Friends

Through one of my classes I have recently made the acquaintance of an Australian exchange student named Julie.  It has come out this past week in our class that it is very difficult to make friends in Tampa, regardless of where you are from.  I've done okay on the friend front since I've been here a year and lived in the dorm for a while.  Unfortunately, Julie has not had quite so much luck.  She lives off campus, she doesn't have a car, and she can barely get anyone to talk to her - much less be her friend.  She's one of the nicest people I've met here, she loves to laugh, and she is extremely kind.  So why can't she find friends?  I don't know, but I've had the same trouble since moving here.

We met up for coffee on campus this morning before our class, and she told me just how hard it's been to meet anyone.  She's hardly seen anything of Tampa or the U.S. besides her apartment, campus, and Walmart.  To top it all off, a stranger dropped her camera and broke it over the weekend.  As an exchange student, your camera is your only memory of a life you'll eventually leave but always love.  Julie doesn't have a memory now.  My mom is trying to find someone to donate an old digital camera to her.  The point of all this is that it made me realize just how hard it can be to make friends - and just how important friends are.  

I've traveled to Europe twice, once for two weeks and once to live for a semester.  On the first trip I was betrayed by false friends, and I absolutely hated Europe.  I went back two years later with people who became excellent friends, and let me tell you, Paris and the rest of Europe were a different place!  I learned then that you can be in paradise, but that without friends, even paradise can seem like hell.  And so I met Julie.  This semester and next fall (she's here for a year) should be some of the most exciting months of her life, but instead she's been lonely and, although her smile would never suggest it, probably pretty miserable, too.  She is a beautiful person and, from what I experienced over coffee, she is very easy to become friends with and a lot of fun.

Although I haven't met them, I know that there are other people in the world like Julie.  Your friends really do make your world so, please, do me a favor and talk to anyone who may be in Julie's situation.  I've been there, and I can honestly say that it is one of the most miserable ways to live.  Julie has been trying for almost two months to make friends with everyone she's met, but it hasn't been up to her.  It takes two to make a friend, so please, find a Julie and be the second.  Have coffee with them, or lunch, or maybe just say hi.  Whatever you do, it will mean a lot to them, and maybe to you, too.

As for Julie, she now has a couple of friends, and she seems to be doing pretty well.  We're making plans to show her around Tampa this weekend and sometime this morning during our coffee meeting the Australian exchange student/classmate became my friend, Julie.  If our meeting this morning is a sign of what's to come, then I've made a wonderful friend and we'll be having some great times together.  Sorry for the long post, but the difficulty with making friends in Tampa is something that has bothered me for more than a year, and after meeting Julie I decided that it needed to be publicly addressed.  I now understand why many foreigners think that we're so mean and conceited because we act that way, often without intending to.  

As mentioned before, please find people like Julie, whether an exchange student or just a new person in town, and make them feel welcome.  You don't have to do everything with them or solve all of their problems, just let them know that you're there and that you care.  Turn someone's hell into paradise or at least make it tolerable.  America is a great country and it has much to offer, and everyone foreigner and native alike should feel welcome and appreciated here.  That's my challenge for you this week; find a Julie and be their friend.  You won't regret it.  Alright, I have homework to do so I'll be shoving off now.  I hope that your Monday went well, and if it didn't then remember that there's always Tuesday.  Lastly, I'm including a poem by Sam Walter Foss that I first read as a child, and that I still read while traveling or when I meet new people.  I hope that it helps you like it's helped me.

The House by the Side of the Road

There are hermit souls that live withdrawn

In the place of their self-content;

There are souls like stars, that dwell apart,

In a fellowless firmament;

There are pioneer souls that blaze the paths

Where highways never ran-

But let me live by the side of the road

And be a friend to man.

Let me live in a house by the side of the road

Where the race of men go by-

The men who are good and the men who are bad,

As good and as bad as I.

I would not sit in the scorner's seat

Nor hurl the cynic's ban-

Let me live in a house by the side of the road

And be a friend to man.

I see from my house by the side of the road

By the side of the highway of life,

The men who press with the ardor of hope,

The men who are faint with the strife,

But I turn not away from their smiles and tears,

Both parts of an infinite plan-

Let me live in a house by the side of the road

And be a friend to man.

I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead,

And mountains of wearisome height;

That the road passes on through the long afternoon

And stretches away to the night.

And still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice

And weep with the strangers that moan,

Nor live in my house by the side of the road

Like a man who dwells alone.

Let me live in my house by the side of the road,

Where the race of men go by-

They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,

Wise, foolish - so am I.

Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat,

Or hurl the cynic's ban?

Let me live in my house by the side of the road

And be a friend to man.

A fun weekend

Okay, so neither Chris or I like Valentine's Day.  We both think that it was created by marketing people to make unromantic men spend money on their wives and girlfriends for one day to make up for being unromantic all year.  I'm not sure if that made sense in words, but it made sense in my head, sorry.  Anyways, Chris always buys me chocolate on Valentine's Day because, well, I like chocolate, and he's sweet like that.  Beyond chocolate though we never really do anything.  Last year we went out to dinner, but we didn't go on actual Valentine's Day because eating in a packed restaurant with every other couple in Tampa sucks, so we went on a weekend instead.  This year though we stayed in.

We have a friend who we met in our dorm last year when she was on exchange from Germany.  She's now back at USF to get her master's degree, and she coincidentally ended up moving into our apartment complex a couple of weeks ago.  Since we we didn't have any big plans we decided to have her over for dinner.  Chris cooked an incredible dinner, and after eating way too much we all went back to our friend's place to hang out.  We ended up trying to play her Wii, and I'm absolutely horrible at everything except bowling.  We had a good time, and we made it home around eleven.  Today we did absolutely nothing and had a great time doing it.  Now we're both doing homework, I'm taking a break obviously, and dreaming of a time when we're no longer broke college students.

That was my weekend in a nutshell, and I wish that tomorrow wasn't Monday.  I am meeting a friend tomorrow morning for coffee though so that will be fun, but then it's on to classes and that's not so great.  I need to get back to my reading for education, but I hope that everyone had a good Valentine's Day or at least a decent weekend.  Enjoy the last of your Sunday.

I miss pubs

Above:  The Welsh flag.  I have one that my sister brought me from her semester in Wales, four years before I went, and it still hangs, framed in my apartment - it has also graced my dorm room for the past two years.  Cymru am byth! (Wales forever, for you non Welsh folk).  Cariad am byth Abertawe.

I just wanted to say that.  Last night at Bar Louie was a lot of fun, but it made me realize how much I miss living in Britain.  Granted the food here is better, but the beer is better over there.  Sitting in a corner of Pub on the Pond and watching people wrestle with the giant Santa in the doorway while my flatmates and friends laughed is something I wish I still had.  Pubs and beer gardens just offered an atmosphere of warmth, kindness, and friendship that is hard to find over here, if it can be found at all.  Yeah, Bar Louie was happening and chic, but it wasn't a "great good place."  Pubs are such a center of the community in Britain that my university's student union had two in it.  USF just got a Beef O'brady's, and although they served beer during the day for about a week the administration has since limited their beer hours to after six.  What kind of a social center is that?

I just liked walking into pubs and being welcomed immediately.  In the States you have to have frequented the place at least a year before they begin to even remember your face, much less your name or drink preference.  I found it very interesting last Friday when I met three Irishmen in Ceviche in St. Pete.  They were the friendliest people in the place and the only people who made my friend and I feel welcome, in our own country.  It must be hard to be a foreigner here if you're not visiting someone you already know.  Chris and I have a German friend who we lived with in the dorm last year.  She is back for her master's degree and will be here at least two years.  She was lucky and came here with many friends, as I went to Britain, but it must be very lonely to do it by yourself.  I moved to Tampa knowing only one person, my aunt, and I honestly think it was more lonely and difficult than moving to Europe.  I do not mean to offend anyone, but I wish desperately that Americans were more friendly.  Many of us are, but as with every country, there are many who are not so much.  Alright, well it's my bed time - I have to write a paper tomorrow and go to class so I'm off now.  Sorry for the depressing thoughts, but I was doing some reading for my communications class, and all of the talk about America's lack of the "great good place" made me really miss Wales and Europe.  Should you be visiting the other side of the pond anytime soon, please send my regards to those people and places I once knew and loved so well.  Here's to Monday, may it pass quickly and painlessly.

Bar Louie

Above: Bar Louie

Having both had a tough week, Chris and I decided to go out for a couple of drinks last night.  Then came the inevitable question of where to go.  We usually just go to Tampa Bay Brewing Company in Ybor City, but Ybor is not someplace you want to stay past midnight, and we didn't leave until nine so we were going to be out pretty late.  Chris and I had gone to International Plaza a few weeks ago and had noticed a new place called Bar Louie on International's Bay Street.  Of course we came home and looked it up, and it had some pretty good reviews.  So we put on our big girl panties, braved the unknown, and went to Bar Louie - someplace new.

International Plaza (off Columbus Drive) has an outdoor section called Bay Street that has several nice restaurants and clubs along it.  Bar Louie is next to Blue Martini by Capital Grille.  First off, the bar is way too cool.  It is directly in front of you when you walk in, and all you can see is a huge island bar and their "world of beer" on tap.  They had just about everything you could ever want!  We found seats by the door, we froze our asses off, and I ordered a 20 oz. Guinness while Chris got some kind of German beer.  I think it was a pilsner - not sure, sorry.  Later we ordered their "loaded fries," yeah, those were amazing!  Chris got another beer, but he gave up on the beer and started drinking my amazing mojito, that I got after the Guinness.

Above: the bar at Bar Louie

As for the rest of the place, there are loads of tv's all showing different sports which I thought was pretty cool.  One tv had wrestling, another had NASCAR, and thank God, one had football.  It's nice because everyone can, hopefully, find something they like - at least more than everything else.  Bar Louie is actually a chain, and they have many locations across the country, so if you've seen one somewhere, go in; you'll probably love it.  The atmosphere was chic but not too formal, and it is supposedly a really nice restaurant during the day.  The kitchen is open late, and all of the tables were as packed as the bar.  I have a feeling that we'll definitely be frequenting this place, for the mojitos, if for nothing else.  The employees and patrons were all very friendly, and being Gasparilla (Tampa's annual pirate invasion/festival.  I know, I live in the coolest city!) many of them were very festive, too.  I saw one guy, wearing tons of beads (like mardi gras), order a black and tan, but I think that he forgot about it for a while because when I looked over thirty minutes later, his black and tan was a murky brown, and he hadn't touched it.

So yeah, that was our Saturday night. Definitely check out Bar Louie if you live in Tampa, visit, or have one near you.  The drinks are fantastic, the atmosphere is loads of fun, and the food is very yummy.  Oh yeah, we also didn't have to worry about getting shot when we left - that's one-up on Ybor.  Other than being cold the whole time, damn doors, it was an awesome place.  We'll be going back.  Happy weekend everyone. 

P.S.  If you click on the title of the post (the part in yellow) it will take you to the Bar Louie website.

Papers and toes

I've finished the damn quiz!!  I began working on the thing at five last night.  I went to bed at twelve thirty.  I got up at five thirty, and I just finished it at seven thirty.  I spent nine and a half hours working on an eight question quiz - I've spent less time on essays for finals!!  I'm not one to drop classes because they're hard, but I can honestly say that I wish I had dropped this one.  It's not hard, it's impossible.  I've completed two other assignments for this professor and so far neither of them has received a grade.  Does that say something about the professor?  Yes, I think it really does.  I'll explain more about this lady's idiosyncrasies later when I have more time to get into the nitty, gritty parts of her sadistic little brain.  It will be ugly...really ugly.

This week has been so bad because of how many quizzes I've had.  I had one Monday night in my education class over reading and notes.  There's the one that I've just finished which covered about 200 pages of reading, and I have one in my lit and occult class today over Jung and Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher.  That's three quizzes in three days.  YUCK!!  And I had to take a myers-briggs typology test Tuesday night and research my personality type.  I'm an ENFJ for anyone who cared to know that; I supposedly belong to the "pedagogical teachers" of society.  That's good to know.  So yeah, I've been a little busy.

The toes reference in the title is because it's 31 degrees here, and my toes are absolutely freezing!! And no dad, I'm not wearing socks.  I know, go put some on, crazy.  I don't like them though, and I moved to Florida so that I wouldn't have to wear them.  So much for that.  I just want the weekend to come, the quizzes to be over, and my toes to be toasty, without socks.  I think the whole country is freezing so, regardless of where you live, stay warm!

Honestly, it's never going to end!

This week is seriously dragging and getting weirder with every passing day.  First of all, Tampa is supposed to dip into the upper 20's tonight - it's already 37 - and we once again have a prediction for snow!  I'm graduating, buying a boat, and moving to the islands.  

Okay so now for the weird part, my apartment complex has had an interesting day.  Our complex only has two dumpsters.  One is for trash and is located at the entrance to the complex by the office.  The trash dumpster has a compactor built in, and the compactor quit working today which sucked!  Of course, I haven't had any trash to throw away, until today.  The other dumpster is a big, green one parked in front of my apartment, and it's for furniture and other big things that get left behind when moving.  Today it became the dumpster for the entire complex.  I got so tired of hearing people throw away their trash with a loud thud or big bang that I went to campus to do some way too stressful homework.  The dumpster filled up before I got back from class and could throw my trash away, so yeah, it's still stinking up my kitchen.  At least I still have a kitchen though.

That's the other weird thing about today, someone drove through the front wall of an apartment in my complex.  I was on my way to campus to run away from the dumpster dumpers when I passed a tow truck which seemed a little out of place.  I then saw a four door sedan in an end unit's living room.  The dust had cleared by the time that I came upon it, but four people were still standing around it staring in amazement; I was too.  I'm not sure what happened.  We have parking in front of our apartments, and I'm guessing that someone confused the brake with the gas and turned their car into a bulldozer.  The maintenance man has since put a huge piece of plywood over the hole, by hole I mean that the entire front wall of the apartment is missing, to keep out the wind and cold.  I'm assuming that the residents are living somewhere else until management repairs their apartment.  I wonder who will be paying for it - definitely someone with more money than me.

Okay well I'm working on an unbelievable assignment for a very anal, inconsiderate, and condescending professor so I need to be going.  It is an eight question open book, study question style, take home quiz, and I have been working on it for six hours so far.  I am just getting to question four, no exaggeration.  Yeah, it's that bad.  I also spent three days writing an 800 word paper for her last week, and not only did she use the assignment to publicly humiliate everyone in the class, but she also refused to put a relevant grade on it, only much wasted red ink.  I'll go into more torturous details later.  To say the least, don't take legal writing with a former lawyer who also teaches the Bible as lit for the USF English department.  I won't list names, but anyone who has had her for a professor will know, all too well, who she is.  The saddest part is that I'm being kind but such is my nature.  Alright I have to get back to the damn grind stone.  Here's to the weekend.  It can't get here soon enough!

For those who wonder

This is where I row.  That's not my boat or my crew, but that's my river and my city.  Make it dark, we row at six a.m., and add a couple of really big tugs, barges, and yacht transporters and you have my morning, four days a week.  How I love my Floridays.

Almost Empty

It's taken a couple of days but Tampa is beginning to feel like its old self again.  I don't get strange looks in Target anymore, and I can complain about the "cold" without some Steelers fan laughing at me.  The best part though is the traffic - it's almost back from impossible to insane, nice.  For the past week I've felt like I've been living in a studio rather than a city.  As someone in my communications class said, "I feel like we've had our sense of community taken away for the past week."  My classmate was right, Tampa hasn't been Tampa, and I think we've all missed it.  

TBO published an article that commented on how well Tampa was received by all of the visitors.  They created a grading system, and we mostly got A's and B's with a few C's.  It's funny though, a lot of the complaints were about the traffic, and I have to laugh since they brought it with them.  Some of the people that I met who were here for the game were great, like my Irish friends, but some other people made a week seem like an eternity.  I'm just glad that it's over.  To give you an idea of the madness, 32,000 people flew out of TPA yesterday, and 6,000 rental cars were returned.  That's a lot of people!  It's quieting down though and downtown is clearing out.  Maybe by tonight I'll live in Tampa again.  Until then, I'll be in class or catching up on some reading in my apartment so I should be able to avoid what's left of the Super Bowl.  Oh yeah, it looks like it could be back in 2014 or 2015.  If it is, I'm either going to visit family in Tn or maybe some new friends in Dublin, but I won't be here.  I feel like it should be Saturday, and it's only Tuesday.  I hope you don't feel the same.  

Game Day

Never live in a city that has a chance of hosting the Super Bowl, and never live on the same street as the stadium - two mistakes Chris and I have made.  Tampa is nice for me because it's the biggest city that I've lived in.  I've visited most big cities in Europe and many of the big ones in the States and I've come to love them, but living in a city definitely has some disadvantages.  The biggest problem is traffic.  Tampa is big enough to have big city problems, but too small to feel like a real city (London, New York, etc.)  The traffic here is pretty insane most days, but with the Super Bowl in town it has gone from insane to impossible.  I had to drive to St. Pete Friday night, and I usually go down Dale Mabry (the street I live on) and get on I-275 south of downtown.  However, thanks to game day, that part of the street has been blocked off, and I've had to go up Bearss to get on the interstate.  That route takes me through downtown.  I don't just get screwed once by the big game, I get screwed twice.  I sat in traffic for almost an hour in downtown trying to get to St. Pete, and every license plate I saw was from somewhere else.  

Tampa is trying to start a train system sometime within the next five years, which is great, but it needed one about twenty years ago.  That's what I admired about British and European cities, they had train systems, even if they didn't need them.  The DART system in Dublin was amazing!  We need something like that here and fast.  My plan for today is to stay as far away from where I live as possible.  Chris and I are going to my aunt's house on the other side of town to watch the game.  We went to Target and Sweetbay a few minutes ago, and everything about the place felt kind of weird.  When we got back to the parking lot we noticed all of the Northern tags and realized that the guy asking where the beer was had probably been from Pennsylvania or beyond.  The Yankees are invading, and I only have palm trees and sunshine to defend myself with. 

The bay area about doubles in population during the winter because of all the snowbirds that come down to escape the snow.  One in every three license plates I see is from Ontario and three in every five are from New York.  With the Super Bowl here, Tampa seems to be bursting at the seams.  I met three Irishmen in St. Pete Friday night.  One lives in Seattle, and his father and brother had flown in from Dublin for the game.  They're smart, and they're staying in St. Pete.  They asked me if I was going tailgating at the stadium before the game, and they were surprised when my answer was that I was going to run away instead.  I'm avoiding like the plague what they payed thousands of dollars for.  I hope they enjoy their holiday, but I'll be in hiding.  It was great to meet someone from across the pond - it reminded me of my former life when I visited Ireland and made a distant shore my home.  

While everyone in other places can't wait for kickoff, I can't wait for Monday.  Maybe by then the invaders will be leaving or at least too hung over to be out in the city.  I've been waiting, since I moved here last year, for the moment when I truly felt like a local instead of a visitor or an out of state college student.  That moment was today when I was in Target and everyone there was looking at me like I was crazy because I was in jeans, flip-flops, and a long sleeve shirt, and complaining of the cold - it's 67 degrees.  To those people, I was a local, and, as I recall from a time when I only dreamed of living here, perhaps someone they truly envy.  

Like many who have gone before, I have left Tennessee for Florida, and I've made Tampa my city, my life, and at last, my home.  As much as I hate the traffic, the damn game day people, and the snowbirds, I love Tampa.  Even if it isn't a real city, it's bigger than where I came from, and that's big enough for me.  I hope the Super Bowl people enjoy the game and my city, but I also hope they'll be gone come Monday.  It is nice though, to know how it feels to live in the focal point of America, even if just for a day.  I hope everyone enjoys the game, and when the camera shows an aerial shot of the stadium and Tampa, look North and somewhere in all of those dots will be my apartment, my small life, and the city that I've come to know and love so well.  Enjoy the game!