Month: July 2013

Old Friends

/ Gracetopher Kirk / 2 Comments

So, Paris is awesome, and I’ve wanted to go there for quite some time, but the real carrot of the trip was friends. The first few days of my trip I spent my time with two amazing people who happen to be my housemates, another amazing person who goes to my university but with whom I haven’t spent enough time, and a former fellow UP student who I hadn’t seen in over a year. The first three I will obviously be seeing again in the fall, but Andrew actually lives in Germany now, so I probably won’t be seeing him for quite some time.

Then several days after my friends and I had to part ways, I saw someone even more exciting! (though perhaps I shouldn’t say that, he always did have a big head as it is, no need to make it even bigger). Any Glenwoodians reading this may remember a certain skinny dark-haired Finnish boy who graced our town with his presence between about August 2010 and June 2011. That’s right. Emil Bulut. I tracked that kid down. I think I’m actually the first Glenwoodian to see him in two years…. It was pretty freaking awesome!

It’s of course always interesting though…. people change in two years…. not always a lot, but enough. If he hadn’t have been looking for me as well, I may have passed over the tallish dark haired guy sitting outside…. But he was looking for me, and despite a change of hair and glasses, I quickly adjusted, and we were (more or less) back to old times.

Talking about two-year old gossip from a small town high school in Iowa while you’re in one of the biggest cities in Europe…. Well, that is one way to give yourself a massive head-trip.

Me with my old friend Emil and my new friend Juho

Me with my old friend Emil and his friend Juho

I Miss Peanut Butter

/ Gracetopher Kirk / Leave a comment

Never have I ever felt more American than now that I am finally someplace outside of the states.

I am not particularly patriotic. Many things about American culture kind of disgust me actually. I don’t trust our government, and I’m not always the biggest fan of the military. I spent a good deal of my teenage years believing that if I had been born in Europe my life would have been much much better.

I was however born in Portland, Oregon, and have since spent half of my life in Oregon and the other half in Iowa, and nothing that I do will ever change that. Even were I to move to Europe, I will always love the mountains and forests where I was raised, and I will always miss peanut butter and apple pies. Nuttella and crepes are amazing, but I didn’t eat any of either until I was 19 years old; no matter how great they taste, they will never have the sentimental value of food I grew up on.

It’s not just food either. Europe is in general very similar to the US: I’m still firmly within the realm of Western culture….. but it’s the small things. Things like where people live: in the Basque country at least, towns can be smaller than 5,000 people and it’s still normal for everyone to live in apartments instead of houses. Things like travel: It’s faster here to travel by train, carry-ons in the airport are limited to one bag, and said bag is smaller than carry-on size in America, and said bag is limited in weight as well as size. Things like homosexuality: I was in a library in a tiny town…. the kind of town which would be extraordinarily conservative in the US… and two guys kissed right in front of me. And not the famous cheek-kissing that you do with complete strangers – full on undeniably romantic kissing. Things like language: I don’t think I have yet met a European who is not at LEAST bilingual.

Little things. Things that in some cases I actually prefer here…. But still, things that make one realize exactly how American one is. I miss peanut butter.

Happy America Day fom Not America/the Fourth of July vs. Homecoming Football Games.

/ Gracetopher Kirk / 2 Comments

Well, happy fourth of July everyone. Here of course it will be just another day, no fireworks, no parades. At least here the lack of parades on the most patriotic day of the year isn’t underscored by a parade for a silly American football game (cough cough Glenwood….).

Ok… Just going to spend a moment on this, but what self-respecting American town can get away with having parades and fireworks for a football game, but not for the fourth of July??? Not that I’m particularly patriotic or anything, but throughout my time in Glenwood, Iowa, I had even less school spirit. For my readers who have never been to Glenwood, what you need to know is this: every single year there is one football game that is more important than the rest (I’m not entirely sure why, but it is). The day of said game, school children are released four hours early, all the shops temporarily move locations to stands on the square, and there is a massive parade. Since every single class from kindergarten on up has their own float (it’s not required to ride on them of course, but I only opted out once), and I later spent six years in the marching band, I only watched this massive spectacle once. 

After the parade there’s always a party at Jim Hughes’s real estate offices. There are ponies, face paint, clowns making baloons shaped like whatever you like, watermelon, hot dogs, potato chips, soda, dancing, a mini train ride…. 

Everyone spends a few hours wandering about the town, hanging out with friends, and altogether being completely useless. If you’re in the marching band, you have to report to the practice field by five pm with your instrument (alto saxophone in my case), and run through the field marching a few times while Mr. J yells from the sidelines…. This is one of our biggest shows of the year, in some ways bigger than the state competition, because we have massive amounts of alumni who will be sitting in the stands to watch us.

By six pm we are getting dressed in our awesome uniforms to line up and head to the field where we will spend the first half playing pep songs during time outs and then go do our thing during half time. In my opinion, we’re the only thing worth seeing at the whole football game (unless you want to watch 14-18 year old girls dancing around like sluts in the cheerleading squad and dance team). The football team usually loses (though recently they have brought in the very worst teams they can find specifically for the purpose of winning homecoming). Then, win or lose, we have fireworks. As a member of yearbook I loved taking pictures of that part, even if it was overdone. 

Is that all? Of course not, that’s just one day! In Glenwood we have to celebrate our mediocre football team for at LEAST 48 hours. The Saturday after the game we crown the Homecoming Queen and King, and then follows one of the two most important dances of the high-school year. I have actually heard it argued that this Coronation dance is more important than Prom. 

Somewhere in all this mess is also when all of the class reunions happen, plus another dance for the adults. It is THE craziest weekend in Glenwood.

So what happens on the fourth of July? A few people light off small things in the street (though not many, fireworks are illegal in Iowa). Some people have small private barbeques I suppose…. But compared to Homecoming, the Fourth of July is extraordinarily quiet in Glenwood.

Moral of the story: I don’t believe I’ll feel incredibly sad missing Independence day. It’ll be just like the times I spent it in Glenwood.

Euskera: Endangered Language

/ Gracetopher Kirk / Leave a comment

The language of the Basque Country is called Euskera, and it is currently on a list of endangered languages. It is slowly making a come-back thanks to nationalist sentiment but  is still spoken by less than a million people. Although it is the co-official language of the Basque Country, Euskera is actually spoken by less than half of the residents of the region; where I am you wouldn’t guess, but I suppose all the city-dwellers offset those of us in the boondocks.

It doesn’t help of course that dialects of Euskera are massively different, even in very small areas. There is a standardized language used for publications written in Euskera or for movies and television shows, but it is not the normal Euskera spoken by real people. When you can’t necessarily communicate with other people who are supposed to be speaking the same language as you… perhaps it is understandable that some people choose convenience over preserving a beautiful ancient language.

Despite the trouble involved in communicating in different dialects however, as little as 80 years ago Euskera was “very widespread and inescapable in daily life” (http://www.unc.edu/~sdteeter/basque.html). What happened in the past century then? The Spanish Civil War. When Franco assumed power, he banned all of the languages aside from Castellano.  When he died in 1975 and Spain finally became a democracy, the four provinces making up the Basque Country were allowed a large degree of autonomy, and the Basque language was once again allowed.

Now schools in the Basque Country are taught in one of 3 models: Model A in which classes are taught primarily in Castellano with Euskera as a separate subject, Model C in which classes are taught in both languages, and Model D in which classes are taught primarily in Euskera with Castellano as a separate subject. There are also night schools offered to give adults the chance to learn their ancestral language. Hopefully these measures can save the oldest language in Europe from extinction.