Browsing ktravula – a travelogue! blog archives for August, 2010.
On Sunday, we gathered for a picnic to welcome Turkish students from various departments. Amidst smoked sausages and other refreshments we played a football around the open park and got around to knowing each other.
It was a nice welcome into the new semester.
I’m slowly warming up to this new yet familiar experience. School, with a once dry and slow atmosphere suddenly bursts into life without warning and everything finds its root from it. Just last week was the last days of the summer semester, and by this time tomorrow, the school would have burst into the full form of a busy, happening place. The geese are here, still not yet nesting. So are the deer. I saw one yesterday on my walk back to Cougar Village for the very first time in three months. It must have recognised me for having visited a place where its kind are “bush meat” because it immediately retreated from the road further into the woods.
Starbucks remains where it usually was, deep on the side of the students centre. On many sides of Peck Hall are water fountains that give the passageway a kind of home feel. On Friday, just for the kicks, I moved the knob on one of it and watch the water sprout up onto my face. The candy and cookie dispensers also remain, stationary as a public building. I won’t be using them this time. I think I have enough sugar in me to last a year. I won’t be patronizing Papa John’s either even if I get a 200% raise. Something about the exuberance of a bubbly Fulbright scholar has receded, and all that remains is a more relaxed mature student (but of course not without sufficient residue of needed mischief).
What remains is the famous bicycle, and/or the car. The latter is a luxury about which I am fighting myself very very seriously. Even with a bicycle, I remember the horror on my own face to discover how much weight I had gained after a mere ten month’s absence. Now imagine that spent in the comfort of a moving vehicle that requires even less physical exertion. I can also almost swear that I will forget where I’ve parked it on campus nine times out of ten. It doesn’t make sense that people who think of so many things should have to operate a moving vehicle. Isn’t there a law against that?
Today I attended a get-together for Turkish students on campus from various levels and different programmes. I was one of the third non-Turkish students there out of about fifty of us, and I made it a duty to tell whomever asked that my qualification for being there was that I had recently been a victim of Turkish Airline bag misplacement. What I didn’t say was that it was actually convenient that the bag had to be brought to me on campus two days later and I was saved the hassle of having to drag it all by myself all the way from Chicago.
I think pretty much everything is in their place now. Now let’s go enjoy the semester.
I came across this in the shelves of my professor’s library a few hours ago. It is a special edition of Drumvoices Revue (Spring-Summer-Fall 2004) that featured a set of Nigeria’s Third Generation writers. Introduced by Nigerian poet Remi Raji who was then in the United States, the section in the publication was a result of earlier collaboration between this University and the one in Ibadan. Even the cover said as much, with Lola Shoneyin taking a choice spot in the corner. Other writers featured in it were Toni Kan, Tade Ipadeola, Francis Egbokhare, Toyin Adewale-Gabriel, Unoma Azuah, Obi Nwakanma and Angela Nwosu.
Drumvoices Revue is a publication of the Eugene Redmond Writer’s Club and edited by Eugene B. Redmond itself. I’m going to find out if they still publish works. Those were good times when Eugene came to Ibadan seeking new voices around Nigeria, and seeing the book brought back good memories.
One word: nostalgia.
There is a place not far from St.Louis called Fairview Heights. Why they call it by that name is for now beyond me, but it has the same pulse as every other town in this area. We visited it yesterday. The eating spot we visited yesterday is called Hooters. Hooters has outlets in much of every state in the US but I’d never been there before. And the accomplices were Chris, Abdiel and Mafoya.
Hooters is distinct for it’s scantily-dressed waitresses and nothing much else. The fries, chicken or drinks are much like everywhere else. The waiters would all be younger than 22, for sure, working to add some change to their tuition fees or saving for a holiday somewhere. They were cheerful and lively. One of them allowed us to take a picture with her. I’m hoping it didn’t have anything to do with the lie Chris had told that I was an African prince. ;). The Nigerian outfit I was wearing might have helped too.
At a corner, one boy had turned 16 and was placed on the table with paper beaks in his mouth. All the waiters gathered around him and sang him a Hooters birthday song. I’m sure he enjoyed it. Pity my own birthday is still a month away. Who knows who gift I might have got from the Hooter girls. In any case, I’m doubtful that a perching on a table in the middle of a bar would have sufficed for a birthday for a quasi-adult like me. Who knows though, I might have enjoyed it too.
We have all now returned to our various hideouts to regroup as soon as the semester gets into full gear. America is up for exploration, and here we are as volunteers for the great cause. California, Texas, Connecticut, New York, Colorado, Minnesota, Seattle, and even Alaska, here we come, slowly.
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