lend me your ears...or eyes. whatever.

hello lovelies -

so here's the deal. i went to norman, ok, right? and it was a wonderful trip. we did a lot of amazing stuff while i was there:

 - Milk tea with boba

 - College campus, libraries,  backpacks, and sore feet

 

- taking pictures with my iPad, so they're not anything special, unless subject was awesome then I did use my regular camera.

 - piano music in Beaird Lounge

 - the little stationary/journal/neat artsy stuff shop that was like, three blocks away from campus.

 - trying (and failing miserably) to food blog 

 - drinking water because dehydration is not fun.

 - LEARNING. (aka: an honors class in which I learned that one interpretation of government is that it harnesses the ambition, vanity, and ego of human nature, and pits it against itself. Ambition against ambition, ego against ego, want against want. I NEVER KNEW THIS and partially hated government for it. it always seemed like government was supposed to be above human nature. But when it is described like this is offers the idea that government uses human nature and it totally makes sense now.)

 - people watching and stereotyping, which I would normally protest against, but while on college campuses and in airports it's basically a sport.
 - takeout thai food (MOST FAVORITE EVER.)

 

- our own attempt at thai food - which was rice made with coconut milk, beans, and curry powder sprinkled over the top (it was really good.)

 - late nights that turn into study times that turn into music jam sessions with four female voices and a guitar and a ukulele that turn into wall-sits and planking (the roommates have accepted me as one of their own. I'M SO PROUD OF MYSELF.)
 - first time flying on a plane. which was awesome, and terrifying, and terribly liberating. (see?)
 - visiting my awesome friend who showed me all over campus and we got to talk about EVERYTHING. (Okay well maybe not everything but she really confirmed my suspicions: she's seriously the coolest person in OK right now.)
 - #pianohandsami and #travelbug...check out my instagram @saminuxoll.

this trip to Norman was what i would consider my first solo adventure (i've been on many trips with groups of people, aka my family, but this one i was on my own...for at least part of it.) (basically this was me.) and so i'm like, YAY NORMAN, but then i'm like, oh. home. and then i have to decide, and i end up with the conclusion that travel is wonderful and new things will always be lovely and visiting friends in their lives and worlds are usually wonderful things, but home will always be my world which is okay. because that's my world, and they have theirs. and we can visit each other. And maybe even I will get stuck in their world sometimes but that's okay. Good, healthy even. (Yeah I totally just quoted Flynn Rider. #bombdiggity)

SO THE TRIP WAS GREAT.
the thing is, while i was there i got an email from a previous professor of mine. he was the one that taught me to love writing. and he says "sami, i'm starting a creative writing course, and i know you're getting ready to go to midwifery school and you need to save money for that but i also know that you love to write so if you want you can audit this course" and i'm like "TOTALLY. COUNT ME IN!!" because i mean really: it's poetry and creative writing.
and so one of the assignments for the class was to write a memory and/or place using imagery and assertion, simile and metaphor, and make it live. so i get totally excited about this assignment and i end up writing about norman.  and then i realize that i love writing places into people, and that's how this poem about norman looked and i'm like:

I SHOULD BLOG THIS.

and so I'm writing and writing and I end up with this poem about how Norman was kind of a place-fling for me. don't get me wrong: i loved norman. its just that norman wasn't for me. it was flat and i'm a mountain kind of girl, and the museums were great but you can only go through so many museums before you get sick of them. so this poem is kind of how i feel about places, which is basically I LOVE new places but in the end i will always return to mountains. particularly MY mountains, to home. and so then I'm thinking about how i could try writing a lot of different places as people - the ocean where we've always gone, the cabin that we have in the woods, Arizona when we took that road trip, even downtown in my hometown and then by my house and the next thing I know I'm like:

I SHOULD BLOG THIS.

And so just a note:   i swear this first post about Norman is actually NOT how i feel about dating people. And the rest of these posts in the series are not how I feel about family or friendships or PEOPLE in general. It's just how I see places - how I relate to places and maybe even how my pen took over my brain for the length of the poem. 

This post: it's a bookmark: it's a colon: it's me saying BRACE YOURSELF because the series that's coming? If Places Were People.  It's gonna be awesome. Mostly because I'm stoked about it but let's be real: sometimes that's all awesomeness needs to get started, is a little excitement. 

enjoy!

-XOXO-

Sami