arizona, my own alternate universe.

greetings any and all readers. this post comes to you from my parent's master bedroom in lovely oro valley, arizona. it is always somewhat odd to come home to warm, sunny tucson (we live just north of the city), a city in a part of america that whose geography is said to be quite similar to many parts of the middle east including palestine, israel and I imagine even jordan and iraq as well. it is weird to be here not only the weather but also the way of life.

by the end of last semester I was used to living on meager portions of ramen, saltines and the occasional blast of grease and joy in the form of pizza, not to mention once or twice a day hookah and coffee.

so now I am back, not working and am dreaming of what comes after graduation. for now I want to find a job in chicago, seattle, LA, maybe phoenix and maybe tucson. I don't know though. thank the Lord I get to go back to sweden this summer though. joy oh joy.

so after a morning run in the blazing sun, dodging cacti and construction, I have now showered and dressed and will keep reading and sudoking. blessings and thanks for reading, if you are....

and I've finished my interview!

so yesterday, december 9th, I had my day-long interview with teach for america. it was downtown in this beautiful building. ibm donated space for the interview and the boardroom that we were in had a great view of the loop.

the other students I was with were quite nice. we began the day with a sample five-mintue teaching lesson that we each had to prepare. I decided to go first to get it out of the way. I taught everyone the three trigonometric functions, sine, cosine and tangent. it went pretty well. I was glad to have that over with and as the day progressed, more and more relief came over me.

after some lunch at chipotle, I had the last thing, the one-on-one interview, which was good, but sort of weird. to be perfectly honest, I have no idea whether or not I will be accepted. I sort of think that I will be surprised either way.

one thing that I do know is that I really and truly believe in the mission of teach for america: decreasing the huge educational gap in the united states of america. I really do think that I am exactly the kind of person for whom they are looking and I just hope that that really came across yesterday!

I'm going to update this more. really.

the war at home.

things are heating up. no, I am not talking about the weather. in fact, as I type this there are about 2 inches (6cm) of snow falling here in chicago.

I'm talking about the debate about the war in iraq. I believe the united states has entered an extremely crucial point in the public debate about the war and the course of the war itself. it began a few weeks ago with the call by democratic senator john murtha for the united states to immediately withdraw its troops.

this is no ordinary call. this man served in vietnam and was a huge supporter of the war before. here on campus at north park university, it is becoming increasingly more rare to find people who really want the united states in iraq.

my wish is that we could be more educated about the situation. no one, and I mean no one, talks about the war anymore. I never see it on cnn, I barely read about it in the newspaper (american and british) and few people on campus talk about it. if only I could come visit and see for myself....