Labor Day

My meal plan was fixed, finally, on Thursday. Now I can eat all the cafeteria food I want 8 times per week! I'm pretty stoked. Ok, I'm being facetious, but I am certainly glad to not be having to pay for my meals anymore, especially since they're supposed to be paid for already.

I'm in Texarkana this holiday weekend. Mom's having a birthday tomorrow. I made cookies for her tonight-- oatmeal chocolate chip, because they're her favorite-- and I am making breakfast in the morning. When you've got nothing but a mite of talent, you give away services for birthdays.

Jenny is down here, too. We went to our friend, Jeri's, wedding. She married a guy named Jerry. It was confusing, but I am happy for them. I admit that I'm sad a bit because they will be living in Dallas as she goes into a speech pathology graduate program and he works. Interestingly, Jeri's from Redwater, but we actually met and became friends in Conway. Oh, how people migrate these days.

I'm really glad that Labor Day is tomorrow because it falls on a Monday, and it's getting me out of my worst day of the school week. Mondays I have about 7 hours of class (about half of my week, if you crunch the numbers), and by the end I am dead. So I don't have a chemistry lab or a night class this week. Hooray!

In my mind I am wrestling with my thesis work for the Honors College. I want to make a documentary that deals with expatriation and identity. It started because my friend is a second generation in the US, and she was asked not too long ago if she's a foreign exchange student. Of course, her English is perfect and she's much more Arkansan than Salvadorean, but for whatever reason she isn't quite "American enough" yet. And even though she laughed hysterically at the woman who asked, it makes me wonder how people identify themselves in cultures where the roots don't run especially deep. (It's almost like I've done that before or something...) Anyway, it's gonna call for some field work, and I'm figuring out what that will mean for this summer. And I'm trying to work in a bunch of things this summer, so we'll see. I'm wondering if I can't overlap and extend one thing to encompass two. I'm being nonspecific because I don't want to make grandiose plans known and then realize that I have like zero dollars. (Which is true, but not the point. Grants, people, are made for this situation!) Anyway, there will be a trip involved in the fieldwork, and I'm excited.

I want to title the work "Off-brand Americans." And I'm in love with the idea of this journey. (It's the honeymoon phase... I know.)

T