Hi all, Hope vacation and college and life is going well. It's almost March! Going home next weekend. Here's an interesting article I found. Entertainment for when you have some downtime.
http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/russ/
xxoo shannie

Ooh! Greece!

Hi,
Have fun on break Nikole!!!!! Take lots of pictures :) we can skype when you get back.
How did the LGBT conference go Elenor? Did you meet lots of interesting people?
Tonight I had a liturgy committee meeting and afterward went to a talk on "The Early History of Chocolate" about the cacao bean's cultural place in early Mesoamerica. Growing on the cacao tree are lots of pods, and in the pods are the seeds and the pulp. The pulp was used to make chicha, or beer; the fermenting also gives beans their chocolaty flavor. The beans were also used for currency (one bean=one tomato/avacado in wealthier trade areas where cacao was cultivated). So, a basic message: in pre-Colombian mesoamerica they made beer out of chocolate and money grew on trees. There was also hand-made chocolate (milk to 85% dark!)from the anthropology class that sponsored the lecture and hot chocolate there too (yum!). Also some chips of the inside of beans (extra yum!) and some whole cacao beans that I may send with the baton next time. Overall, a very excellent event.
Tomorrow there is a sleepover at the Ithaca Youth Bureau for Littles and their Bigs, so I'll be going to that since I didn't get to see Taniesha on Tuesday. We're going to go see a Cornell Women's basketball game. I'm really excited! The only thing is that I don't have a sleeping bag :(
Hope to hear from you adventurers soon!
xxoo Shannon

STRAX SKA JAG ÅKA SKIDOR I ÖSTERIKA

hey guys!

i just wanted to let you know that if i dont write for a while, its because im on sport holiday!!! wahoooo. yup we are leaving at 5.30 tomorrow morning (so like 11.30 thurs night your time), and ill be back in like ten days....

I LOVE YOU

pray that i wont break a leg...or arm....

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxooxoxoxoxoixooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Happy Valentine's Day!!!! (A day late). I'm glad we got to skype, even though it was only a couple minutes. IC doesn't have wireless, or I would have taken my computer somewhere else. How did the cookies turn out?
Ski trip sounds like a blast! Take lots of pictures. Pictures will be good from the Big Gay conference too Elenor. Maybe a rainbow flag? Ithaca is very into LGBT things, and they just had a front page story in the Ithacan about an IC professor who is worried about what could happen to her family (her partner and their son) with all of the changing laws regarding gay marriage. Plus the college has lots of gay music/theatre guys....
I'm going to Longview -- it's a senior care center (i.e. nursing home) about a half mile up the road from IC -- with Molly to give mass. I haven't done it before, but we basically just read the mass, sing a psalm, and give communion. It should be good, but afterward I have to catch the bus to the Sciencenter so I can work there noon-5pm. Yesterday I worked and got to help with the touch-tank, where there are chocolate-chip starfish and a pencil sea urchin and little and big hermit crabs that we can help kids pick up and learn about. A TON OF FUN. My hands got all pruny from being submerged in salt water for two hours.
That's it for now, love you love you love you.
Oh -- and I've only watched the first 1/3 of P.S. I Love You, so I definitely need to sit down and watch that sometime.
AAAAh! --- And I just remembered that I forgot to tell you who came to Ithaca a few days ago to give a guest lecture: Dr. John Carlos, 1968 bronze medalist in the 200m dash at the Olympics in Mexico. He held up a gloved fist along with Tommy Smith to represent all of the oppressed peoples of the world. There's a video online "Return to Mexico" that you can google if you're interested. It was a really awesome talk, he talked a lot about growing up in Harlem, and what he experienced growing up in the U.S. during all of the political tension. He's a really cool person, and I'd tell you more, but I have to go to Longview now.
Peace :)

Grattis På Hjärtens Dag!!!

Happy happy happy valentines day! hope your day is filled with hearts (shannon) and lots of gay pride (elena). and yes i want a t shirt. or pin. or both haha. anyways, my day is not so interesting...i climbed earlier though so now my fingers are no longer capable of gripping anything at all. yesterday i did art the entire day at school, i was in the zone, so i didnt even eat lunch lol. ill take pictures of my stuff sometime to show you. yesterday i made two sculptures and one painting. but i dunno how im gunna be able to take them all home with me on the plane. yup yup so i love you guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ps. will u be my valentine?

If I were a flower growin' wild and free, all i'd want is you to be my sweet honey bee

Ahahahaha! Ahhhh..... yeah.  So I just saw this picture today, and the song was stuck in my head.  And then I read the blog.  And I needed to show you guys.  

Shannon, oh my goodness, Shabbath sounds awesome! There are a bunch of Jewish guys in the RCAH, and it's cool to hear their ideas about their own history.  I mean, most of the stuff I've read about the Holocaust and Jewish history in general (besides the Diary of Anne Frank) has been by everybody else.  

Nikoleson:  So. Jealous.  Ski holiday?! That is of the awesome!  And yes, I've seen him kind of a lot.  We study in the library together.  So romantic, right? :p  Speaking of romantic, I've seen p.s. I love you, and I cried.  lots.  with my sister.

I go to the Big Gay Conference tomorrow!  I'll get you guys something gay.  Like... a rainbow flag.  Or an ally t-shirt.  Or an "I love god, but I don't hate gay people" pin.  Because I saw one of those and it was awesome.  I've just realized that I use the word "awesome" much too much.  I should work on that.

Anyhoo, 

   love you guys.  

i shot the sheriff, but i didnt shoot the deputee

hola hej greetings:

shan. thats cool that you went to the shabbath (sp?), we are learning about judendom (cant think of the word in eng. at the moment) in my religion class. test on thurs. and i think it is really interesting!! also, i read a book that u have prolly heard of or read already yourself called 'when bad things happen to good people' and it was written by a rabbi.

elenor. gotta love gospel choirs!! its weird in sweden cuz everyones like athiest so u never see ppl worked up over what they believe in like that. and also cuz swedes are shy in general i think. i am glad or unglad that your non date-date went well and non datelike. have u hung out with him since?

i have nothing much to add, other than that i had a girls night and we watched 'p.s. i love you' which is soo sad and we all cried like the whole movie. so i dont recommend it. unless your shannon, because their is nothing about a fox or a hound :)

nothing new here really, just waiting for my ski holiday (yeah, they get a ski holiday, for a week every winter). yup. so. theirs no words that can describe my love of my shannon and elena.

ps. about the title: that song was stuck in my head today, and if u dont kno that song, u should look it up and listen and then get it stuck in your head too.

Shabbath Shalom!

Hi: just want to tell you about my Friday night. I went to a Jewish Shabbath (pronounced shabbat), or service. It was at six, and usually they go to the terrace dining hall afterwards and have a kosher meal. So I went to the service part at Muller Chapel, where they also have Catholic and Protestant masses. It was really cool, and I even met a girl there who was in my freshman seminar class last semester. It was a small group, and we all sat on one side of the chapel, facing Yishrael (if I am remembering the spelling of "Israel" right.) Shabbath consisted of constant praying, singing the prayers out of individual copies of the prayer book (Torah, I think), with some brief teachings by the rabbi to explain and give a brief history of some of the prayers. Some prayers we said in unison, some were only said by the rabbi; all were sung and most were in Hebrew (or was it Yiddish?). Sometimes we stood up, but mostly sat. I'm sure everyone could tell I had never been to a Shabbath before, because I started reading the Torah from left to right (it's supposed to be read right to left, turning the pages to the right). It was difficult at first too to try and follow along because it wasn't in English. But the copys of the scripture we had had Hebrew (Yiddish?) written in Arabic, hebrew written for pronunciation (with western letters), english translation, and english explainations of the scripture for each part of the prayers. It was very free-form (of course that might be because I didn't understand the reasons each prayer was said), and an interesting break from the Christian tradition. A very relaxing and meditative gathering. Sadly, I didn't attend the dinner.

Egg Fu Yung...

...is delicious!!  I got some for lunch today because I didn't think I'd be able to get into the caf because last night at about 9:30 the roof of our caf turned into a waterfall.  They think a water pipe burst or something, and the whole place got flooded.   There was a LOT of water!  And they put up an oh-so-helpful "caution wet floor" sign in the middle of the huge puddle, which was funny.  Unfortunately, they also decided to set off the fire alarms, so we had those going for about two hours.  Anyway, I didn't think the caf would be open for a while, but I guess it was today.  Oh, well.  I got egg fu yung!  And Jimmy Johns' 50 cent bread.  If I was homeless, that's what I'd eat.  

I went to the MSU Gospel Choir the other day, because I'm researching them for my ethnomusicology class.  They are crazy, crazy good!  And they let me sing with them, although I was actually more focused on swaying right and trying to clap on beat than singing.  The director is amazing!  There is absolutely no sheet music, ever.  He just has it all in his head, and everyone just remembers their part once he sings it for them.  And all the songs are improv, so he'll be like, "say be encouraged" and the choir will sing "be encouraged", and so on, and he seems to be just making up the order as he goes along.  And the band seems to know exactly what they need to do, no matter what the director's doing.  And they're amazing.  And I love it.  

The not-date was, in fact, a not-date.  :( ... or :)?  I don't know.  I went to his apartment and he made me chinese food, which was delicious, but I also had to play Snow White and clean the kitchen because it was disgusting!  But it was fun.  And then his friend showed up, and we all went to play ping-pong and talk and watch Jet Li movies at my dorm.  So it wasn't really a date.  But it was still really fun.  His friend is very funny.

Shan:  Our spring break is the same as yours!! We should do something... dunno what... Florida? :)

Nikole:  You jumped a little over 15 ft!  :) 

Love you guys.  Lots and lots and lots.

News from Lake Cayuga

Hi, Nothing too new since I talked to you guys last...just that I got the BATON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I haven't looked through it all yet (there is a lot of stuff in here!) but it did get to see the theatre magnet and the vodka/wine and cheese brocures. And Jackie if you are reading this, I loved your letter :)
I just got back from bible study where we read the book of Ester (or summerized + read a few chapters). Very good book. We are also learning about a different kind of Ester in Chemistry, so you see, the world goes around and I'm beginning to see a lot of connections between words. Like "allosteric inhibition" (has to do with enzymes) and "alla breve" (a music notation), and "Allopolyploids" (dealing with genes)... they all start with "all" if you didn't catch that. Challenge for the day: see how many words you can connect! This shouldn't be too hard with Swedish and Chinese in the mix.
I'm very happy that the party went well Nikole. And long jump too, although I'll be honest and say I haven't done the conversion; it sounds far though :) How did the date, or not-date, go Elenor? Any new concerts/shows for visiting? Beauty and the Beast? And when is your spring break el? (mine is the week of March 9th). Do you have any breaks coming up, Nikole? Spring festivals?
Miss you all tons, xoxo Shannon

Söndag

so. the birthday party went pretty good, i left at 12.30 because i had to get up at 7.30 this morning to help with the hammarby tävling (track competition, my club is hammarby). so i helped with that until 1, and then i had my long jump. i did okay, i think my best jump was 4 meters and like 65 cm, but ill check that later. the ppl there are all crazy good. so anyways im finally home and i really need to sleep soon because ive had a pretty tiring weekend. i have wednesday off school too this week, so that makes my day haha. good luck with the chinese elenor, and i think ur doing the right thing by hanging out with chinese ppl all the time, its really gunna help make the language come quicker. shannon, what other kinds of things do u and your 'little' do? do u have snow in ithaca? I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE YOU GUYS.