Carol Bontekoe

This blog has been keeping track of my adventures since 2004. The stories and the adventures have come from my college dorm room to Uganda, Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan, learning Dutch in the Netherlands to living in the wilds of Homer, Alaska. I went back to school in Amsterdam to study Theaterwetenschap (Theatre Science) at University of Amsterdam. And now my adventures as a Fruit Fly, a Sexy Unicorn, and creating a movement with Team Sparkle in Chicago.

Sunday, October 8, 2006

My Personal Soundtrack

My iPOD made the desicion to take it's own life, totally unprovoked. Sitting there on my desk not ten minutes before alive and active, and then when I came back... gone. I could do nothing to revive it. As of right now I'm ignoring the bone crushing depression that will come with a cold hard winter alone and no music. For right now I am focusing on the soundtrack of my life.Most days I like to go for long walks to see the beautiful countryside and to study my Russian. I make a little index card full of words I want to learn and try and memorize them. On my way out of town I always pass this one house that has music blaring. The other day the song "I come from a Land Down Under" or is it called "Down Under" see it is on my iPOD, if it was alive and ticking I could check what the official name is. Anyway, the song by Colin Hay, sung by Men at Work (I own both of Colin Hay's solo albums so I didn't have the Men at Work version I had the accustic version). It seemed wrong to have it blaring as I walked by. Then I had to realize it makes no more sense then when I would blast it in my room in East Lansing. Hell, I'm closer to Australia here then I was in Michigan. I tried to tell myself that it is more okay there, even though I have never been to Australia, because the song is in English. That same day when I came back from my walk "Lady in Red" was blaring. There was no arguement in my mind for that one, that was a weird song to hear here. Alot of English songs are constantly used in Ads on Television here. One song that is constantly being played is that WHAM! Christmas song. The other day I found my 7 year old host niece, who I taught to say, "shake your money maker" knows the words to it better than I do. She sat there singing ever so nicely, "Last Christmas I gave you might heart and the very next day you gave it away..." I was very impressed. But for her encore we went into a little James Brown. And dance party was started.They keep reminding us that this is a 24 slash 7 job(the always say slash). So when I see work to be done or anyone needing help I try to jump in and give a hand if I can. The other day a bunch of teenage girls were husking corn. I asked if I could help out and they said sure. For the next few hours we sat there and husked corn and sang any English song they knew. We started with Old McDonald. They didn't know what any of the aminal names were even though we made the animal sounds; because as I have found around the world animal noises, as imitated by people are not universal. But old McDonald quickly led into Michael Jackson, Britany Spears,and eventually Black eyed peas where we sang "shut up" and "Humps". I also was given the job of trying to explain what "Never, never, never goin' let you go" ment without being able to remember the word for never. I had to grab on to a girl and say, "never, never, never goin' let you go." Seemed to get the idea across. My hands were rubbed raw from husking corn, but my vocal cords were shot from a rousing round of "Oops, I did it again."In my class on Friday a student stood up and asked me what, "I'm going to F*** my B***h up right" ment. I told him to sit down and NEVER(I looked up the word when I got home) say that again. That it is very bad for someone his age to say that, or my age, for anyone as a matter of fact. I asked where he learned that and he said a Rap Song. Probably 50 Cent, they are obsessed with him here. The saddest part is I like Rap, but I realized I don't like the image of Americans they are sending out to the world. Last night I made a mean batch of Kettle Korn for my family. I sang if "Hammer Song" while I made it. You know.... "If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the mornin'..." You know! But as we sat there eating the POPcon(as my family calls it) they all liked to talk about how smart I was because I make a mean batch of Popcorn. Praising me because of my extensive knowledge of popcorn is not done enough. Actually, it was done only once before last night, when a friend of mine from college(Max) tricked me into making him popcorn on the stove. When I rocked it, he sat there talking about how great the popcorn was and my mad popcorn skills. Let's face it, I do have some mad skillzzzz

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