It’s finals week.

Fitting, right?

I’m leaving Bowling Green this Friday for the summer and I’m not returning until August for my last semester of college (weird). And as I prepare to leave, I gloss over the semester. At first, returning to school after spending eight months away was hard. I fell in love with Cincinnati in those eight months. I missed my friends, the rec center, OTR on Sundays, the Highland Cafe and so many other things. And it showed because I wouldn’t shut up about it. But that’s also what I do. When I love something, I talk about it a lot. I’m Nina Bosken, it’s what I do.

Sooo I’m about to return to that place. I can’t wait to hug my friends, sip a hot apple cider at Highland and make sandwiches of love from Becki’s apartment on Sunday. I long for reggae night, the Cincinnati skyline and hearing bagel pronounced with a Cincinnati accent. 

But.

When I go home, I feel like I’ll long for Bowling Green.

Shit.

That wasn’t supposed to happen.

But I will. I’ll miss riding my bike and Sunday dinner and all my friends. I’ll miss the roadtrips we take. I’ll miss the donut shop and late nights and theme parties. 

So I wonder if I’ll talk about Bowling Green all the time this summer. Hmm.

So welcome to my life over the past few months:

Dinner parties. Fallon and I threw one in memory of Brian Krampe (who left us to operate roller coasters in Wisconsin). We ate veggie chili.

cutie-pies. Kids at the rec center I worked at.

Obamahome. Traveled to DC for an environmental conference.

Here we are again. We decided to wake him up.

Dirty coal. Mountain Justice Spring Break

OTR crew. Anne and Becki rock.

Pomegranates

Booger Love.

I just deposited love and blessings into your account for 2009. Your pin is Jesus.

Star. What an amazing woman. She rocks.

Meredith glows in the dark. Food not Bombs dinner. FNB is a grassroots org that feeds homeless people vegetarian food, in case you were curious.

I went to Nashville. What a fun city. I could be okay living there someday. 

I had sort of a job training there. I’m most likely taking this job where I place foreign exchange high school students with American host families in the area. It’ll be me making my own hours. My job entails mostly recruiting the families, doing paperwork and making sure the students are happy/being good. It’s one of those jobs where it’ll be easy to slack and get disorganized. So I just need to make sure not to do that. I really pray that that won’t happen. I’m kinda scared it will.

Then the rest of the day Kyle and I just did stuff around Nashville. We looked for Booger’s grave site. Booger is this formerly homeless guy I know from feeding the homeless in Over the Rhine on Sundays in Cincinnati. He used to live in Nashville and he has this crazy story about how he’s legally dead in Nashville. Apparently some guy stole his wallet and then died, so when they buried him, they put Booger’s name on the tomb stone. Ha. Well we went to the cemetery. That was an adventure.

Then we ate at Which Wich. Then we went to the Frist, the art center in Nashville. It was nice but a lot smaller that I thought. I mean Cincinnati’s art museum is huge compared to it. But there was still some quality stuff. They had a whole like naked people section.

Then we walked around Broadway. I bought The Contributor, the paper their homeless coalition puts out. We have a paper just like that in Cincinnati called Street Vibes. It’s for the homeless and written by the homeless and formerly homeless. The venders are homeless/formerly homeless and they sell them for a dollar and get to keep half the profits. So it also helps them out financially. And the one in Cincinnati works the same exact way. So it’s cool to see another city with the same idea. And the people selling them knew Booger! Like I said before, Booger was homeless in Nashville for some time. They didn’t know him well, but they remember him. Small world!

And then we ended the night day with coffee at Cafe Coco. Kyle got a drink with 4 espresso shots. 4! And then we discussed drugs on the way home. No really, we did.

So in short, life is good.

http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0904&article=nashville-s-new-groove

I made a to-do list. I suck at actually sticking to them. 

The toppers are playing tonight. Maybe I should care? Maybe?

My camera sucks. It won’t upload pictures. It’s being a poopoohead.

I like Face hunter. http://facehunter.blogspot.com/

Can I live in DC? Now? Right now? Thanks.

This is sorta late, but the Pomegranates had a CD release party. It made me dance. A lot. Their new CD is something you must check out. Must.

Jesus rocks.

Annnnnd that’s my rambling blog.

Well today, this wasn’t a dream. It happened. 

But I didn’t cry. It’s so weird, but I just don’t seem to cry anymore. When shitty things like this happen, I just take a deep breath and deal. What’s the worst? Well, I fail and then withdraw the course. I mean it sucks and I feel irresponsible. But it’s not the end of the world. Nothing is the end of the world. Except maybe the apocalypse. 

But a few years ago, I would have cried and probably made somewhat of a scene. But now I just feel that that would be stupid. It’s only my fault, I don’t own a time machine. So I can just deal.

Plus the sun is shining. I have food in my belly. And I’m in college. Praise the Lord. Fo real.

So I’m self-righteous. Yup. This Sunday confirmed it. I was home for spring break and so I went to University Christian Church, the church I attended all fall while I was home. It’s a good church with good people wanting justice and love to spread all throughout Cincinnati. I love it there. 

Well the sermon was on that passage in the New Testament with the two people praying. The one is the Pharisee. He’s pretty much like “Thanks God that I’m not a horrible sinner like those crazy people over there. Thanks that I’m not a crackhead or a thief or whatever.” You could put tons of things there. The other person is a tax collector and he’s like “Please forgive me Lord, I’m a sinner.”

The idea, of course, is that we should be like the second person because no one is any greater than another. 

Well it got be thinking about my life and I realized how self-righteous I’ve been recently.

The Lord has been good. He’s recently been opening my heart to a lot of social justice and poverty issues. And I consider myself to be more of an “aware” or “progressive” christian, hanging onto everything Shane Claiborne writes and getting daily e-mails from Sojourners. I’ve scoffed at the religious right, thinking I’m better and actually acting as a christian should. Because they are often self-righteous.

But really, I’m the self-righteous one. Thank you Lord that I actually care about the poor. Thank you Lord that I recognize that the environment is an issue, unlike so many christians who don’t feel this way. Ugh.

I’m no better or worse. It’s crazy that this is what I’ve become self-righteous about.

And the other thing this got me to think about is my actions. Yes, I say and believe all this stuff, but what am I really doing? How am I really putting my faith into action right now? In Bowling Green, I’m not really doing much. Talk is cheap.

So I need to be humbled. Most definitely.

spring break has officially begun.

And I feel like I’m in a weird place in my life. I know what I’m doing today, tomorrow, this summer and next fall. But after mid-December, I have no idea.I used to be so sure about just being a journalist. If you would have asked me what I wanted to do two years ago, I would have said work for a newspaper or magazine. I love writing and talking to people, so it seemed like a good idea.

But.

30,000 children die of starvation every day. Somewhere around 1 billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water. People are poor and hungry. This world has problems. And I believe that the gospel says something about this. It has a solution. Because Christ ultimately loved us, we’re to go out and love others. The Lord works through us. The Lord calls us to stand up for justice. He calls us to defend love. 

So I want to use my life for this purpose. I want to do something about these problems because I feel that’s what God has called me to do. And I’m just not so sure I can do this being a journalist.

And it’s scary.

I’ve wanted to be a journalist since I was 11. Letting go of dreams like this is hard. 

So I could end up anywhere. In social work, working at a non-profit, in the middle of Africa or my favorite, Sojourners Magazine. Check it out: www.sojo.net

Yes, that is a magazine. But it’s different. They’re already fighting for justice and love and peace. They simply rock.

So right now, I’m just going to live in the present. I just have to live life in the now. I have to be the best student, friend and daughter I can be. And above all, I have to love the Lord as much as possible.

On another note, I’m starting up Food Not Bombs in Bowling Green with some great friends of mine. It’s this grassroots organization that cooks vegetarian food for the homeless. They’re anti-war too which is where the Not Bombs part came from. And I’m going to Mountain Justice Spring Break. It’s this camping trip in East Tennessee where we learn about how shitty mountaintop removal is. I mean, I already know it’s shitty. But you go a little bit more in-depth over the spring break trip. 

So life is sweet.

So this is a blog in case you didn’t know. I’ve just been feeling like I need one. I’m not sure what direction this blog will take. I’ve learned that you can’t really give stuff like this any sort of expectations. Just let them play out. So Nina Screams is going to the park.

I’m listening to “The Jumper” by Third Eye Blind off youtube. I have a collection of like 8-10ish songs that I listen to via youtube videos because I’m too cheap to actually purchase them. Lily Allen, Sufjan Stevens and even Lady Gaga (yes, I do sometimes like cruddy pop) are all a part of this exclusive club. I also have a Hinduism test tomorrow. Ha.

Life here in Bowling Green is grand. Last semester was spent at home in Cincinnati interning and working. It was probably the best 8 months of my life. The Lord really broke me and showed me what I need to be doing with my life. And I just think it’s so crazy that he did that in the place I used to hate. It’s truly crazy how he works. Sometimes I think he does stuff like this to be ironic and funny. But who really knows.

Last weekend rocked. I attended a conference in DC called Powershift. It was a huge student environmental conference. And I’m starting up Food Not Bombs. It’s this grassroots organization that feeds vegetarian food to the homeless. I’m pumped. 

With all this excitement I cannot forget what truly fulfills. It’s not money or feeding the homeless or my friends. I mean these things are great. But. It’s only through the Lord. Only.