Musings from Minnesota

Once my feet hit American soil I went right back to my busy ways, visiting friends and family and trying to ignore culture shock. It really hasn’t been too bad, and a lot of things that catch my eye are things that I would notice when I visited from DC as well: really big trucks, all the space, and mullets. I haven’t seen a huge number of mullets but this is rural Minnesota, they’re around. I’ve also found myself staring at shelves in stores trying to determine which of approximately 359 different types of toothpaste I should buy. The options in this country are mind-boggling.

But overall it’s been nice to be home, I’ve run into lots of familiar faces and enjoyed the loveliness of a Minnesota summer. I got out on the Mississippi not once but twice.



And ate smores fresh from the bonfire



And enjoyed a Minnesotan potluck. I know people do potlucks all over the country, but there’s just something unique about the hot dishes and salads and bars you find at a Minnesotan get-together. Unfortunately at our family picnic/potluck the tater tot hotdish got left in the oven on a farm a good 20 minute drive away (I still think it was intentional so they could keep all that tasty hotdish to themselves), but we had plenty of food anyway.

Beautiful afternoon except for some flies


I’ve also been spending a large amount of time indoors performing round two of Throw Away All the Crap! Before I left for the Peace Corps I tossed and donated tons of stuff. When I got home I was horrified to see how much stuff I still have so I’m again removing a decent amount of things from my possession, with much more brutality than before. I’ve chucked a lot of my school assignments but I’ve uncovered a couple interesting things that I want to share with the blogosphere before I share them with the dumposphere.

Dated January 7th, 1998 - which places me smack in the middle of 8th grade - I filled out an inventory in order to determine which career path would be best for me and my result was….. Science, Professional. Sample occupations include botanist, statistician, archaeologist (which was my chosen profession at age 10), and geographer! I also chose “Being famous and known for what I do” as one of the three job aspects that would be the most important to me.

Next I have some weird collage thing that is dated May 29th, 1996 which would be the very end of 6th grade. At age 12 I wanted to visit Washington, DC (check), Washington state (not check), and see some Mayan temples (check). I also wanted to be an archaeologist (not check) and do some writing (check right now!). My pet peeves were Jonathan (my brother), Heise (Jonathan’s friend), Spam (one of Jonathan’s obsessions that I had to eat occasionally), zits (no explanation needed), and chewing loud (still drives me nuts).

I’ve been told by a few people that I should keep writing in the blog, so I’ll do that either until my readers get bored or I get bored. Whichever comes first.