Revival...and onto adventure!!!

Yes I am just another person who starts a blog with lofty aspirations...and then doesn't write anything for months, but by necessity I have to revive this blog because I will be leaving for New Zealand in about a month.

I will try to update often to let all of you know what I am up to.

Until then...

Me in a nutshell

With visual means you can explain a whole wealth of words, therefore negating endless babble.

Via Mushaboom Movement

New York, New York!

It's noisy, vast, and busy. It’s sensory overload. How do I sum up the city of New York?

First of all, I went to New York City for a service trip with my student group Christian Student Fellowship, so 12 other people joined me on this trip. I had a hand in planning the trip, and I chose the organization Global Outreach to organize our time there. We drove out to the East Coast in a van pulling a big trailer. While we were there we slept in a church basement in the Red Hook District of Brooklyn, and we ventured into Manhattan and other areas for service and sight seeing.

I’ve been thinking how to convey my experience in the city that never sleeps to you my dear reader, I could post some hastily snapped pictures, ramble about the tall buildings, the people, talk about how it is a concrete jungle, and always busy. But I decided to convey my experience through the lens of the souvenirs that I picked up while in New York. Now, these are different souvenirs in that I didn’t buy them at a typical kitschy tourist booth because most of them were free. Each random object tells a story about what I did in New York. 

The letter Z

I picked up this wonderful square wooden Scrabble game piece on my walk back to the subway after helping at this food shelf in Brooklyn. I picked up the letter by a wrought iron fence, on the concrete where it was stranded along with cigarette butts and various litter. (How great is it that it was the letter Z and not some random letter in the middle of the alphabet? It is one of the best pieces in the Scrabble game) At the food shelf we helped organize the storage room, and stock the shelves in the customer area. The shelter serves over 10,000 people in a month! It was not only great to volunteer there, but we had fun quickly forming assembly lines, cutting bread, and singing while we worked.

The New World Family Encyclopedia Volume Six: Dumas – Fire Worship

This is one of my favorite things I picked up on this trip.Two different days on the trip we worked at a senior center in Red Hook, where we served lunch, played games, sang songs, and just enjoyed conversing with the elderly people who frequent the center. One task we were assigned to was sorting books in their activities room, and throwing away the ripped ones. I came across the 1953 Encyclopedia volume, and its cover was torn off so it was free for the taking. Inside there are many pictures such as the eye diagram you see in the picture. I was very excited to find an item such as the book because it seems like the perfect thing to go into my future Cabinet of Curiosity.

Proud to be Irish Button

I picked up this Saint Patrick's Day find on the walk back from Covenant House a homeless youth shelter. We worked two separate days at the shelter, first time sorting clothes, and the second a game night with some of the residents. I was fortunate to talk to Michael, a guy who was only a year older than me, after he played Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on the piano. He grew up in all 5 boroughs of New York after leaving home at a young age, and on his own he saved money to move to Buffalo to start anew. Before he could leave though, all his money was stolen and now he is at Covenant house to work and save money. Covenant house plays a crucial part in giving mainly people ages 18-21 an opportunity to succeed, whatever their past may be. It was a privilege to spend time there, and helping in even just a small way.

Subway map, Metro Card

Ah the subway. What an adventure. The loud screeching metal bullet is a great way to get around the city, and fun too. Half the fun of this trip was just finding my way around. I used the handy metro card every day on bus rides and subway trips. It's a strange experience to walk down the steps into a whole other subterranean world. There's also nothing like the feeling of walking up the steps of the subway and emerging into a completely new city scene.

Il laboratorio del gelato

The plastic cup came from an ice cream and gelato place in Soho. They had strange and delicious flavors such as black mission fig, black currant, honey crisp apple, and maple. A wonderful part of the New York experience is finding great eats, from a pretzel from a street street vendor, to hearing some good and mostly not so good off Broadway singers/waiters at the Stardust cafe, or even listening to karaoke at the neighborhood restaurant Hope and Anchor, the choices in the city are endless. The best food I had was a Nathans hot dog on Coney Island, a divine slice of Grimaldi’s pizza, and a 3" thick pastrami sandwich from Katz deli, oh be still my heart...

The MOMA ticket

Last but not least, I had to squeeze in time at a Museum, even if it happened to be the free Friday night at the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) along with about, oh I dunno, a million other people!! That experience was a great end to the trip, and it literally was since we hopped into the van that night and drove through the night back to MN. The crowds of people in New York, the ever present noise of sirens and car horns, and  just the perpetual sensory overload that happened every time you walked anywhere basically sum up the city experience. 

I definitely did more sightseeing than I expected to do on this trip, and I ended up going to most of the major sighting destinations. (Central Park, Times Square, Grand Central Station, Rockefeller Center, Coney Island, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, seeing Trinity Church, and walking by the Stock Exchange) I'm glad I was able to see the sights, but most of all I loved to serve in the city. My goal for whenever I travel is to do volunteer work where I am, and usually that ends up to be the best way to understand a new place because you stretch beyond the normal tourist bubble. Also as a Christian, because I claim to live in Jesus Christ I must walk as he did (1 John 2:5-6) and so I will take every opportunity to imitate the love and compassion of  Jesus, even when I'm exploring a new place.

Cabinet of Curiosities

This semester I have to design a coffee shop for my Interior Design Studio class and I think I will base my concept for the project off one of my favorite things: a cabinet of curiosities.

I have always been fascinated by the idea of a cabinet of curiosities (Also known as a cabinet of wonder, Kunstkammer or Wunderkammer in German). It may spring from all the nature center visits of my childhood, tapping on the glass pane separating me and snakes, picking up pine cones on nature walks, or simply being enthralled by even the simplest natural object.

I visited the Bell Museum of Natural History right here on the U of MN campus after my last class for the week. I cannot believe that I have not explored the wonders held within that building until now. Having a lecture in the large auditorium connected to the museum this spring and last, I have been mere steps away from a whole world of  wonderful objects without even knowing it. 

A cabinet of curiosities is literally a window to the world, a visual delight, and sometimes a visual overload. Basically they came about during the Renaissance period from rich guys who had time and money on their hands to collect cool stuff, though humans have been collecting intriguing objects throughout the ages. They bring to mind great adventurers and explorers who went to the ends of the earth and decided to pick up a few things along the way, or the anthropology professor who has filled his old creaky office shelves with peculiar things. They are a delight the eyes and the imagination.

I am particularly interested in the cabinets because they house such a variety of not only objects, but stories. Being an aspiring collector of curious objects myself, with every object there is a story and a history. The rocks on my bookshelf were picked up on the shore of Lake Superior last fall, the piggy bank a gift from my parents, and the feathers from a collection of my grandfathers.

We are accustomed now to searching out the latest YouTube sensation, the next big musician, or the up and  coming artist or designer on the internet, yet we are still taping into the age old search for something that fascinates us. I think we need to remember that there are curious things all around us everyday if we just step out our door. 

In the Bell Museum Touch and See room, it's like a cabinet of curiosities was strewn over the entire room. There are animal bones, antlers, rocks, seashells, animal pelts, live snakes and turtles, and many more objects that you can pick up and investigate closely. I felt like a kid again as I knelt on the floor and stared into the red eyes of a turtle, or when I lifted the various antlers to test their weight. In the room there are also cabinets full of various natural history objects, and I could spend hours gazing at the wonders within. For me, looking at the various treasures is more aesthetic than scientific because I could not tell you the difference and names of one bird or another, or identify what animal skull graces the shelf, but it does not diminish their intrigue.

I drool over books such as the 636 page volume of Albertus Seba's Cabinet of Natural Curiosities. I spend hours perusing photos of fellow curiosity hunters, such as Curious Expeditions Flickr page. I long to have an array of objects like ones you can buy here from a store in New York. I could spend hours in the Touch and See room at the Bell Museum. Some people collect the same object when they travel such as mugs, t-shirts, or snow globes, I buy something that is unique and will add variety to my collection. I cannot help but be curious about the world around me, I guess I still am that little kid who thinks they found a great treasure when I pick up a perfectly shaped rock, a piece of driftwood, or a fascinating seashell.

Places I want to go

It's about the time in the semester when I wish that I was elsewhere, roaming freely and exploring new territory. I often dream of traveling to many places as I'm stuck in my desk chair reading a 65 page chapter on means of egress for building code...loads of fun.

I long for wide open spaces, and a realm of possibilities. I want to learn and change. Exploration and adventure is so dynamic, travel is an ever changing art. I dream of going many places, and awhile back I made a list of all the places I must go to in my life, which amounted to 25 countries. My list in no particular order:

New Zealand,   England/Scotland,  Ireland,  Iceland,  Japan,  China,  Australia,  Czech Republic,  South Africa,  Greece,   Italy,   India,   Turkey,   Egypt,  France,  Peru,  Brazil,  Russia,  Spain,  Netherlands,  Tanzania,  Uganda,  Germany,  Israel

And those are only the places I must go to, not the places I would just like to go to. The reasons for going to some of the countries are strong, some not so much. In the end, I just long for new territory and places I've never been before, so that I can come back to my home and see everything is a whole new way...

We shall not cease

from exploration 

And the end of all

our exploring 

Will be to arrive

where we started 

And know the place

for the first time.

~T. S. Eliot