Sitting in my new green sweatshirt, content with things....

well. I have taken an almost one year hiatus from this blog. In fact, I am only writing now because I have found a renewed want to blog again. The reason for this renewed longing you ask? It's my birthday. But that is only half of the story. It is my birthday and I just turned 24 and I got a copy of the movie Julie & Julia, which just came out today, from my dearest sister. (Along with some delicious Hershey's kisses that are Irish cream flavored and that my sister and mother have decided are disgusting which I am perfectly okay with because that means all the more for me) the movie is about Julia Child and her life in France and her cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and Julie Powell, a writer who decided to cook her way through that cookbook in one year and blog about the experience. Watching the movie makes me want to do two things: cook my way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and begin to blog again.

Since I last wrote, not a lot has happened on one hand, life has happened on the other. I am in the process of doing the Peace Corps, even though I haven't heard from them in months. I am a GSA at Target, which is the equivalent of an assistant manager. Those are the semi good things. The more unfortunate things: I lost two men whom I was close with, my grandpa and my pastor, within a month of each other. Both were sick, one with uncontrollable infection, the other with cancer. Still doesn't make it any more fun.

There. now you are pretty much caught up on an entire year of my existence. Man, I need to do something with myself.

nothing exciting to report. Working. Reading. that's about it. ooh, I'm going sledding this weekend.....that's exciting.

The Holidays are over....

So the holidays are over and we are back to "normal". I don't really have a lot to say. I heard from quite a few of my Hong Kongers. That was really cool, I am glad that they wrote to me. I miss them. There just isn't anything particularly interesting going on. Too bad.

Friends Abroad

Don't get me wrong, I love my friends who are all over the world, and as such, I feel like it is important to keep in touch with them. however, when they are 13 hours ahead of me, it is particularly difficult to stay in touch which has led to me being in a coffee shop at 7 am with all of these people around me who are much too chipper this early in the morning. Don't these people understand that I haven't had enough coffee yet for them to be so chipper?
It's worth it though if it means that I get to talk to my friends, even if it is only for a little while.

I decided to take on the world....

what was I thinking?
I decided to take on the Christmas program....I agreed before I knew all of the stipulations though. I have been given strict parameters as to how I am allowed to do this and I should have asked before I agreed. I have thought of my own ways to subvert the parameters but that isn't the point... I guess that teaches my to agree to do something before I know all of the details. My sister and my cousins Sherri and Stefani and Chelsea have all agreed to help me but it was clear from the beginning that I am the one taking the helm on this one. Which would be fine if I didn't have some many expectations about how it should be done put on me by the ones I took it over from. I just feel like saying, " you didn't want to do it anymore. I am more than willing to take it over but it is going to be on my terms, not yours and if you don't like that then you can get someone else to do it!" But I didn't. I am sucking it up and doing it mostly how they want me to. What a good little follower I am.

In other news, I am still looking for a good job and still working at Target, which is a fine place to work but I can already tell after two weeks that it isn't something I want to do long-term. but it is a great job for the in between, if you will.

I'm proud of the United States Postal Service

I received a very disturbing email today. Inside this email was a whole list of terrible things that "Muslims" had done to the U.S. The point of it was to say that these horrific things perpetrated against the U.S. by "Muslims" was a good reason for people to boycott the United States Postal Service because they have a stamp celebrating the Muslim holiday of Eid.
I had to read it twice to fully grasp what this email was trying to tell me. It was informing me that because an extremist sect of Islam has attacked the U.S. in the past, that is a good reason for the USPS to neglect that there are anywhere from 5 to 8 million Muslims living in the U.S.
The reason this email hit me so hard I believe is because it assumes that just because there is an outspoken minority of Muslims who hate the United States and will do anything to harm Americans and the American way of life, that doesn't mean that all Muslims feel that way. Maybe because I have actually been places that are predominately Muslim and encountered the lack of hostility toward me, a very clearly American woman that I feel frustrated with the prevailing feeling in the U.S. that all Muslims are bad and that they should all be removed from the face of the earth.
It would be simple to counter the arguments made in the email I received and come up with very plausible reasons why Christmas stamps should be boycotted because Christians who celebrate Christmas have done terrible and horrific things to people throughout history (the crusades, the justifications for slavery, I could go on, but I won't).
I guess I say all of this to say, Why must we as Americans and often as Christians feel the need to be hostile toward an entire religion because of the actions of a small if outspoken minority? Does anyone else think that emails like this just give Americans a worse name and if anything perpetuate the problem and do nothing to solve it? What happened to the peace and acceptance and love preached by Jesus? when I see things like this it makes me ashamed to be a Christian and ashamed to be American. America is so great because it is a place where people with differing opinions are listened to and where religiously oppressed people have come for refuge for generations. what happened to those ideals?

The most depressing year of your life.

So I may or may not have found an "in between" job. At this point I have been applying for jobs that are not ones that I really really want to do but ones that I could stand doing in order to get my mother off my back!! She seems to think that if she mentions me getting a job enough in everyday conversation it doesn't count as hounding me about it and therefore she isn't being freaking annoying. Sorry mom, that is false. Hounding me in everyday conversation is still hounding. Even if you don't just up and say "get a job!" every time I walk in a room, when every time I say something even remotely close to "man, I need to get some of "insert item a here(usually something necessary like shampoo or like, lotion for my face)" she says, "Well, get a job so you can buy it yourself." which, granted is a valid opinion since I am a college graduate and I should have a job, but apparently the fact that I spend at least 50% of my time looking for jobs is irrelevant. I just want to yell "I AM TRYING TO GET A JOB! DON'T YOU THINK I WANT TO GET OUT OF THIS HOUSE WORSE THAN YOU WANT ME TO LEAVE!!????" I have spent the last four years of my life being relatively independent and having jobs that pay for my everyday expenses so why would I want to live at home and mooch off my parents if I could help it?

I am starting to realize in a very tangible way why they call the year after college the most depressing year of your life.

I think that my mother just doesn't think I am trying hard enough. I think she doesn't realize that I am trying to find a job in which I make enough money that I can actually make my loan payments. Enough money that I will be able to pay them off sometime within the next century so that I can get on with what I really want to do, which is be poor and live abroad and do development at a grassroots level. I don't really know exactly what it is that I want to do yet, I don't know if I want to work in water purification or sustainable agriculture, or education, or HIV/AIDS awareness or any number of other things that I could do, but I know that I want do something abroad and I also know that I have to get some hands on in the field experience before I can come back and go to grad school and really decide what it is that I want to focus on and then maybe actually be the change I want to see in the world. (thanks Mahatma Gandhi)

Life is relatively good all things considered, though. I am sitting in a coffee shop, drinking a pumpkin spice latte supplied by a buy one get one free coupon from my generous sister who has helped to support her derelict older sister for the past few months and I am still healthy and able to do things that I really want to do, albeit with a lot more begging and forced labor than was necessary before.