Guess Who's Back...?

Ok, oh man, where to begin...

I suppose first, my sincerest apologies for not writing. I don't think that I was ready to write, to open up. Since I've come home I've slowly decompressed and gotten stronger.

My first week home I lived in the same sweatpants and shirt. I think I changed my underwear, but I'm not positive. I showered once or twice, maybe. I spent two solid days lying on the couch, eating, and watching movies nonstop. It was gross.

After that I started to shower semi-regularly. I started leaving the house and wearing "real" clothes, even if I wore the same pair of jeans for the next three weeks. I unsuccessfully tried to find a job, I had a sort-of internship interview. I started my marathon training.

The next month I started doing bikram yoga. If you don't know, it's a series of 26 postures in a heated room, about 95 degrees. You SWEAT, but afterwards you feel so cleansed. I started cooking a lot.

Mid-March I started going on adventures. I went to Anza-Borrego desert with my mom to see the wildflowers bloom. It was only a few days' trip and we drove the 10 hours to get there, but the whole journey was amazing. That part of California is like a whole 'nother world. And the desert, man, the desert is where you will find truth. My best friend Sam came to visit over her spring break and it was a glorious week being children of the sun, playing all over the Bay Area. A couple of weeks later some friends from Harvard flew out and we road tripped the California coast. We stopped at a winery for wine tasting and a bottle for our sunset dinner on the beach, we hot tubbed deep in the forest under the starry sky, we stripped off our clothes and jumped into a river after a short hike in Big Sur, we shared our music as we drove, we played soccer and drank beer and made musi on the guitar as we soaked up the sun, we had a 6-person RAGER in Santa Barbara, we were positively young :)

Now my life is beginning to fall into place... This past week I began doing some volunteer work with East Bay College Fund, which I will continue for the next couple of weeks. The organization is small and fairly new (the last few years) and gives college scholarships/mentors to underprivileged B students (the A students tend to do pretty well at getting the scholarships they need). Both of my parents are mentors to kids in their senior year of college. I've been doing fundraising work for them so far, basically looking up various grants that we can apply to. I also work on other random projects. This weekend I'm going to UCLA to visit friends.

The following 3 weeks of May: Volunteering as a cabin leader at The (Fabulous) Mosaic Project (www.mosaicproject.org)! In a nutshell it's a diversity education program for 4th and 5th grade students, but it's more than that. The kids come up to the camp with their classes and they come from varying socioeconomic backgrounds. It reallllly intensively opens up a dialogue about stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination in order to create a space of understanding to eradicate those issues and work towards peace. The program is REALLY well designed, is filled with people who are super passionate, and has been very successful in terms of opening kids up. Sooooo I'm basically helping to save humanity and create world peace. No big deal.
Next couple of weeks: I'll be in France with my lovely, darling friend Sam and her gracious, generous parents! I'll be in the south of France with them, we will spend a night in Paris, and then I'll remain in Paris on my own for a few more days.

a lil less than 2 weeks unplanned...

mid-June to late(?)-August: Workin at Monkey Business Camp again (this'll be my 3rd summer working with them in one way or another and the name is still so silly). Anyway, it'll be all summer, full-time M-F, running around with crazy kids in the sun, anxiously anticipating the weekends by Monday afternoon. It'll be an exhausting summer, but also revitalizing - camp is still fun, bein around kids all day allows me to "connect with my inner child," and I'll be working with some really cool folks. I'm planning on throwing in some camping trips, beautiful hikes, weekend excursions, etc. on weekends.

my cousin's getting married over Labor Day Weekendddd!!!

and then my travels begin... mmmm, early/mid-September, probably the weekend after Labor Day I'll FINALLY head to Maui to do WWOOF! The farm I'm planning on goin to is supposed to be suuuuuper chill, and I hope that I don't get much rain! The farm generally has a minimum stay of 3 months, but seeing as how Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday I'm hoping to come back home after 2 months at the end of November in order to celebrate with my family. And HOPEFULLY my family is going to Ethiopia this winter! We've been talking about it quite a bit and my dad says there's a pretty good likelihood that we will be going, so WOOOHOOOOOO!!! We'd probably be gone for about a month, leaving sometime in mid-December and returning mid-January. Besides I'm planning on being back at school at the end of January. The thing is, I've been dying to go to Le Festival Au Desert, a 3-day music festival (really more like a musical gathering) in the desert in Mali outside of Timbuktu showcasing traditional Taureg music, as well as Malian, African, and other international world artists... Le Festival Au Desert happens in the beginning of January and I believe in 2010 it'll be January 8-10... So basically I'm tryina go. Hoooopefully I have the money - the festival is a few hundred dollars, so it all depends on airfare from Addis to Bamako. Even if we don't go to Ethiopia maybe I can make it to Mali. It's a stretch, DEFINITELY a lofty dream, but I bet I can make it happen :)!!!

At the end of January I should be back at school. Studying anthropology. I already know which classes I wanna take :)

Sooooo that's the plan as of now. Pretty much packed and set through when I go back (unless I don't end up going to Ethiopia, meaning I'll have the month of December at home...). I think that I'm going to get better at updating my blog.

ALSO I've been asked to write a training blog for the San Francisco Marathon Training Program! To view that blog: http://tsfmtp.wordpress.com/ and ALSO I'm fundraising for the marathon! I am raising $1500 for the marathon's beneficiary Youth Run4Fun, an inner-city youth running program. So far I've raised $838! To donate or to learn more about my inspiration to run or Youth Run4Fun: https://secure2.merchantcart.net/runsfm/MyWebPage.cfm?pID=375145&CFID=5576429&CFToken=e7d2489b5aa758f-82E17745-65B8-C82F-8B1462ECF16DBCAF