Early posting for once!

Hi friends. I'm not going to be able to post tomorrow, so here it is today. Plus it's already Friday somewhere... in Bangladesh, for example.

Monty and I are heading to Normandy this weekend to see the D-Day Beaches, and then back to the States on Tuesday. Wooow, as Rachel might say. I will go straight home, but will likely be restless soon. Let me know what you all have planned for the month of August? I want to see youuu. About to run out of internet time. Looove.

summer stories

bored !

bored at work and flipping through my pipeline notes - we had a poetry training and i wrote a poem about chapman

here goes

peeling white paint
off the sides
of my old slanted house.
great flat roofs to climb on
clambering through windows
with dishes
for dinner
sunlight filtered through leaves
flecked on our faces
as we pass around the pasta
merry and content
on our roof top perch

ta da !

i'm so antsy right now !! love love

After spending a week in the midwest collecting water and gas samples (in southern Indiana and western Kentucky), I have never been happier to return to New England. But the whiskey out there is certainly better.

I'm fighting through computer crashes to try to get a lot more of my pictures (recent and older) onto my Flickr account, so whenever that's up I'll post some here and give links and whatnot, because that's probably the best way to see what's going on in my life recently.

For now, a quick story: for the last few weeks I've been reading East of Eden (which I just finished in the van while in Indiana), and was reading the same copy that Destry had gotten out of the library and brought to Florida. When I first opened it a few weeks ago, a few pictures fell out, which turned out to be a picture of Destry and Monty, and a picture of a bunch of the Chapman ladies (Destry, Megan, Carmella, Sarah Z., Selena), which Destry had accidentally left in the book when she returned it. So, they've been my bookmark for the last few weeks, and every time I would pull out the book to read in the van or hotel room, I would have flashbacks and think "awww....Chapman!" So thanks to Destry for being forgetful.

hi darlings, sitting outside the bookmill (you know, up on that ramp, little tables that overlook the water) slightly apprehensive, wondering when this good life i've been leading will halt or falter.. ? hopefully soon.. i'll shut myself in my room, turn off my cell phone, make a pot of coffee, and .. write my thesis.

til then tho, the party goes on. every night there appears some new reason to gather together, cook up veg (vedge), and imbibe wine and beer. every day a new place to ramble round walking.

carmella and i appreciating the valley for all its greenery, stormy skies, water holes, for the beautiful people that reside here, the feelings they stir up inside us..

not much else to say, cept this seems ominously like the raucous '20s before the great depression.. this much fun is unsustainable ? we'll see. feeling particularly gloomy after a long conversation w romain c. (my bookmill buddy) about healthcare, the rich and the poor, in the u.s. there we go.

like destry, will be re-radicalized and politically-activated again soon..

sending all my love, rach.

weekend in new york

This week has included some free modern art at the ICA which has a beautiful view of the harbor and free latin jazz concerts.
The featured exhibit was Shepard Fairey - the guy who did the 'Andre the Giant has a posse' stickers and a lot of other art that looks like advertising....so ironic man. The medium IS the message.

I also went to my first modern dance class in ages at Green Street Studios in Cambridge, which was fun, though I'm still in the market for a really good weekly.

Have found a ton of entertainingly useless websites on StumbleUpon.com, the most recent of which has been a food blog that is almost pornographically delicious-looking.
I also made this cake in a mug. Actually works!

Heading off to NYC tomorrow to visit Jenny and my good good friend from home who is moving to Germany. Have to wake up super super early tomorrow so that's it for me. Love to all.

Rainy Friday

It's my post day, but without much here to report. It's been quite rainy, so I haven't gotten to walk around as much as I'd like. Not feeling like getting soppy this afternoon. We have a cocktail party to go to this evening... a little strange or silly that that's what we're doing, but there it is. A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend (the last friend is Pan V. of Amherst; the second to last is his buddy Aaron from Brown) is throwing a birthday party at her Parisian boyfriend's apartment. She's turning 21; he's in his 30s. The question is what to wear... The object is to get the (relatively wealthy) older boyfriend to take us all out to schmancy Paris dinner afterwards...

Tour de France comes through the city this Sunday. Very exciting.
Have finished the Paris history and now am on to The Hunchback of Notre Dame. So far pretty boring.
Thinking about you guys.

laguna, lisboa

Hellooo!

It's so nice to read all of your blogs. I'm such a bad blogger, but I love reading about you guy/ladies! Destry--I'll try to track down that book. I've been reading whole books, and parts of books, and book-backs and it's so nice just to pick and choose and read 5 things at the same time.

so, updates on life:

• I have a knee injury, which is now turning into something having to do with my sacrum...it makes me think of you, Megan! The good part is that I get to go to this great physical therapy place, where they fix my whole body twice a week. A lot of fixing. Hopefully, I'll be able to run and dance again by the end of the summer...


• I've been going to the beach a lot. Beautiful California beaches! See the pics. It's also been absurdly hot, 95-105 every day. So Sophie and Ariel and I spend a lot of time lying around and moaning about the heat...see the pics.


• My Portugal plans are getting more and more solid, it's so exciting. I've been looking around for apartments online, and I think I'll be able to find a good fit, with other Portuguese or Erasmus students. Martin Aguilera will also be there on his Fulbright--which (Destry, Jules)--just seems kind of funny: I'll be starting off after college with someone who was one of my first (Waldorf) friends in college. Life goes in funny circles sometimes. Also, it turns out I know the director of a theater company there, so that's one more friend in Lisbon, plus hopefully I'll be able to meet people in that community.


• I've also been doing some English teaching at a local Day Laborer's Center, which has been really fun. The guys there have such tough stories: wandering through the desert, getting left for days in little "ranchitos"...it's a pretty humbling experience to talk to them. It's also interesting to realize that many of them have lived in the US for years and have gotten by perfectly well without speaking any English. I had always sort of known that there's this whole Spanish-speaking world in California, but I never really knew how to find it. So now, I've started to explore Pomona, the city where the Center is, and it's so fascinating. It's full of botanicas (the stores for santeria), cheap restaurants with the best Mexican food, carnicerias, pastelerias, and the like. Really, no need to travel to Mexico if you live in LA!

Other than that, I don't have much to report on. Has anyone started to plan our reunion yet? Selena? ; )

Big hugs,

Hannah

PS: Megan and Rose, I keep forgetting to ask you two! Can either of you somehow get me a copy of Rose's thesis? I realized when I got home that in the stress of the last two weeks, I didn't burn it. So stupid of me. Maybe you can post it somewhere and I can download it? Let me know! Sorry to be so dumb...

silly from the heat...

cavewomen...

at Laguna

ready or not

hey friends. sorry to have been out of blogging commission. but it is only a sign that life has been amazing here that my virtual existence has been minimal. what else can i say except that so far this summer has been impeccable. hiking around, biking for ice cream, exploring the farm country that IS amherst, ma. (this is the most incredible thing i have discovered living off campus), cookouts and cookins with awesome friends, fresh veggies in the garden, frequent visits with my family, snuggling with carmsy, learning italian-- i'd say all of my essentials are being exceedingly met here. the only missing piece is jose, his family, and the rest of my family down in costa rica-- but everything has fallen into place and TOMORROW (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) i am going back. yes, with my whole 6 ft and over family (ok minus my mom but still.) and lets talk about an overwhelming first moment. there is an entire BUS of people coming to pick us up from the airport. this will be the first time i've seen jose in almost 3 months. wow. good thing i have a super cute dress to wear ( i will post a picture of it sometime later).
anyway, i will send some love down from costa when i get a chance.
until then, hasta luegito y abrazos for everyone!!

summer snapshot !