La vie vient à vous rapidement

Life comes at you fast. My mom would always tell me this when I was younger, but I would never listen to her. Now I wish I would have. I can say that for a lot of things she told me though. She told me I would understand why she put so many rules on me one day. She said I would miss her when I left for college. She said I would lose faith in myself many times before I would succeed. She said I didn't really know as much as I thought I did. Looking back, all of that was correct...why didn't I listen and really believe it? If I would have, a lot of things would have been easier for me. I would have fought less with her and my dad when he told me not to look at a boy until I am 30. I would have taken the blows of life and jumped over them instead of pausing for a while. I would have had a much easier time when I found out the hard way that I really don't know as much as I think I do. Why do parents continue to dish out good advice when no kid ever takes it?

I think it's because they know eventually it will sink in. And then their kids will be like me, wishing I would have listened better.
Life comes at you fast. Don't fight the advice.

I Am The Master of All Languages

Ok so we were at a coffee shop and Norma, my roommate, started talking to her mom on the phone in Spanish. Me, being the creeper I am, tried to type everything she said. Knowing absolutely no Spanish and trying to type based on sounds, this is what I came up with:
mu chacha
si
no save conto suestra....esta on blocke
no quiendo questa siento
no ninguno
no sola min de casas
el stupido
eyetine bender supermeso
monde? aya porque dan mas minemo
in se mas porardo
na na na notinen una cosa pasa
exorcista???
donde yen contraire ain meesmo

I read it to her afterward and she doesn't remember saying any of that. She has the memory of a squirrel. Gawd.

l'émerveillement de la causerie

Here's my one-liner of the day.

This may seem weird but if something's up with you, talk to someone else about it.


Just do it.

Molly- I'll give you a dollar if you can pronounce that first word in the title correctly.

"Problems"

The thing with me is that I always think I have problems, and then it turns out they are not problems at all. In my head, a problem is something wrong for which you don't know the solution. The solutions are not unknown, and in fact the solutions will better myself. I am fully aware of this, and yet I don't rectify anything.

My "problems" at the moment"
-No motivation to go to class
-No motivation to do homework
-No money to blow on coffee everyday like usual

Looking at these, I see no problems at all. 1- suck it up and go to class, your future depends on it, 2- do your homework, your future depends on it, 3- Don't buy coffee, it's bad for your health...and most likely your future depends on it.

Look at that. I must be magic. Or Dr. Phil.

Now the real challenge is how to convince myself of how easy these solutions really are.

Long Live Boy Bands

The video below has managed to drive me absolutely insane.

It's this new boy band that I guess my sister and all her friends are obsessed with and she sent me this video of one their songs. I watched it just to make her happy but then I realized it was kind of catchy and now I can't get it out of my head and I sing it all the time. She also sent me like 20 other videos all about what kind of girl they are looking for. Ladies I can relay that information to you if any of these boys strike your fancy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUrR9WI0emM


ps- If any of you are planning on giving me crap for this, I just want to let it be known that Erin Korbel also said the song was catchy. That is all.

Attendre pour une signe formidable

Sunday night I was VERY distraught. I literally didn't know what to do or how to feel. The emails of encouragement were pouring in, but I couldn't bring myself to read them. In my head if I read them, it meant it was true. The facts were set in stone. But if I didn't read them I could keep living in my own fake world. I remember going outside in the rain, sitting on the steps of Chadbourne, letting the rain pour on me, and just waiting. Waiting for something, anything to happen. I didn't know what I was waiting for, but I knew I'd recognize it when it came by. After sitting for 30 minutes I was completely soaked still had not found my sign. I then realized I was waiting for something that was never going to come without my help. I was waiting for myself. Waiting for myself to make a stand. To tell the world that I wouldn't be defeated, no matter how many blows I suffered.

Apres ca, j'ai trouve mon signe. Un e-mail de mon pere. Il a ecrit qu'il ma donnera l'argent pour le billet a Cote D'Ivoire. J'avais trouvais ma signe.

Here's to becoming a revolutionary baby

The Space Between

I've gone through a lot of shit in my life. I keep a lot of it to myself because it honestly is something a lot of people I know can't handle knowing. I used to feel angry , like why did this have to happen to me? But now I'm so glad because every time I suffer a blow and lose faith in myself, I think back to that time and remember how strong I am. It's hard to look past something, it's even harder to look it in the eyes. But I think I'm ready to look all of it in the eyes. It's scary as hell, but if you don't come to terms with yourself, how can you ever improve?

Parents these days

So I thought all hope was lost on me finding a traineeship in Africa, because all the traineeship dates on the website began in March. I emailed all the traineeships that I thought sounded really cool and asked if I could come at the beginning of June instead and no one had responded to me. Then I wake up this morning and find this:

Hello Meena!
Hope that you're very well.Of course it a big pleasure for me to write you and tell you that i will be happy to get you here for my great traineeship here in Cote D'Ivoire under the ASK program!
So concern the date it's cool.
After this let us get quick match.
Please let me get your news asap for match
Cheers

Of course I was sooo excited. I called my parents right away to ask them if it was alright (and if they could fork over $2500 for the plane ticket). To my surprise they didn't really care about the money, instead they said, "Meena, Africa is so dangerous, we're going to have to look into it".

It's so hard to try to convey @ to parents. No matter what I tried to say, they wouldn't really understand. The want to break down barriers, dispel generalizations, get in touch with the rest of the world, these things don't seem to matter much to my parents. They just think I'm going to be murdered in the street the first day I get there. Excellent.

Oddlings Unite!

My whole life I've kind of felt like the odd one out. In middle school it was really cool to wear Abercrombie. I wore shirts with unicorns on them. It was really cool to flirt with the boys in the hallway. I tried to do this, but no boy had anything interesting to talk about, so I peaced. In high school it was really cool to drink on the weekends. I spent the weekends going to Caribou with my friends and talking about life. It was really cool to have those sequin satchel bags. I glued a bunch of fabric together on a canvas bag and wore that (it cost me $2.95 to make, holla). Anyway the point is that I didn't care about anything that the crowd cared about, and I thought I was going to be the odd one out forever. And then I found AIESEC and found people who care about the same things I do. People who actually value conversation and at the same time turn it into action. People who when you tell them you are going to Africa for the summer, get really excited, and don't say "Omg you are going to get AIDS!!!!" People who want to make a change in the world for the sake of change, not fame.

Shukran Asdeqaee, for showing me that if I am in fact the odd one out, I'm the odd one out with a group of people that are in over 1100 universities in over 100 countries and territories.

Measure this

When I measure my success I usually think in terms of what I've done academically an d athletically. This is only because my dad is obsessed with grades and sports. In high school, my dad was happiest when I was swimming varsity and getting A's in school. All that is fine and dandy with me, but now that I am in college I've discovered that those things aren't my measuring cups anymore. Now I think about how much an experience has taught me, or how I've grown from something. My mom thinks this is brilliant, my dad thinks it's the work of evil. Actually he blamed it on the influence of certain types of people, but we won't get into that. The point is what measures success? Some people think a brilliant scientist who has a lot of money is successful. But what if he is a shitty person? That's not success to me. According to my dictionary, success is the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. Is it personal? Or general? Generally people want money. Personally I want to be a translator. But I probably won't make any money. If I am a poor translator does that mean I am successful? Actually don't answer that, because it is going to be my life.