Nostalgic

K, my replacement in Serbia, recently suggested that we make lists for each other about the things that we like about the places that we just left. Here is my list:

Some Things I Love about Serbia

1. blueberry juice
2. cafes that serve every beverage imaginable, so one person can have juice, one coffee, and one beer
3. the ‘Olympic-level’ people watching
4. parks that turn into everyone’s living room in the summer
5. my friends
6. Women in Black—Belgrade isn’t gender exclusive, unlike Women in Black—Seattle
7. movies are so cheap that it doesn’t feel too extravagant to go to the theater to see movies that aren’t very good.
8. FEST, the film festival, which might be my favorite week in Belgrade
9. fresh fruit in the summer
10. wandering pijacas
11. being able to pick and choose which parts of Serbian culture I adopt and engage in, which I can’t really do here
12. kajmak
13. ajvar
14. fried pepper and cheese sandwiches from Toma Pekara
15. palačinke
16. being an expat – meeting so many people from all over the world
17. going to Ada Ciganlija in the summer
18. hospitality
19. the tradition of bringing small gifts whenever you go to someone’s home
20. single use bus tickets (They do not exist here, so I end up carrying pocketfuls of quarters with me everywhere.)

Trivial

Last night, I attended a reading by Ken Jennings at a somewhat local bookstore. He talked for a bit—and was super charming in his dorky way—before getting down to business and starting the trivia contest.

(On a side note, the crowd was pretty good people watching – game show fanatics are not known for their ability to dress themselves.)

The contest was divided into two rounds - Seattle-specific trivia and general trivia. My mother and I tied for third in the Seattle round, winning tote bags. The questions I missed concerned Bill Gates’s successor at Microsoft, a Sonics player who was the first unrestricted free agent in the NBA, what Ichiro means in Japanese, and the location of the first Dick’s Drive In. And in the second round… I was flawless. Well, I did argue with Ken about one of the answers, (Carolina is not a state.) but it was a poorly worded question.

And now I am the proud owner of a $15 gift card to the bookstore. Not bad for a day’s work.

Tearful

At my re-entry retreat, we used a handout about the stages of grief to discuss our re-entry process. One of the stages is emotions expressing themselves at odd times. That rang true. 2008 has turned me into a crybaby. Times that I have cried – or at least have my eyes well—so far this week include:

- Reading a newspaper article's except of Obama’s recent speech at the Ebenezer Baptist Church.
- Reading further in the article – speculation about a possible assassination of Obama.
- Moments later, after telling my mom about the speculation in the article. (Her crying set me off again.)
- Watching the youtube video of the aforementioned speech.
- Talking to a group of strangers over brunch after church about when Multnomah County legalized same-sex marriage (At least they were Unitarian strangers).
- Watching Ron tell Christina how much he loved her in ‘The Amazing Race’ finale (but before he said 'Now when I say I love you, I actually mean it').

It’s embarrassing. That’s six cries—or near cries—in three days.

It’s embarrassing, but not quite as embarrassing as what set my mother crying – a comment on the aforementioned youtube videos.

Apparently I cry at reality shows now, but I draw the line at youtube comments.

Questionable?

In recent years, I have developed a set of questions that I ask when I am in a group of people I don’t really know and the conversation dies. These include:

What is the worst meal that you ever ate?
What is the movie that you have watched more times in your life than any other?
What was the first CD/record/album that you bought that wasn’t children’s music?
What was your first kiss? (I am hesitant to trot this one out now, as the last time I asked it, a surprising number of the twentysomething crowd had never kissed anyone and that made me sad.)
What was the worst date that you ever went on?
Do you have a ruined song (like this website)?
How do you say, ‘that’s Greek to me’ in your language? (This one doesn’t work so well now that I am surrounded by English speakers.)

It’s a set of questions that is personal and interesting, but not personal enough to make anyone feel uncomfortable. They’re not the most typical get-to-know-you questions, so people probably haven’t worked up a trite answer. Often, people's answers spark stories and the conversation takes off again.

Unsurprisingly, I trotted them out a few times during my recent retreat. I heard about blood-soaked suitcases in Kabul, a daughter’s love of The Jungle Book, and a first date on which the woman announced that she owned a gun and ‘had trouble with her last boyfriend.’ Good times.

Near the end of the retreat, after we had all told the stories about our calls and how we chose the path we are on, after I had talked about how I want to become a minister, the facilitator told me that I ask too many questions to be a minister.

If being a minister means not asking questions (even such superficial ones) or pretending that I am not curious, maybe that isn’t the path for me. I’m hoping that the Unitarians are more comfortable with questions and doubts than the Church of the Brethren is.

Rachel + Chicago = Gluttony

I spent the weekend in Chicago, reconnecting with some old friends and attending a ‘re-entry’ retreat sponsored by my volunteer program.

Also, I ate.

K, the friend I stayed with, lives in a diverse part of town that is full of ethnic restaurants. We ate the first night at an Indian buffet. I have never seen an Indian buffet dinner before (I am a country mouse.). It was delicious. It being so delicious, we ate and ate and ate. We ate until our stomachs ached and we spent the remainder of the night watching Project Runway, A Daily Show, and Colbert Report, as I enjoyed how everything shows an hour earlier in the central time zone.

The following day, we didn’t start eating quite so early, but once we started, joined by S, the gluttony continued. We drank Ethiopian coffee, ate Asian vegetarian (at a restaurant owned by some sort of spiritual community), drank rum made in New Jersey that puts everything but Flor de Caña to shame, and then found a Serbian café (the kind of café that I never went to in Serbia, the kind of café that is populated by old men watching basketball and playing cards) for burek and rakija. Delicious and a great chance to trot out the srpski again.

The following morning, we headed to a local diner to further gorge ourselves on omlettes, potato pancakes, French toast, and grits. Again, delicious.

A Tale of Two Women in Black

As part of my ‘re-entry’ process, I have started to attend Women in Black vigils in Seattle. It’s very strange.

Women in Black—Seattle has a weekly vigil in Westlake Park, across the street from a downtown mall. (Not until I started attending this vigil did I realize that Seattle doesn’t really have a central place.) It’s small; I have been twice and it has been less than ten each time.

One of the things that I always found so interesting about Women in Black—Belgrade was that people would stop to watch us, even if all we were doing was holding signs and standing silently. The Seattle vigils remind me of why I thought that was so surprising. Passersby do not seem to care what we are about; they are too busy with their lives.

Women in Black—Belgrade is a full-fledged NGO that runs educational program and has lobbying activities. Women in Black—Seattle has a weekly vigil and monthly meeting, nothing more.

The most discomforting aspect of Women in Black—Seattle and a reason why I probably will not stick with them after my re-entry period ends is that they do allow men to join their vigils. I find the gender exclusivity element of feminist activism extremely distasteful. What’s the point of trying to improve things if half of the world is disqualified from participation in the struggle?

Besides, the comic book series that I am currently devouring about the world after a ‘gendercide’ that kills everything with a Y chromosome except one man and his monkey, further emphasizes the fact that men should be kept around.

I Owe Ioway All I Owe and I Know Why

For Christmas, my brother gave me a knife block onto which he had decoupaged pictures of Barack Obama. While the act of sticking knifes into something with pictures of him on it is a bit troubling, it remains one of my favorite gifts this year.

I brought my new knife block (I really should get some more knives. I only have one and it lives at F&A’s house right now.) with me to a Iowa caucus returns-watching party on Thursday night. In light of Obama’s victory, it is now a lucky knife block.

By the time I got to F&A’s house, CNN had already declared Huckabee and Obama the victors. We spent the evening watching the pundits on closed captioning, talking about other things, only un-muting the TV when the candidates gave speeches. We talked over most of the speeches being snarky, listing words and phrases for the ‘buzzword bingo’ we are devising.

But when Obama’s speech began, we remained silent, listening to his words. His rhetoric is so good; he speaks so well. Inspired, I started to cry.

I have never felt this way about a politician, not even Paul Wellstone, not even when I watch and listen to RFK.

I have tried not to care too much about the primaries, since it probably will all be decided before I get to caucus next month, but I can’t claim neutrality any more. The crush that I have harbored for Barack since the 2004 Democratic Convention has blossomed.

I hope he can hold on; I worry that I am setting myself up to have my heart broken.

New Year’s Resolution

This year, I resolve to be less of a snob.

I attended The Seattle Pops last month and didn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted to. The music was simplistic; the jokes were awful. Nearly everyone in the audience seemed to be having a good time. Why not me?

To counteract this, I came up with a desnobification list. I would watch romantic comedies, the number one movie in America, and NASCAR. I would listen to top 40 radio, eat at chain restaurants and read romance novels. So many people enjoy these things, but I am not interested in them. And at least for me in these areas, there’s only a short step from disinterest to condescension. It creates distance between me and other people that I don’t want to be there.

Or, maybe snobbiness isn’t really the issue. Maybe I am just having trouble re-integrating myself into US culture. I recently came across this passage in Exclusion and Embrace by Miroslav Volf:

‘Both distance and belonging are essential. Belonging without distance destroys: I affirm my exclusive identity as Croatian and want either to shape everyone in my own image or elimate them from my world. But distance without belonging isolates: I deny my identity as Croatian and draw back from my own culture. But more often than not, I become trapped in the snares of counter-dependence. I deny my Croatian identity only to affirm even more forcefully my identity as a member of this or that anti-Croatian sect. And so an isolationist “distance without belonging” slips into a destructive “belonging without distance.” Distance from a culture must never degenerate into flight from that culture but must be a way of living within that culture.’

Maybe my new year’s resolution should just be to figure out how to be an American again.