Part One: Ancestry and World Culture:
¤ If you could live in any other country than your own, which one would it be and why? Australia. I thing Britain's just as fucked as America, and I'm not quite willing to give up nice things yet. So...Australia. Although I think a village in Iran would be cool, too.

¤ List all known ancestral nationalities: Irish, Scottish, Welsh, German, Spanish, Pennsylvanian Dutch, Italian

¤ Do you feel a sense of national pride for your home land? Yeah, most of the time.

¤ Do you feel a sense of national pride for your ancestral roots? Sort of. I don't go shouting about them everywhere, but they're cool.

¤ Your mother's maiden name: Decker

¤ Your grandmother's maiden name, on your mother's side: Dean

¤ Your grandmother's maiden name, on your father's side: I'm forgetting it right now. It's Italian, I think.

¤ Is your family interested in your heritage? Not that much, but sort of.

Part Two: Linguistics
¤ Languages spoken fluently: English

¤ Languages you know the basics of: Latin, German, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Finnish

¤ How many languages did you learn while growing up? Just Latin until I hit high school

¤ What languages were/are/will be offered at your high school? Latin, German, Spanish, French

¤ Which one(s) did you/are you/will be taking? All. Haha. I'm insane.

¤ On a scale from 1-10, how much does the realm of linguistics interest you? 9

¤ At the top of your head, what language do you think is probably the easiest to learn? German, but that's from the perspective of someone who speaks English. Finnish is kind of nice because it's wonderfully adaptable; they don't give a shit about word order.

¤ What about the hardest? Arabic. Oh god the new alphabet and the lack of a 'to be' verb. It's crazy. But it's my favorite.

Part Three: World Culture
¤ Are there world cultures that interest you in particular? Middle Eastern, and recently, Northern European. Can't imagine why, hahaha...

¤ Do you/would you listen to music with lyrics in a language that you don't know? Yeah

¤ If you have one, what is your favorite type of world music? Arabic dance stuff is terrific. But I do like my Finnish rock. Haha.

¤ What is your favorite type of cultural food? Irish Coffee? Heh. No, probably sauerkraut and sausages - it's a Pennsylvanian Dutch thing.
Mmm.

¤ Beauty is defined by our culture. Which practice do you find the most horrific and unethical? Oh god, Japan. So much of what they do just freaks me out. The whole kamikaze thing. WEIRD. But then, I'm in love with the Arabs, and they're blowing themselves up an awful lot these days.

¤ Have you seen a foreign film before? If not, would you? Yeah.

¤ What aspect of the world that we live in do you hate the most? Intolerance. Strict rules for things that should be more personal.

¤ What aspect of the world that we live in do you love the most? The people. No matter how much we suck, people will always amaze me.


Today, I had a Shamrock Shake at the McDonald's in Wal-Mart and watched a kid I was friends with in 10th grade feed his kids with his wife. It made me feel delightfully white trash.

I also bombed a pretty important calculus test. Eep. I have to pass calculus or I don't graduate high school, which is a fucking dumb policy, because I've achieved a higher level of math education than at LEAST half the student body, yet I might not get to graduate with them because the system's fucked. And lord knows I don't care about graduating - I'm just doing it for the father. Bleh.