Bloomability, or: How the scorching heat allowed me to stay inside and read two books in two days (and now it's really cold--Thanks, Midwest)

Tina Fey is one of my role models, for many reasons, including the very important reason that I have modeled my last three haircuts after hers (you know, when you take a picture into the salon and they try to duplicate it). I watch her show, 30 Rock, every week, even when it's not on, because I netflix-it quite often.

See the hair-semblance?

Shut up. It only happens on days I care about hair.

Unfortunately, Tina's recent bestselling book, Bossypants, is hardly about travel (though I now know what not to do when there's a fire on a cruise ship, very useful). Fortunately, it is incredibly hilarious and well-written, so it only took me a day of hiding in air-conditioned safety from the oppressive Chicago heat to read the book cover-to-cover. If you haven't read it yet, do it. If you live close to me and promise to give it back, I'll even lend you my copy.

On Wednesday I faced the task of cleaning my room of all the moving-home-from-college clutter, so naturally I read my Switzerland book, Sharon Creech's Bloomability, instead. Although the novel is written for younger readers, it does bring up a lot of really important questions and topics about being an American abroad, especially when you're with other Americans abroad, which I will be, come September.

The story is about a young tween (who goes by a really weird nickname - who would do that?! ) who's spent her entire life moving to new homes and schools every six months, due to her dad's constantly changing career preferences. One summer, her aunt and uncle swoop in and take her to live with them and go to school at The American School in Lugano, Switzerland, where her uncle is the new headmaster. Through her year there, "Dinnie" deals with a lot of homesickness (or rather, family-sickness, since she doesn't really have a "home"), learns what it means to be an American abroad, and comes to realize the wonderful similarities between all of her friends at the school, despite their very different cultural backgrounds.

One passage that I really liked comes when Dinnie's been in Switzerland for about 2 or 3 months:

"At the beginning, you looked at people, and you'd think, 'He's Japanese,' or 'She's Spanish,' but after a couple weeks, you forgot about that and you'd think, 'There's Keisuke,' or 'That's Belen,'... after a couple months if someone asked you [where someone was from], you wouldn't be able to answer. You'd first have to stop and think, 'Let's see, Keisuke, his parents live in Osaka, but he was born in Lagos--' And people who looked Japanese might be American and never have lived in Japan, and people who looked Spanish might have been born in India of Spanish parents, and might have lived in Spain later for a couple years, but then gone on to live in Nigeria or Sweden or Belgium." (81)

Later, at graduation, Dinnie makes the observation of her classmates: "the most surprising thing I knew was that for all our differences in nationality, in language, in culture, and in personality, we were all more alike than not" (256).

While this novel didn't necessarily give me the best insight into Swiss culture, it serves as a good introduction to the international topics that my group and I will be facing, especially in Geneva when we meet with UN officials and the like.

Bloomability also approached a concern I have for much of the traveling ahead: guilt of prosperity. In the novel, the school sponsors a month-long educational unit on Global Awareness, which involves lessons about the various ailments of humanity around the world, causing most of the students to question their role in the world and why they are so blessed while others suffer just to live another day. When Dinnie asks these questions, her aunt and uncle provide excellent advice that I plan to write in the front of my journal for Global as a daily reminder:

"'I don't want to be a lucky one. I should be suffering, like the refugees.'
Uncle Max looked bewildered. 'Why, Dinnie, why? You're allowed to be lucky. Maybe one day you can make someone else lucky.'" (153 emphasis added)

I sure hope so, Uncle Max.