A promising summer

I think I finally get to do Europe justice this summer. For once, I'm not going to spend thousands of dollars just to visit a boyfriend in one country. That was pretty great though, despite the fact that the only way to see each other was to spend lots of money only to really spend not much actual time together.
There's a giant theatre festival happening in Prague this year called the Prague Quadriannual, and in it is a Scenofest which holds lots of great theatre design workshops for set, costumes, lighting, sound..etc etc.
Afterwards, I'm planning to go around Europe a bit with my best friend and hopefully land in New York and Montreal before flying back home. I remember a few years ago I was ambitiously planning to go on a HUGE European backpacking trip by myself but that fell through as I never got around to working and saving enough money for it.
But now I finally get to backpack and hopefully travel around Europe :)
Sometimes I also think about living on an organic farm and/or vineyard in the south of France or in Italy, where my only concern should be whether I've fed my goats, or whether I need to head into the local market and get some ingredients that I'm not currently growing in my garden. I would really like to try WWOOFing or something similar, and learn more about agriculture and cooking organic foods.
AHHH the travel bug has just been rekindled.

Happy New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR.

So this is turning out to be an ok night.

At the beginning, I was with my awesome close friends, pre-drinking, ready to hit the club and dance the night away. Everyone was pretty drunk except for one girl who spent the entire night sober! She is so h-core, haha. We get to the club finally, and one of our friends has trouble getting in because someone else had signed off on her name. Betch. But she manages to get in anyway. In the middle of that, we lose one of my other friends, and I practically spend most of the night there trying to look for him. I stay with my friends who are still in the club and make out with them for the midnight countdown, then I'm off to find my lost friend. A couple of my other friends were trying to help me find him, but I suspected he'd gone home because he lives close by. So I take a friend with me to his place, luckily we get in the building, and he didn't lock the door. And voila - he's there in his room drunk off his ass. I'm kind of mad and irritated that he left for no real reason, but glad that he's ok, despite how frustrated I was while at the club trying to find him.

I tell my friends he's at home and ok, and they come back too and now they're all asleep. I fed them all water, had the sofa bed laid out, and the night is at peace for me! I could be kind of irritated to end up being the sober one at the end of the night (did NOT expect it to be me because last night I was fucked up, and was pretty drunk earlier), but I am not. I am so happy to be sitting here with them, all safe and quiet. I'm about to head out to meet another friend at her apartment and celebrate with them for a bit, then I'll be back here at my friend's to sleep and see them all in the morning. Back at the club, I thought this was going to be the worst night ever, but right now I'm pretty darn happy.

I love my friends and couldn't be happier to be with them on New Year's. They say that how you spend New Year's is how you'll spend the rest of the year? If that's the case, I'm definitely looking forward to being with my close friends in 2011 :) Not that a new year makes any difference to whether I spend time with them or not :P.

Happy New Year everyone. I wish you all the best in 2011.

Merry Christmas

I feel really lucky to be where I am right now. I have a lot of great people around me and I cannot have asked for more, and sometimes I don't deserve it. But sometimes I still feel like I am competing with people to achieve goals, and that I am constantly bending over backwards to ensure that I am not boasting, or bragging, or being too overly confident, or helping someone achieve their goals over mine. And I do that because I believe in karma and feel that modesty is a really good trait to have.

I do think I should be a little more selfish and try not to think of what others would think of me and how what I do would affect them. I feel like this isn't a time to be best friends with people (who are competing with you to achieve the same things), but instead to look out for myself. But I always feel guilty and always try to please the other person and place them before me.

Blargh.

Tattoos tattoos tattoos

Yay! So I got that "One thinks and deals in a language." quote tattooed on my right side. Now I am thinking of getting an outline of the map of the world right underneath it. Suitable, no?
Plus of course the other tattoos that I already mentioned:
A mermaid on my left foot.
A fleur-de-lis somewhere on my left side, or the left of my back, or my left inner forearm.
Another quote on the left side of my back, below the shoulder blade.
A realistic looking crab on my right shoulder blade.
An antique sewing machine.
The theatre tragedy/comedy masks.
A compass?


And I would like a nostril piercing! - DONE!

Confusion

There are so many things in this world that I love, but so many to question and to doubt, and things that I cannot comprehend whatsoever. I am privileged to say, that I live a happy, healthy life, filled with loving, caring people. I may have very little money in my bank now, but I know that I am earning it, and that I have the ability to spend it. I stay up late at night, and get up early in the morning and I complain about being exhausted from all the work that I do, but I have a bed and a house to sleep in, and I have the means to transport myself to other places and accomplish things. I can eat and drink without a second thought, and I do not worry about being able to afford my next meal. I feel lucky tonight, and I so appreciate all of this, because I know that many people in the world fight for their lives every minute of the day.

Things I don't understand, are how people treat each other and others. Why discrimination exists, why homelessness exists, why genocide exists, why people can be pushed so far as to end their own life.
The recent news of the four teenagers who ended their life due to extreme bullying has once again made me lose my faith in humanity. I just cannot comprehend the level of cruelty that exists in a human being. What drives these people to discriminate others? So far that their victims feel the need to end their life. And how do these people live with themselves, knowing that they've contributed to a suicide? Or do they even realize? Acknowledge? The hard part of this it is the youth who are the centre of this issue. Our future generations. Even worse, are the adults who choose to ignore this bullying, who are the root of these youths' discrimination, and who provide no means of release and help to those who are discriminated against.
I don't understand why we haven't learned from our historical pasts, that hate and discrimination stops us at an evolutionary standstill. The Salem witch trials, the Holocaust, and slavery are probably the three most predominant historical examples of discrimination in my mind. During the witch trials, it was not just the women who were thought to practice witchcraft that were killed. Homosexual men were wrapped in "faggots"(a unit of measurement for a bundle of sticks) to be used as firewood for burning the "witches", and this is where the modern slang term "faggot" is used for a homosexual man comes from.
I would like to talk to these people one day, and ask them to rationalize their discrimination towards others. I want to know what goes through their head when they tease, bully, abuse, harass, and push people to their limits. I want to ask them and have them answer me thoroughly, and maybe when they hear themselves, there might be a second during the time that they're responding to acknowledge the reality of their words and their actions.
I feel like people do not appreciate the gift that they are given, which is life. How can so much pain be inflicted when one lives on such a flourishing world like this? How can people be so selfish, so abusive, and sadistic?
These are the things that I do not understand.

Tattoo bug

I think I'd like to get at least three or four more tattoos.
Fleur-de-lis
A mermaid (not cartoony)
A realistic-looking crab
A quote, these are possibilities:
"Ich denke, dass ich denke - also denke ich, dass ich denke."
"Man denkt und handelt in Sprache."
"One thinks and deals in a language."
"The best way to find out if you can trust someone is to trust them." - Ernest Hemingway

That is all.