Things I'm doing / thinking

In no particular order:

• Learning about sushi: I feel like a true foodie (or Asian?) would have done this a long time ago, but I am just now reading the Wikipedia page on "Sushi" and figuring out what all the Japanese terms mean and anything else sushi-related. (E.g. Nigiri = the rectangular-ish rice with the piece of sashimi on top; maki = the regular sushi rolls; temaki = hand rolls.) But then, I'm not really a true foodie (just an apathetic one), so my current informal education on sushi is really due to curiosity.

• I have an appellate brief due Monday (as in, an actual appeal that I am working on for a real client in my Immigration Clinic). Um....all I have to say about this is that physically filing things is CRAZY. Like, there are SO MANY THINGS you have to do, and it's probably freaking me out only because it's all still new to me, but I will post about this later.

• I think I will (eventually) post on here my first journal entry for Immigration Clinic, so you guys can get a sense of what I'm learning, and I can keep it for future reference. The first entry covers my time since the beginning of school until last week. The second entry will cover the middle portion of fall semester, and will include a part about everything I have to do in order to file an appellate brief to the BIA (Board of Immigration Appeals) (see post above). The third entry will cover the last third of the semester. Just so you know, these journal entries are mandatory, but it's been fun doing them because it's basically blogging, and I do that anyway. And also because it really has been a good way to synthesize new information and experiences in Clinic (and yes, I keep my informal tone when writing these journal entries, although I make it a little less crazy because all four of my professors are reading them haha).

• I will be at school Friday (tomorrow) even though I don't have classes, because I need to work on this appellate brief.

• I will be at school on Saturday from 8am - 3:30pm for a cover letter/resume/networking/interviewing workshop.

• I will be at school on Sunday for who knows how long because my journal group has to attend something called "Roundtable," where we all have to be at the journal office until we get all of our footnotes substantiated in the article that we are editing. We have around 60 footnotes, which apparently is a ridiculously high number. It will doubtless take hours, but at least they're providing us with lunch (Torchy's Tacos!). I also appreciate the fact that they've been upfront with us about how difficult of an article we've had (most of our sources are in Hebrew, so....guess what we've been using to translate? That's right—translate.google.com), and that our next two will be much easier in terms of substantiation.

• Every morning this week (and hopefully for the weeks to come), I've been waking up around 5:30am with my roommate C, and we've been reading Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan, a formerly Christian but now Muslim Iranian-American who has a PhD in the Sociology of Religions (and a Masters and Bachelor's in Theological/Religious Studies, the Masters being from Harvard; he is currently a creative writing professor). His book is about the historical Jesus (as opposed to the Jesus of faith, aka post-death & resurrection, kind of?), so it's written as a work of historical nonfiction, or at least, what was most likely to have been true (it took him 20 years of research to write this book). So far, the book has been incredibly interesting, due in no small part to the fact that Reza writes very well and manages to bring history alive. Unfortunately, I haven't been getting very far every morning, because my brain is super slow then, and it takes me about 30 minutes to read 8 pages. I've gotten through the Author's Note, Introduction, Prologue, and Chapter 1 (lol I know....so little). There are some parts that give me pause, in both good and bad ways, so my experience so far is very close to what Reza has said of Christians reading his book—that is, we disagree with some parts, but that on the whole, we really like the book for the new information and perspective. So, although waking up at 5:30am every morning has been rough, I have actually very much enjoyed my mornings this week. (And FYI, in case you're wondering why I know so much about what Reza has said about his book, it's because my roommate C told me about an event in downtown Houston where Reza was going to speak about Zealot, and we both went! It was super, super interesting and even funny—Reza is an excellent speaker—and the cost of admission included a signed copy of his book, which is why we are now both reading through it and sharing our thoughts.)

• That's it for now....oh, I guess I am also compiling a list of restaurants/cafés I would recommend in Houston. This was brought on by reading the Houston Chronicle list of Houston's top 100 restaurants. Of course, my list is only the "top" restaurants out of the ones I've tried, meaning it has a much lower price range :). (I think I also have lower standards haha.) I find that I've come up with a surprisingly large number of restaurants/cafés, but I guess it's not disproportionate to having lived in Houston for the past half decade.

Welp....until next time!