(sneezecough)

Got home yesterday in one piece! I have yet to unpack the car though. I got home and left to go to my friend Emily's house about 20 minutes later. And then I came home and went to bed early, and woke up about an hour ago with a fever and a massive splitting headache.
I'm glad my body waited until after finals to completely fall apart. Not that finals were all that stressful for me this semester, but they probably would have been if I had been sick. So at least I'm home where I can be taken care of. :)
Although, the medicine my mom tried to give me was not medicine at all. She just pulled out this little bottle that looked like eye drops, and squeezed some of it out into a glass half full of water and told me to drink it. So I did, thinking it was maybe legit. It tasted awful, so I asked her what it was. Turns out it's some sort of fruit and vegetable wash that removes pesticide residue...so I mean, I'm sure it's nontoxic and all that, but I don't know how it's supposed to help a headache and fever...?

Despite my being sick, I still have a lot to do today. One task involves going to the mall, which I am dreading as  Christmas is in 2 days. And I can't go to the mall until I get my van unpacked. Which I am also dreading because my limbs are weak and my head is killing me and I just want to go back to bed and sleep until I have to go meet my friends at Applebee's later.
Sooo tired. I should go take some real medicine...so far I don't feel any different after drinking pesticide wash.

Sleepless rantings...

I wasn't able to sleep at all last night. It's currently 5:36 AM and I finally just decided to get up and take a shower because I couldn't stand laying there and thinking anymore. I'm thinking and worrying myself into a panic lately and I need to stop.

I had so much fun last night and I'm so glad to have such amazing friends. And I keep thinking about how much I'm going to miss them. And then I just kept staring around my empty apartment getting sad, and then thinking about the fact that my apartment is empty reminded me that all my shit is in my van about 3 blocks away and I hope to god nobody decides to break into it. Not that there's anything all that valuable in there, but it would definitely suck. And then I realized that it snowed overnight while I was laying there staring at the ceiling, and that today is an even number day and I parked on the odd side of the road and I don't know if they need to plow or not. Meanwhile, as I'm needlessly worrying, my next door neighbor is blasting her TV all night again and the people across the alley from me apparently don't feel the need to sleep either and would rather play blaring music with the bass cranked up to 11 until about 5 AM.

I literally haven't slept. It's going to be a treacherous drive back, with me being barely conscious and with a van filled so much crap that I can't see out any of the windows. If the roads are icy, it'll probably take all day to get home. But I'm glad that by the end of the day I'll be back in EP and I can take a nap and bake cookies with my mom or watch TV with my dad or something. Sounds so nice. Finals are over, the semester is over, and I can finally go home and veg.

I just wish I could get maybe even like a half an hour of sleep. But I tried that earlier when I got out of the shower and was just disturbed again by some truck-backing-up-noise directly outside my window for about  five minutes straight. Typical. One plus of not living in this apartment anymore will be not having to deal with all the stupid trucks and their annoying backing up noises that drive through this alleyway all the time. And at ungodly hours of the morning. It's just evil.

Sorry for all this ranting. I'm just anxious and kind of cranky and a little lonely and sad, and I want to go home so I can sleep and eat normal food again. Mom food that's free and actually tastes good...

Jarreth Merz: Filming democracy in Ghana | Video on TED.com

This was just something interesting I found on TEDtalks while trying to find a video to do my global health homework on. I saw Ghana mentioned, got excited and decided to procrastinate a bit longer...

Jarreth Merz: Filming democracy in Ghana | Video on TED.com:

'via Blog this'

All of my children were accidents.

I wish the temperature in my apartment would hover somewhere around normal for once. It's either 90 degrees in here, or about 35, and never anything in between. I think if the thermostat knobby thingy worked on my heater, I wouldn't have this problem. I'm super cold because my window's open and I took all the blankets off my bed to wash them, but if I close the window, in about 5 minutes I'll be sweating. This is super interesting, I know.

Anyway, today was one of those awkward days where I didn't get out of bed until noon, and then despite the fact that it wasn't morning anymore, I still ate 2 breakfasts because....I can?

And then I went to class, where my crazy professor tried to defend her controversial lecture on Tuesday that was kind of offensive because she was hardcore stereotyping poor people and everyone got really mad about it. I kind of just sat back, slightly entertained, as I watched her dig herself into a deeper hole with everything she said. I kind of felt bad for her though, because I know she had good intentions about her lecture. It just kind of backfired on her. Like a lot of things she says. She's one of those awkward professors who I'm not sure if she really knows how to teach...she kind of just walks around telling us about her personal life for an hour and a half and ends up sharing WAY more than she needs to. Examples?

"The FIRST TIME I had sex, I got pregnant. We used all kinds of birth control, they all just failed."

"All of my children were accidents."

"My sisters interact with each other in a different way than they interact with me. Because I figured out how to get out of poverty." (ouch?)

"My sister wasted all of her money on a new car, and now can't afford to put gas in it or pay her rent." (So I'm sure she's thrilled you're sharing this with a 250-person lecture hall)

"I am considered upper class. I make more in a month than my father made in a year. So why do I take the bus to work instead of driving one of my five cars?"

She's kind of the reason I skip that class a lot. Because I think I've learned more about her personal life over the course of the semester than I have about global health. Any time I do go, I just end up doing a crossword puzzle, only looking up to listen to the person who's bitching her out for something unintentionally offensive she said.

My other class today was pretty uneventful. And now I'm using laundry and cleaning to put off homework, even though I should be memorizing a presentation I have to give tomorrow. Kind of important... but I'll get to it eventually.

Appreciating normalcy

I've decided I'm going to start appreciating the boring in my life before I decide I want it back. I suddenly realized today that in a little over a month, I'm going to be living a completely different life. And I'm going to realize how much I take for granted on a day to day basis. Instead of the normal problems I have now, like not getting my homework done, or not having enough time to clean my apartment, or (insert boring/stupid problem here), I'm going to be feeling my way around in the dark, trying to understand a culture that is not remotely close to anything I've experienced before. It is both really exciting and pretty terrifying, to say the least.

I'm going to be honest and say that at this point I'm probably more scared than I am excited to leave. When I think about all the things there are to worry about, and all the things that could go wrong, I kind of want to cry a little bit and wonder why I decided that this is what I wanted. Luckily, everyone who has done the program that I've heard from so far has loved it, so I know I'll realize there isn't all that much to worry about, but I'm still freaking out. I'm just trying to remember how I felt on my trip to China in high school, when I left with my Chinese host family and separated from the group, and how terrified I was to be in such a different place with people who only spoke broken english, and everything was so unfamiliar. It took me a little while to adjust, but once I did it was an amazing experience. And I only stayed with them for about 5 days.

This time I won't have a host family, so it'll be a different situation to get used to, but the fact that I've had to adjust before will only help me.

I think the biggest thing that's freaking me out right now is how long I'll be away. 5 months is a pretty decent chunk of time...

Anyway, other than freaking out, not much exciting has happened in my life since last I updated this, which was probably a super long time ago and I don't remember what was happening then. Probably also nothing.

School continues to be a burden on my life, as I continue to pretend that I have a life outside of school. The truth is, I don't, unless you count watching netflix, playing guitar, and other miscellaneous distractions a "life". Ha, I just remembered this post was supposed to be about APPRECIATION OF BORINGNESS and I've already forgotten. Now appreciating....and I'm happy again.

It'll be nice to be not-bored for a long time. I'm sure there's nothing boring in Africa. That's what I'm going to assume. I mean, kind of the whole idea of studying abroad is not to be bored.

Another thing I've been thinking a lot about is what it's going to be like when I get back. A lot of people are going a lot of places, and there's a lot of possibilities for lots of things to change. Lots of people are going abroad, or will be leaving to go abroad when I get back, or are just doing super exciting things with their lives in general, and it'll be interesting to see what changes when it's all over. I'm thinking in terms of friendships, and relationships, and what have you.

I'm going to try to start writing in this more often before I go, just to get used to the whole blogging on a regular basis thing... My mom wants me to blog while I'm gone and won't be happy with anything less than hearing about my life in excruciating detail. Just a warning. Everyone else, please feel free to skim or just not read this altogether. I won't be offended.

But that won't be for a while. I still have like 40ish days or so before I leave.