A Short Come-Back Post

Happy Eid, everyone!

I know, it's been exactly a year since I last wrote here. I wasn't planning on doing this, it just happened. After I got back home I decided that I needed a long vacation from everything I ever did before: from reading, writing, researching, or even looking at books which was hard to do since they were everywhere. However, I didn't decide how long this vacation should be, I just told my family that I better get some time off after the hard work I did in the previous two years, and so I did... and without noticing, a whole year passed!

I don't have to mention that so many things happened in this year, one of them was my sister's wedding preceded by my Dad's sudden illness and back surgery (He's much better now and back to normal life)... and of course, me getting the job I worked so hard to get!

I never meant to stop blogging, I was just taking a break, especially after I noticed the lack of interesting things to write about. I felt that if I only wrote about my school things and classes then it would be too boring or that people would think I was bragging about being in graduate school. And I couldn't write about the things that were happening in Iraq because I wasn't living there and therefore felt that I didn't have the right to write about it.. And so I thought I'd better stop for a while and see what becomes of my blogging block.

But, I'm still here.. checking new posts written by others, even if I wasn't commenting.. but I'm still here, and hope that there is still some people out there checking my blog for I am coming back now!

And It's Over!

This is officially my last week in the U.S.

Last year, I was dreading this week and almost didn't want to think of it. Yet now, it all feels so odd! I'm just not sad about leaving at all. It is like there is something in me that doesn't believe I'm actually leaving, or it's more like a feeling that I will be back here someday. It's not that I plan to come back or anything since my primary goal for now is to get a job back home, but I feel that somehow I will be back.
In any case, I'm so happy about going home and can't wait to get there! I'll be leaving the US next Saturday on a flight right to Jordan (fourteen hours or so, yuck!), then spend a night there and take my final flight to Baghdad on Monday the 29th. It will be an exhausting trip but it's worth it for sure!

There is so much to talk about, especially the past two years that went like a blink. So many incidents passed, so many lessons learned, and so many faces met. I hope that once I get home I will have more time to blog as regularly as possible and talk about all of the things I've seen here.

Wish me good luck!

Writing from the 18th Century Where there were no Blogs!!

What a shame! I haven't written a single word in my blog for five months. Sorry about that, but it turned out that this thesis work is way harder than I expected. I'm actually enjoying it very much, but it takes a very long time to read and write everything about the subject. I've been reading so much about 18th century now I think I live in that time more than I live in the 12st century!! The good thing is that I finished writing my three chapters and should be submitting the entire work in less than a month. I finally see an end for the hard work of the past two years!

Well, my visa was over by May; I was supposed to graduate then and be returning back home by early June. But I needed more time to finish my work so I requested the Fulbright to extend my visa for a longer time. And what do you know, they actually agreed to extend it till the end of August. So now I'm staying in the States till late September or until I get my diploma from the university. After that, I'm going home! I know it sounds crazy to go back right now, but I made my decision to go back a long time ago, because, I can't afford staying here on my own, I don't want to apply for asylum or anything like that because it takes a very long time and I don't know if it worths it, and I don't think I can live by myself any longer. It's not scary, but it's just so hard not having anyone to talk to and missing all events and things that happen in my family. And even though I have many friends here, it's nothing like being with your own family. So I said that's it, I'm going back, and if it's meant for me to come back here in the future then it will happen. And if not, then I'm not sad at all about leaving here.

Now I should go back to my 18th century world; I will try to tell the people there that we have blogs in the new century... maybe they will let me post more often!! :D But I should be able to post regularly by next month. I hope you will still be remembering me!


Morbido, M.A. (almost!)

Not Ready Yet

I just realized that the spring semester started today, and I'm not ready for that yet. I still can't look at books or even get near them even though they are practically all around the apartment. This is the first time that I don't feel like studying again after taking a break, and the other thing that feels weird is that I don't really have classes this semester. All my work now is meeting with my director and writing my thesis, no classes and homeworks, and no classmates to talk with. I was wondering that maybe this is why I don't feel ready for the semester since I don't really have a "semester". Another thing, I'm graduating in May, which I don't want to even think about right now because I've always liked being a student and I'll have to be something else when I graduate.

So, I've been absent from the blog world for a very long time now and I don't have a real excuse this time except for saying that I have been rebooting from the past semester's work all this time! I did nothing but sleeping, watching tv, and sleeping some more!

I just realized that I used the word "time" many "times"!!! :D
Isn't there another word?!

I haven't started the actual work on the thesis yet, but I have been preparing for the topic and materials since summer. At the beginning I decided to write about Oscar Wild and the New Woman movement in the late 19th century, and I started reading about the topic and collecting materials, but I was short on that and I reached a dead end. So I had to change it. Fall semester started and the first novel I read was Jane Austen's Emma, and then it hit me: there is nothing better than writing about Jane Austen, especially when the interest in her novels is ever increasing all the time. So I talked to the professor of this course who is also my thesis director and she said that I can find many things to write about concerning Austen and her novels. So a new search was in session, and I started getting all those books on Austen's life and her novels and many other related topics. I know she is not a feminist and she wouldn't even consider herself so, but her novels certainly have many similar aspects. And that's what I'm going to write about. Luckily, PBS channel started a Jane Austen movies' marathon yesterday in which they will play all of the movies depicted from the six novels that she wrote. I watched Persuasion yesterday and I liked it a lot. My friend said that it's not the same as the novel at all, but I still liked it. Right now, I'm reading The Jane Austen Book Club.

Oh, did I mentioned that I went to New York last week? I went by myself but I met my friend there. I had a great time and visited so many places in two days. The trip was actually three days but the third day was for traveling back, it's about an hour and a half on plane, but it took me about three hours on the bus to get to the airport because it's located in another city.
This will need another post, with pictures of course!


Countdown has begun!

Quick Thoughts Before Class!

Greetings!
I just finished my first class for the day, and while waiting for the second class to begin, I thought of writing a post.
Last time I wrote that I was having troubles sleeping and that I wasn’t feeling sleepy at all times. Well, after some talks with other students in our graduate lounge, I found out that everyone else at graduate school is having the same problem, if not worse! A student told me that she actually can’t sleep at all because she doesn’t have time between doing all the assignments for classes and going to her job. So she only has a time for a short nap around 6 o’clock in the morning, and then she has to get up and go to work!
But believe it or not, after I knew that I wasn’t the only one in this situation I could sleep well now! I started by forcing myself to waking up early in the morning even when I have nothing to wake up for. By the end of the day I could manage to sleep. It’s been like this for a while now and it’s still working :) but I hope that this non-sleeping problem won’t come back with the end of the semester and the fast-approaching deadlines. I was having all those plans for Thanksgiving break but I had to cancel everything and just stay at home and work on my paper cuz of the deadlines. However, I managed to go on two nice trips to reboot and get ready for the heaving work, and above all, the thesis.
Well, I don’t know what to else to say for now, and there is not much time left for class. So I will go, hoping that I will find time to write a real and decent post with something interesting to say. I’m not checking the post, so I apologize for any typos or weird sentences that may occur.

P.S. Dad, I was so happy to read your comments on my post, and I hope that you will read this one too. Believe me; I even tried to count my books, not just sheep! But it’s ok for now :)

Sleepless in ...

I can't sleep, and it's been like this for a long while now! I just don't feel sleepy at all.
Don't know what to do, so I got out of bed to study at 2:00 a.m.
Maybe I should call for Mr. Sandman!

Just a Thought...

How comes whenever we search for pictures about Iraq or anything related to it all what we see are the pictures of death and blood? Where did the beautiful and happy pictures go? Or are they any?!
I was preparing a powerpoint presentation for a speech that I gave to a freshmen class at the university, and I wanted to tell the students about what they usually don’t see in media or anywhere else: the good side of Iraq. But all my tries went in vain when I tried to look for some photos of young happy people. Instead, all the photos that came up in the search were of dead shattered bodies, blood, torn clothes of people who withered after being thrown out on the side of the street, and destroyed neighborhood that once used to be happy.

Ramadan Kareem everyone! :)