I sit and wait

For once I actually find myself, huddled in a blanket and sitting in a dark room that has somehow lost its appeal, completely and utterly void of any activity. I kind of like it. Thirty minutes it's been and I've watched The Walking Dead, doing nothing on the side. Those of you who know me know that this is rare and I don't often just sit around enjoying the moment for what it is in its singularity. Those of you who know me know that I tend to fidget and I'll have to do something on the side to keep me occupied. Up until just an hour ago that was packing and getting my assignments done. With that all done and ready I'm ready to conquer the last day before break so I sit and wait, essentially.
I sit and wait

What perfect timing!

Look what I just managed to spot!

The date and time are perfect!

This is never going to happen again until we decide more than 12 months is preferable or in 2101-2112 which I plan on not attending.

Gummibaellchen

Today was interesting. What started with me oversleeping an hour, not picking up things I needed, being stuck in class for five hours, and multiple times strongly disagreeing with people to the point of argument (on topics in class), ended with me in a new Yoga class.

I normally go to Yoga on Saturdays, sometimes Wednesdays, but I had never gone to the one today and it is lead by a different guy from the other days. I thought, this will be interesting, a nice change of pace, as you probably also know there are several different types of Yoga that people practice. He did indeed teach a different one from the other instructor.

And so I was in the back of the class, keeping up well and working hard, when the difficulty stepped up and we had to do the following poses:

I thought: Hey, you know what, screw inhibition, let's do this shit!
And I did them, I did them all!! Granted, I didn't look that graceful, but I managed to do, and hold, every one of these positions. Even the balancing on your hands, and the bend and fold thing... it was amazing. And now I feel great about myself

December 1st

And so November ends and the countdown to my return home begins. I celebrated by watching a man burn off his mustache wit a lighter, dancing at a punk club that really just involved me standing there and looking kind of annoyed at the music choice, going to yoga and body pump in the morning, eating a freaking awesome lunch of coconut rice and teriyaki fish and carrots, and then watching movies, interrupted only by an awesome nap! I believe my celebration has been a success so far. My dinner involved cookies and chips and then self loathing for a couple of minutes. But other than that the day was a success and I got lots of work done too. Happy 1st of December 2012!!!!

There is so much weed being smoked on my floor right now that it is wafting in through my closed door and probably would cause me to fail a drug test tomorrow if I had one.

And suddenly, Christmas in Coventry

I realised after publishing this post that several photos need captions otherwise they would be so unbelievably weird, so here's the second go at this:

A bar/restaurant. No big deal here...

The Cathedral

Same Cathedral

The inside of a shopping centre

Moving gnomes, just a little creepy

Another church or something

Lady Godiva on her stallion or pony or other such beast

A very confusing and frightening performance of Winter Wonderland

A christmas robot... 

A Christmas/British... um... wo/man

A very blurry arrival of Santa on a Sleigh pulled by an Audi through a giant crowd of people... totally safe

This is what happens when you throw Christmas at cars

House parties

Last Friday I attended a house party. It was a typical house party with tons of interesting features that I will describe to you now because, well, frankly, it was very fascinating.

Upon entering the three story house filled with students the indistinguishable smell of weed and cigarettes wafted towards me. Thinking I could possibly get high off the smell alone I was concerned what would await me on the next floor as we know smoke travels up. It was indeed very smokey and very very illicit drugy.

I had a drink and went to the balcony with a friend where we met a lot of people that were either high off their minds, drunk, or very emotional. It could have been all three at once, I wasn't sure. We ended up talking to a guy who talked to us about family and moving away from home recently. With the history I ave of moving around it proved to be a very interesting and helpful conversation for him as both my friend and I had some experience in moving about and away from home. It was hilarious to find this conversation at a house party.

Later we went back inside to find another interesting experience taking place, people huffing laughing gas. That is the gas used to create whipped cream and someone bought a huge box full, filled it into balloons that they would later huff in and out. Fascinating and somewhat weird. Actually really weird. Very weird.. why would someone huff that stuff? Who came up with that? Hey! I bet I can make my brain whipped cream.... OK.

Eventually, after more talking to people and finding some nice people at this place we decided to go to a club. The house party was nice, relaxing, and other than the obnoxious amount of drugs not too crazy. At the club we danced a little and eventually ended the night by buying delicious french fries that never seemed to end and watching Robot Chicken, an awesome show.

And thus concludes the episode of me attending a British house party.

Unbelievable

Every once in a while there is an issue I learn about in such detail that I am horrified to be a part of the human race. I look around thinking: How could any person ever even think about doing something like this to another? How greedy does someone have to be to put their own well being and wealth over that of the life of a child? How horrible does a person have to be to exploit a child or a woman or a man to such an extent that it leaves them physically and psychologically scarred beyond recognition? How horrible are the people that do this? And how could there possibly be so many? Oh, there can be.

Human Trafficking in particular is a crime I just can't wrap my head around. With an annual profit of $32 Billion, this money is made by exploiting innocent men women and children so completely it baffles me. 29.9 million people are trafficked that can mean a variety of things:
-4.5 million people are being sexually exploited, sold to the highest perverted bidder that will do with them what they like, such as beat them, rape them, or whatever else pleases their sick selves.
-14.2 million people are in forced labour which means they are forced to work extreme hours, in extreme conditions, trapped from leaving or voicing out, and with very little or sometimes no pay.
-40% of forced labourers are men while many are children and women as well.
- About 10% of sexually exploited trafficking victims are men, which means the most highly exploited in the sex industry are women and children.
-Shockingly, 5.7 million children are being trafficked for all sorts of reasons, including forced labour, domestic servitude, forced marriage, and sexual exploitation. Others may be trafficked for benefit fraud, theft and crime exploitation, and organ harvesting.

Trafficking in persons is a fundamental violation of any person's human rights and is a major issue in every country, whether it is considered a source country (where victims are recruited), a transit country (a country they travel through), or a destination country (where they stay and work).

According to the Palermo protocol from 2000 anything that involves the following is trafficking and is a horrible thing to do to any human being:
the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring, or receipt of a child or person for the purpose of exploitation of work and money.
This means trafficking includes elements of force, deception, abduction, coersion, violence, abuse of power, vulnerability, and threats.

Victims are often forced into a country where they do not understand the language, they may not even know where they are. They may be locked into a home or a room and become completely isolated from teh outside world, making them very vulnerable. Victims may be exploited by as many as ten people a day for sexual favours which may pay badly but is even worse knowing that the money will go directly to the traffickers who are collecting a supposed debt owed to them. Many victims are debt bonded to the traffickers, meaning they will always have to pay them back for something (privilege of having been smuggled to a new country etc.). Victims may work 12 hours a day only to be forced to work somewhere else for several more hours with as little as one meal a day and perhaps two hours of sleep. If victims attempt to run away they may be beaten, killed, or forced to watch as another is killed because of them. Can you imagine living in such conditions?

How on earth could anyone do such a thing?!?! I just don't understand and I never ever will.

Lessons so far

There are so many things I have already learned so far even though all I have had is three lectures in research and three days of human trafficking lectures. Yet the substance of human trafficking is immense and fascinating. I'll cover that another time because after 9 hours of that today I feel a little too down to have to continue thinking about it. So, another thing I learned: People are really self centred!

I know people have a lot to tell. Especially when meeting new friends, it seems the stories never run out. But a trend I have been observing actively is that many people, here where I am in particular, are very full of information that only concerns themselves. For instance, when one person talks about hair and how they have trouble with getting their graduation hat on, suddenly everyone has a story.
While that is good and all, it seems there are always some people that must re-mention their stories and tell the point three four times in order to make sure that everyone knows they have the hardest time with hair. Same is with family. i don't think I talked to any of the people here except maybe two about my family other than vague details. Nor do they know about different segments of my life. However, i know all of theirs, their pet names, best friend's name, siblings location, parents occupation, past sexual history, hobbies and side hobbies and second hobbies and things they once tried. In fact, I know them so well at this point I think I could easily steal their identity.
Yes, that is friendship. You know the other person so well. But somehow nothing is reciprocal here but rather one sided. A topic comes up and BAM all the info is spewed forward so that I am left only asking questions because, frankly, at this point in time I am waiting for them to realize how little they know about me. Like a ninja, I'll hide AND STRIKE WHEN LEAST EXPECTED!

emails.......

In my haste to cut down internet usage I never thought I would have another email thrown at me. Through the university I, of course, cannot receive emails to my private account but must do everything through the account they set up for me. In addition, this account works through the same provider as my private email which means I can never check them both at once but must log out one to check the other.
 Then come my obligations to Facebook and Blogs. After that I still have to make sure that our online course guides have not been updated or information has been put in the forums. All of this together means I spend more time online than I want to.
I have tried cutting down, but seriously, who knew it would be so difficult? I hate coming home and having to respond to like ten emails all professionally and officially. It's going to be horrible when I have a job..... SO MUCH RESPONSIBILITY!!! ARGH!

Oh Saturday....

It would seem to be an interesting Saturday. But, in fact, the last three days looked pretty similar. Get up laaaaaate, eat brunch, go to gym for class, work on assignment for hours, watch The Office for hours. Then go to sleep, late. It's been like this for three days... so exciting...

Things I wish I knew at all times

1. Don't watch movies and think of things as they are in reality, it will ruin it. Especially when those movies are Transformers, Harry Potter, or any other sort of sci-fi stuff. 
2. When walking around short furniture don't cut corners. You may only have one little table and chair in the entire room but still somehow the magnet in your little toe is more powerful than your ability to walk around a piece of Ikea furniture.
3. Don't put your coffee next to the computer when playing intense computer games. You don't play them very well and you end up scaring and then pushing the cup over, spilling hot coffee onto the table that slants down towards your lap. The coffee may also somehow leek into your top drawer and spread wonderfully there hiding there until later that day when you need something and it is somehow glued to the wood and slightly soggy. And of course you don't own a towel with which to clean this whole mess up and just end up sweeping it back into the cup with your hand and using the not-very-absorbent dishtowel. Luckily the electronics and papers managed to escape... selfish bastards.
4. Don't even try to set goals for the gym. While you say "I'll sign up for free classes!" what you really mean is "I'll look at a list of free classes and then decide which one I would go to but decide not to because I'm too lazy and would rather watch a movie!"
5. Don't wash spoons in the sink with the water on full power, it will go everywhere but the sink. Magic.
6. Never live in a house with inexperienced cookers and very sensitive smoke detectors. So far there have been 4 fire alarms and a couple of close calls in two weeks because people somehow still don't understand that leaving food in an oven or on the stove for way too long will lead to fire. Also, they will happen when you are in the shower or still asleep. Because f-you, that's why. 
7. Clearly not all English is English you can understand. "Hi, where are you from?" Smile and nod during every conversation from there-on out. 
8. "I'll just browse" is never true in a secondhand bookstore. Also, I'll only buy two is a huge bloody lie.
9. Trying to give up sugary stuff on a diet will only lead to anger and frustration. It's been one day and I'm about to rip someone's head off.
10. New creations in the kitchen seem a good idea at the time but they almost always disappoint. Yum! Potatoes and cereal and salt and apples because I don't have anything else in the fridge!
11. "I'm going to read more!" uh-huh... computer games it is. "I don't have class all week, perfect to go somewhere new and read!" vs. "holy crap, it's three in the morning and I'm still in the ruined temple!"
12. There is no such thing as a good time for high heels. Especially when that time is during rain on cobblestone streets with only uphill and downhill and a lot of drinking is involved. The only thing missing is lots of drains to get stuck in with your heel- ohh... never mind  she managed to find that too. (This clearly didn't happen to me because if I wore heels in this place I would detect the rain about an hour before everyone else.)

Decisions

Five year ago, after graduating from high school, I took one year to myself to figure out what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go. It was a wonderful year of discovery, action, travel, and spending time with the family.
Then when I had made my decision I moved to college in Spain for two years. I go there knowing I had to move to a new school in two years time since they didn't have my major. But it was two years away, so of course I didn't need to worry about it. Then the two years were over and I moved to the US. I thought, wow, those two years were over and I was in the US and thinking, the next two years will be over but not for a long time. But now the two years are over once again. Where have the last four years gone? Where have the last two years gone?
At times I thought it would never end, sometimes I hoped it would go by faster, but now that the end of this part of my life is here I really don't know how I should or want to react.
It's been wonderful, stressful, enlightening, encouraging, discouraging, upsetting, annoying, happy, sad, and exciting.
But all in all I know it was a great time and it was a great decision. I'll never think back and second guess my decision making process. I'm glad I'm where I am.

Packing up, moving on

Packing bags is neither easy nor quick. I'm not going to deny the fact that it takes time, effort, and planning to do it the right way. More so even when you're packing your bags to leave the country for good and have to cram two years of hoarding into roughly four suitcases. Yeah sure, FOUR SUITCASES?!? Seriously though, it's not that much...
So far I have one completely packed and ready to go, one big bag full that just needs to be added to a suitcase, a batch of small bags that equal to one suitcase, and then all my other stuff which is probably one and a half suitcases still.
I thought I would have roughly four suitcases full, but now looking at it, as I keep shopping and hoarding all my stuff, I realize I might have five/six/seven.... no, five though. So let's hope to keep it strictly business and only bring home what I need.
But I don't want to leave anything behind! I have a nice little collection of random stuff here that I got attached to, like a pet just made out of wood and paper and stuff...

And then the next problem: Where am I going to put all this stuff!?!

Oh lord...

Are you serious? How can a university function when the departments are so disconnected that they can't even respond to my emails and apply my acceptance information...
I wrote my future graduate school three times now about hearing back if my offer acceptance has been received because I sent in the payment, the forms and firmly enrolled. But so far no response. Also, I accepted my scholarship twice yet they still wrote me congratulating me on my offer.... Hold up, seriously?? What's going on????
GET IT TOGETHER! JESUS!

I CAN'T WAIT! 9 DAYS!!!!!!

Being there

The power that is service is amazing. Never before have I truly realized the strength and support it relays to other people. Today I went out with a friend to volunteer at a 5k run. While we didn't run or walk to 5k, we made a difference in the lives of others. This was surprising on its own because the people in the run were making a difference in ours. Thinking that all we did was hold an arrow at the 1 mile mark, people running past kept thanking us. It startled me, in a good way, when I finally figured out that they were thanking us because of our support for them who are supporting others.

It's the little things, what might not mean anything to others, that means so much to the specific group of people. Just spending a couple of otherwise idle hours out in the beautiful sun holding a big red arrow made the people running feel more empowered and supported a great cause, research on multiple myeloma, bone marrow cancer.

Just one step at a time, one hour at a time on your free days, you can make the kind of difference that can possibly change lives. By just thinking: "there's free bagels there, so why not?" you suddenly catapulted yourself into the position of volunteer which leads you to touch the lives of others. Having several causes close to my heart myself I know that I would love even the slightest most unenthusiastic volunteer around.
Because, still, they decided to be there.

Lead by example

The day after the presentation. It was wonderful and sad all in one go. While the presentations went well, we went out for drinks after, and we all got along splendidly it's sad to think that we connected like this on the last possible day.

But nonetheless it was all worth it. As a summation of the past four years, two years in my major, I learned a lot of lessons that are not only valuable to me as a student, but also as a person. One of the major lessons I have learned has to do with acceptance. While we all think we are tolerant and accepting, are we really? Do we really forgive and pass no judgment on others? Do we really live in a world where we feel nothing matters but we think? I think, and learned, over time that there is no escaping the judgment of others and the only real step to take is to learn and teach others about the power of acceptance. 

With just some simple thoughts shared by those aware of the need or lack of acceptance and tolerance we can at least strive to provide for others the world that we all want to have. If you can't live your life without judgment then why do you expect others to do the same. Like a lesson learned as a child and as a student, and now as an adult: Live by example.

Picture from weheartit.com

Capstone

Tonight is the night of my Criminal Justice Capstone presentation. What this means is that I have my paper done and in a nice folder. I have my poster printed and it's huge. I have my reference page printed and copied. I have my dress and nice shoes and nice bag and nice make-up. I have my note cards to give me cues and I'm pumped to get this started. First I'll have a dinner with the Jesuits, a senior year event where you reflect on the experience at a Jesuit university. After that I'll head over to the presentations and at 6pm I'm going to be standing next to my awesome poster with awesome knowledge.

I'm excited to be able to wrap up this project and get the presentation over with. But I also don't want it to end because this will be the last criminal justice class I have here at uni. =(

Ob nox ious : [uhb-nok-shuhs]

As the semester comes to an end I find myself feeling the consequences of pressure. Not only do I have a lot of work to do academically and with my organizations, I have a lot of work to do in my apartment, packing up, cleaning up, and trying to organize the last couple of days of my stay. Although that is still three or four weeks away one cannot think that it is a long time to plan. The weeks are flying by and I'm finding myself surprised by the date at a more rapid pace each time. Can you believe it's May in just a few days? Well I can't because I thought it was just February! Come on, man!

But other than my time lapse and failing judgement of how long my work would take I am also finding myself worried about... well, not being worried enough. If any of you feel anxiety and its impact a lot you know that there are times when you feel worried and just don't know why.
That is, in fact, easy to define by dictionary:

ob·nox·ious

 [uhb-nok-shuhs] Show IPA

adjective

1. highly objectionable or offensive; odious: obnoxious behavior.

2. annoying or objectionable due to being a showoff or attracting undue attention to oneself: an obnoxious little brat.

3. Archaic . exposed or liable to harm, evil, or anything objectionable.

4. Obsolete . liable to punishment or censure; reprehensible.

Origin:
1575–85;  < Latin obnoxiōsus  harmful, equivalent to ob- ob-  + noxiōsus noxious

 

 

So I've decided:

 

The day I almost died, twice

The last 24 hours have been very interesting. While last night is a long story of great awesomeness it's not part of this post. It start when I met a friend and we went to a cafe to do work. I finished my capstone project for one of my majors, a 32 page paper, and just wanted to have another look at it to make sure it was perfect. I opened it... but... it didn't open. "Document Corrupted". I stared at the screen. Document corrupted? What do you mean document corrupted? I tried it on the zip drive, from the email, and the one from my laptop. None of them worked! I slowly died inside, knowing that the only one that worked again was one before the final edits of this draft. I put 25 hours condensed  in it since Tuesday and Tuesday was the last draft saved that worked.
I think i almost threw up knowing that I had three days to reedit everything I had worked on. I got up at 6 every day and worked for 5 hours before my first class. Then after class I stayed in the library until 8 or 10pm, another 8 or more hours of work, before I would go home, dinner time, and get back to work.  It was horrible. I got so worried. I told my friend Chelsea about what happened and she said she would try it on her computer. Still it didn't work, but she tried to fix it for a little while. In the meantime I thought I would just start editing because it's already Saturday afternoon and it's due Tuesday. But suddenly Chelsea was able to extract the text and posted it into an email. Constant text though, I would have to go through the whole thing and reenter spaces, paragraphs, underlines, and visually appealing structure. It was exhausting, but I was so excited that I didn't have to rewrite all the edits but rather could just go through it to add paragraphs etc.

I thought I would die...
But not literally, that only came later in the day.

It was around 6:15 when suddenly people started getting up and grabbing their stuff. Chelsea and I were listening to music on our headphones so we had no idea what's going on. We looked around at the emptying room when the lady in charge said to grab our stuff and go into the cellar. There was a tornado coming quick. Since we didn't live far away Chelsea and I got in the car and booked it towards home. Suddenly there were weird random bangs on the car and we realized it was hailing. Golf ball sized hail! Banging on the car... We drove slowly and carefully and decided to bunker down in the parking garage of another house.
We got out and wind was pummeling like crazy and we snuck in with another person and sat in the lobby. We started watching a movie and it was cool. Suddenly though the fire alarm went off and  and tornado warning went off which meant, technically, we should head to the cellar. We didn't because it was interesting to watch all the stuff outside. Firefighters arrived because of the alarm and we continued watching the movie in peace. When the rain stopped and it all calmed we quickly drove home and bunkered in there.

It was an interesting day so far.

New York from every angle

Pretty much one of the major reasons why I decided to go study in the US is so that I can go visit New York. Finally I have completed this mission and below are some of the pictures that resulted from the trip. Enjoy.
Brooklyn Bridge:

Times Square:

 Central Park:

Manhatten Skyline

That's right CAMERA PANORAMA FUNCTION! Muahahah!!!

The hope

Some moments in life really make you set your priorities straight. This moment came for me once more this morning when I realized there weer only about three more weeks before the end of the semester when I have to have all my stuff done and ready. So I had reality sneak up on me once more and it smacked me in the face.
Now I'm setting my priorities in order so first thing I did was write a To-do list. I organized the to-do list, then I colour coded it, and now I'm writing a blog about it. Time management at its finest right here.
The problem most people probably face at this phase is not the management of time, with so much management of other things to do than work that's not the issue. The true issue is just motivation to start whatever we need to start. That's the problem I have every time. I can finish it once it's started, I just can't manage to get the first sentence of a paper out, the first page of a book read, or the first communication with a group going.
Tomorrow I'll be busy, so that's my excuse for not doing my work then. But I promise on Thursday I'll get my first three papers done and wrapped up. I hope...

Vegas Part Deux

 Part two to the post about Vegas, it continues.
The Venetian gondola rides:

 Treasure Island:

 Caesar's Palace:

 Treasure Island once more, the pirate ship right outside:

 The Mirage from the inside, looking out at other hotels:

This is actually in Caesar's Palace. I should really put them in order...

Treasure Island:

The Mirage has a volcano outside:

New York New York has a miniature of the Brooklyn Bridge:

 And of course the Statue of Liberty:

 And the Empire State Building: