Visiting Friends and Road Trip Part 1

Peregrination

[per-i-gruh-ney-shuhn]

1. Travel from one place to another, especially on foot.

2. A course of travel; journey.

Okay, I am taking a jump back in time because I lost my camera for awhile so I couldn't update this as soon as I would have liked to.

So last January (I know, I know, a loooong time ago) I hopped on a plane to visit some very lovely people in Chicago:

We went ice skating in Millennium Park in Chicago and it was lovely.

After a lovely weekend in Chicago staying with two incredible hosts, I headed to Beloit, WI with Hannah and Kaitlin (the two sexy blondes above) to stay with them in their very cute apartment there. It was so strange and wonderful to be back at my undergrad college. I felt very much like I no longer belonged yet everything was so familiar. It was very nostalgic. But I saw some old friends, visited the Costume Shop where I worked for 4 years and said hello to a few professors. I also baked all of my MFA letter of rec writers cookies, which they all seemed to enjoy immensely (seriously one did a jig type dance when he saw them and the other two opened them immediately).

Hannah had to leave after a week to go to a real adult type job, so Kaitlin and I kicked it for awhile and were visited by another friend, Coley and it was absolutely fantastic to see her.

After that Kaitlin and I hopped into her very brave car, nicknamed Earrings to start our road trip.

We, we, we so excited, we so excited....

We drove to St. Louis, where we stayed with one of Kaitlin's old buds. The drive was pretty easy, only about 6-7 hours or so. And we read a lot of John Green's The Fault in Our Stars and listened to sweet tunes. Though sadly my all Weezer mix CD didn't burn properly.

St. Louis was a really great city. It seemed like culturally it was a true mix of MidWest and South. The downtown area was really diverse and eclectic. We went to an organic/local bakery, got bread from a panaderia and got bubble tea. Kaitlin's friend was so kind and drove us all over giving us a stellar tour of the Loop, many used book shops and antique row. We even saw the arch.

It was a little gray out that day.

But I have to admit the highlight of the trip was spontaneously walking into the St. Louis Church of Scientology. Now I've got to admit, I knew very little about scientology before this trip. Kaitlin pretty much took the lead and said she was interested in learning more for a writing project and we pretended we were current WashU students. But the people there were very sweet and gave us an extensive personality test to help us assess the problems with our lives or something like that. I thought the results were pretty great. A perfect score has rankings all above a certain baseline and ideally your ranked score is pretty straight. Most of my areas were above the "good" line, but my line was definitely not straight (which means what? I don't know). Maybe I'm not very stable. But they did tell me I was very cynical, which I find hard to believe. I'm not gullible certainly, but I'm a very optimistic person and am idealistic and believe people can save the world and make great change, etc. etc. I think it was my scientific side surfacing. They also told me I was too honest and consequently mean. I admitted that I liked people who are brutally honest and thus am brutally honest myself at times. I think a lot of this comes from being an undergrad creative writing major. My writing can't grow if people consistently sugar coat feedback, so I like to tell it like it is. That doesn't mean I just say mean things; I do have tact. But I will point out flaws in a constructive way. But, I always do so in a constructive manner. And that's the whole point of workshop.

My favorite quote from the trip: "When you're brutally honest you don't have to be mean."

I really wanted to ask her if she understood the definition of the word "brutal" but then I thought she'd think that was mean.

So that happened.

It was really strange because when I watched the informational videos Scientology seemed pretty legitimate. It seemed like it was super tolerant (religiously, racially, etc.) and focused on making you a better, happier person. I'm all for those things! Like 150% But the videos talked about Scientology very generally and when we asked for more specific information things stopped making sense. Like they accept people from any religion yet their symbol is a cross (with some very, very small lines intersecting with the main cross like a small star). The lady said the symbol of the cross predates Christianity, which is true, yet Scientology was founded in the early 1900s, when the cross was THE dominant symbol of Christianity. Fishy. And when they showed us an e-meter, which is supposed to read negative mental energy (or something like that) the lady couldn't explain how it worked. I asked if it went off blood pressure or temperature (you grip two metal rods to be "read") and she said no. Then I asked if it read changes in charge in the air and she said "yes, among other things". Firstly, that's not really possible (okay it's possible but not with that piece of equipment). Secondly, what "other things"?!? Scientology pretend to be so scientific and then completely tries to distance itself from Psychology and real scientific method science. I'm all for helping people, but I'm not such a fan of the illogic.

Anyway, I could go on more about Scientology and how strange but fascinating it is, but I'll leave it at that. Apparently I'm mean and cynical but beyond that I am an a-okay person. Huzzah!