1172

Patrick and I started talking about a month ago about the possibility of buying a condo out here in Chicago. So I got online just to see what was available, and next thing you know, we've done it! It's in a building that is very well cared for, and though it's small, it has a good layout. Pictures of the interior are on Patrick's blog. The home inspection just happened today, and everything went very smoothly. We met the current owner, too, and she was really nice. Invited us to visit her and her husband at their new home, a farm in Wisconsin. We'll close in June, when the husband will officially retire from his professorship at the U of C and our lease at this apartment will end.

Went home for the weekend. Took grandparents out to yum cha, which felt good, though it was hard to talk. Noisy restaurant, plus the language barrier. Had a nice chat with Candice and Eric in the afternoon, then more gorging at Goong goong Herb's new year dinner. I don't know if I'm going to keep going back to meat at these things. Anyway I got sick again (probably related, I think, to the stupid Southwest flight I got that landed an hour late, at 1AM; sleeping wrong really weakens me and my immune system), but I'm doing better now ...

The guy from Mississippi who we've been helping out has been back intermittently. His grandfather died a few weeks ago, so we gave him a little bit of cash to help get him back to Mississippi for the funeral. When he returned, we went shopping with him at the Coop, where he bought white bread and canned meat (yucky!). The cashier asked, "Are you guys roommates?" (I guess it isn't common to see a mix like us together in a grocery store.) We all hesitated for a second before Matthew shyly replied, "No, just friends." The cashier said something about not rooming together being a good way to maintain a friendship, and I have to admit the profound truth of that in this particular case, at least.

So then Matthew's wallet got stolen. He didn't lose much, just his ID card (which it was a struggle for him to get) and a few days' bus money. Still, it really shook him, and all these events have given me a new (though still so obviously limited) sense of what it can be like to live on the edge of financial solvency, not to mention the limitations on you if you are illiterate in this time and place. Matthew is pursuing a GED right now, and he says it will take 8 weeks to get it. But that hardly seems likely, given that he can barely read more than his own name and can't even spell the name of the street where he lived in Biloxi.

Other events have brought to mind other kinds of literacy. Waiting for my plane at the airport (and eavesdropping on the inane conversations taking place nearby), I realized very concretely that students coming from white, middle-class homes have a cultural leg up on most of my students. It isn't just having parents who take them to the library. Perhaps even more important, it's the way of communicating that they bring to school; they talk one at a time, and they try rather hard to be agreeable to each other. Most striking, at the moment it struck me at least, is this: it isn't that other ways of communicating are necessarily worse, just that they harmonize much less well with the cultural standard. I guess this is what all those articles I read about the dominant discourse were all about. It's less that it was unclear to me then than that it's real to me now. I still am not sure what to do with that knowledge.

If you can help it, you should avoid flying Southwest. The last three times I've flown with them, they've done something stupid. The first time, they said one thing on the phone and another when I actually got to the airport (regarding changing a reservation to an earlier flight). The second time, they put my luggage on another plane without telling me; then, when I went to report it lost, they said it would be there in another 20 minutes, but it actually ended up taking over an hour. Most recently, my flights were delayed by about an hour each way, both coming and going, which is always inconvenient not only for you, waiting in the airport for all that extra time, but also for anyone waiting for you on the other end.

I think those are all my updates for the moment. Thank you to all the Louies for passing on lei-see for me, even though I couldn't be there to celebrate with you. Thank you to the Lems and Owyangs for remembering not just me, but also Patrick! Happy Year of the Dog to everyone. Sending all my runny-nosed love from Chicago.
Nicole