3 DAYS.

In 3 days (well actually, two to be more accurate), I will be on an airplane. Again. Flying over the Atlantic. Again. You'd think that by now I'd have wisened up and picked one airline to stick to so that I could get super nice membership/frequent traveler benefits.

Anyways.

In 3 days, I will be traveling to Spain. España. Espagne. 스페인. Whatever you want to call it, I'm studying abroad for the semester and I am flying in three days. I'm slightly terrified. Inordinately excited. Thrilled, anxious, a bit sad, nervous, stressed, exhilarated. So many words that thesaurus.com is pretty inadequate for tonight.

I've dreamt of studying abroad since I was a freshman in high school, wanting to get out of my mundane suburban lifestyle and out of the house and away from home and on my own and somewhere exotic and refreshing and breathtakingly new. When I first heard of the United World College, I thought it would be my chance to go abroad. I went to New Mexico. It was still quite a different experience, being across the country and in a whole new environment, but still not abroad. When I was choosing where to attend university, I came within a split decision to studying at a university overseas. I am now in New Jersey. Closer to home than before, although the decision to attend a university with the resources that it has has paid off through the opportunities I have had to travel to new countries for summer internships. However, it's still different from studying abroad. I always hoped in the back of my mind that I could go to a country like Spain to study, although the more my academic track deviated away from languages and international relations and such the smaller my hopes of studying in Spain dwindled. And then Cantabria happened. The engineering department at my school forged an exchange program contract with the Unviversity of Cantabria last April, and even before they had finished signing all the documents, I began planning out how to study there.

Fast forward 9 months or so, and I am three days away from Spain. Visa is in order. Finals have been completed. I have a place to stay. I still have one assignment to turn in, but I'm trying not to let that concern me. Part of me is still aching from the goodbyes I've said over the past few days - particularly to my senior friends whose last semesters I will be missing out on, and whose graduations I will be unable to attend. Part of me is terrified - I've never been away from home for so long, nor will I have been abroad for so long before. I don't plan to be back in the States before late August or early September, although that's just more determined wishing rather than concrete plans. And most of me is excited - I've been dreaming, hoping, waiting for this opportunity for years, and it's finally come true. I don't have too many big dreams in life, but studying abroad was one of them, and let me tell you - dreams are worth dreaming, if only just for the one or two that might come true in your lifetime. Of course, here is my cue to knock on wood that I don't end up having a miserable experience abroad.

Well, 3 days to go. Tonight I'll reflect some more. Tomorrow I'll go shopping and start figuring out what can fit into my suitcase, as well as meet up with another friend for yet another temporary goodbye. Geez, it feels like I'm leaving forever.

My first stop: Madrid! I wish I had a nice camera I could take with me for some high-quality photos. I guess my iPhone will have to make do...

Take Two?

It's funny how even when I post publicly that I will be publishing something new daily, I fail in even that. I have all these grandiose dreams of how I am going to find my voice through blogging, and the best I usually come up with are half-hearted attempts at blogs, re-posting interesting articles or videos that I happen to come across daily.

And to think that great writers are made of this stuff.

Anyways, although I've embarrassed myself already, I won't rescind my commitment, because it will at least give me motivation to post more often than I have in the past. Who knows, maybe I will make multiple posts in one day! (Yeah, right.)

So my post for today, aside from that confession, is a link to an interesting article I read the other day. The writer of the article is speaking tonight at Princeton, and although I would love to attend the discussion, I unfortunately have a class that I must get to. Isn't it ironic, that we come to school expecting to attend all these discussions and meet wonderful professors and faculty in addition to all the amazing people that the school brings to campus, and yet we are hindered by our very own "education"?

Regardless, I present to you an article by Anne-Marie Slaughter, current Princeton professor and former Dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, as well as former Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department.

Man, I wish I had the balls to skip that class, but I'm afraid I'll fail this week's problem set if I do...


This lady said it: Why Women Can't Have it All

Bibanke

I sing in an a capella group on campus called Umqombothi, and this is the most recent song that we arranged and learned in rehearsal a few days ago. It's been in my head ever since. The tune is beautiful and haunting at the same time, and speaks of a nostalgic lost love. I suppose it's pretty cheesy, or typical of a song theme, but something in Asa's voice and the arrangement of the instruments moved something within me. I hope it moves you, too!

Medium

While we're on the topic of writing, I'd like to share an excerpt from a poem by Billy Collins, who is perhaps my favorite American poet. The words in this excerpt caught my heart and made me fall in love with the remainder of the poem, as well as with Collins' works.


"I want to write with the least control,
one finger on the steering wheel,
to write like a watercolorist
whose brush persuades the liquids to stay above the pull and run of gravity.
...

I want to write on air
as in the rapid language of signs
or in the lighting of a cigarette,
both hands cupped near the mouth,
then one waving out the flame
and the long, silent exhalation of smoke,
the gate of the body swinging open.

Most of all,
I want to write on your skin
with the tip of my finger,
printing one capital letter at a time
on the smooth vellum of your back.
I want you to guess the message
being written on your flesh
as children do in summer at the beach,
to feel the shape of every letter
being traced upon your body -- oh, ideal reader --
to read with your eyes shut tight,
kneeling in the sand, facing the open sea."

- excerpts from "Medium", by Billy Collins

Commitment

Commitments.
Time, activities, people.
Every new year, school year, or birthday that rolls around we love to make resolutions, commitments to do this and change that and determine to succeed in these promises to ourselves.

 But it's not so easy.

Easy enough, perhaps, to keep up with homework and to attend lectures.
Easy enough, perhaps, to attend practices and meetings and rehearsals.
Easy enough, perhaps, to be on time for that work shift.
A little more difficult to follow up on that diet and workout.
A little more difficult to hang out with your friends outside of classes and activities.
A little more difficult to Skype with your high school friends.
A little more difficult to phone your long distance boyfriend every day.
Difficult to read the Bible daily, and to set aside 15 minutes for quiet time with God.
Difficult to call the family and keep each other updated about where you are in life.
Difficult to give up the easier commitments for the harder ones, claiming that those are higher priority.

Not everybody can relate, but these are my specific struggles. Everybody has a set unique to their own personalities and priorities and livelihoods.

It's so easy to plan something, to promise another, and then to flake - to perform superficially, to procrastinate, to cancel. And it happens all. the. time. Every New Years', every birthday, every round of intense introspection and contemplation which occurs at least twice a year, always ends in a newly strengthened resolve, an eagerness that feels like success this time. And then it fades. We are built in cycles, almost like the seasons, or the moon. Our enthusiasm peaks and ebbs and usually dies out. Sometimes it persists, and most times it doesn't.

Blog-writing is one of these commitments. It's small, but bothers me because there is so much to write about, to reflect on, that otherwise passes through my mind like the fleeting thoughts they are and end up buried somewhere deep within my cranium or gone like ghosts passing by. I tried to blog regularly about my life, then about my time in Oman, then after Oman, then in Rwanda, then after Rwanda, and now having undergone at least 3 of those cycles, I'm tired of it. I need to write because it will cultivate my thoughts. It will force me to organize the way I think into coherent ideas that can be articulated in a non-bullshitty manner.

So my commitment for this blog is to write a piece every day. Whether it is big, or small, or a "reblog", or a photo, or an essay, or a poem, or an old journal entry from my time abroad or traveling, I will make a commitment to write a post. Every day. It's hard without an accountability partner - I could ask a friend or a sibling to make sure that I post everyday - but I hope that by doing this by myself, for myself, it will make my efforts that much more effective and will help me to break some of these nasty habits I've developed over the past several years.