ithaca

Please remind me when I spend the next seven-eight years of my life at Cornell NEVER to fly our of the Ithaca airport. All attempts thus have been disasterous. The first time I visited Cornell I couldn't fly in or out of the airport due to weather and then overbooking and ended up missing my spanish comprehensive exam as a result. Most recently, I managed to make it into the airport but barely managed to escape after hours of standing in line and begging with ticket agents.

(s)no(w)

In response to my previous post, spring has not arrived. Not in Michigan and certainly not in Ithaca. In what seems to be a trend in my graduate school interview forrays, The 70 degree weather everyone along the midwest/northeast part of the U.S. enjoyed earlier this week quickly turned to snow upon my arrival in New York. Eleven to 16 inches? In less than 12 hours? No problem! At least I don't have a comprehensive exam to rush back to when my flight out of Ithaca is cancelled on Sunday.

Spring?

It's finally warm here! After weeks of living in a frozen world, today reached a balmy 70 degrees! And the sun shone all day to top it off. The highlight of my day was finding an awesome shield bug while walking in the woods before dinner. You know it's Spring when the insects start emerging.

Too bad there's a cold front coming in tomorrow :(

a relaxed week of finals

I have no *real* final exams this week. That is, I presented my Spanish final (an analysis of the impact of the Bourbon reforms in Spain on the indpendence of all of Spain's Latin American colonies) last week. My genetics final was an open-book take-home exam that I just handed in and I just need to revise my final critique for journalism--a critical look at the effects of subtitling foreign films. Technically, I have to work at the vet clinic and finish grading some things, but mostly, I get to enjoy finals week.

A (belated) review of the Oscars

The Oscars are generally a tedious multi-hour self-congratulation by the established acting industry inexplicably popular with the American public. But touted as the “most international of Oscars”, this year’s show vowed to be different. With a record number of foreign film nominations accompanied by the most ethnically diverse group of nominated actors, the academy seemed to finally recognize the talent in non-Hollywood productions. Alas, at last night’s awards ceremony, they couldn’t manage to fully pass up lesser-quality, traditional Hollywood films.

At first the evening looked promising. Pan’s Labrynth, a Mexican film, was nominated for 16 awards and received three (best art direction, cinematography, and makeup) within the first hour, which were dedicated to “all the filmmakers in my country [Mexico]”. The excited cast received a slap in the face later in the evening when the award for best foreign film went to The Lives of Others. While the Academy was grudgingly willing to give up minor awards to a Hispanic film, it couldn’t neglect its Anglo-European heritage for the big one.

This pattern was repeated throughout the evening with smaller awards conceded to the international population of nominees while saving the larger awards for the tradition of Hollywood. Letters from Iwo Jima picked up an award for best sound editing, while Babel received one for best original score. The Blood of Yingzhou District won best documentary for a short subject, The Danish Poet received an award for best animated short film and West Bank Story won best live action short film.

Yet a series of faux pas starting with some of Ellen’s well-intentioned jokes began the night’s downward spiral back to the safe and tedious celebration of old American cinema, showcasing Hollywood’s lack of consideration for foreign films. Ellen’s first jokes about the degree of diversity at the awards ceremony were well intentioned, “Spain is in the house, Japan is representing, I think I see a few Americans as well…of course I’m talking about the seat fillers.”

Then she mistakenly referred to Penélope Cruz as Mexican instead of Spanish. When The Departed received its award for best adapted screenplay, the work it was based on, Internal Affairs, was cited as Japanese instead of Chinese. There wasn’t even an attempt to translate Ruby Yang’s portion of the acceptance speech for The Blood of Yingzhou District. Although given Clint Eastwood’s botched translation of Ennio Morricone’s acceptance speech for his honorary statuette in Italian, that decision by producer Laura Ziskin was probably less painful for the audience.

As the longest Oscars yet slowly rolled to an end, the international films it heralded were nowhere to be seen. Alan Arkin took the award for best supporting actor for his role in Little Miss Sunshine, Jennifer Hudson took the female version of the award for her character in Dreamgirls, and Forest Whittaker and Helen Mirren won best actor/actress. Although blockbusters were scarce among this year’s nominees (Little Miss Sunshine, an independent film, was the highest grossing nomination) the most blockbuster-esque film of the group, The Departed, picked up the awards for best director and best picture as the Academy finally hit bottom.

The drudging ceremony reaffirmed that the Academy is still too pompous to fully appreciate the diversity of today’s cinema.

I'm going to Australia!!!

I am officially spending next year in Australia courtesy of the Fulbright commission. Visitors are welcome anytime. I am not exactly sure where I will be because my original mentor took a job in the States but the choices are not bad: either Cairns or Melbourne...

Australia for the geographically challenged:

Cairns

Melbourne

grr...

I thought I was all done school shopping after trying desperately to escape from Ithaca during a snowstorm. But no. There's more. Cornell invited me to return for their graduate recruitment weekend which just happens to fall when I was supposed to be in Oregon relaxing and hanging out with my mom. I get into Oregon late at night on Wednesday and dding insult to injury, the only available flights to Ithaca are ones that leave early Thursday morning. I can't remove the wholly inefficient jaunt across the country because I bought a cheap ticket online and changing the itinerary will cost more than the ticket itself. Rationally, I know that I should go back to Cornell. I am still seriously considering it and I would get to meet faculty members who I am interested in working with that I didn't get the chance to meet while I was interviewing. Emotionally, I would really just like to be in one place for a while. No planes, no homework, no requirement to be extroverted. Just time to hang out with my family and my dog, and see what new swaths of forest have been clearcut since the last time I visited.
Alright, rant complete.

hide your sewing kit

A woman called into the veterinary clinic yesterday asking for a second opinion on her cat. Her kitten got into her roommate's sewing kit and swallowed a bunch of thread. Stangely, the first veterinary clinic she went to said that her beloved cat only had a 15-20% chance of survival. I found this strange, since we remove string and other interesting objects from both cats and dogs fairly frequently and with a much higher success rate. Since we sounded more optimistic, she ended up bringing in her cat and we did an exploratory abdominal surgery in the afternoon. I was really excited because I got to help with it. But, since we had regularly scheduled appointments as well, I got home really late.

After I ate dinner and pretended to work on homework for a while, it was time to head back to work and check on the cat. I failed to realize, though, that since I rode my bike to work earlier I didn't shovel the driveway. So I'm stuck outside, after midnight, in a really nice neighborhood where no one is up at this unreasonable hour (I'm housesitting for a professor), trying to silently shovel the foot of ice and snow separating me from my car. I was only successful at scraping off the top layer. Fortunately, the cat was doing quite well.

the countdown

I'm grudginly counting down the weeks before I am no longer an undergraduate. Maybe they won't make me leave, but I have a feeling that in 11 weeks I'll be forced out of my haven for the past four years. Here's an illustrated summary of what I've been up to the last few months:

August: Meandering across the US of A with my best friend and roommate, Katie. Highlights include cracking our windshield within the first 20 miles, killing a bird on the highway, reservation dogs stealing my sneakers, moose, illegal campsites, and a large prarie dog.

The best campsite I have ever seen (Katie found it)

The upper peninsula of Michigan: unfortunately, I can't diss the state after spending a couple of days up here.

Bacterial mats at Yellowstone

September-November: My favorite quote (during a review of my thesis, regarding a really cool confocal micrograph that I took and wanted to include in my introduction):
Me (whining): But I really like the picture
My professor: Yeah, but I'm sure you really like a picture of your dog, too, yet I don't see that included in your thesis. (I almost included a picture of Shiloh on the last page of my final draft just to see what he would say).
Neruda's poetry, advanced analytical chemistry, thesis revisions, graduate school applications, and Pet Vet were all occasionally punctuated by escapes to the arboretum:

Spittle bugs in a conifer


The sun occasionally does shine in Michigan

The international students' visit to the arboretum

December: two great trips...a road trip to see my other best friend, Reid, followed by a short visit with my extended family and a second stay in Ecuador!

Reid and I decide to jump into a lake near her house on December 1st. We immediately regretted the decision.

My adopted family with our christmas carol rendition (my sister remembered me!)

For unforseen reasons, I ended up back in the jungle collecting turtle eggs

A great hemipteran

Some cool ants making a nest

You know your underwear smells bad when...

Larvae, anyone?

Driving (illegally) in the Amazon in a truck with a broken clutch and a leak in the fuel injection system is fun...until you drive through a military checkpoint.

The cutest kids I have ever met

January: I returned to Oregon just long enough to leave for Colorado and kick off the interview season. Three months later, they are finally over and, for the biggest news of all, I have been accepted to all three dual veterinary/PhD programs and am in the second stage of the Fulbright application process. I guess now I have to make a decision :(