So much more than just coffee..

Whether it's a grande skinny vanilla latte or a tall-medium-roast-in-a-grande-cup, Starbucks has definitely become a huge part of my life in college. People accuse Starbucks of being a cult, and that's totally true. They create personalized drinks for the few who understand how to work the system. Extra hot? No foam? No whip? Extra squirts of flavor? Half-decaf? For the ordinary passer by who just wants a CUP OF COFFEE, Starbucks is not the ideal place (also, their regular brew tastes like mud. I get the tall-in-the-grande-cup so then I can enough milk in it to make it taste decent. And when you're using the calorie-conscious skim milk, that's a lot). You have to learn how to say the right (and strange) words that will make your drink perfect every time. Who knew that just saying the word "skinny" could cut the calories of your drink in half? Coming from a post-communist, highly controlled country, the amount of choices that you have just to pick what type of coffee you want is slightly ridiculous. If I were a more adventuresome person, I would try every single combination of words and try countless flavors of drinks. But I am a person of extreme habit (thanks, Dad :)), and venturing beyond my two drinks of choice is always a challenge. I am currently enjoying a Friday treat, though: grande no whip coffee light frap, because it's just too beautiful outside to drink something hot (and I already had my Seattle's Best coffee this morning). Occasionally, I'll get a grande non fat chai tea latte, because it's Dani's favorite (though I laugh every single time I say I would like a "chai tea"). But as wonderful as it is, and as much as I feel proud of myself for conquering the system in order to get the right flavor and amount of calories that I want in my coffee, I am definitely looking forward to next year, when I will have a coffee machine in our apartment and I will be able to make myself simple, cheap coffee whenever I want. And really, that's all I need.

Discussions

After an eye-opening day in the south side of Chicago yesterday, I returned to have a very intense conversation with Tricia about how the American culture perceives race, what steps they are taking to ensure equality, and how those steps are actually backfiring and underlining the differences between different ethnic groups. It was definitely my most fascinating conversation of the week (and I found out something new about American culture and things that are NOT acceptable to say that I had no idea about). Having grown up in Kazakhstan, where everything is so different and race is perceived in a completely alien way to the way Americans understand things, it's been great for me to learn more about the difficulties in America. I honestly do not perceive race (my mother can attest to that - when I'll be describing someone, she'll ask me if they were Kazakh or Russian ... and I will have no idea. I just don't think that way) and my lifelong desire to be anything besides American (because being American was too "boring" for me) probably says something about my internal preferences. (I would no longer kill to be Canadian, but when I was 12, that was the ultimate country.) Last night, I came to the conclusion that, in my mind, cultural and cultural heritage is extremely important and should be preserved, however race is not always an accurate indicator of culture. (Perhaps this links somewhat to my own life and situation, but I was also thinking of all the Asian friends that I have here who have grown up in Florida or LA) But how America as a country could move from identifying people as "people of color" to "people of culture", I don't know.

I also realized last night that I need to learn to debate. I have a slight issue in that, when people question the moral or cultural principles that I believe in most strongly, I get so angry that anyone could even call those ideas into question that my impassioned convincing is not the most effective. (Strangely enough, I don't feel as angry when people question the existence of God, etc. Maybe that's because I've been trained to teach in that area, but not in others.) Northwestern offers a speech and debate class, I think, but sadly the three majors that I am trying to turn out don't leave room for many (read: ANY) "extra" classes.