The Insatiable Itch

I have the travel itch, bad. It's almost overwhelming. Unfortunately, I'm broke.

The other problem with "the itch" is that the more I travel, the more I get hooked. I used to be able to go years without travel, and be fine.

The travel bug was instilled in me early. My family is not at all wealthy, but we spend our extra money on travel. We don't have cable, internet access, and we buy all our clothes from sale racks (The most expensive piece of clothing I have ever owned was my sixty dollar prom dress). However, we do believe in travel. All of the four children in our family have passports.

At five years old, I went to England and Scotland with my family. This is where it all started. After this first big trip, the addiction had only started to form.

There were a few trips during this time period, all in the states. There were a few places in the Midwest, Colorado, Oregon, Mississippi, and Georgia.

Four years ago I went to Ireland. Beautiful, gorgeous, la-ti-dah.

The itch got worse. Before the trip, I had been able to casually dream about traveling without any strange reactions. However, after that trip, I couldn't daydream without rushing to a travel site and trying to find a reasonable price.

One-and-a-half years went by with only a trip to D.C., which I was forced to go on. It was a group trip (vomit) with a group I despised (double vomit). I am, fortunately, no longer involved with that group. It was the worst trip of my life, but it helped sooth the itch for a few weeks.

Then the itch came back with a vengeance.

I started browsing different travel websites the way most people browse Facebook. I made a running list of places I want to go (which is a subject for another post, the list is close to reaching 100).

Then I studied abroad. In Ghana. For those of you who don't know where it is (and here in the rural midwest, it's a huge amount that don't know), Ghana is in west Africa.

Now, it has been four months since I got back, and I'm dying to travel again. I have only been back for four months, and I'm desperate to get out of the Midwest. I have a trip to North Carolina planned for early June, but that's not enough and not soon enough. It will be great fun, but this addiction now requires regular international travel to exotic places.

As I have no money to feed the compulsion to travel, I am stuck until I can save up enough to travel. I have one year until I graduate. Then I'll get a real job. I can live cheap, but it will probably be at least three years until I can save up enough vacation time and money to take a vacation like the kind I've been craving. That's three years. Three! At least!

Aaaaaaaahhh!

Super Tuesday!

Today's an important day. Most of the United States sees it as Super Tuesday, a huge day in politics. Here, the importance of this day is that it's an excuse to get drunk on a Tuesday. Yes, in this town, the important thing about today is that it's Fat Tuesday. Not Mardis Gras, that was the past weekend. Not even French speakers make the connection. For those of you who don't speak the language, Mardi Gras is French for Fat Tuesday.

So, while much of the world is monitoring CNN, the locals, ignorant that history is being made at this very moment, are drinking their beer. Yet, they'll be the ones complaining when a "muslim" (as many seem to think Obama is) or a "woman" is president.

Another testament to the ridiculousness (I know this isn't a real word) of many people around here is how many people voted for John Edwards, despite the fact that he dropped out of the race several days ago.

Why Can't I Get Just One Job?

It is so hard to get a job here. There is such a limited number available. I've been searching for three weeks now and the only response I've had is from Home Depot. Unfortunately, Home Depot is almost three miles away from where I live, and I don't have a car. There is also no form of public transportation available here. So I'm deciding if I need a job bad enough to bike three miles there, then three miles back every time I work. I'm poor, but that's a lot of biking. It's quite a dilemma. It wouldn't be so bad if it was a straight shot to Home Depot, but the way there takes some roads that are a fairly dangerous. There's no space on the side of the road, and there are a lot of stupid drivers around here.

So, what to do? Stay poor and safe, or have money and risk getting hit by a car daily? I'm yet to decide.

I wouldn't have this problem if we had a subway. Or a bus system. Or even taxis.

Getting Laid

Yet another of the unpleasant things about living in a small town is that you can't have casual sex. I'm not the type of girl to just hop into bed with anybody, but sometimes a girl just needs to get laid. However, in this town, everybody knows what everybody else is up to. Which means no one-night stands, no fuck buddies, nothing. Because if you do, everybody will know. And they will judge you. You really don't want to run into your best friend's mom at the town's only grocery store and know that she knows you have casual sex. And, because I live in th emiddle of the Bible Belt, where sex before marriage will earn you an express ticket to hell, you know you're included in their daily family prayer.

Now I'm faced with a dilemma. Do I go hit the bars, risk fending off drunk townies for an evening in hopes of finding one good apple, or do I just stay home watching reruns of Without a Trace. This weekend, I chose the latter. As I'm sure I will until I get so desperate I break down and hit the bars. Or I somehow manage to land a boyfriend. But, if the relationship lasts more than one month, then I'd have to deal with all the questions about when we're getting married. Living in a small town sure is hard on my sex life.

Small-Town Saturday Nights

I'm sure a lot of people blog about their fabulous Saturday nights. They probably discuss the wonderful clubs, parties, or restaurants they went to. Well, in rural areas, such as where I'm from, the options are a little bit more limited. In places like this, there are bars and parties.

In my ideal world, bars are where people go to socialize in a relaxed setting while having a few drinks. In the rural midwest, bars are where legal adults go to get drunk. You don't even have to be of age if you know the bartender and you've memorized the police schedules or are friends with the policemen.

Parties are more accessible to everyone in my age range, but available less often. One has to have some kind of excuse to throw a party. If not, it's just a bunch of drunkards hanging out to music. However, this doesn't seem to bother very many people, and they still try to pass off events like that as the event of the year. Where I come from, there are only three kinds of parties. They are house parties, frat parties, and field parties.

If you still live with your parents, house parties only happen when they are foolish enough to leave town. If you have your own house, you avoid throwing house parties at all costs because you will then be expected to host them all the time. As hosting a house party usually ends with the host scrubbing dried vomit off the toilet seat the next morning, it is not a desirable position. Those who make that mistake once seldom make it again.

If you live in a rural college town, like me, there are frat parties. It's an opportunity for the fraternity to get all the girls in the town together. They know girls will come because there's nothing else for people to do on a Saturday night. Lucky them, not-so-lucky us. We can stay at home, or deal with drunken men trying to cop a feel on the dance floor (and by dance floor I mean over-crowded basement with borrowed speakers set up).

If one is not so fortunate as to live in a town with fraternities, one attends parties in cow fields.
I'm not joking. Police- and weather-permitting, everybody circles up their cars in a remote field, sets up lawn chairs, and drinks beer. The person with the best car stereo gets to be the dj.

Unfortunately, my tastes are a little bit classier than any of the above-mentioned options. Which is why I'm at home, alone, blogging on a Saturday night.

What would you do?

Small Town Politics

Have you ever been embarrassed for your hometown? I certainly have. Very recently. It is almost that all-important time: elections. Not the big presidential elections. Not for senators, governors, representatives. No, it's time to elect a new mayor. And the candidates this town turned out are really pathetic. None of them have a college education. I doubt any of them have ever been outside the midwest.

There's the present mayor, whose recent (and, so far, only) term was a joke. He did nothing for the town and used his power to push his church's agenda. And he's the best candidate.

The second candidate is a hick. He was once the mayor, but was not re-elected. On the rare occassion our small town makes the news, his speeches are an embarrassment. His accent is barely decipherable. He must have slept through every class they ever taught grammar in.

The third candidate is severely retarded, literally. He also doesn't live in the real world at all. I don't want to belittle his character, because he is an excellent person, and brings a lot of morale to the town. Sometimes it seems a bit like a scene from Radio. Despite all this, I highly doubt he can run the town. He marches around town wearing an orange safety vest, shouting into a fake walkie-talkie. He thinks he's a member of a S.W.A.T. team. Should he be elected, he wants to require that all residents of the town to start wearing orange vests.

The three listed above are the best my town has to offer. The cream of our local crop. If this is the best local sources can supply, I want to know when we'll start importing.