our poor little blog! :-(

oh, my. you have been so neglected! we're very sorry. you know how it is! it's summer... things get hectic, distracting, people go to colombia and get life-consuming jobs... i promise we'll be back to you very soon with substantial things to share! just hold on! you can do it!

why so serious?

does everyone know what is coming out this week?!?!?!! THE DARK KNIGHT! THAT'S RIGHT!!!!!

i have been seriously considering going to the midnight showing. this mostly depends on what time i have to be up for work the next day, not to mention how tired i am thursday night, because lord knows i won't be getting home then until 3am. (and yes, i know it's summer and i'm 19, but i'm an old lady and that is waaaaaay past my bedtime) this is heath's last film he completed, too. :-( *moment of silence* so, there is a VERY large possibility that i might cry the entire movie from his first screen appearance until the ending credits. (sorry, i'm a sap like that, especially concerning my fave actors)

this also means it will be MADNESS at the theater this weekend. O JOY. maybe even though it's batman everyone is still going away and down the shore and what not, so not as many people would be around as if it were during the off-season. yeah, right. but hey, a girl can hope. i'm actually on my way out to go to work, but wanted to get in a quick little blog since it has been over a week, again, and i think the blog is starting to feel disowned.

remind me next time to tell you all about my very first spa experience! back soon!

xoxo

i miss wilmington

well, it's been nearly a week and a half since the last post. i was waiting for sara to come on here and yell about how horrible it is that the blog has been deserted before i could come on here and write something, but looks like i beat her to it!

sorry for the gap, people. work HAS been owning my life and therefore taking up any time i might be doing something else and getting lovely interesting stories to impart with you all (work is kinda boring). so besides me not being on the computer much, the very fact that i have really nothing to talk about is the reason for a lack in things. hence, why i have decided to come on here and rant about how much i miss dub town and want to go back like...yesterday.

besides working, life is generally fine. have been seeing all my awesome amazing friends and being a big old ice cream eating lazy bum fattie as we know i do so well (might be my greatest talent), and love so much. but i INCREDIBLY miss all my NC lovers and cannot wait til i'm back on campus, running around wag, actually writing again since calling it "homework" seems to be just about the only thing to get my butt in gear these days when it comes to that...

i miss the warmth and beauty and beach and flaming amy's and outback adventures and the riverwalk and sara-nicole dates and late night frosties! i miss all of it! :-( *sigh* at the end of this week there will be just about a month until i am finally, thankfully back, and let me tell you... it CANNOT come soon enough!

there is something so wrong with this picture

i have to work 6 days in a row...count 'em...6! and sara is off gallivanting around south america.

sweet. nice life, sara! :-p

the movie theater will not own me!

so all my complaining about not working has, of course, come back to bite me in the @$$. they are taking over my life!

not only are the shifts to upwards of 9 hours long, but it goes from either being a whole lot of nothing to a whole lot of madness! and i'm not really complaining about the nothingness because that is certainly better than the madness, but i hate standing around looking like i'm not doing any work because, oh yeah, there isn't any work to be doing. you can only clean the counters so many times, ya know?

i never thought i'd say this...but i actually miss concessions at school! i know! what is going on?!

i guess, of course, it could be a lot worse, and i could be working everyday, which might end up being the case later this week...thank god i took off tuesdays or i might never see the outside of that place again! geez! but, i think i should stop complaining because it will only, once again, end up causing me more problems later..as we know!

i think i'm gonna work on that "The Secret" thing... ya know, where the whole trick to getting everything you want in life is honestly believing it and sending the good vibes out into the universe so they come back to you and you get it, etc. etc.? yeah, i'm gonna try that. especially after i just spent a good half hour man bashing my friend's ex boyfriend and even said something about the defectiveness of the Y-chromosome... yeah... haha.

in lighter news, our dear sara is in colombia with alicia and scott experiencing new people and getting their latin grooves on.. love shouts to them all and we hope they come home safe and soon!!! <3

reasons i should stay here forever, except the part about time

Some things I've learned so far in Colombia:

1. Sometimes it hails, and when it does, being inside doesn't help you any.

So about four hours after I'd gotten to Alicia's family's apartment, she and Scott and her brother and sister and I went to take Samuel, her brother, to his Taekwon-do lesson. When we first left the airport it was really sunny and hot--a little hotter than normal, apparently, since Bogota is normally cloudy and cooler--but in only a few hours the clouds looked like they sometimes get in Wilmington. But we made it inside before the rain and we were sitting on the second floor on this little balcony that overlooks the place where the kids practice, so we were good. Well, something about the roofs: not all of them, but a lot that I've seen so far, are made of half cylinder shingles, don't know what material, but they're kind of like skylights. You can't see anything through them, but they let a whole lot of light in. Best I can describe it. And so I discovered that they let a good deal more than light in. It started pouring, and I mean really coming down. I was sitting next to her sister, Alejandra, and we both felt it at the same time. It was raining inside a little bit. But then it started hailing. And it started hailing inside, through the roof. It was absolutely amazing. And Alicia and I promptly ran to the door downstairs to watch it.

2. My shampoo bottles explode.

That one's pretty much as good as it sounds. I suppose it's the difference in air pressure. Apparently I'm supposed to squeeze the air out of my bottles before I leave so that way they have room to expand. But I definitely got in the shower, opened up my shampoo, and the whole thing blew up on me.

3. People here don't like clocks.

I don't know if that's completely true, but they must be much less worried about the time than I am. In this whole apartment, there is only one clock, and I only just found it this morning. I never really know what time it is, and it's an interesting thing going on. Although I'm already understanding much more Spanish than I did at first, sometimes I just have no idea what people are saying. So if Alicia's dad and step-mom are talking and I don't know what about, if it's bad, I don't worry, because I just have no idea. My days, too. I've been confused about the days. I know it's Sunday, but only because people have said. And I can just forget about knowing the actual date. And the food schedule is so different here. Lunch is like dinner for us, except they eat it around three. And so three feels like six-ish, and then I expect it to start getting dark several hours before it does, and by the time nine or so rolls around, I'm ready to go to bed. So all that said, I'm very confused about anything to do with time.


The picture is my view from the window at night. See the mountains in the background? I pretty much want to stay here forever. It's been amazing, and with the exception of the guy in customs, the people have been incredibly nice. And I think I need to come back here periodically, if for no other reason but to get my hair cut. I got it cut and styled by this guy called Alonso and my hair has never looked so good in my entire life. I got a picture of it the next day after sleeping on it and it still looks amazing.

And the traffic, oh oh the traffic. It's like a dream come true. If there are two lanes, they might make three. If there's a stop sign, they might stop, or maybe they won't. People here kind of have their own rules about driving and it makes an incredible ride. And I've realized I'm not nearly the crazy driver I thought I was. And speaking of that, I'm leaving today on a fourteen hour bus ride that travels through the rural parts of the country and along the edges of very tall, steep mountains, and I'm totally pumped. It may be dangerous, I realize, and I don't only mean the driving. But I'm really just excited.

So that means I'll be in Santa Marta tomorrow morning, for about ten days, maybe a little less. And I'm not sure if they'll have internet there, but I'm thinking probably not. So if I disappear for that long, that's why, but I'll be sure to make up for it with crazy stories when I return.

cheers.

voy a ir a colombia

I’ve definitely fallen off the planet in the last week or so, minus my rant about J. K. Rowling (who should not be compared to C. S. Lewis, not ever ever ever). My mom and brother came down to visit me before I, you know, leave the country, so I’ve got plenty of stories about that. And before they came down, I found out that Wilmington has alligators. Real ones, ones that like to cross the busy highway and float past people in a park. And the last few days I’ve just been kind of panicking about the trip, running around packing and avoiding packing and freaking out about things that I’m sure I’ve forgotten and just generally going off the deep end. So, the last two weeks:

I should tell you first that a really good friend of mine from high school is staying in Wilmington for the summer, which I have really enjoyed. In fact, a lot of this summer has felt like old days. All the girls left and it’s just been me and the guys—and I’ll tell you, even though I’m really excited about Colombia, I’m definitely sad I won’t be seeing these people for four weeks. I don’t think I could have had a better summer so far.

So since Tristan has been down, when his girlfriend came down to visit we all decided to go to this park. It was about 109 degrees like it’s been for the past few weeks and all I really wanted to do was jump in the water, and the only reason I didn’t was because near the edges there was green slime so thick I dropped a pinecone on it and it didn’t sink through. Good news. When we were crossing one of the bridges, we stopped to look at a bunch of turtles swimming underneath. About five minutes of that, and this massive alligator, like eight feet long, swam right underneath us. Just floated around down there, the turtles sort of scattering. And the thing is, we could have walked to the end of the bridge right down to the edge of the same water the alligator could have swam to the edge of. And then later, we were walking on a wooden path next to lake—and by next to, I mean we were nearly level with the water—and five feet to our left there went another gator. Just floating by like hey. On the way out of the park we saw a sign that said, yes, there are alligators in this park.

And this past week, I was driving around with my mom and brother in the car and let me just say this: first, people in Wilmington drive like crazy people, so much so that insurance in this city is highest than anywhere else in the state, which sucks. Well. I had just gotten gas and I was driving down this somewhat narrow road when, in front of me on the other side of the road, this huge submarine boat car pulls out, toward me. Now, crazy old lady crappy driver took the turn out of her driveway wide. As in, she pulled into my lane before she turned forty-five degrees back into her own. Had I stopped and let her pass, she would have destroyed the back end of my car. But instead, I had to monster truck off road it between a bunch of mail boxes. Pulled my car all the way off the road—actually, I just kind of drove into the ditch, but it all happened really fast. I only mean that ‘’pulling my car off the road’’ is much safer sounding than the actual Nascar evasive maneuver I had to pull off. And I knew, I knew my whole little car was going to get smashed into, but somehow, by maybe three inches, she missed me. And kept driving, probably into somebody else. But my little car is safe and has not been attacked and I’m still quite happy with it!

So now it’s Colombia. My actual flight is in around nine hours, but we’re leaving here in six. And I can’t believe it at all. Four weeks in South America. Here’s to making it, to learning Spanish, to becoming adopted Colombian. To flying for the first time, to not getting eaten in the rain forest or contracting Yellow Fever. To seeing the Caribbean, and being higher in altitude than I’ve ever been in my life (currently, I live at ten or so feet above sea level). This is for my story about fathers, it’s for language and how if I had my way, I’d say drop me in a country, drop me in another language, let me live there and be immersed in all of it, the people, the words, the life.

I’ll say this: I’m nervous for all kinds of reasons, and even now I don’t quite believe any of it. It’s sort of like you’re growing up, and all the while you’re looking toward the moments where you’ll be living, where you’ll be doing what you wanted to do when you had grown up or got to the point where you could, and that’s the thing. Getting there isn’t something you realize. I’m here. I’m at that point now, the one that’s only existed before in the things I’ve written. I imagine marriage will feel something like this. Suddenly I’ll be standing at the altar and I won’t realize when I got there, when a whole part of my life began. And I’m not sure now when I got halfway through undergrad, when I got to leaving the States for something bigger than the things I’ve done so far. I feel like I’ll wake up sometime later and I’ll have already published and I’ll have children and it just all seems so fast. Not too fast, and I’m not at any of those places yet. I only mean I can’t believe I’m already where I am now, and it’s only quickening, and maybe when you cross over lines in your life you don’t know it, you don’t have time to ask yourself whether you’re ready, it’s only suddenly you’re doing it and when did it ever happen, but you must have been ready because you got put there and you didn’t sink.

This is what that is, I think. I’ve flown past the starting point because it’s all now, happening is now, Colombia and writing and living are now and if all those waited for me to realize I was ready, now would be a perpetual holding, a waiting. But here I am, and next time that will be South America. And who knows after that, only that I began toward there longer ago than I know. So see you guys on the other side of the Caribbean.