Aleksandra the Great’s Exploits

(eigo de: It’s cold!) Finally, it is so cold now that there is not a day with a high above 70 degress in the ten-day forecast!

Also, I find myself rather envious of my New York friends whose weekends have already started. If only the beginning language program were not so intensive! demo nihongo wa ii desu, and I wouldn’t trade it. I haven’t actually said anything about my classes this semester, have I? I’m taking post-colonial literature with an awesome professor (who took pictures—shashin o torimashita; forgive me, I have a test in the morning—of everyone so that he could make flashcards to learn our names) who said he would give extra credit to the person who could say something completely irrelevant about the readings. My other English class is on women’s poetry, but I swear I’m not turning into a feminist.

Bill Clinton came to my school yesterday (Wednesday, actually) with Lois Murphy and Ed Rendell. I waited in line for two hours, and then I waited around in the cloisters (luckily!—not everyone could get in to see them in person) for another hour and a half before all of the speakers showed up. Just as they were about to come out to do their speeches, it started raining. Admittedly, I did not stand in the rain to watch; I had secured a spot along the wall, and when it rained I just stayed under cover. Either Murphy or Rendell (you’d think I should be able to tell them apart, but I can’t remember) brought up something about global warming in their short speeches, which was pleasing. Clinton’s was about the original intent to form “a more perfect union”—a phrase he repeated often—and that the current, special interest, ideological (contrasted to philosophical), most right-wing group of Republican leaders do not have the same goal as our founders. He said that the Democrats were now the nation’s liberals as well as conservatives. Since he was at a college, he brought up a lot about college tuition and the cuts from the education budget that were used to pay his tax cut. He apologized and said that he prefers that we be able to go to college. He, having taken off his coat in the rain, said that it was his 31st wedding anniversary and he wanted to keep his coat nice because he was taking his wife out after the rally.

Several times people have tried to get me to register to vote in Bryn Mawr’s district or to volunteer for its Lois Murphy. I love when I tell them that I’m in Sestak’s district and they respond with things like, “Oh, stay in that district; we like Sestak,” and “Okay, if you put your information down we’ll forward it to Sestak’s campaign people.” I must make more of an effort this year to get the Democrats elected (more than in 2004, the only other time I was really that politically-active, when I only went out on election day’s night to make sure the Democrats were voting). Does anyone know if you need your voter registration card (that they sent in the mail) to vote if it’s your first time, or is photo id all that is required?

[Shoot. I just realized that all of September passed (but when I checked my watch and saw that it was the 8th, I wondered whether it was September or October), and I didn’t even make a new post. How dull!]

This evening during the Eagles game I was in my room (at home), reading a collection of Christina Rossetti sonnets (which were very lovely indeed). Every minute or so, the group of people out back or in one of the houses across the alley would chatter loudly, and I had imagined that it was a party. I soon realized that they were being loud about the football game, and I managed to ignore the noise. Suddenly, a bomb exploded. Or at least that’s what it seemed like, since I’ve been reading (for class) about violent colonial battles in Algeria. It was probably only a firework of some sort, but the sound reverberated and shook more than all of the noise-makers fired after it. I had, for about a second, seriously worried that a bomb had exploded.