Life: health, money and people?

I've been thinking a lot about my life lately. In good and in bad. This is probably because my dad is not doing well and I find it hard being all the way here. I don't know if it is hard more because I'm worried for him or because I feel seperated and alone. Probably both. Luckily, I know he is not alone and I am also fortunate to have both modern technology which enables me to be in contact with everyone back home (and to fly me home over spring break) and also to have people here, who are very supportive and helpful.

I've been talking a lot with quite a few people about all sorts of things during the last few months. Despite all the worry I have for my father and my family, I still cannot help but to be happy how well things have gone for us for the most part. I don't think life is ever supposed to be all fun and games, but despite all the hard times and difficulties we have faced, lots of things have still turned out for the best. Not everything and always, but for the most part. Having met people, who have in my age already experienced serious illness, first personally and then with their younger siblings, or people who have lost not one but both of their parents to cancer before the age I lost my mother, and who still lead as normal and happy lives as life can be, just makes me appreciate all the possibilities there are, even after a life of difficulties.


I do realize not everyone can necessarily be as lucky as me or the people I have encountered, and many things in life depend on the simple fact of where one is born. At the moment, I am reading a book by Pamela Constable, Fragments of Grace, for my journalism class. Especially in my current situation many of the stories have hit me pretty hard, not least the autobiographical sequences. Some of her experiences and thoughts awoken in "exotic" lands I can relate to based on my own travels, even if my travels have of course not been anything as extreme as her travels in war torn areas. But it is also interesting to notice how easy it is to be blind to one's own familiar surroundings and the evils in one's own society. Maybe it is so, because elsewhere one is usually more of an outside observer, with not that many personal attachments to the occurences in the surroundings. Maybe that's why it is easier to observe more objectively elsewhere, even if the impressions are somewhat tainted by one's own frame of reference.


It's been interesting to notice in the book for example, that when she is comparing the other places she has lived in with the U.S., the author doesn't really bring up any issues related to the poverty in her own country (at least hasn't this far in the book). She does tell about other "evils" she notices every time she returns home, but most of them have to do with the ever more consumeristic and entertainment appreciating culture in the States; usually things related to having and spending money, not the issues that arise when people don't have it. However, for me (and even more so for my friend living in New York) it has for example been very shocking and sometimes unnerving to see how many homeless people there are here and this just in the downtown areas. Also, all the personal accounts I got to hear last semester in my education class, the inequalities in the public school system, the huge difference between the students' home neighbourhoods' income levels and violence statistics is just something inconceivable for me.


However, at the same time it is very much likely that I am just as oblivious to similar things back home. It is true I don't pay much attention the "professional" or less professional drunks that disturb D. so much in Finland. Also, I don't know what it is like to be an unemployed single parent or how difficult it can be to live in Finland as an immigrant. There are so many realities in this world and only one of them is the one I know. In the original sense of the word, it is an awesome thought.



Enough of my outpouring. All of this is of course in honour of Friends' Day, which we have back home instead of Valentine's day. To save you all dear friends from having to read any more of my deep thoughts on life, I will leave you now by wishing you all Hyvää ystävänpäivää! You are the people mentioned in the headline, I just never got that far, when trying to save the best for last :) So thanks to all of you for being so great! I honestly don't know what I would've done or would do without you in my life. And of course, a special thanks to my four devoted readers; it's nice to know some one else besides me might some day read this text :)

J.R.'s Mission

Dolores Park

Our San Francisco / Bay Area / Danville local, J.R., promised to take me and Kelvin out on a food tour in S.F. We all agreed on a Saturday that turned out to be a really beautiful "wear your flip-flops and a T-shirt" day in January. As usual, Kelvin had however forgotten that he couldn't actually go on that specific day, so me and a few other friends from the Ihouse decided to participate J.R.'s guided tour of S.F. without Kelvin and headed out to the Mission.

We started out by visiting a free market. It was basically like a flea market, except everything was free. Since I personally have too many things already I didn't really put that much effort into collecting even more stuff, but almost all of us ended up leaving with something(s), whether it be a book on racquetball from the 80's or a hair straightener. After we were done "shopping" we were already getting peckish so we decided to go to an ice cream bar where, J.R. boasted, they would serve the best ice cream in the world. Well, he wasn't wrong. I wouldn't say it was better than the chocolate and blueberry ice creams I have had in Rome, but I wouldn't say it was any worse either. I pretended to be healthy, so I had my hot fudge sauce with a kid size pomegranate sorbet - delicious! The best description I can give for the yumminess of their ice cream is probably that I have NEVER liked banana ice cream, but I am seriously contemplating on buying a scoop of their Roasted Banana when I go there the next time...

After that it was time for a little lunch nap so we headed for the close by Dolores park to hang out and chill. It was really nice to just enjoy the sun and the people around us. We could've got us some more dessert, since home baked cookies and brownies seemed to be really popular in that park. Based on the vendors' appearances and the price of the pastries we decided however that it is probably best not to buy any, or our "trip" in San Francisco might have ended up being totally different. They looked good though, and based on the busy trade they probably tasted good too. Who ever said that the American small businesses are suffering nowadays?!

For the rest of the day we did pretty much the same, walked around, ate, and walked around some more. One of the pretty strange curiosities on the way was the Paxton Gate shop of Treasures and Oddities. They had all kinds of things gathered and "further developed" from the nature, such as small animal skeletons (mice, skunks, etc.) dressed up in Victorian clothing or a bird with a crocodile head. They also had all kinds of fossils, my favorite being the one we thought may have been fossilized poo. It is however very much possible we were mistaken, but considering all the other things they had for sale, it might very well be we were right after all...


My other favorite for the day were the Mission murals. According to my other SF-guide, my weekly MeNaiset -magazine, the murals have been painted to demonstrate and tell about indigenous peoples' struggles, political resistance and immigrants' experiences. I could very well imagine that looking at the colorful and sometimes really powerful wall paintings.


After the murals it was time to eat again, this time at J.R.'s favorite pizza place, Little Star Pizza, where Kelvin finally joined the rest of us. The deep dish pizza was great (kind of like "pannu pizza" except slightly crispier) and the Mixed Salad was even better (I thought). With full stomachs we finally headed back downtown to end the night with some stand up comedy. That was a great way to postpone the eventual return to Ihouse, where the Welcome Dance for the spring term was taking place the same night. We got quite a few good laughs before BARTing home and sneaking upstairs to our rooms without being lured into the dance. (Ending stories with cheesy and stupid puns has always been one of my experties, so here we go again:) Mission accomplished! :D

Handsome men in the Mission

South Dakota

My friend Mari was on a road&air trip in the States and stopped over in Martin, South Dakota for some time. I was lucky enough to have been invited there to visit her in October and to see some of the areas I had read and heard so much about as a child. It turned out to be a very thought awakening trip. I will write here about thoughts and things I was told of; whether or not all of them are accurate in every aspect, I do not know (some of the information on the ever so trustworthy Wikipedia differ somewhat of the impressions I gathered during my short stay).

Healthy local food in
Nebraska, ie. fried green beans

People and Economy
South Dakota, and especially the area I visited, are among the poorest, if not the poorest, States and counties in the US. Also, it is very scarcely populated and the towns are small. One of the smallest towns we passed through, we found in the state of Nebraska, where the population was an amazing 33 people. Martin, the town we stayed in, was rather large with a population of more than 1000 people, but most of the towns we passed had around 100-200 inhabitants.

The town of Martin is situated between two reservations. I was told that many of the people living on the reservations live in very poor conditions, some of them earning about $2000/year. Also, the questions revolving around the Native Americans and the reservations are not only in the past, but even today there are many issues related to Native American peoples' rights, including land rights. Sometimes the reservations might be concidered to have too much "unnecessary" land and this extra land might be redistributed for some other use and taken away from within the original reservation limits. Often times it seems, however, that the lands removed from the Native Americans seem to be the areas with the most fertile soil. There are of course many efforts put into trying to develop the reservations as well, but not all the plans are thought through. For example, a nearby town got funding for a youth center that was built outside the city center. The young people, however, didn't have any means to reach the center without a car and therefore the center's capacity is largely underutilized.

Vanha intiaaniputka

The mother of the family I stayed in had a saying, that poverty is a lifestyle in South Dakota. When the gaz prices were at their highest, some of the people took their horses and rode to the grocery store to do their shopping. The state has also suffered from drought for the past eight years, which has also significantly weakened the economical status of the Native Americans living on the reservations and who often don't have other sources of income besides agriculture.

School
The family I visited had four children in the house who went to school. However, they only went to school four days a week. There was no school on Fridays, because the county does not have enough money to keep the school open more than that. This way they can save on the staff salaries (teachers and other school staff), school bus rides and heating expenses, since they won't have to heat the school during weekends.

However, since there are limited options for pastime activities in (at least those parts of) South Dakota, the reading scores for kids actually went up after they changed into a four day school week system. Also, since many of the children live on farms, they often help out at their family farms or businesses on the extra "free day" and thereby also gain work experience. I wonder what would happen if they did the same in New York or here in the Bay Area...

Nature

Even if all of the above sounds somewhat disheartening, South Dakota was great! Luckily for me (and unluckily for Mari) I had a private chauffeur for the whole three day roadtrip, because I forgot my driver's license in Berkeley. But oh, all the things we saw!

We visited a couple of national parks where we saw the buffalo roam (a bit too close, I might add) and also plenty of really gorgeus views. We did see Mount Rushmore (the mountain with the president's faces carved into it) and I took the perfect shot of it from a moving car. That was how much we wanted to see it, after having visited the Crazy Horse Memorial which is situated about a half an hour drive from Mount Rushmore. Carving the Crazy Horse Memorial started as a one man task in 1948 when sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski and Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear officially started the project. The carving work still continues and is done by seven of Ziolkowski's ten children and some of his grand children.


On our last day of driving we saw absolutely beautiful places, such as the Badlands National Park. Despite the amazing scenery we were quite preoccupied with other things, like keeping the car on the road! During the night it had snowed in some areas we had visited just the day before, but luckily we didn't have to use any of the roads that had been closed on our last day anymore. However, the whole 250km that we had to drive to get back home to Martin, there was a terrible wind that occasionally reached hurricane force gusts (about 30 m/s). After having tried once, we didn't even dare to open the car window, let alone the door, to take pictures, because it honestly felt like the wind coming in the window could've lifted the whole car into the air. Luckily our car was heavy and low enough and my chauffeur so unbelievably brave, that at the end of the day we reached Martin safe and sound. Kiitos Mari!!! :D

Football

Today, Sunday February 1st, was the day for the 43rd Super Bowl. I did not watch it. I have however seen many (American) Football games already. Or well, at least three. But they have all been memorable experiences.

My first American football game was a home game, possibly maybe on October 4, between California Golden Bears and Arizona State Sun Devils. The game was long and in the end rather boring as well, but having gone there with a free ticket I would say it was well worth it. Our native friend Kelvin told us that usually the other team brings their band and cheerleaders as well, but this time, whether the reason be the long distance between the two universities or some other reason, the Devils did not have any support groups with them. I was very much looking forward to seeing the cheerleaders after having seen all those (of course very realistic) American movies, but they did not quite live up to the expectations. I was told that cheerleading had actually become so dangerous with all the difficult stunts they were expected to perform, that the risk of injuries had become too high and the insurances too expensive. But even if the game seemed very long, me not really knowing the rules, the sun being so hot and in the end us being cold once the sun set, it was lots of fun and the pastry I had during the halftime show was absolutely delicious!

My second football experience I shared with my friend Mari who came to visit me all the way from Turku in November. Mari has spent quite a lot of time in the States and was eager to go watch a Bears game during her visit in Berkeley. Me being a bit stingy and not yet too convinced of my love for football, I must have seemed rather hesitant and even unwilling to join her and we ended up going for a walk instead. Lucky for Mari (and me) it turned out to be the second of the three rainy days I have had here in Berkeley and we had to run for cover! Surprisingly (not!), we of course ended up at the campus bar (website worth visiting :) ). We watched the game there with our pints and at least three dozen drenched Bears fans who had decided half way through the game that it was a lot more comfortable to watch the game at the bar than at the stadium. Imagine the feeling when you are wearing nothing but a soaking wet T-shirt, micro shorts and fur boots (the IN apparel of the year here in the land of eternal sun shine). That ended up being a very enjoyable football experience and I don't think Mari was left too disappointed not having been inside the stadium to watch the game.

My third game was great as well. Berkeley is known for its hills and conveniently there happens to be one right next to the football stadium. During every game there is probably almost as many people watching the game on the hillside as there are in the stadium and this time we went there as well. Also, this was the Big Game of the year, ie. Berkeley vs. Stanford. The rivalry was at least as bad as in a Finland vs. Sweden hockey game, and heaven help you if you happened to be wearing anything red, which is the colour of Stanford. Unlike the second game, the weather was beautiful, the views were great and I was lucky enough to be surrounded by all "my boys", both the Berkeley boys and the Helsinki one (excluding Kelvin, who was stuck somewhere in the crowd and couldn't reach us on that very crowded and slippery hill). However, like I mentioned earlier, the game has a tendency to last quite a few hours so the first hour and a half was enough for us. The halftime show was worth seeing though, since especially both the Berkeley band and the Berkeley cheerleaders had obviously put in a lot of extra effort in honor of the Big Game!