And now they’ve gone. I don’t know really know what to feel. It was almost a twisted deja vous (however you spell it…) because my uncles had picked us up from the airport, and now they were dropping off. Except not dropping me off.
As we first went into the airport parking lot there was very little traffic, surprising since when we arrived it was absolutely chaotic. As my uncles were walking me back to the cars afterwards there was a lot more traffic. I thought about commenting on it, but it seemed pointless.
Every time my eyes started to well up I suppressed the tears. I wonder if I’ll cry. I wonder when I’ll cry.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Riding My Bike
So… my family leaves today. In only a few hours. How has a month gone by already? Will an entire school year go by just as fast? In a blaze will it all be gone, over, swallowed by flames in an instant? Each day might seem long, yet you look back and it dawns on you that you slept through it all. How many times didn’t I take advantage of possible moments with my family? I still feel, through and through, that you can’t truly savor the final moments; if you haven’t lived the way you wanted to up until that point, then you can’t really change it. However, those moments are still important. They are still potential memories that you’ve lost. If I could go back in time, I don’t know if I would do anything different though. I suppose I would have been nicer. But if you change the past you mess up the future; I wouldn’t be right here where I am now, as the person I am now.
I’ll miss my parents. Yes, it’s true, I really do love you guys. I’ve learned so much from them, as I know they have from me. More than my parents, they’re my best friends, my pillars of strength, constants that will always be there. They let go of my bicycle, let me pedal on my own and teeter along; when I fall down, they’re there to help pick me up, dust off my knees, and kiss my scratches if I really need them, but first they linger back and wait to see if I can get up on my own. But now that I’m riding on my own, what will happen if I fall down really hard? Now they’re not even sitting on the other side of the playground, chatting with the other parents but always sneaking little galnces out of the corners of their eyes. I guess at least they’ve taught me to always wear my helmet. And so it goes.
On a slightly different note, we ended up going to the Sheraton for New Year’s Eve! Oh my god, I was SO excited! It’s just absolutely inexplicable, there’s no way to verbalize how much I wanted to go. My family went, and Betty’s family went, excluding Menna because she’s too young, and we’d be out to late, menamen. The sad thing about Menna is that we had to lie to her since she’d be really upset that we didn’t tell her; nonetheless she found out, and was really mad and angry. 100 birr fixed that though, haha. It took SUCH long time for us to leave; it started at 7 p.m but we didn’t even leave until about 9. We were all just chilling in my room dressed and ready to go, listening to music, singing along, and Danny and Betty who are really good dancers were busting out some moves. We were just having a good time, and it was actually really nice.
Anyhow, the Sheraton looked incredible, it was beautiful, all lit up and flashing as if it we were in the midst of a war and gunshots and canons were flaring all around us. The cool thing is that I could have talked to Wyclef if I wanted to, he was standing in the lobby just mingling with everyone and taking pictures, whatever, but I didn’t. A lot of my friends did, but I guess I was scared or nervous to or something, but oh well, I don’t really care. But Danny, my “little brother,” did, and they were talking and he mentioned that he really liked dancing, so Wyclef said that he’d challenge him to a battle later on. Wyclef didn’t start playing until a little after midnight, and until then it was just various famous Ethiopian artists, so everyone was just mingling around eating and talking. Everyone was all dressed up and looked really nice, and there were SO many people there! Good God, it was outrageous, I don’t think that I’d ever actually seen a prostitute before, but the way some of these women were dressed…
Anyway, Wyclef started playing and it was really fun, everyone was singing along, some really, really drunkenly. That was definitely one scary thing. We were up in this front section, and obviously everyone wants to be up there because it’s right next to the stage menamen, but that meant that it was really jammed and cramped, and people didn’t really care. Eventually I just had to say, “screw it” and be aggressive myself, or else I would have been trampled; people will just plow past you, spilling their drinks all over you, stepping on your toes, and it gets really frustrating. On top of that, if you’re near men who have been drinking and you seem at all like you’re having a good time by dancing and stuff, they’ll get on you, holding onto your wrists and pulling you along with them. It was really scary, sometimes we would have to pull each other out or very physically push them off and yell at them and stuff. It was very scary, I’ve never been in that position before. But I digress, something absolutely incredible happened. At one point Wyclef was talking into the microphone and said something like, “I met a little boy, about 12 years old, named Danny, who said that he could challenge me dancing. Where is he, come up on stage Danny!” WHAT THE HELL, RIGHT?! You’d never think that something like this would happen! You wouldn’t think that a world-famous celebrity would remember or care about some random boy that he met before a performance. But he calls Danny up onto the stage, and in front of HUNDREDS of people has a dance-off. And Danny, an amazing dancer, holds himself SO well. On stage. He dances. In front of a huge audience. Not to mention this is televised. He’s 11-years-old. It’s basically amazing. I can’t get over it. I’m so proud of him, and happy for him. It’s amazing.
I’ll miss my parents. Yes, it’s true, I really do love you guys. I’ve learned so much from them, as I know they have from me. More than my parents, they’re my best friends, my pillars of strength, constants that will always be there. They let go of my bicycle, let me pedal on my own and teeter along; when I fall down, they’re there to help pick me up, dust off my knees, and kiss my scratches if I really need them, but first they linger back and wait to see if I can get up on my own. But now that I’m riding on my own, what will happen if I fall down really hard? Now they’re not even sitting on the other side of the playground, chatting with the other parents but always sneaking little galnces out of the corners of their eyes. I guess at least they’ve taught me to always wear my helmet. And so it goes.
On a slightly different note, we ended up going to the Sheraton for New Year’s Eve! Oh my god, I was SO excited! It’s just absolutely inexplicable, there’s no way to verbalize how much I wanted to go. My family went, and Betty’s family went, excluding Menna because she’s too young, and we’d be out to late, menamen. The sad thing about Menna is that we had to lie to her since she’d be really upset that we didn’t tell her; nonetheless she found out, and was really mad and angry. 100 birr fixed that though, haha. It took SUCH long time for us to leave; it started at 7 p.m but we didn’t even leave until about 9. We were all just chilling in my room dressed and ready to go, listening to music, singing along, and Danny and Betty who are really good dancers were busting out some moves. We were just having a good time, and it was actually really nice.
Anyhow, the Sheraton looked incredible, it was beautiful, all lit up and flashing as if it we were in the midst of a war and gunshots and canons were flaring all around us. The cool thing is that I could have talked to Wyclef if I wanted to, he was standing in the lobby just mingling with everyone and taking pictures, whatever, but I didn’t. A lot of my friends did, but I guess I was scared or nervous to or something, but oh well, I don’t really care. But Danny, my “little brother,” did, and they were talking and he mentioned that he really liked dancing, so Wyclef said that he’d challenge him to a battle later on. Wyclef didn’t start playing until a little after midnight, and until then it was just various famous Ethiopian artists, so everyone was just mingling around eating and talking. Everyone was all dressed up and looked really nice, and there were SO many people there! Good God, it was outrageous, I don’t think that I’d ever actually seen a prostitute before, but the way some of these women were dressed…
Anyway, Wyclef started playing and it was really fun, everyone was singing along, some really, really drunkenly. That was definitely one scary thing. We were up in this front section, and obviously everyone wants to be up there because it’s right next to the stage menamen, but that meant that it was really jammed and cramped, and people didn’t really care. Eventually I just had to say, “screw it” and be aggressive myself, or else I would have been trampled; people will just plow past you, spilling their drinks all over you, stepping on your toes, and it gets really frustrating. On top of that, if you’re near men who have been drinking and you seem at all like you’re having a good time by dancing and stuff, they’ll get on you, holding onto your wrists and pulling you along with them. It was really scary, sometimes we would have to pull each other out or very physically push them off and yell at them and stuff. It was very scary, I’ve never been in that position before. But I digress, something absolutely incredible happened. At one point Wyclef was talking into the microphone and said something like, “I met a little boy, about 12 years old, named Danny, who said that he could challenge me dancing. Where is he, come up on stage Danny!” WHAT THE HELL, RIGHT?! You’d never think that something like this would happen! You wouldn’t think that a world-famous celebrity would remember or care about some random boy that he met before a performance. But he calls Danny up onto the stage, and in front of HUNDREDS of people has a dance-off. And Danny, an amazing dancer, holds himself SO well. On stage. He dances. In front of a huge audience. Not to mention this is televised. He’s 11-years-old. It’s basically amazing. I can’t get over it. I’m so proud of him, and happy for him. It’s amazing.
Nothing Really Interesting
Hmmm, well, where to start? I don’t really have much to say. It’s Thursday evening, 7:47 p.m., and I had volleyball until five, ate dinner, have already finished what little homework I had, cleaned up my room (a little bit), and have nothing else to do. I’m also outrageously tired. No joke. I think that I could actually fall asleep right now, and it’s not even 8 o’clock. This getting up around 6:20 every morning, going through a full day of school, plus an hour and a half of sports, plus homework is really tiring. Parents think that we have it made, no real responsibilities, life is easy. Yeah, right. Granted, we don’t have families to provide for and bills to pay, but it’s no breeze. We get worked hard.
Anyhow, this Saturday is the Ethiopian New Year. I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to go to the Sheraton (it’s SUPER nice), because Wyclef Jean is coming. For those of you who don’t know who Wyclef is, download Perfect Gentleman, Gone Till November, 911, and Something About Mary. It’s expensive though, so I doubt Betty and I will be going, which is fairly disappointing. But oh well, I suppose at least it’s not the end of the world.
Tonight my parents are having dinner with Sally’s parents and Betty’s parents, and Mattios is sleeping over here. Tomorrow after school I’m getting dropped off with my parents and we’re going out to dinner and I’ll be sleeping over. They leave on Sunday. I can’t believe it. How has a month already passed by? Time flies when you’re having fun I guess, but it also flies when you’re living. Oh, and time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana. Yeah, you gotta think about that one, right? But anyway, I digress. I can’t believe that I’ve already been here a month. In three months and six days I leave for home. Oh, my hair is in braids! I got extensions. I really hated them at first, just because it’s very different, and it was hard to adjust, but now I’m really enjoying them. It makes life so much easier, because I don’t really have to do anything to my hair. I can shower when I get home in the evenings after sports, and wake up a little bit later the next. There are definitely advantages.
Ok, well I just wrote three paragraphs of nothing, so I may as well just end here. Nothing really interesting, just an update of the blah blah blah of my life right now. Love always…
Anyhow, this Saturday is the Ethiopian New Year. I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to go to the Sheraton (it’s SUPER nice), because Wyclef Jean is coming. For those of you who don’t know who Wyclef is, download Perfect Gentleman, Gone Till November, 911, and Something About Mary. It’s expensive though, so I doubt Betty and I will be going, which is fairly disappointing. But oh well, I suppose at least it’s not the end of the world.
Tonight my parents are having dinner with Sally’s parents and Betty’s parents, and Mattios is sleeping over here. Tomorrow after school I’m getting dropped off with my parents and we’re going out to dinner and I’ll be sleeping over. They leave on Sunday. I can’t believe it. How has a month already passed by? Time flies when you’re having fun I guess, but it also flies when you’re living. Oh, and time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana. Yeah, you gotta think about that one, right? But anyway, I digress. I can’t believe that I’ve already been here a month. In three months and six days I leave for home. Oh, my hair is in braids! I got extensions. I really hated them at first, just because it’s very different, and it was hard to adjust, but now I’m really enjoying them. It makes life so much easier, because I don’t really have to do anything to my hair. I can shower when I get home in the evenings after sports, and wake up a little bit later the next. There are definitely advantages.
Ok, well I just wrote three paragraphs of nothing, so I may as well just end here. Nothing really interesting, just an update of the blah blah blah of my life right now. Love always…
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