Random Law School Update 40

Congratulations America.

Random Law School Update 39: Why I Vote

Last Location: Barcelona, Spain
Arrival Date: August 26, 2012
Departure Date: December 22, 2012*

Present Location: Paris, France
Arrival Date: November 5, 2012
Departure Date: November 5, 2012

Next Location: Washington, DC
Arrival Date: November 5, 2012
Departure Date: November 12, 2012

Tomorrow is Election Day. If you haven’t already, I trust that you will commit yourself to going out to the booths and braving the lines.

Why I vote:

My vote isn’t merely a symbol of my support for a particular candidate.

My vote serves as a placeholder. A placeholder for democracy in the future. When I vote, I communicate that I value a system of governance in which I have a say. A system that I am empowered to improve through non-violent means.

My vote is a symbol against complacency. And a token of appreciation for what others have gone through to guarantee me this right. When I spend hours trying to figure out the correct system for voting early from abroad, or waiting in lines at polling booths, I don’t compare the time lost to other things I could have been doing. I look at the time saved by my not having to form a revolution.

I vote to ensure the success of my country. And I vote even when there are no good choices—to show that I am paying attention.

However, in this election I happen to believe that there is a good choice. President Obama has made many decisions in office on issues that I do not necessarily support or care about. But official legislative acts represent only a fraction of a president’s opportunity to improve society.

President Obama is changing the way politics are run. By soliciting campaign funds directly from the people to whom he ought to be directly accountable—the public—he is reducing the inflated influence of large industrial lobbies, like oil and gas…or agriculture. In the past, political candidates would find themselves in the pockets of the lobbies that had helped them get elected. This hurt Americans, stifled social advancement, and prevented win-win solutions from being sought.

Obama has also changed politics by talking to the American people like rational adults in terms we can understand. He hasn’t tried to hide the ball or change the subject. He is forward, honest, and rational. Which means, even if I don’t agree with him on everything, I can imagine a world in which it might be the right thing to do. And that is sufficient. Because I know that I don’t agree with anybody on everything. Also, when Americans are treated like rational decision makers, I believe they are more likely to behave like rational decision makers. This is good for every aspect of society, and the economy.

As a pragmatic libertarian, I am not sure how I feel about Obama’s stance on healthcare. I have not read the gargantuan Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, nor do I plan to. However, I do know that the system we had previously is unacceptable. And I know that if I don’t have a job lined up after I depart from my student health insurance, his plan will ensure that I can continue to receive treatment despite my pre-existing condition.

I know that my friends and family are split between liberals and conservatives. I would vote for Obama in this election even if I considered myself conservative, if only because I trust his well-thought-out plan for fiscal responsibility over Romney’s apparently flawless (and numberless) plan.

And because, while the institution of marriage gives me the heebie-jeebies, it hardly affects me if gays want to do it.

Love,

Melissa

Ps. I am attaching several friends here for the first time. Let me know if you would like to receive future RLSUs. You can check past ones out at: randomtravelupdates.blogspot.com before deciding. And you can always unsubscribe.

Random Law School Update 38

Present Location: Barcelona, Spain
Arrival Date: August 26, 2012
Departure Date: December 22, 2012*

Next Location: Washington, DC
Arrival Date: November 5, 2012
Departure Date: November 12, 2012

In lighter news...photos from Venice, Sitges, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Tossa, Barcelona, Frankfurt, Bolder, and Tucson are finally up: https://picasaweb.google.com/a.melissa.meyer :)

Love,

Melissa

Random Law School Update 37

Last Locations-
Lisbon, Portugal: September 28 - October 2, 2012
Sitges & Vilanova i la Geltrú, Spain: October 13, 2012
Venice, Italy: October 20 - October 22, 2012

Present Location: Barcelona, Spain
Arrival Date: August 26, 2012
Departure Date: December 22, 2012*

Next Location: Undetermined

I am sitting alone in a hospital in a foreign hospital as a doctor tries to explain to me, in Spanish, that my counts have dropped to 43. I blink, obviously phased by this news. He looks concerned as well. But don’t worry, he continues. Abnormal but not so dangerous. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. You should see the hematologist immediately. You should come back for more blood work tomorrow. Don’t worry, it is abnormal but not dangerous. Don’t worry. He says. As if I hadn’t gone through this before.

He leaves and I sit alone as the walls shift around me — unable to maintain the straight and steady illusion to which I am accustomed. I am not worried. There is nothing to worry about. I would be worried if they had dropped from 240 to 170. Then I could worry about a downward trend. I would worry if they were at 5, then there would be an immediate risk of death which would almost certainly mean spending a significant portion of the next week in the hospital. And tons of needles.

But 43 offers nothing to worry about. They are already low enough to signal that my splenectomy failed, and they are high enough that I won’t have to do anything about it for awhile.

What I feel isn’t worry. It is simple sadness. I feel completely sad. I can’t tell whether it is a sadness for the loss of something good that could have been or a sadness for the infliction of something new that is bad.

My first thought sitting all alone in the hospital chair was that I wanted to go home. It isn’t true. Going home won’t fix anything. But there is something comforting about telling yourself that you want to go home. As if just saying “there is no place like home,” might invoke the power of the ruby slippers and allow you to escape the Wicked Witch once and for all.

I do suspect this is all a dream, filled with lessons. At some point I fully expect to wake up in my bedroom with boring normal platelets.

Love,

Melissa

Random Law School Update 36

Last Location: Lelystad, The Netherlands

Arrival Date: September 13, 2012

Departure Date: September 18, 2012

Present Location: Barcelona, Spain

Arrival Date: August 26, 2012

Departure Date: December 22, 2012*

Next Location: Lisboa, Portugal

Arrival Date: September 28, 2012

Departure Date: October 2, 2012

On my last day in the Netherlands I visited the Van Gogh museum where I learned that Vincent was 26 when he first embarked on a career as an artist. A career that lasted a mere 10 years before he shot himself fatally in the chest. It made me think that I am not yet too old to discover an incredible talent and die young. An inspiring thought.

Spain feels like home. I have been thinking lately that travel feels like home to me. It is a nice feeling. I wonder if it could ever last.

I went into the beautiful hospital near my school for a blood test last week. It took time to work out the international insurance, but less time than it takes me to work out domestic insurance at home. And my international insurance covers at 100%, which is nice. Lab results were good. I am happy.

Today I go to Lisbon.

Love,

Melissa

Random Law School Update 35

Last Locations-
Washington, DC: July 9 - August 14, 2012
Tucson, AZ: August 14 - August 20, 2012
Boulder, CO: August 20 - August 24, 2012
Frankfurt, Germany: August 25 - August 26, 2012

Present Location: Barcelona, Spain
Arrival Date: August 26, 2012
Departure Date: December 22, 2012*

Next Location: Lelystad, The Netherlands
Arrival Date: September 13, 2012*
Departure Date: September 18, 2012*

I presently live in Spain. I arrived here two weeks ago from Denver via a delightful 20-hour layover in Frankfurt. I like it here.

I love my apartment. It is a five-bedroom, three bathroom spot on the segundo piso (third and a half floor) of an four-apartment complex that is very old as evidenced by the dark and disheveled wooden stairway that is barely wide enough to accommodate a piece of luggage. The apartment itself however looks like it came out of an IKEA magazine. It is clean, simple, and stylish. The kitchen is always clean. My four flatmates keep a low profile and I often have the place to myself. And the one that owns the apartment and is most present doesn’t speak english, so I get to practice spanish, which is wonderful. She, also, is wonderful.

I love my neighborhood, Barrio Gotico. It is right in the center of Barcelona’s old city--an incredible place filled with tiny stone streets where only pedestrians can pass. It is special. The buildings are all about four or five stories and are all connected to one another so that the city is comprised of small streets and plazas winding their way like a maize through a field of impressive old stone buildings. There are “supermarkets” on every street, which look a lot like convenience stores except that they sell awesome things: like fresh vegetables, a half-dozen types of soymilk, lentils, brown rice, and gluten-free products. There are plenty of health food stores including a vegan shop with bulk grains 150 meters from my apartment. Restaurants here are open past midnight, even on weeknights, but no one who lives here goes out to eat much.

I think I may have discovered why it is that Europeans stay so thin. I was at a friend’s apartment around meal time and, unexpectedly, it became time to eat. After assuring them that I was full so as to avoid any sadness about not being able to cater to my dietary restrictions, they brought out a beautiful macrobiotic stir-fry of sautéed vegetables and brown rice and start chowing down as if it was normal to not have any bread, processed foods, meat, dairy, eggs, or sugar in a meal. After dinner, one of the roommates grabbed a peach out of the fridge to snack on. Not a pastry, not ice cream, just a peach, which you can get here as easily as a bag of chips or a Twinkie, because they are sold at every market on every street. Brilliant. Having a lot of tiny markets everywhere means that what is healthy also happens to be what is easy, cheap, and quick to make at home.

In less happy news, our wonderful apartment in my delightful neighborhood was broken into last week. I was the first to discover the damage; as I went to insert my key into the lock the door swung open revealing two broken hinges and two locks busted out of their sockets. The feeling was the feeling that something had gone either wrong or very wrong.

**Interestingly enough, as I was just writing this my cell phone was stolen. A young boy came up to my table at Starbucks with an advertisement for contact lenses pretending to be deaf and holding out his hand as if asking for money the way they do in India and other third-worldly countries. I didn’t think too much of it--though noticed as he left that he had the same color iPhone case as I had. Twelve seconds later, genius struck, I threw my computer in my bag, and bolted out of the cafe. By the time I located the kid with my eyes, he had already managed to start crossing the street a block and a half over. I approached him quickly and subtly, gave him a look of death, and retrieved the phone.**

That makes two lucky close calls in one week. Nothing was missing from our apartment either.

I have been taking spanish classes since I arrived. Law school exchange classes start this week. Our first public holiday is Tuesday. I think I might go here.

Photos will be available in the usual place as soon as I figure out how to convince the new version of Picasa to save my captions. They are also on Facebook. Archived RLSUs and RTUs can be found at: http://randomtravelupdates.blogspot.com.es.

Love,

Melissa

Random Law School Update 34

Last Locations-

Washington, DC: April 3 - May 22, 2012

Miami, FL: May 22, 2012

Grenada, The Caribbean: May 23 - June 2, 2012

Miami, FL: June 2, 2012

Washington, DC: June 2 - June 7, 2012

Boston, MA: June 7, 2012

Wolfsboro, NH: June 7 - June 10, 2012

Boston, MA: June 10, 2012

New York, NY: June 10 - June 14, 2012

Washington, DC: June 14 - June 30, 2012

Stone Harbor, NJ: June 30 - July 8, 2012

New York, NY: July 8 - July 9, 2012

Present Location-

Washington, DC: July 9 - August 14, 2012*

Next Locations-

Tucson, AZ: August 14 - August 18, 2012*

Boulder, CO: August 18 - August 22, 2012*

Washington, DC: August 22 - August 25, 2012*

Barcelona, Spain: August 2012 - December 2012

*Tentative

It has been 11 days since I had my spleen removed. I had intended to write from the hospital, and had in fact started writing, but the constant flow of intravenous pain medication rendered me into a dreamlike state from which the inhibition to not stop writing was alleviated. 

Hospitals are interesting places. They are like hotels in that they contain rooms away from home where your sheets are cleaned for you. They are like jails in that you are not allowed to leave without the permission of the medical authorities. They are like insane asylums in that you are surrounded by a bunch of other equally drugged up people who moan at various intervals throughout the day, and night. They are like luxury resorts in that everything you want or need is brought to you at the push of a button. I can get someone to deliver me food, snacks, drinks, plug in my computer, hand me my bag, search for my iphone. They are like the future in that I don’t have to lift my hand or lower my head to drink. A machine plugged into a vein on my arm takes care of my hydration needs.

As a general rule, hospitals and I do not get along. I have a (only slowly diminishing) fear of blood, needles, and sitting in one place for long periods of time. They had to try twice to insert my IV, which meant four sticks because they insisted in inserting a numbing solution before each try. "This IV is bigger than the ones you’re used to." I was under a few minutes later so none of it really mattered much. 

I was released last Monday morning, in time to make it to my 9:30am Spanish class which meets for three hours a day, Monday through Friday. I’ve managed to mostly carry on with my daily life. I commute 35 minutes each way to class every day by bus, I meet friends out for meals, I go to movies. The doctors didn’t offer a ton of guidance for what to and not to do. So I go by what hurts. If it hurts, I try to avoid it. 

The worst part has been the medication. The pill they gave me to cure the pain causes nausea. The pill they gave me to cure the nausea causes constipation. The pill suggested to cure that causes more pain. And no cure is absolute, so at the end of it I am left with a little mix of pain, nausea, constipation, and more pain. 

I cured this by quitting the medication. That has fixed just about everything except for the initial pain, which is, in all, quite bearable.

I can talk about spleens and why they are removed later. I can also talk about the rest of my summer. It has involved some travel, including a few trips to the beach which have left me with a tan that helps when it comes to soliciting comments regarding how healthy I look for having just gotten out of the hospital. I have also used the travel to connect with family and friends, including several of those on this list. Those trips are probably best described by photo. 

Thank you to all who have sent kind thoughts by mail, email, facebook, telepathy, or in person. They have been received.

Love, 

Melissa

As always, let me know if you would like to stop receiving these emails, or start receiving them if you are reading from the blog. All Random Law School Updates, past and present, decent and awful, can be found at: randomtravelupdates.blogspot.com.