That's my mom!
Now we'll move on to someone else I have known forever...Suzanne Gordon. Suz and I have been best friends since we met our first day at Walker School (we were like 5. Or wait, I was 6. Heheh. I'm a year older). Suzanne just graduated from the University of Illinois. She was a Media Studies major/French minor. Like me, she will take a year off and apply to graduate school. Suzanne likes rap music. If she does not become a famous lawyer, she'll be topping the charts as the first female, white, Jewish rapper!
Of course I must include Marla, Carol, and Marc, Suzanne's family and my second family. Marla graduated Northwestern University and works in a nursing home. Carol is a social worker, and Marc works for the IRS (watch out!!!). Oh yeah, sorry. Marla is Suzanne's sister. And Carol and Marc are her parents (I'll let you figure out which one is her mother and which one is her father!).
As long as we're discussing Evanston people, I must tell you about Doug. Doug was in my high school class, where we met. He graduated Northwestern with a French major. During his junior year, he studied and partied in Paris, where I got to visit him twice. We made up a new name for France. Japan is called the Land of the Rising Sun (Nihon...Nippon), so we coined France The Land of the Falling Bird Shit. You gotta be careful on those Paris streets!
During high school I went on a program in Paris. The program itself sucked (rich kids from LA and NYC), but Paris rocked, and I met Kristin also known as Austin (along with countless other nicknames). Kristin lives in Crystal Lake, Illinois, not terribly far from Evanston. She liked France enough to attend Grinnell College and major in French! SHe graduated in 2000. I visited her in Aix-en-Provence (in Southern France) when she was a student there her junior year. Kristin and I have heaps in common...from salties to truckers. One of our best adventures was a road trip (summer of 1997) to the "Big Sky" (it's a joke) state of Iowa. We traveled all over the state, paying close attention to barns near Waterloo (ummmm...southeast?). Oh and (as a joke!!) we visited Ronald Reagan's Boyhood Home in Dixon, Illinois. That was a riot. Luckily we agree on music for those long hauls...Indigo Girls, Dar Williams, Richard Shindell, and Michelle Malone all the way!
I am not totally stuck in my high school days. At Wittenberg I met a lot of interesting people as well. One of the first people I met at Witt was Mike Ruff. One night I was sitting in Firestine Hall complaining to this nice guy in my Common Learning class about how I hated CL and how I felt Witt was too conservative. The nice guy's name was Mike and we became friends quickly. We suffered through CL together, we were misplaced in an education section. Hello?! He was a French major and I was still undecided, but NOT Education! During junior year, Mike left the brown fields of Springfield for the sparkling waters of Nice, France (who would blame him). I saw him in France as well. We graduated together in 2000. Now he lives in DC and works for the government.
Did I mention that Mike was in a fraternity? Not your typical animal house, the Lambda Chi's are ultra cool and I became friends with a lot of them. Another LXA is Brian Feller, otherwise known as the Web God, from New Philly, Ohio. Brian majorly helped me with the Women's Studies web page when I stupidly volunteered to do it (just kidding, it was a rewarding experience). Brian was also in my Witt class. No, not a computer science major, Brian prefers history. And he knows his stuff...just talk to him! Although he never "studied abroad," he did get to go on class trips to Moscow (where he drank heaps of Vodka and called left drunken message on my machine) and England. Brian is still our Vodka expert! Another 2000 Witt graduate, Brian recently moved to North Carolina.
I didn't get to know Ted Jackson until this past year, which was a shame, but he was a freshman. Ted is a LXA as well. He is going to major in German (I will not even insert Jarred's comment in here). But Ted "roves ranguages." He has taken Russian with Rira and may even take Japanese (thanks to moi). Ted (along with all of the other LXAs) loves to make fun of Tog. It has become our past time, I suppose. And you should see his car! A real (original) red VW bug! Cool! He is a soon to be junior at Wittenberg, and he will be in Germany for the entire year next year!
Other LXAs who deserve a mention are Jarred, Tito, and Jay. Jarred graduated as well. He is one of the funiest people I know (and one of Witt's only Jews). He was an English major. Now he is in LA, but will go to grad school. Tito (Mike) is now a senior East Asian Studies major (WOO HOO). He is great at Chinese and even attempted Japanese (under Tog). He was in China during the 2000 Fall semester. Lucky boy. Jay is now a senior! Wow! He is a sociology major. I had the high honor of making the Hairy Buffalo with him (and Ruff and a few others) at his 21st birthday party. Between streaking and hitting on townies, I must say that was one of my wildest nights at Wittenberg!
I had the honor of working with Sarah Duey for two years on Women's Experience, an all female "talent show" at Witt. Sarah is now a senior (wow) psychology major. Sarah is my "evil Voices twin." We have been known to scare frightening people away! She graduated Witt in 2001 and hopes to move to California.
Of course I can't mention Wittenberg people with out discussing Amy Christiansen. She was my Japanese sensei (teacher), advisor, role model, and friend. I can honestly say that without Sensei, I probably would have left the school. But I stuck around and really got to know her. Some of our craziest times together include her surprise birthday party (complete with Ho Ho hunt!), working on the Women's Studies web page (She is the big head hancho of the WS Dept!), and of course meeting at Ikebukuro station in TOKYO (I loved seeing her in Japan) to accompany her to Narita, the airport. I know that she is going to be one of those people who, in 30 years, I still consider to be one of the most important people in my life. Besides teaching (and putting up with my crazy shit), Sensei is a master gardener who loves her babies (plants) very dearly. Click here to read the letter I read to her at the 1999 Women's Experience.
In Japan, I have a family. The Sangos have helped me so much. From letting me stay with them in Tokyo to finding where I could exchange money in Osaka to hooking me up with phone cards, this family has gone out of their way to help me. Asuka, their daughter, went to Wittenberg. Now she is at University of Illinois working on her Masters. But the rest of the family still lives in Tokyo. I hope I can go visit them again REALLY soon!
I have heaps of friends in Japan. Tomoko, Suzuko, Takahiro, Akiko, Aya, Azumi, Mai, and Yuki all spent a semester at Wittenberg. They live in Kumamoto, on Japan's southernmost island of Kyushu. I just got back from visiting them. Erina Kitaoka lives in Kyoto. While I was a student at Kansai Gaidai, I spent a lot of time with her family.
Although Heather and Maria are not Japanese, I met them in Japan. They were my closest friends at Gaidai. We all went to Hokkaido (Japan's northernmost island) together, went to Karaoke (PUFF, baby! And Celine) countless times, hiked up to the monkey park in Kyoto, and had a crazy experience at Osaka's Hard Rock Cafe. Heather is a senior at Tufts and Maria graduated Goucher College with a degree in Art. They are both origianally from the DC/Baltimore area.
Now on to the non-humans. Frisco is my kitty cat. I adopted her in San Francisco when I lived in Berkeley. Frisco is really smart. She has lived in Evanston, Ohio, and of course San Francisco. She even survived the TWA flight from hell (NEVER fly TWA. I don't care how cheap it is!) home from San Fran. Frisco is adorble and has the sweetest personality. She bites for fun, though. Watch your fingers. Not as nice, but still loveable is Shanghai my dog. Actually, he lives with my father, but he is still my dog. Shanghai is like the world's biggest Shih Tzu (Chinese dogs). He growls, bites, and weighs 28 pounds (he should weigh like 18 at most!). But he is cute as hell, and quite pathetic. We love the bastard.
Did I forget you? Oh well. Anyway, go back to the main page to explore more!
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