I'm still really impressed that Selena got that song link on there...how does that work?

Oy oy oy. Just got off the late late bus from Cambridge only to come home to a beeping fire alarm, which I then had to rip off the wall, standing precariously on a chair and a can of Swiss Miss. All better now.

Highlights of my week (find exciting in the mundane!):
Tuesday- Go to Concord to hike around and look for ferns. Stop for delicious ice cream. See some cool lookin' bugs. Wander in a field of wildflowers. And yet, without my girls, lacks a certain magic.
Thursday- Meeting with advisor. Survive...only slightly embarrassed at my inability to identify trees.
Friday- Orientation. Meet a couple other grad students and go to the BU gym for the first time. I take the single worst ID picture in the history of ID pictures. Like an idiot I take off my glasses to look cute. So then when the photographer tells me to "look at the red arrow" I can't see jack shit, so my picture comes out with my eyes wandering around the frame, glazed and unfocused, like a SLOW CHILD (eh, rach?).
Head out to Porter Square in the evening to meet up with Rachel and Romain, who have come to pick up Carmella. We hang out outside of a CVS on a picnic table, where we eat cake and ice cream in the rain.
Saturday- Tropical Storm Danny brings completely unimpressive amounts of rainfall. I juggle two parties in Cambridge, a grad student party with delicious cupcakes and Sarah Z, Anna Mullen, Sam Grausz's birthday party! Quite a lot of Amherst going on there, many familiar faces. I was so surprised to realize that so many people I know are in this lovely city...and in lovely apartments as well. Ahh, to have a salary!

That's about all. Classes start next week! Eep.

Get our your VAD!

Hi dears, I just got back from my Pre-Service Orientation in Albuquerque last night and I start work on Monday. PSO was incredibly interesting, throwing 216 Vistas from all over the country serving in the Southwest. Ages ranged from 19-62 and with diversity easily rivaling Amherst. The three days were not unlike orientation, everyone trying to feel each other out, cliqueing, sexiling, etc. I made friends with, not surprisingly, the hipsters, indie kids, and organic farmers. We started giving people epithets. There was Crying Girl who always looked like she was crying, Slayer who refers to sex as slaying (can you believe this?), etc. etc.

I'm so tired after PSO, mainly from non-PSO related things. Alyssa, my new Austin friend, and I made friends with Albuquerque Vistas so we got to visit organic farms around Albuquerque and hot springs in the Jimemez Mountains (pronounced Haymen although I obviously called them the Hymen Mtns). I even got to see Bill (who's going to start posting for Jess)! Although the training itself was boring, there were a few highlights. All the vistas received Volunteer Assignment Descriptions, aka VADs, which obviously sounds like a lady's lady bits. Choice quotes from this week, "Get to know your VAD. Feel free to make changes and notes on it", "Discuss your VAD with your supervisor frequently", and inexplicably hilarious "your VAD is not set in stone."

This song (my favorite of the trip) feels like driving to the Jimenez Mountains
Great Lake Swimmers - Your Rocky Spine

Home again, after more coming and going

I've spent the past four days on my dad's boat with my siblings, cruising down the coast of Maine. I love Maine! (which you all know, of course.) It was so beautiful -- dark dark blue ocean, lighter blue skies, little puffs of white clouds and, best of all, the stony, craggy, piney islands that dot the coves. There is no place like Western Mass., and there is no place like Maine's northern coast ("Downeast" as the lobstermen would call it). It was glorious to have a series of sun-drenched, boat-rocked, book-filled, ocean-loved hours, aside from the occasional awkward moment -- when we stopped on my dad's ex-girlfriend's island to enjoy a cozy lobster bake together, for example.

After four days of non-stop family-time -- with the full group of Sibley siblings together -- I've been doing a lot of thinking about the odd nature of family. On the one hand, my siblings and I are in a neatly unique position -- we're all old enough to be considered legal adults and, more importantly, mature enough to engage each other without squabbling over the front seat or pulling out each other's hair (literally). We can treat each other like friends, not just siblings. No longer children, we're also pre-children, and can enjoy each other's company without the preoccupation of our own kids. Hopefully our childlessness will last, but my sister started asking me about wedding dresses this week, so who knows how long we'll be so free -- perhaps only a few years more. On the other hand, as siblings, we're all wrapped up in our own independent lives. That is to say, none of us spend much time checking in with each other when we're not together -- a fact that, for better or worse, makes us more like siblings than friends. I don't think my siblings (particularly my older brother and sister, less so of my younger brother) know me particularly well as a person. I will always be their younger sister, and thus relegated to a certain status, a certain box, a certain personality -- perhaps a caricature of myself. (I think this is also true of my relationship with my dad, but not my mom.) I am certain that you all know me, as a real person, far better than my siblings, making you closer in some ways. And I do think of you -- accurately -- as my Chapman family (or tribe, which I like). At the same time, my siblings will always be uniquely positioned in their closeness to me -- because of shared DNA and personal histories. So that's it I suppose: No choice but to confront the strange estranged closeness of sibling relationships, on a boat in Maine. All that notwithstanding, it was great to see them.

Nursing!

Hi Loves,

I have completed day 2 of orientation for nursing school! I like it. Everyone is nice... I love my big sibling. She took me to eat sushi tonight. I am very very sleepy. But I wanted to post, and be good for once! (it's ACTUALLY tuesday!)

Milo and I are heading down to boca grande tomorrow for one last hurrah of HEAT and SUMMER before I start school and he starts (paid) volunteer work. I would say more, but I too sleepy. Love you all and miss you all and I'm looking forward to seeing EVERYONE when you all descend upon New Haven.

Juicy smooches,
Megan

(sentimental) musings from the Farm

Hello all! Here I am, back on my beloved farm nestled in the great gorgeous magical mystical forests of the Pacific Northwest. I've dreamt of being back here all year long, since I left last summer, and it feels amazing to wake up on this land again. In a way though, being here can be a bit confusing and challenging at times as well. I'm surrounded by all of these incredible and inspiration people, and I share some kind of connection with nearly everyone, which makes this place so important to me. But on the other hand, there's also the underlying force of The Farm on which most of them Live and Share so much time, energy and love, all year round! They are more than willing to share and open their hearts and home to me without hesitation, but I feel a certain disconnect from it at times, and that's okay. Those are the challenging and more uncomfortable moments for me, where I realize I'm an outsider in so many ways - for better or for worse. Times like those make me wish I lived here as a full-time resident, but they also make me think of my own "tribe," or my place of belonging and the people that I share it with. I belong somewhere too, wholeheartedly connected to a land, a place, and a people - and those people are you! and that place is our tiny corner of the country, nestled away in our own magical mystical land of forests, farms, mountains, streams and lakes. And that realization empowers me, brings me peace and happiness- bittersweet as it may be. As my last semester at Amherst approaches, I think about how I won't have a real Reason to be there anymore after December. But then again, what reason do I have to be in Portland, Oregon in the middle of August? None except to share some time with people I love on a land that nourishes me, spirit mind and body. So, that will be Western Mass for me as well. I will look to the land and the people (wherever you may be) as a haven, a respite, a place to rest my soul and come home. My tribe.

Feeling blessed, sending love -
Carmella

PS I helped kill two chickens today. Dinner!

hobo bobo

I purposefully shirked my saturday blogging duty in order to have more to say now! I'm sitting in Rachel's spacious kitchen, banana-walnut-blueberry-chocolate chip bread in the oven, having just come home from sitting in a river in Montague.
This part of the river was down a path fringed with wildflowers. We waded in the river for a ways before deciding to lose our sundresses and dump our bodies in the foot or so of bubbling water. Shortly thereafter, it started monsoon-ing, so we got to watch enormous water droplets bombarding the river, with our bodies safely submerged, out of the reach of mosquitoes and rain.

Earlier today we went to Rao's and I had my usual, mocha and a raspberry oat muffin. We ran into Romain and studied/read with him and also made friends with a friendly glass-blower dude who works at the Gypsy Dog Gallery (which seems to be new-ish).

Yesterday, as Rachel said, was full of wide vistas and swimming holes, avocado-tomato-blueberry-plum-tortilla chip picnics, and some chilling out at the Moan and Dove with the likes of Scott and Sara, Jordan and Chris.
Some things I've learned this weekend:
There's nothing like Western Mass.
There are two kinds of glass blowing techniques.
Bo-bo stands for Bohemian Bourgeois (or possibly the other way around).
The world viewed from water level is divine and silencing.

i've been negligent of postchap, but it seems we all have ! may be because we've been seeing so much of each other !

or life's just been busier - orientation is nearing so all my little preparatory tasks are more pressing.. carmz and cait have flopped places - cait's just returned from costa and carmz left for oregon - almost simultaneously - certainly selena's on her way to austin (shit, i originally wrote "selena's on her way to boston" .. if only!) - megan has a milo ..

haha, here i am, still being the harry potter clock of all my chaps-women/man! anyway, point is that once we're all settled down in our schools and jobs, posting to chapman will be more regular !!


news from the life: i've got rosie here in amherst this weekend! picked her up in worcester yesterday and we went exploring the towns and ponds of rte 9 east.. spent a while high up on a hill in spencer, mass. - cooled off in a big residentialized lukewarm lake - then snacked on the shores of the quabbin . day full of lovely nothings like that.

ok. LOVE, rach

Reiterating Selena on how wonderful Amherst was this past weekend. Wonderful! Julian, Cait: I was sorry to miss you, but see you soon enough! The many current and soon-to-be residents of the Valley was enough to make me super excited about settling down there for one more year. A few people asked if it was weird to go back. The truth is that the past four years have been marked by so much coming and going out of Amherst that one more trip there and away felt natural. I suppose some now have incomes (Scott, Sara[h?] DZ) or apartments (Sarah Z., Ben Vincent) but it's more or less the same.

Also reiterating Carmella on the great love-fest that the past few days have been. Tovah A., Segoshi, other old friends, and Monty in New York; Megan and Milo in New Haven; and so many loves in Amherst. Now Mima, my sister; Calvin, my older brother; Sibby, my younger brother; and Sam, my sister's boyfriend are up in Maine, so the love-all continues.

On another love note, we saw The Time-Traveler's Wife tonight. Ohmygod soooooooo cheesy.

HOME!

... has been great, except my dad keeps nagging me about how much I'm on the computer. I tell him, "DAD! I check the NYTimes and my blogs in the morning and gchat at night!" It made me realize how much of home is not here. I just got back from Amherst (and before that New York and before that Boston). I'll do a recap picture post but check out the facebook album for the full album. Amherst was lovely, full of the best sides of Amherst -- discovering swimming holes (or rivers, as the case may be), fabulous dinner parties, and lazily hanging out. Now I'm home and I have until tomorrow morning to pack up my incredible amount of shit as well as tie up a few loose ends. Then on Tuesday, I fly to Albuquerque for training! Updates on apartment and training coming!







more photos to follow...