and the month winds down

howdy everyone,

today while walking around listening to my ipod (a favorite ritual here), i had the strangely poetic sense that my walk felt a bit like the end credits of a "coming of age" type film...in which lauren varner goes to amsterdam, learns about sexuality and "finds herself" during a month of bittersweet loneliness...ha! as dramatic and self-indulgent as that sounds, i realized that i have changed a lot here in a relatively short amount of time, and i feel a lot more "sure of myself" as an independent, capable and confident human being. i felt really young when i first got here, not just in the academic setting of the summer institute, but as i tried to navigate the city by myself, and just in my own conception of myself as very young and clueless and frustrated. but in just a few weeks of being here, i feel like i've come to "own" my cluelessness and be a little bit more proud of it. Alice Miller, who i've mentioned probably way too many times in this blog, (she taught last week's rights course) told me that she's been clueless a million different times in her life and hasn't died yet, and encouraged me to go with the flow and not worry so much about being successful in "the future." it was great to hear that from someone in a position that i really respect tremendously, and i felt like a big weight came off my shoulders. i'm really lucky to have so many interests, as well as the resources and social position to explore them, so my overwhelming sense of this experience is, simply, of gratitude...

it's been a neat trip, and a month abroad is not nearly as long as it sounded originally! apologies for the delay in sending out all the postcards i've promised, i really want to send one to everyone before i've left the country, but you might not get them until i'm already home. i haven't been souvenir shopping much yet either (though i have found time to go to H&M and buy stuff for myself...hehe) so please let me know if there's anything special from Holland that you fancy (don't say hash brownies, because i might have some difficulties with customs...)

The last two classes began today, and I think it's going to be a terrific week. The morning class is taught by a filmmaker and media scholar from India named Shohini Ghosh, and the class is called "Representation and Sexuality." It's really more of a media studies class than a sociology, psych or anthro class, which is great news for me! I didn't realize I'd have the chance to use some of my media and communications knowledge here, and it should be great to get into the question of how we represent sexualities (esp in film, which is her central area of work and research) and what that means for our real lived experiences...

The afternoon class is called "Infinite Heterosexualities" and is taught by a young Wellesley professor named Sea Ling Cheng. I'm still getting a feel for what this class is about exactly, but given today's lecture, it's the class that's resonated with me the most all month. I hope the next 3 days continue that way! We're reading articles about the supposed feminist political subversiveness of non-monogamy, the constructions of how we define "real sex"/legitimate sexual behavior, a rural culture in China that doesn't prioritize a marital bond at all....really fascinating stuff that I think anyone would enjoy, not just students of so-called sexuality studies.

Hmmm, what else...yesterday I spent almost the entire day walking, walking, walking, from the northwestern end of the city all the way around the concentric canal ring to the south and back up to the north on the eastern side, where I visited an awesome microbrewery that's housed inside a real old windmill! I struck up a conversation with a British woman named Elizabeth and her Dutch husband, Jasper, and had a great evening chatting with them about anything and everything. I'll add a couple of pictures that I snapped of the brewery to flickr as soon as I finish writing this...

Well, I've got a bit of a cold coming on that I need to vanquish completely by Friday, so I better get offline, finish reading for tomorrow and catch some z's. Thanks everyone for your comments and for reading my painfully verbose blog entries. I try to keep them short, but I want to remember everything that's been on my mind! (maybe I should have registered two blogs!)

Can't wait to see everyone in Denver in a couple of weeks, and everyone else as soon as possible!

All my love,
Laur

across the ocean

hi everyone!

first things first--i've added a bunch of new pictures to my Flickr page, so check 'em out! There are a few new views of Amsterdam and a lot of pictures of Alkmaar, a cute town in north Holland known for its cheese market (and not much else!) Thanks for checking them out, it's so nice to be able to share my travels with all of you in (almost) real time! I've been feeling almost excessively independent here--not spending all that much free time with the other Summer Institute students (we see enough of each other all week!) and mostly just spending my time wandering around, sitting and reading at cafes, and exploring other towns on the weekends when I get the chance.

It's nice to just be by myself and have time to think, but I'm starting to tire of appreciating the city all by myself. It'd be so much better to be able to laugh at the little silly things I've seen with someone I love, and to have someone to kill the hours with at canalside cafes. So, while I've certainly appreciated the experience of being here alone and gaining confidence in finding my own way...I can't WAIT for Brandt to arrive on Friday! I wish that all of you could join me here for a couple of days! I heartily recommend Holland for your future travel plans...Amsterdam, at least, is the perfect balance of big-city culture/activity with the slower pace of a charming European village, and I think it would be such an awesome place to visit purely to de-stress.

So, things have been great here, but I can't say I'm too upset that the course is winding down. I'll be really sad to leave Amsterdam, for sure, but it's been a bit lonely being more-or-less confined to the same group of 28 other students (which is more like about 20, because several people are staying in different locations away from the main group.) It's also been a bit hard to play the role of clueless student in the classes I've been taking--which have been quite challenging and sometimes over my head--when I'm used to being the obnoxious teacher's pet at home! It's been humbling, and I'm really proud of myself for holding my own with some of the really bright people here. Still, I have SO much to learn!

Last week's classes were probably the best of the program so far, with Sexuality and Human Rights in the morning and a class in the afternoon called Practicing Theory, Theorizing Practice-- about putting academic theories around sexuality into practice in real activist and advocacy work "on the ground". Alice Miller, a world-renowned expert in human rights (especially sexual rights), and also a professor at Columbia University, taught the morning class, and it was such an honor to meet her. We spoke a little bit about my anxiety over having a lack of direction for the future, and she was very encouraging about keeping in touch with her and allowing myself to be clueless, not jumping right into graduate school, and spend some time figuring stuff out. It was great to hear that from someone with a career I respect tremendously, and I felt a real renewed hope that I don't have to know exactly what my passion is right now in order to have a successful and meaningful career in the future. Phew. I loved the human rights angle that we learned about in her class, and I find myself really responding to discussions about justice, rights to information, and so on...so, there is a chance I'll be putting myself through the wringer of law school sometime in the future...OY!

The afternoon class wasn't as good as the morning, but we did have a lot of really great readings about NGOs and other activist organizations around the world that are doing awesome work around sexuality. There's one group called kuleana, in Tanzania, that works with young street children around issues of their sexuality and sexual health, and their whole philosophy is about empowering the kids and encouraging them to direct the activities of the organization. That's just one example, and there are so many great organizations around the world that really work with sexuality from a human rights approach, not in a patronizing or overly-medicalized way, and I hope that I will have a chance to do rights-affirming work like that in the future....great stuff!!

This upcoming week is the last one, with Sexuality and Issues of Representation in the AM, and Infinite Heterosexualities in the afternoon. I'm not exactly sure what either will be about, but I'm looking forward to using my journalism/media studies skills in the morning class. I know we'll be watching several films and looking at depictions of sexualities, so I think it's kind of a "cultural studies" class. No clue about the afternoon class, but it's taught by another well-known professor from Columbia, so I'm sure it'll be great.

After Thursday's class, we have a big closing party/ceremony where we all receive our certificates and drink ourselves silly, I'm sure...Friday morning Brandt arrives, and then we'll hang out in Amsterdam for another week! I can't believe the Institute has gone by so quickly, and that I've been in Amsterdam for over three weeks. I've been counting the days until Brandt arrives since I got here, so I'm relieved that the course is coming to a close, but it's going to be hard to come home after all this.

Ok, I'm starting to repeat myself a bit and getting even more rambly than usual, so I think I'll sign off...Tomorrow I might take a bus into an area the guidebooks like to call "Folkloric Holland," including a town called Volendam where the big thing to do is have your picture taken in traditional Dutch costume, so maybe that'll be a laugh and a half for all of ya back home...hehe.

Oh--one last thing--please let me know if you have received a postcard from me, because I realized long after I had sent them that I don't think I had complete addresses on all of them. (Jesse and Jon in particular, I think.) I had addressed them at a cafe and planned to add the zip codes and other stuff I couldn't remember...but I think I dropped them in the mailbox without ever finishing them. haha...STUPID!!

Update me on what's going on with all of you. If you've been reading this blog and have not commented at all...DO IT NOW! Just say hi.

All my love!!
xoxo
L

new pictures!

Hi everyone!

I'm getting ready to head out for a (hopefully) pleasant Saturday walking around the city, but I wanted to let you know that my pictures have been updated! There's a bunch on there from the canal boat tour, as well as some from the beach resort of Zandvoort that I visited yesterday. Today I'm planning on climbing to the top of the Westerkerk tower in the hopes of taking some great panoramic pictures of the city, and I might head south to the Museumplein area to visit the Rijksmuseum (where a lot of great Dutch masters' paintings are located) and the Van Gogh museum.

I sent out my first batch of postcards a few days ago, so please let me know if you get one...I'm not sure if I bought the right stamps or if I put the postcards in the right slot! sheesh!

please comment if you're reading this, so I know who I need to email and hassle about keeping in touch!

xo,
L

catching up

hi everyone,

wow, i can't believe it's been five days since i last sat down and made an attempt to record my daily experiences here in Amsterdam...it feels strangely much longer than that, mostly because the days seem SO long here (endless lectures and a sun that never seems to go down, or at least not until around 10:30 or 11?) but it's also been flying by. i owe you all (especially my closest family, friends, and partner) an apology for being so removed from communication with you all in recent days. everything that i want to do seems to be getting ahead of me, and my routine here seems to consist of constantly being in a hurry to read/meet up with people/etc or feeling too tired to try and deal with my tortoise-like computer to upload pictures, email and write in the blog. anyway, i've been extremely scattered and i'm really sorry...i love and miss you all!!!

i'm not sure where to begin as far as recapping the week, so i guess i'll try to remember an overview of what i did. last weekend i spent a lot of time keeping to myself, which was perfect after a week of almost-nonstop contact with the other students and teachers of the Institute. i walked around the city for hours on end, and visited a quaint old (but fairly big) city called Haarlem, only about 20 minutes away by train. it was great to drift through the huge market there, stretching out in front of the gigantic cathedral, and spend the day watching people and enjoying being alone. Monday we started a new series of classes, with "Sexuality in the Political Culture of State & Nation-building" in the morning for all students, and either a research methodology seminar (for students working on their theses or dissertations, for example) or "Intersections of Sexuality with HIV/AIDS" for the rest of us. i can't believe these classes are already finished, given how long and in-depth the first week's classes were, but so they are...wow. Anyway, the morning class was really fascinating, albeit extremely theoretical, with lots of references to Marx, Gramsci, Foucault and other great thinkers that I have a depressingly surface knowledge of, as I quickly realized in our discussions...we had a chance to see the role sexuality played in the French Revolution, with examples of pop art from the time depicting the old French monarchy in any number of extremely graphic depictions of sexual deviancy...all you see in art history are the very lofty paintings of the elite upper class, so it was pretty amazing to see how sexuality was being used as a strategic tool for marking who was "in" and who was "out," even hundreds of years ago. ramble ramble ramble. The afternoon class about HIV/AIDS campaigns was really pretty disappointing to everyone, mostly because we spent all four days of class talking about the virus in extremely surface, general terms...I'm not sure anyone came out of it with a lot more insight into how to really implement effective sexual health and HIV prevention campaigns, which seemed to be the whole point of the course...? At any rate, I enjoyed the discussion we had and at least got a bit more background into the field of HIV/AIDS work, but it just seemed to be missing a lot...next week is "Sexuality and Human Rights" in the morning, and "Practicing Theory, Theorizing Practice" in the afternoon. I'm not sure I really even know what the latter means, but the morning class should be fantastic--it's taught by Alice Miller, who i mentioned at another point in this blog...I'm really starting to think that I want to pursue sexual and reproductive rights law, as opposed to sociology or public health (other career possibilities in the broad field of "sexuality studies"...) anyway, Alice Miller is a big name in the field of sexual and human rights, and I'm thrilled to have the chance to learn from her, if also a bit intimidated!

I can't remember what else I've really done this week, beyond my daily ritual of wandering aimlessly amidst the canals until i find a cool corner cafe, and having an excellent witbier (white beer) while I read my endless articles for class. On Tuesday I climbed up to the top of this crazy science/technology museum called NEMO just across the street (right on the Ij river harbor area,) where they have a bunch of deck chairs and beanbags set up to hang out. You have to pay 2.50 (euro) to get to the top, but you get a free drink and can stay there as long as you want, which seems pretty nice. There's an awesome, panoramic view of the city up there. Last night a huge group of us all went out to dinner at a small Italian restaurant that actually had reasonable prices (everything here is shockingly expensive...everywhere!! most restaurants charge between 12-18 euros for very standard restaurant fare...it's nuts.) Tonight a smaller group went out for Indian food, which I enjoyed tremendously...My nasty-ass apartment doesn't have any pots or cooking utensils, only a few spoons and a dried-up-food-encrusted dish drainer, so i haven't been cooking any hot food at all, but instead eating endless numbers of sandwiches, chunks of Gouda, apples...I can't tell you how much I enjoyed dinner these last two nights, it was pretty ridiculous.. oh, the things you take for granted (microwaves!!...pots and spatulas!)

Tomorrow a few of us are heading out to the beach resort of Zandvoort, which is only about 30 minutes away from Amsterdam by train. i'm so excited to see the ocean again, even though I was so recently in California. I love it!! anyway, I'm going to wrap this up so i can speak to Brandt on the phone before it gets TOO late here, but i promise more frequent updates, and a whole new batch of pictures sometime this weekend...

hope you all are well, please comment or send me an email if you can!!
xoxoxo
L

the Jordaan and who knows where else

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the encouraging words about the academic side of things over here in "A'dam." Next week is a new set of classes (followed by two new ones the week after as well as the final week,) so I'm looking forward to staking out a comfort zone in those new discussions. The morning class is called "Sexuality in the Political Culture of State and Nation-building" and the afternoon one is something like "Intersections of Sexuality and HIV/AIDS." Okey-doke. More on those later, I suppose.

Today was the first "free" day any of us have had since we arrived in Amsterdam (we have three-day weekends!) and I made the most of it by breaking away from the group of SI students and exploring the city on my own for the day. It was such a perfect day, and I have a bunch of new pictures up on flickr, so find the link in a previous post and check em out, hehe. I made a point to head west toward the Jordaan neighborhood today, a more residential, postcard-perfect area of Amsterdam, near the Anne Frank House (which had an unbelievable line...I'll have to visit later in the day?) and home to a ton of beautiful canal houses decked with flowers and lots of houseboats on the canals. I started out today having lunch and a capuccino at one cafe, had another capuccino at an amazingly airy, high-ceilinged cafe called De Jaren in the university area, wandered around the courtyards of the university pretending to be a Dutch student, walked through most of the Jordaan, stopped for excellent cheap Thai food, checked out a supremely geeky (and therefore excellent) store called Kitsch Kitchen,and ended up at another canalside cafe for a beer...so, that makes for many miles of wandering gorgeous streets broken up by four cafes--sounds like a perfect day to me. I've started a bit on writing postcards to you all, too, so hopefully I'll get a big stack mailed out by early next week.

I'm sure I had more to share, but the details of the city in this blog might start tapering off now that I've seen almost all of it...! Please check out the pictures, I braved my tortoise-like laptop processor to upload them just for youuuu. Tomorrow I will probably take another day to myself, possibly visiting a few of the bigger museums, or maybe even taking a train out to Haarlem (a nearby city with a lot of cool historical buildings) or out to the beach of the North Sea! I also just learned that there's a microbrewery probably a 5 minute walk away from my apartment, housed inside a real old windmill. I was surprised that I hadn't seen it yet, but it's in the exact opposite direction as the way I've been going to go in to the more downtown area of Amsterdam. A real live windmill and GOOD local beer (Heineken is getting old)...I'll get two of the things I wanted for my trip to Holland at once!!

Oh, and I got my phone all set up, and incoming cell phone calls are always free in Europe (isn't that maddening?!) so if you want to try and reach me, call this number: 011-31-6-42943572. Keep in mind that it ain't free for you. It may also be possible for me to send and receive text messages for cheaper than a call...someone wanna try it?

Love and extra-aged Gouda,
-Laur

academic humility

hi all,

a bit more reading to do tonight before bed, so this will have to be short again (i know i say that every time, and then proceed to write an extremely verbose entry, but this one really will be short.) today was a much more "normal" day than the previous ones, in that i just went to class, napped, studied...no exciting wandering around stories or even tales of shattered PB & J for you today, sadly. I just wanted to take a break from reading and make a comment that the academic side of this trip to Amsterdam is extremely humbling. The readings are mostly fascinating and the discussions we have had in class really do capture my excitement, but I feel less articulate in this situation than I have ever felt in a classroom environment before. Strangely, though feeling less-than-confident usually makes me feel terrible, I don't mind as much here, probably because our casual conversations outside the classroom have been so fulfilling. I have felt discouraged in class and while reading our articles many times, but my inner mantra has just been an unwavering focus on how lucky I am to be here establishing, at the least, aquaintance-type friendships with people who can teach me so much....I'm often too negative about my experiences, and certainly too hard on myself, but I am really trying to just be in love with Amsterdam and hopefully leave with a stronger sense of what I want to do, or be, as a person. So far this effort is working as far as my enjoyment of the experience, but I find myself feeling even less certain of what I'm good at and where my passion lies as far as sexuality studies goes. Tomorrow we are visiting a place called the "Gender Center" at a university on the opposite side of town, and I am really enjoying the articles we're reading about intersex and trans issues, so maybe my work in the future should deal with gender advocacy, rather than sexual health? I have no idea!! I'm afraid that my uncertainty about my ability to speak with any expertise on these topics will hold me back in making the "networking" connections I had hoped to make, with the other students, but especially with the various professors we'll have over the month. Next week our morning class is taught by a woman named Alice Miller (the class is "Sexuality and Human Rights") and I'm really hoping that I feel comfortable engaging in discussions with her and hopefully getting some advice. She is world renowned in the field of sexual rights (something of a law/public policy expert, I believe) and I don't want to come home feeling I have wasted the opportunities to learn from her, or anyone else. I just clam up when I'm not sure how to speak intelligently about a topic--but I suppose even the most intelligent, amazing scholars had to start somewhere. I'm just not so sure that I will ever be a scholar--these abstract sociological understandings of sex and gender do not come easily to me, and I want to be further ahead of myself than is really possible....such is the nature of the perfectionist (obsessive, compulsive) mind!!

sorry about the rambling...i guess this blog is as much for my own memory of the trip as for your entertainment, so please forgive me! I hope everything is going well back home...I miss and love you all a lot! Please post a comment with a little update of what's going on, or email me anytime at varnerL@colorado.edu ...

XOXOXO

the second and third days

hi from Holland, everyone!

I want to write a really long update with all the details from yesterday (Sunday, my second day) and today, but the summer institute officially started today and i am BOGGED with reading...it looks like we will have about 100 pages of reading a night...thankfully, the material is extremely interesting and stimulating to me, but i have been walking and exploring so much that i haven't left much time to finish my reading for tonight! I'll try and give a quick overview of what I've been doing the last two days, mostly just to remind myself (and you all) to tell you the interesting details later on.

Yesterday, Sunday, I set out to go grocery shopping for the apartment and failed to realize that in most of Europe, you are supposed to bring your own bag for groceries...I loaded up, and found only cellophane-thin plastic bags at the bagging station to carry my crap in. I double bagged everything, left to walk back to my apartment, and promptly dropped groceries all over the street about a half a mile from home, some of which could not be salvaged...Turns out, they will give you grocery bags for 20 cents each, but you have to ask. Amazingly, this is really the only culture shock I have experienced so far, and it's pretty funny now to look back on, and to watch the shattered jars of peanut butter and apricot jam slowly grow more and more rancid on the street each time I walk past them. Amsterdammers all speak English perfectly well, and the city has a character not at all unlike Boulder, or even some parts of Denver. I have been surprised at how natural it feels to be here, even lost amongst tiny side streets or walking along the mostly-identical looking canals. So far, I have never felt unsafe, and no streets strike me as particularly "bad," though the red light district at night is filled with some interesting characters...

Later in the day yesterday, we attended a fancy-schmancy opening session/orientation for the summer institute during which we all had to stand up at the front of the room and talk about ourselves and our research interests. It was amazing to hear everyone's background and what they hope to do with their interests in the study of sexuality. It is a bit frustrating not to have any clearly defined research interests or background in any specific area, as I didn't have much to say when I stood up, and the question keeps coming up again and again in one-on-one conversations with the other students as we all get to know one another. However, I keep reminding myself that I am so lucky just to be here and have a chance to soak in whatever information I can learn from the professors and other students here. There is an Argentinean man who works in D.C. as a child psychiatrist, specializing in counseling families of very young children that display so-called "gender dysmorphic" behavior or otherwise atypical gender role expressions...a woman who does rape crisis work/victims assistance, an intersexed individual from Argentina (that prefers the male identity) who directs the transgender issues side of things for an international human rights organization...There are also a few other younger students with no graduate background yet, which is a relief. One woman and I discovered today that we both have a dreamy fantasy of attending the same MPH program at Columbia, and I also found out that she is from Newport News (the same town in Virginia where Brandt grew up!) She had heard of the Shwayder family...y'all are a Big Name everywhere...hehe.

After the orientation, I walked around a bit more with a few people and got a pretty good sense of the area of town in which most of the university buildings are located. I hope I can find it again pretty easily, because there were some cool cafes and cheaper places to eat, as well as a pretty young, busy energy. Today (Monday) was our first day of class, preceded by organized discussion groups (required, to meet and talk about the day's readings before class.) Class starts at 9:30, but I meet with my group at 8:30, so the "school day" goes from then until around 4:00. This morning's class (and the morning class for the rest of the week) is called "Sexualities and Cultures: An Introduction." Calling a class like this an "introduction" is an extreme stretch, but I was pleased that I could follow most of the discussion around some complex theories of sexuality and also some of the terminology used relating to communication theory, postmodernism, etc. It's strange not to feel certain enough of myself to raise my hand and contribute to the discussion regularly, but I hope that will pass soon...regardless, I think it's great just to listen and try to understand as much as I can...and probably a good exercise for an incorrigible academic blabbermouth!!

We had a great (free!) lunch in the same building where we have classes, which will help to cut costs a bit, as even subpar falafel on the street costs 4 or 5 euros for a little pita pocket (probably about $7?) The afternoon class for this week, "Sex in the City," (all about sexuality and tolerance in Amsterdam) began today with a fantastic lecture by a woman named Petra Timmerman, a former prostitute that now works for an amazing place called the Prostitution Information Center, right in the heart of the red light district, next to a row of prostitute's windows, literally ten feet from an enormous OLD church (such are the headspinningly gorgeous contradictions of Amsterdam!) She was so articulate and passionate and really gave me a refreshing chance to understand prostitution and sex workers' rights as truly crucial to a bigger global picture of human rights. Before her lecture, we all accidentally crowded in front of one woman's window (we were waiting for some people to show up), blocking her a bit from customers' view, and promptly had a bucket of water thrown out the window at us ...crazy city this is!

Afterward, I walked all over with Paul and the girl from Newport News, Annalies (Hernandez, sound familiar to you guys at all?) and found a great bar on the side of a canal with very cheap (but good!!) beer. I am really starting to get my bearings here, and I am so amazed at how small this city really is. We had walked almost all the way to the edge of the canal ring (if you look on a map, central Amsterdam is basically encircled by a few main concentric canals) and still it only took about 20-30 minutes to walk all the way back uptown to our apartments. Tomorrow I may try to wander for a while in the opposite direction from where I went today, to get a feel for the other side of the city (like the Jordaan neighborhood, where Anne Frank's house is located.)

There is so much more that I wish I had the time to record, because it's hard to keep track of everything I want to share, but this will have to do for now. I love and miss you all like crazy and I should have my phone by the weekend, so hopefully we can talk soon. Until then, know that I am keeping my eye out for unique and wonderful souvenirs for you all, and thinking of you everytime I see something cool, which never stops!

All my love!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ps, for Prof. Matt Brown's benefit if he's reading...tonight's article (among others) was your most favorite Gayle Rubin article ever (thinking sex)...I promise to speak up in class!! and tomorrow we have a special lecture from Jeffrey Weeks...I don't know much about him, but I know he's huge in social construction theory. I can't wait to hear what he has to say! RAD..

pps, for everyone... I need to organize my pictures on flickr a lot more, and figure out how to put some in the blog in an appealing way...but for now, here's a link to MY AMSTERDAM PICTURES!