OYOY!

AAAIIIEEEE!!! One of my best friends back home is engaged! How friggin' awesome is that??? Man I wish I could be there right now...

Of course that reminds me I have no boyfriend and in fact have never had one. My friend isn't much older than I am. Bah humbug. I must remember, however, that they have been dating since their sophomore year of high school (well, his junior year) so that makes it four years which makes perfect sense. Can't say I didn't see it coming. Still... OY! I feel old now or something! Bad enough my cousin is married... Now two of my friends have to go and get engaged to each other! Am I growing up or something?

What? I'm still maturing? Noooo!

It’s kind of hard putting my concerns and thoughts down where I know someone is going to read them, but at the same time, if I don’t have them out I’ll feel even worse. So for those of you who actually read this crap, sorry.

I’m turning into someone I don’t recognize, and it’s beginning to scare me. I have been noticing this the most when I’m around my new friends and I realize how open I’ve become. It took me three years to be this blatantly honest with my friends back at home, and now in only two or three months I am so much more at ease with the new ones than I expected. That is of course to their credit, that they’re so easy to be open with. One thing I will say most emphatically – there is nothing like a few overnight trips for getting one acquainted with people fast. One sees people at their lowest and sometimes at their best. It’s a very good way to get honest, and for me at least it really sped up the whole friendship process. This is probably why I can be so open with people now.

But that’s only part of it. I catch myself swearing more in the presence of others, for one thing. I’ve become much more self-aware and I suppose self-indulgent. I think I’ve lost some sort of innocence or something, but I can’t think what! Is it a good thing? Does this merely mean I am maturing socially? Geez, I feel like a highschooler again! NOooooo…

I may post more later, on cool stuff like Glasgow and Oxford, but for now I'm all done. Thanks for listening (reading), chaps and chappesses.

ERF, Verona, and Suchlike...

So I just got back from an intense game of hearts following some intense games of ERF. This afternoon I lost (Curse You Widge!!) for the first time since last year at least. It was MY game. I always win. Except for last weekend but that was a fluke. I had only had three hours of sleep the night before and I refuse to count it. But I have established my goddess-dom of ERF once more and all is well (except for my perfect record being screwed).

Oh yeah, last weekend I finally got to have a taste of real world-traveling (well, I suppose England counts) when we (that is, Widge, Ande, RK, and I) went to Verona for a couple days!

Words cannot describe it. There were some tense moments and some grumpy ones especially after (not) sleeping in the train station the first night, but all-in all the experience was fabulous and certainly an eye-opener. Word to the wise: if you buy a bottle of wine and no one else follows through on drinking it, don’t try to finish the bottle yourself. (Actually, I didn’t really try to finish the bottle. I was trying to get tipsy, however, and I’m not really sure if it worked or not. I may have to try again later, eheheh)

Then of course there was being offered hashish the first night at the train station and later playing cards with the same guy (he knew the most awesome card tricks)… even though he was just checking us out to see if he could steal stuff it was still cool. And then there were the Italian policemen who apparently thought Widge was some sort of creep when he was watching us sleeping, which I thought was absolutely hilarious. Of course some time in there was when I lost at ERF but I swear it was because I was so sleep-deprived.

We wandered the town and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly despite the lack of sleep, ate good pastries and drank the most incredible coffee (I swear I can never go back now) and of course sampled the gelatos oh my gosh… *sigh of happiness*…

Right. It has all become something of a blur, but I recall seeing the coliseum, which was awesome, and a whole bunch of beautifully picturesque streets and buildings and so on. After we checked in to our nice little hotel room and slept for about five hours it was much better and I actually remember much more. We ate at a very nice, reasonably-priced restaurant in which I drank half the bottle of wine and consumed copious amounts of excellently-prepared gnocchi (oh the beauty of it all) and it was all bliss and joy and coconut gelato afterward. A lovely taste of Italy, I must say. And staying up again till about four or five just talking with Widge was pretty dang cool too. I was so sleep-deprived!

I’m going to shut up now because although the weekend was brilliant and unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before, talking about it is becoming tedious and it’s all pretty much been told already by Widge and RK in their blogs. So yes, I’m done now. Peace outside!

And I am still the goddess of ERF no matter what they say.

Random Crap

Having given in to peer pressure and actually gotten a blog, I am now giving in to peer pressure and updating because if I don’t Widge or RK’ll probably call down the little green men and have them force-feed me curried brussels-sprouts or something hideous. I should have warned them all I was a lazy-ass typeh and all my attempts at other forms of journaling or diary-ing have fizzled and died a quick and hopefully painless death within perhaps the first month. I’m even bad with emails.

So, today I feel like crap. Actually, crap is entirely too mild a word for the way I feel but out of respect for those who wish this to remain g-rated or at least pg-rated I will keep the $#*@% to a minimum, or at least until something really – er – crappy comes along and releases my personal Pandora’s Box of badness. Whoa, I’m long-winded today – check out that last sentence! Okay, fine, don’t.

Anyway, back to feeling like crap. I have a nasty cold which decided to plug my nasal passages last night so I couldn’t breathe;my throat, nose, head and neck all ache; and I’m drippier than…umm…something really drippy. On the plus side, my red nose looks cute and my voice is all froggy which is also cute! Ok, it probably isn’t and that really wasn’t a plus side but I’m tired of being negative already.

I got an email from my Dad yesterday and benefited from his infinite wisdom. Actually, that wasn’t meant to be sarcastic. There are few people in this world I respect as much as I respect him. I also got to talk to my family on the phone – finally – a couple nights ago and was much entertained. It’s been weeks since I’ve communicated with my sisters. I miss them all so much!

I miss my friends back home too. True, I’ve made some awesomely cool ones here (heheheh I of course have to say this because they’re the ones who blog-pressured me and are therefore going to read it) and am pretty much having a blast supplying weapons to RK for her war with Widge, whipping people’s asses at ERF (or rather, Egyptian Rat Screw, or Egyptian Slap, or other more g-rated names) and such. However, I just realized how much I miss my really tight buddies when one of my best friends emailed me back yesterday and I realized how long it’s been since I saw him last. Certain things about my friends here keep reminding me of my friends at home (which makes sense, since I choose who I hang out with and there are certain kinds of people I think are really cool), but at the same time I feel guilty that certain things like inside jokes, phrases, traditions and such are being lost altogether. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll go back next year and find myself replaced, left behind. I wonder if I’ll feel like a stranger. Now, with true friends one shouldn’t have to worry about these things, and I know they would never do anything intentionally, but people grow, and grow apart, and there’s no changing that. I just hope the changes won’t be so big I’ll have lost something precious.

The death of a bird

Where shall I begin?

Here are the facts - This morning between classes I was making a trip to my dorm room and was brought up short just outside the door by the sight of a small brown bird lying on the pavement. I stopped, of course, and noticed it was still breathing, albeit rapidly. As I stood over it two other students stopped as well. We concluded it had hit a window above the door and was in shock, but did very little until one man bent down and gently moved it to the grass. I left before he finished moving it and went on to my room, and the next time I walked that way, I noticed it had died.

This story, if one can call it that, isn’t horrific or even terribly tragic. Small birds die all the time, right? What troubled me was the fact I did nothing.

I have taken care of downed birds before, because at home we have floor-to-ceiling picture windows. I knew what I could have at least tried to do for the creature, which looked uninjured but for the shock. I have done it before. I knew moving the bird to the grass would accomplish nothing and possibly speed its death (the grass was wet and cold) but I said nothing and let things be. That may not seem disturbing to you, but it told me something about myself I didn’t really want to know. I have grown more uncompassionate than I would care to admit, and despite all my fine words about love to every living creature and so on, I just let a small bird die because I couldn’t be bothered and after all don’t these things happen every day?

Of course I have no way of knowing if it would have survived with my care. It may have been irreparably injured and I would have been just as sad, if not more so. Still, the fact that I turned and went to my room even while it was still struggling for life… It wasn’t until I walked by later and saw the bird was dead that I realized what I had become. It may seem silly to a world-wise cynic, or even a ‘normal’ person, that I would hate myself for not trying to save a common brown bird that had hit a window and would have died anyway, but I remember the time when I mourned over every dead bird and a downed one would have had me racing to the rescue, and I realize I just don’t care as much as I once did. At least someone else had the decency to do something, even if it was probably not the best… but the point is that person wasn’t me, and that is what rankles.

It seems to be the death of a bird should mean more than it does. Death is a terrible thing no matter what, and death of an innocent creature as a result of human establishment in particular should mean something to a human like me! But I know I don’t have to tell anyone this is an uncaring world where the innocent suffer and die and the rich and comfortable don’t lift a finger because they have more important things to do. Humanity has always been this way. Today I was forcefully reminded I was a part of that. It’s easy to write fine speeches on the need for compassion, and be proud of the fact that I am not a hard uncaring person when I’m done. It’s easy to fall into the “holier-than-thou” groove because I don’t hurt living creatures willingly and so on. Today I came to grips with the fact that despite all my words, I’m a cold, self-absorbed human just like everything else. Welcome to the real world, Avi.