and inevitably that means it’s going to hit me somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean and make me feel pretty sad to be gone before I could really comprehend that was what I was doing. At least before I go I’ll have several get-togethers with classmates and also friends from the Mormon church (who’ve been good enough to let me interview them, too, for my dissertation), and I may get to see friends in Manchester on my way home, too, even if I won’t be able to make it to London or Oxford to see friends there. Gives me good incentive to come back, one could argue…

I’ve completed one of my conference papers today, which is about the transformations of research. It was amazing to realize how much my research has changed since I began three years ago with sending an application to the Fulbright (and Marshall). I started out asking questions about politics, spent some time observing religious studies pedagogy (the subject of my second conference paper) and have now ended up with the Mormons! Life is funny, to say the least! Fittingly, I am quoting from the seminal text, Alice In Wonderland in my conference paper about this research:

…Alice was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, `Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!’ (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge

In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

Highly relevant to the research process, wouldn’t you agree? That is definitely how I feel this whole thing worked out (including all the strange and wonderful encounters along the way, something with which Alice could also relate!).