The world is hollow...: life

Showing posts with label life. Show all posts

Back from the dead

Wow! I...um...it's been a while since I last wrote here! My sister asked over a week ago if I was still blogging and suggested I take it up again. So here I am.

So much has happened since August. I guess a quick overview is as good a place to start as any.

1. I started school. In a previous post I mentioned wanting to teach ESL and so I am pursuing that, although in a slightly different way than I anticipated. I've decided to get a BA in English. My school of choice is Thompson Rivers University because of their distance program that allows me to study from the comfort of my own home...very much like my education has been up until this point. I have just finished my first English course and am studying for the final exam which is on the 14th. In the mean time I am also studying Spanish (because I have always wanted to learn it, and because I would like to travel throughout Central and South America) and will soon find some kind of math course to fulfill the math/science requirements.

2. Home has moved. In February I moved back in with my parents instead of living with my grandma. It was time for a change of scenery. I really like my new community, although we are planning to move yet AGAIN to another one due to my dad's job. While I think I may miss it here, I always enjoy getting to know new places, so I think I'll like this next move.

3. I HAVE TWO NEW BROTHERS!!! I think I like this change the best. Until November or December of last year, I was the oldest in my family and had always wished for an older brother. My parents provided MANY brothers and sisters for me....but they were always younger. Sometimes you just have to take matters into your own hands. So I adopted one...and a few days later was adopted by another. They're the best, and now I can't imagine life without Nicky and David. =)

I guess that's a good summary of the last 8 months...at least, as far as the big events go. I'll try and be back soon and post more frequently.

Until later.

posted under ESL, family, life | 0 Comments

A thank you

International House's Junior Program of the summer of 2010...what an experience! Mostly good. Some bad. I definitely learned a lot and I think I made some pretty good friends.

A few months ago I broke off my engagement. Naturally, that was a very hard thing to do and it hasn't been easy getting over it. I'm not even sure if I'm completely over it yet. But I do know that some of my new friends unwittingly and significantly helped me through. For that I would like to thank Matt, Bobby, John, and Joe. Strangely enough, just hanging out with you guys and your incessant joking and teasing has helped a lot in healing the pain. I don't know if any of you will read this...probably not...but I just needed to say it here. Thank you. Jerks. =D

posted under life, thank you | 2 Comments

Lady Old, Lady New

Who would have guessed I'd learn something new about myself while playing games on Facebook? Certainly not I!

I am rather addicted to Kingdoms of Camelot right now...although, it's not so much the game as the sarcastic bantering that takes place in the rather small alliance I belong to. Yesterday I popped on to build a little more of my city and discovered that three new people had joined my alliance and one "old" member had left...apparently due to a misunderstanding between her and one of the new members. My friend (the "old" member) had given an ultimatum: "Either she goes or I go". I guess maybe people thought she was bluffing or something, and nobody really likes to respond to ultimatums anyway. So when nobody did away with Lady New, Lady Old left like she had threatened to do.

I was sad to see her go.

Later that evening Lord Peacemaker sent me a private message asking me for my vote: Lady Old or Lady New? I was hesitant to give an answer because I thought it was just idle talk, and I didn't know the whole story and couldn't say who was right or wrong or anything. With the knowledge I had, I said my vote was for Lady Old because I knew her. I don't know Lady New from a hole in the ground, though the little I had seen of her in the chat room seemed to suggest she would fit very nicely in our alliance. But I also mentioned my lack of knowledge of what had transpired between the two ladies. He later informed me that Lord Chancellor had handed the issue over to him, which was why he was taking a vote. He wanted to know what the rest of us voted. Apparently everyone (or almost everyone...I don't really know) voted Lady Old, because today Lord Chancellor talked to Lady New and explained things to her (probably still trying to work things out so both ladies could stay!), and she left. Lady Old is back!

Through this whole thing, but particularly through the dialogue I had with Lord Peacemaker about the vote, I learned that I tend to value "right" and "wrong" over relationship. I wasn't sure who to vote for at first because I didn't know which of the ladies was more in the "right" and which was more in the "wrong". But I think it shouldn't matter so much. Right or wrong, you stick by your friends. Ultimately that's where I cast my vote, but I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't see it that way before.

Anyway, I THINK I believe that relationship comes first and THEN you can worry about right and wrong. But I will admit that I haven't sat down and thought this out completely to it's logical conclusion. It just occurred to me that placing right and wrong before relationship could lead to becoming more like the villains that scare me most--the logical, un-emotional, un-relational ones. For example, the Borg from Star Trek or the people on drugs in Equilibrium. And as with almost everything else in my life right now, I'm at the point where I really don't know what I believe so pretty much everything is open for consideration.

posted under beliefs, life | 1 Comments

Pillow fight!

I have the best job in the world, apparently! At what other job do you get PAID to beat children with pillows? Seriously, it was a good night. Some of us started out with a few games of Twister...which we promptly abandoned once we heard there was a pillow fight going on upstairs. Twenty or so kids and a couple councillors running, screaming, and beating on each other with pillows equals a lot of happy kids. Then we "quieted" them down with GuitarHero (one of the kids bought it yesterday at the mall). Now I have a little bit of free time. Not much else to share...except a favourite poem of mine that I re-discovered today.

"Earth" by John Hall Wheelock

"A planet doesn't explode of itself," said drily

The Martian astronomer, gazing off into the air--

"That they were able to do it is proof that highly

Intelligent beings must have been living there."

posted under life, poetry, random | 1 Comments

What do you want in life?

I was gonna write about something totally different, but had to look it up in a notebook I keep in my purse first...and got sidetracked reading some of the other stuff I wrote in there. So instead of my original idea, I'm going to share something I wrote during one of my lunch breaks at work back in January 2007. My desire is the same as back then, but unfortunately I don't think I've made much progress towards it. Anyway, here it is:

"What do you want in life?" I want the world to be my home. I want to know different countries, live in them, have friends with different cultural backgrounds, and not limit my residence to Canada. I want to spend my life learning about life, people...developing friendships.

I want to learn how to wisely invest my money...to be free of financial worry...what the heck! I just want to be free of worry! To be able to take my life one day at a time and enjoy it and fully experience it. I want a life of intensity: joy, happiness, pain, sorrow, anger, forgiveness. But I want to be able to control them because it's not good to be run by your emotions.

I want to share this journey with someone. I want to get married and share his journey. I want to have kids and show them the world.

I want to be sensitive to God's leading. Sensitive to the spiritual realm. I want to understand what's going on around me.

I want to have time--to relax, think, listen to people, watch the world...

I want to write about life. People. Ideas. Beliefs. Food. Travel. Lessons.

I want to major in life. Learn to observe. Take time for little things like flowers opening.

I want to take risks, have adventures, and live dangerously though not stupidly.

I want a nice villa in Spain!

posted under life, lists, travel, wishes, writing | 1 Comments

Three

If I could change 3 things about my life right now, they would be...

I would be an ESL teacher and would be making a decent living from that. Let's hope this one will actually happen even though I don't have a university degree. There must be some ways of doing this WITHOUT the degree. After all, a degree doesn't say I can teach English. It says I spent years of my life with my nose in a book, writing tests and papers, and racking up a huge debt that will take me years to pay off
I would be traveling...maybe even teaching ESL while I did it. I want to see new countries, experience different cultures, and get to know the people in their natural environment.
I would write more...which I guess is where this blog comes in. It's hopefully a reason to start writing again...because, well, I just miss it. I've recently become very bad at expressing myself clearly.

This short list was rather hard to come up with! Everything I could think of seemed to be things I would change about MYSELF, not my life...I guess because who or what I am affects what happens in my life.

posted under ESL, life, lists, travel, wishes, writing | 1 Comments

"Never have your dog stuffed"

I've tried writing a few blogs over the years...some a little more successful than others...but I really haven't done it for a while. And I miss it. I considered reviving one of the old ones, but that just didn't feel right. Life is so different from what it was when I wrote them, and I think I just need to start fresh again. It reminds me of the title of Alan Alda's autobiography I read a few years ago: Never Have Your Dog Stuffed. The idea behind that is to recognize that there are different seasons throughout life, and it is not good to hold on to past seasons but to embrace the one we are currently in. So, this blog is just a part of my attempt to do that.

Welcome.

posted under life, seasons | 1 Comments