I've been getting lots of work done lately...the idea is to spend a LOT of time working now, so when I go home for Thanksgiving my stress levels are low and I don't have to spend all my time working. I've made great progress.

My Danish classes have been going great lately... I honestly think I'm better at Danish now than I am at Spanish or Italian. And that's really exciting for me, because I honestly enjoy the Danish language a bit more...it's so much fun to speak. And Danes are fun people to talk to anyways...they're usually really fun and happy! When speaking Danish to a Dane, there will inevitably be lots of laughing, because the non-native speaker(me) will have difficulty pronouncing a word, and then it sounds even sillier than it does when pronounced correctly.

Every Monday and Friday, the days I have my Danish class, my teacher, my classmate and I probably laugh just as much as we speak. Good times are had by all.

I'm a coordinator for NLVS, New Live Volunteering Society, an organization at Yale solely dedicated to working with veterans in the community. I am in the process of spearheading a new program with the West Haven VA Hospital/ psychiatric ward that would pair students up with veterans in a monitored environment (not by themselves) as workout accountability buddies. I've had quite a bit of interest from lots of students and from the West Haven VA Hospital. There are lots of young male and female veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq that would love to have a workout partner, and same with students here. It's a win-win...it helps the veterans re-integrate into society, and both parties have a bit more accountability when it comes to exercising.
I'm really excited about the prospects of this program.

I was going to head into New York City this past weekend to get away for a day, but I was just so bogged down with work. Maybe I'll be able to take some time and head down there for a day once I'm back up here in January.

It won't be long until I'm back home for Thanksgiving!

Lately I have become more and more obsessed with this research  of mine. I suppose there's a certain allure to researching and writing about something that just hasn't been researched before. It's a good problem to have --- much better than not caring enough about my term papers.

On a bright note, I'm in the middle of listening to Jackson Browne's new album...Yep, he released a new album this year. I really like his older stuff, and so far I like this new album. It's actually not too far from his old stuff, and he still sounds like himself (as opposed to an older man with a noticeably aged voice).

Other than that, things are rocking along really smoothly I suppose. I do lots of language studying between Danish and Italian.

It's still surprising how beautiful the Fall is up here in New England... I will be honest and say that rural New England, not urban areas like New Haven, is probably the most beautiful place in America in the Fall.

Lately I have been spending quite a bit of time at our Rare Book and Manuscript Library reading and analyzing the book I mentioned before, Relationi Universali by Giovanni Botero. The good thing is, I don't necessarily even need my roommate to help me translate...the book is a description of the world (including the New World), which is easy to read! I mean, describing places and people is basically lesson #1 of any language course, and combining that with my background in Spanish gets me somewhere to around an 85% comprehension rate for this book. The even cooler thing is that we have multiple editions of this book...one from 1601, one from 1617, and one from 1623. Each version is updated with the new information the conquistadors learned in the New World. 

This is why I love studying history here so much... the history classes here require term papers to be done using primary documents. So instead of reading articles about the New World, I'm able to head on over to the Rare Book library and read a book printed in 1601 about the New World. It is a window into exactly what they thought of the New World at the time. It takes away the middlemen academics from the equation... I don't have to rely on anyone but myself to interpret the primary sources. Also, being able to apply language skills is incredibly helpful when researching Europe; if I only had English to rely on, I'd be cutting out a lot of research options. 

This is a map foldout from the book from 1623 of the New World. Sorry, I didn't feel like re-editing the photo to make it upright.

The page below discusses "In which ways our World is superior to the New one"

I think it's so cool to read books from old printing presses hundreds of years ago. I love to woodcut print art.

The "v" and "u" were the same back then in some cases...they still used the Latin alphabet more strictly at that time and hadn't quite made the complete transition to using the "u"

We have to be really careful with old books like this...You are given two foam blocks to rest the book on, and a cloth sack filled with small marbles to hold the page open.

The note below was written in the front of book. I can't understand a bit of it. I can only read the "Io" at the beginning, which means "I" in Italian...as in "I am..." But it's still cool to see notes like this.

Oh yeah, fall colors are all around campus!

So I'm enjoying this term paper on the American West and the implications of the globally expanding Catholic Church in the New World. It's the kind of thing I don't mind doing on a Saturday afternoon. 

On a sad note, Alan the Sumatran orangutan died yesterday at the Atlanta Zoo. RIP Alan. He was 43 years old. 

Well, Thanksgiving break is in two weeks. The goal is to finish my 25 page research paper on Southern Labor History in the Fulton Cotton Mills of Atlanta, to finish my 10 page research paper on the New World, and to study Econ a good bit (that class isn't going too well). 

Wow I haven't posted in a long time. For those of you that may actually still check this page, here's an update:

My classes are going well this semester... I'm actually doing really well in Italian, The American West, and The American South. Econ is a different story, but life goes on. :-)
My Danish studies are also really starting to pay off. My teacher is really starting to push me to the limits during our sessions by making me speak as sophisticated as possible. Instead of asking simple questions, he'll have a conversation with me about complex issues that in turn require an in-depth usage of the language. It's hard work and tiring, but really helpful.

I guess my Italian studies are about to pay off in a small way - Thursday I am going to Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library to do research on a series of volumes published by an Italian thinker in the late 1500's. He made some pretty ridiculous (and intellectually stimulating) drawings of what he thought native americans in the New World would look like. My roommate, who is from Milan, Italy is also going with me to help translate since this is complex 16th century Italian (not exactly something in level 1 Italian is fully up to reading). Check one of the pictures out:

I'm really excited to head home for Thanksgiving in a couple weeks. I'm also knee-deep in research for a 25 page term paper for my American South class in which I am writing on the post-World War II economic globalization and technological progress as it pertained to the Atlanta Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills and their decline then ultimately the shut-down in the 1970's. It's a mix of economics and history, and it's really neat because nobody has ever really written on the Southern textile industry in the post-war years. I'm using mostly primary documents too, so it's original research. 

I promise to post more often!