Perfectly Purple

Luggage! It's so exiting!!! After much researching on Consumer Reports, reading a million reviews, and consulting my profeccional travel experts (aka my aunt and neighbor) I have finally purchased a luggage set of my very own! Some of its important features include:

• A large suitcase, and a carry-on one with swivel (4) wheels, 2 front pockets, long ajustable handels, and side handels, that are expandable
• A rolley duffle bag with a handle that zippes into it
• A under-the-seat tote bag
• A little mini "travel kit" or toilery bag 
• An atractive and differentiating purple color
• A resinable price (and a great deal!)
• High quality
• Makes me happy! :-)

+ it also passed The Alice Test (we rolled my friend around Macy's in the big suitcase. LOL) I highly recomend to anyone getting luggage to do some research, read reviews, and most importantly, look at it in a store so that you can get a feal for it. The first set I was going to buy was significanty cheaper and cuter, but when we tried it out, it was very poor quality. My current one is much better, and I am very glad that I acctually went to the store to buy it. Also, I took two of my friends and had a ton of fun picking it out!

 

Did I write this for me?

I write for the necessity of documentation.

for the ones
who guard
and track
the progress I plot.

for parents both near and far.

for adventurous friends
and strangers.
that wish they could,
or know I'm insane.

for family.
the future,
and the past,

But mostly,
I write,
for me.

Finalmente

This is one of my favorite spanish words, and I use it all the time. It means "finally" or "at last". You may be asking "Why is this blog post titled finally in Spanish?" Which is a very good question. The anser to which is that yesterday, I  finally ordered my t-shirts!!!! Disclaimer: my life is a mess. As you may or may not know, they were supposed to be ordered in December. However, as it tends to do, December ran away from me and became January and then Febuary, which became March, and then April, but as May comes to a close, I have finally caught him. Now, in two weeks max, I will have 200 marvelous t-shirts in my possession (which you should buy for $25 or 3+ for $20 a piece). {sigh} This may not seem like a big step, but to me it is. My stress level has gone down 1,000% and now I'm simply exited.

RYE vs. College

     I have so much in common with the soon-to-be college students! They have to fill out rigourous applications, decide what to pack, host going away (well, graduation) parties, and spend an extended period of time away from home. However there are some small differences, like the fact that I do not get to come home for Christmas, will be simultaneously learning a different language, my classes will not be as challenging, and it does not cost a fraction as much (thank heaven!). But, among these there is one itsy bitsy, tiny little difference; these soon-to-be college students are 18 and I am 15.
     When I here stories about students who had to come home because they could not handle being so far away from their families, I usually think two things. The first is,"What?!?" Because I'm expected and plan on embarking on a similar endevour, and I am significantly younger than all of them. On the other hand, those stories also give the piece of me that is scared beyond imaginable an excuse to quit. That is by far the more dangerous thought. I try to keep it at bay by reminding myself that I have worked far to hard for this to give it up now, and a whole string of other reasons why I cannot quit, nomader what.
     These stories remind me that I was chosen to be a RYE ambassador for a reson, and it was not because they thought I was a quitter. However, after filling out the RYE application ;-) , and completing next year, I think I will be able to take anything College throws at me!

:-)

Journal 2.0 -- Brought to you by the Carmens

It's actually more of a scrapbook than a journal, but IMJ.

     At the Rotary District Conference, I was reminded that I need to be keeping a journal, and be writing in it every day. I thought "Does February count as yesterday?" Which is when I realized that I needed to get back on the writing wagon. However, the only problem was that my old journal was a plain, stereotypical composition notebook, and even though it had a pink Eiffel Tower on the front, and I wrote in every color imaginable, it was B-O-R-I-N-G.
     The next day, I had the honor of looking at Carmen's journal ,which is amazing, beautiful, and well kept up. She had little pieces of scrap paper with journal entries stapled into her pristine journal. That made me think, "If I did that I could write in my journal throughout my day, back them up on super cool paper so that they would be beautiful and exiting, and put other stuff in it, like pictures, and not just entries... what if I made a scrapbook!!!! So that's just what I did.
     It just so happens, that I had recently received a perfect scrapbook-to-be from my Aunt Carmen for my birthday, and is the perrrfect thing for my purposes. Currently my journal 2.0 is everything that I had hoped for, and more, and I write in 4 or 5 times a week instead of once every three months. I learned from this that what you want is the way you should get to have it. Don't let anyone tell you differently. If you love it, it will be successful.
     By the way, IMJ is the best thing ever. If you are writing a journal for any reason, I highly recommend living by it. It stands for It's My Journal, and it means that my journal is for me and so I can do what I want with it and write what I want in it. I use the acronym to remind myself that there are no journal police, and no laws that say how my journal must look or what it must say. IMJ is the basis for my Journal 2.0, so feel free to you know, be inspired or something, just use my secrets for good, wasabi.

.

Btw, their supposed to be blurry. Secrets are secrets, and all of them cannot be shared. :-)

Strive for Information

Dear Readers,
Thank you sooo much for reading my blog! This blog is mostly for you, and I would like to make the content as relevant as I can. Therefore, I was wondering if there are any questions that you have concerning my exchange. Please email me/or comment below anything that you would like to know, and I will do my best to answer it in post.
Thank you again!
-w