Hiatus

As I prepare to leave for Korea for the next year,  I am working on a new website and blog to keep track of my journeys, which means I will hardly have any time to post on this blog! 

If you have the urge, check it out and subscribe for updates! I recommend it! :)

www.adventuresofanamericannomad.com 

Birthday Blog Recap!

Friday, April 13th was my 22nd birthday! I don't feel much different now than I did at 21, and I'd like to think I'm right where I'd like to be: I've already graduated college, I'm working now, and in 4 months I'll be living halfway around the world.

Anyways, I think I celebrated 22 the right way. Max and I went to the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium! It was amazing; I missed the zoo, and Max had never been there! My family used to have a membership when I was growing up, so nostalgia probably influenced my decision to go there, but it was such a wonderful decision!

Me with the elephants!!!

Max with his favorite animal-lemurs!

I was very disappointed when I saw that the Komodo dragon had died, as he was one of my favorite animals! But I very much enjoyed the elephants (of course I did!), and the baby gorilla was delightful!  The aquarium is always a wonderful place too, with all the colorful beauty that exists underwater! 

Max and I side-by-side with the polar bear statue outside the aquarium.

After getting some cookies and cream Dippin' Dots ice cream on the way back to the car, we went home and baked a Romanian sweet bread for my internship showing of a Romanian film entitled Best Intentions the next day. The bread smelled delicious, but alas we did not get to try any of it! :( But all was well, as we didn't spoil our appetite for dinner!

For dinner, we ventured over to the North Side for Thai food at Nicky's Thai Kitchen. It was some of the most incredible Thai food I've ever had!! Major thanks to my co-worker who suggested it!  We got the spiciest Tom Yum soup ever, and it was AMAZING! I also got spicy basil fried rice with lump crab meat, and it was phenomenal.  I'd definitely go back ASAP.

After dinner, we went back to the house to dress-up and get ready to go to Static Nightclub in the Strip District to dance the night away! I had a brand new dress from Forever 21 that I had been waiting to wear to Static. We got a private table, and we got to see all of our friends who weren't attending beforehand, when they came over to our house to help us pregame! It was a great night, even though my feet killed me afterwards!

Toni and I in our birthday dresses before Static!

 22 is bound to be a great year, and I can't wait to see what will unfold!

My Next Life

I don't think I could put this any better myself:

Carnegie Mellon International Film Festival

Every year, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) puts on an International Film Festival, in which over a dozen films from all over the world are shown in various venues throughout Pittsburgh. This year, the theme is 'Faces of Others,' which, in the words of our director, Jolanta Lion is defined as such:

"How do we define the Other? The term Other can be defined as anyone or anything that is not us. At first a seemingly simple notion, under careful consideration the term becomes more ambiguous and complex. An Other can be identified as anyone of a different culture, language, religion, gender, appearance, sexual preference, personality, world view, the list could go on. In contrast, an Other can also be something very familiar to us: our family, our desires, or even ourselves in times when our thoughts and actions do not seem to align with the person we thought we were.

In the midst of these musings, our minds begin to wonder. Is it possible to understand the Other? Is it possible, in a world full of binary relationships, to know who the Other is: the citizen or the foreigner, the parent or the child, the audience or the film? Perhaps most importantly, can the Other even exist? Or is the Other just our mind's creation used to explain that which is different from us?"

I find these words to be beautiful, and I have learned, and am continuing to learn more and more with each event. I found myself especially attracted to the internship, as "Other" is a huge facet within cultural anthropology. These films have added another meaning to the word, as I watch the stories play out on the screen.

This weekend three of the directors will be in town, and it will certainly add a new dimension to the film to be able to have a question and answer session with the director following the screening. I encourage anyone and everyone to check it out: www.cmu.edu/faces. On this site, you will find the event schedule, ticketing prices, locations of the theaters and more!

I've also met a lot of wonderful people through this internship. Not just the director of the festival, or the film directors, or the guests, but also my fellow interns. They are all such great people from both CMU and Pitt, and we have worked so well together to help this festival run as smoothly as possible. Check out all of the interns here! That video is shown to introduce the major events of the festival to show all of our hard work, and displays our individuality-even though we all worked together, we are each an "Other" ourselves.

Come check it out!! You won't regret it!

Why Americans Can't Learn Foreign Languages

I found this interesting posts in my adventures through Stumble Upon, and I found it rather interesting, so I wanted to share it. Although it is from 2006, I believe there is still much factual truth in the article's main points:

WHY AMERICANS CAN'T LEARN FOREIGN LANGUAGES

What struck me most of all about Lawrence Henry's piece on accents was something Mark didn't even mention. Mr Henry notes that in American English a totally unstressed vowel is reduced to a sound usually written down as "uh" (the sound linguists call schwa); and he goes on:

It's a rampant American fault and accounts for our relatively poor performance learning foreign languages. "Effect" becomes "uh-FECT." Cassette becomes "kuh-SET."

An accurate enough phonetic observation: the first syllable in these words is pronounced with a schwa, whereas many other languages have no schwas at all, in any words. My horse laugh at the quoted remark comes not from this phonetic fact but from the astoundingly dopey idea that it is a "fault" that provides the key to the riddle of why Americans don't do so well at learning foreign languages.

Steve Jones points out me, for example, that western varieties of Catalan do not have schwa, but in Central Catalan (of Barcelona) there is reduction that makes schwa the most frequent vowel in actual speech; yet this doesn't correlate with any perceptible difference in language-learning ability Catalan speakers from different regions of eastern Spain. Henry's remark about how vowel reduction to schwa "accounts for our relatively poor performance" really is astoundingly dumb.

Why we Americans, with our staggering wealth of resources and (for example) the most highly ranked graduate schools in the world, do so poorly by any measure on our command of foreign tongues is a complex question with a mainly sociological, political, historical, educational, and social-psychological answer. (Never forget that John Kerry is said to have had to attempt concealment of his fluent French to avoid bad press during his Presidential run, and Nebraska in the early 1920s had a law making foreign language instruction illegal, and in that very same state as recently as 2003 a father was threatened by a judge with loss of the right to visit his child if he didn't speak English during his visits... This country could not exactly be said to be uniformly friendly toward polyglotism. Nor does it always honor the accomplishment of those immigrants and Native Americans who speak a heritage language at home and English elsewhere — in fact punishment of Native American children for speaking their Amerindian language while in school used to be commonplace.) It's certainly quite a bit more complex than anything traceable to the reduction of unstressed vowels to schwa. Don't give up on taking foreign language lessons simply on the grounds that as an American you are doomed to failure by your learned vowel reduction habits.

Posted by Geoffrey K. Pullum at November 23, 2006 01:34 PM

Dancing My Way Into a New Job

I feel like a lot has happened since I've last posted, and I keep wanting to post to catch up on everything, but instead, something else major happens. Which not only pushes back me posting, but also leave me with a lot more to post about!! I barely know where to start.

Max moved back to Pittsburgh and is currently living in my room with Autumn and I. It's really nice to have him around, even just for the stupid little things, like having lunch together or falling asleep watching a movie on the couch. He's starting his own company designing websites, and I can't wait to see where it goes from here!

Max arrived back in Pittsburgh January 28th, so on the 29th, we decided to have an adventure! Jess, Anna, Javid, and Andres joined us as we galavanted through Scheneley Park, colored beautiful artwork, and watched an epic snowstorm roll in from the vantage point of Javid's roof.

In the photos below, Anna and the boys have a conversation overlooking the pond in Scheneley. It was such a beautiful day, and although cold, we managed to all stay warm and happy together! Below that, you can see more of our adventures through photos. Jess had a yo-yo that she loved, and she also brought a bubble wand which I danced around with as we watched the bubbles land on the surface of the lake and float off far into the distance.

Andres moved to Delaware to start his new job about a week after that, so it was a nice goodbye sort of thing.

A little over a week after our big adventure, on February 8th, a group of us went to a Rusko concert in the Strip District at Club Zoo, which is right next to Static, an awesome dance club and bar. Jess, Max, Javid, Sveta, Intaek, his girl Julia, and myself went and had such a blast! We danced the night away and even got the whole way to the front!

I seriously love this picture of Jess and I, with our sweet glow sticks! It was so hard for us to stop dancing long enough to get a picture together!!

The boys, all sweaty and happy, at the show during Rusko's performance!

And the man himself:

The next day, I had an interview with Adventure Teaching, and at the end of the interview, I got offered a position teaching English in South Korea for a year! I am almost positive I am going to go, as it is a dream come true, and I would definitely regret it if I didn't! Anna also got the position, and we are trying to live together over there so we can travel and explore Asia together!!

Other than that, it has just been work and hanging out with friends. Andres came back this weekend, and we all had a great time going out with him!

Oh, and Happy Mardi Gras!! :)

College Life, Post Graduation

I've been back in Oakland for 9 days now, and the new semester seems to be in full swing. All of my friends are back in classes, and I'm working about 20 hours a week in the Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science department of the Swanson School of Engineering, along with a new babysitting gig I just picked up, and, of course, those birthday parties at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh. There is a nice rhythm to life right now, so I'm very hesitant for anyone to come in and change that.

This past weekend was certainly a whirlwind welcome-back-to-the-dirty-O, full of incredibleness. (Yes, I'm making that a word.) There was dancing: like a white girl, on table tops, with an adorable old man. There was drinking: beer, wine, rum, vodka, tequila, gin. And my personal favorite of the weekend, there was a crate race!

Let me explain. A crate race, in this case, consisted of teams of six people, with no more than three guys, and a case of beer (30 cans), two forties, a box of wine, and a fifth of liquor (at least 70 proof). Originally, we had at least four teams participating, but when it came down to it, we only got two competing teams: the United Kingdom (consisting of our friends Mike, Bruk, Becky, Lauren, Emily, and Tata*)(*Tata killed their fifth of rum in literally like 5 minutes. It was unreal!) and our team, the USSR, which was, from left to right in the picture below, Tom, Javid, Jess, myself, Anna, and Andres.


We thought we had this on lock, but Tata's performance was a little scary. But we ended up pulling through and winning! It was epic and so much fun! Here's us about three seconds after our victory:

In actuality, everyone ended up winning, because we all had such a good time, and we all got to hang out and drink and socialize. Even though a few of us may have been in pain the next day, it was definitely a pleasurable experience, and I would love to do it again soon!

To quote my friend Jess at the crate race: "Sometimes, I look around, and I'm so proud of what my friends have become." I agree, I really do love my friends, so I am one of the luckiest girls in the world.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It's that time of year again! 2012 is almost upon us. Christmas was absolutely amazing. My boyfriend, Max, came up on the 23rd and is staying with me until we head back to Oakland for New Years, and then we're off to Albany for the first week of the new year. For Christmas, he got me a jar of bacon mayo (seriously.), a grow-your-own dinosaur plant with lava rocks, and a beautiful pearl bracelet.

I got him his first stocking (he's Jewish), with socks, cologne, and chocolate inside. I found these cute little packages of Nutella with breadsticks, and I knew Max would love them! I also got him a Pitt hoodie, a sweater (it's so soft and cozy), a watch, and a reversible belt.

We went to my Dad's family and my Mom's cousin's house, so it was busy, but it was so nice to see all of the cousins and aunts and uncles and such, and it was great to introduce Max to all of them, since he isn't used to big family things. It was a wonderful holiday all around!

Now, it's time to figure out New Year's plans and make resolutions. I know I tried to have mid year's resolutions in my first post on this blog, but this time, I really want to have resolutions I can keep. I'm really interested in getting into Buddhism, at these in the theory and readings of the faith. I'm also definitely giving up meat. I feel so much healthier when I do it, and it also marks the new stage in my life of being a college graduate. I'm excited to start a new year, with new goals and hopes. ♥

Life Passes By So Quickly

I know I've failed at blogging when I haven't posted for over 2 months. But everything has just been so busy! But on Saturday, I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh! I feels like just yesterday that I was moving my belongings into Holland Hall to start my freshman year. Check out a picture of me at graduation with my diploma below! (disclaimer: it wasn't really my diploma yet, but its a cool diploma frame thing haha)



And to think, I've had the same wonderful friends for these whole 3 and 1/2 years! I certainly couldn't have done it without them. They were there through the thick and the thin, and even though I've had friends that have come and gone (who hasn't!), I have that group of friends that will be together for a long time to come. Regardless of where the road takes us next year or further into the future, I know that I will always keep in touch with them. And an extra plus is that we're all so cute together (and modest to boot).

A Post to Your Future Self

Calen,

You need to remember a few very important things in life, especially that you should not change your life plans for anyone else. That is just how you end up being let down and feeling guilty. Make plans and keep them. Do not change your plans for someone, because chances are they will change their plans on you, and you will be the one left alone. Even when you think they are different and they will feel bad, they won't, and they won't come back for you, so stick to your guns, do what's best for you, and be happy. Nothing will make you happier than doing something for yourself, regardless of how tough it may be, or how much it hurts at the time. Pick your future plans only based on yourself, because you can't expect someone else to change their plans for you and you need to look out for what's best for you. It is scary growing up and having to make possibly the first real adult decisions that will forever affect your future, but that's just it-its your future, so you have to do it for you. No one else can tell you what the future holds or how you should handle it, so when you pick your own route, you must be accountable for it and learn to keep your chin up and deal with it. Life is rough, but what doesn't kill you always makes you stronger, so be independent; you always have been, don't change now.

<3

The "Importance" of Liberal Arts

Today was the University of Pittsburgh annual fall Career Fair at the Petersen Event Center. My friend Jess and I got up early, got all dressed up, went and had a delicious breakfast at Panera, and caught the bus up to the Pete early for a special Networking Event prior to the start of the fair. Since I'm graduating in December, I was really excited to go and find myself a job for the spring semester while I'm still in Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, all I found was a lot of frustration. The university stresses the importance of liberal arts, but at Career Fairs such as this one, there were very few employers looking for anyone but a business or engineering student. Some were looking for biological/hard science majors, but rarely were there any for social sciences and the humanities. I love anthropology and linguistics and I love the courses I've taken and I love the experiences I've had, but would I really have been better off taking a different path in school and pursuing a different interest of mine-say, in finance?!

Its incredibly frustrating, as I am an Undergraduate Teaching Assistant for an Introduction to Arts and Sciences class, and I'm constantly stressing to them the importance of the liberal arts, with required readings, etc. Pitt even makes all Arts and Science students take a series of General Education requirements, spanning the whole range of courses, requiring focus on the liberal arts. But then, is this how I'm getting rewarded for this-by multiple rejections from potential employers?

What Kind of Woman am I?

This semester, I'm taking my last class towards my linguistics minor, LING 1235: Language, Gender and Society. For our first major assignment, we have to basically identify what kind of woman (or man) we are, and what we do that fits into our particular prescribed cultural gender roles and conversely, what we do that diverges from our assumed gender identities. We were given very open ended instructions for this assignment, so I figured using my personal blog to record my thoughts would be both a unique method of completing the assignment and also an interesting and thought-provoking topic on which to blog.

So who am I? Calen Alexandra Cygan: 21 years young, a senior at the University of Pittsburgh, majoring in Anthropology (specifically cultural), with a certificate in International and Area Studies (with a focus on Europe) and minors in both Linguistics and Italian Language and Literature. I currently hold two jobs: I work at Benedum Hall as a Student Assistant in the department of Mechanical Engineering and Material Science during the week, and on the weekends, I’m a ‘Birthday Party Pal’ at the Children’s Museum. I love both of my jobs! I would say I’m a pretty typical college student; I like hanging out with my friends when I’m not reading or doing homework for classes. And when I graduate (early-at the end of this semester!), I plan to continue on the academia path to earn my PhD in Anthropological Linguistics.

But that really says nothing about what kind of woman I am. I like to paint my nails and gossip with my girlfriends. I like shopping for clothes, and I enjoy getting dressed up (although, most times its more because I have to for work, especially with working in a professional setting such as in Benedum Hall). My ideal midlife crisis job would be to become a makeup artist for Sephora. I like to cook. This summer, I worked a third job as a babysitter at the Jewish Community Center in Squirrel Hill, and I absolutely loved getting to hold the infants. Kids really make me so happy with their carefree attitudes and how they say whatever is on their minds; the Children's Museum reminds me of that almost every weekend. Baby animals, regardless of species, always have a soft spot in my heart. I am definitely a caring person, which certainly plays into the expectations of my gender. Growing up, I was a cheerleader, a gymnast, and a ballet and tap dancer. I have a stuffed elephant, Peanut, who I sleep with every night and take on every trip with me!

I have a second degree black belt in Taekwondo, and more often than not, I’d rather be “one of the guys,” than chattering around a large crowd of girls. I really like sports, my favorite being football and hockey and my favorite teams being the New York Giants and the New York Rangers, respectively-even though I’m from the Pittsburgh area! I know more about sports than my boyfriend, and he also comes to me for advice for things like generator engines; he lost power during Hurricane Irene and could not figure out how to work the choke on his generator-I had it up and running in less than 20 minutes talking him through it over the phone. I know a lot about car makes and models, and I even started rebuilding a car essentially from scrap metal when I was 14. I listen to a wide variety of music, but some of my favorite stuff I've gotten from my guy friends. I can't imagine many girls listening to much dubstep music-like this song, which I listened to repeatedly while writing this blog entry. I like to play video games, and can beat most guys at any game in the Madden series, as well as most other sports games. I own a Nintendo-64 game system, and I love it! I prefer Nintendo consoles to Sony ones like the Playstation, as the controllers confuse me!

It's difficult for me to differentiate what I do that specifically makes me a woman or counters my femininity, as the really close girlfriends I do have are very similar to myself. Throughout college, we have all remarked multiple times how funny it is that we are all friends, as we always got along better with guys in high school and we never expected to have this many good girlfriends in college. I've been lucky to have made nearly all of my best girlfriends within the first six months of college, and all my close guy friends by the middle of sophomore year, so being friends with the same large group of people for quite some time now has made me become comfortable with our habits and lose track of what sets us apart or makes us similar to the other gender and to each other in general. (Below center: all my best girlfriends and I watching Super Bowl XLV where the Steelers lost to the Green Bay Packers//sorry for the vulgarity of my friend in this image!!)

We seem to have moments where we all really do fit in with the guys-see picture above, with almost all of us in Steelers jerseys watching the game with our guy friends. And of course, every so often, I'll do something that makes me feel really "girly." For instance, a couple of weeks ago, my roommates and I were all watching television, when they all left to go grab some food. I wasn't paying attention to the show they were watching until after they left; it was "Say Yes to the Dress" a show in which brides-to-be try on a variety of wedding dresses until they find one that suits them. While watching the show, I started searching the internet for wedding dresses of my own, resulting in me having four ideal wedding dresses, two different styles of bridesmaid dresses, and even a couple beautiful engagement rings open in my browser when my roommates returned. By no means am I ready for anything even resembling marriage, but looking up these dresses and even fantasizing about a wedding someday is definitely something that makes me a woman-I've never met a guy who has his dream wedding colors picked out, but if I ask any of my girlfriend, they will give you at least two colors without the slightest bit of hesitation.

Reading over my analysis of myself and my gender and how I portray that gender shows me that culture plays a huge role in determine what's "right and wrong" for a particular gender. Even the conscious thought of my friends and I-which usually goes something like "God, we're such dudes!!"-shows that we are aware of how we should act as women and how we deviate from that, both consciously and unconsciously. I never remember to sit with my legs crossed and I constantly have to be reminded to bend at the knees when I'm wearing a dress. But the fact that I even wear dresses is a completely culturally constructed concept. Looking at it from an anthropological perspective (I tend to do that!), gender stereotypes are just that-stereotypes. I'm expected to wear dresses and paint my nails and speak like a lady, just because I biologically am such. But in fact, I curse like a sailor, even when I am in a dress and heels.

So, to answer the question 'What Kind of Woman am I?' in 1200 words is difficult, as being a woman in America is different than being a woman in Iraq or in Ghana or even in Brazil. I do not fit neatly into a gender specific package, but I doubt anyone does. I can be extremely girly, but I can also fit right in as 'one of the guys.' Language is certainly one of the ways that I can be feminine, but certainly some of the things I say defy my gender role as well. Thinking about this for this assignment definitely made me more aware of the gendered things I do, and I'll be more aware for particular characteristics of each gender's conversational habits as this class continues.

Mamihlapinatapai

“A look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start.”

Travel and Growing Up

I want to go somewhere. Yesterday, I worked on updating my travel blog and I think it gave me the travel fever again. I still need to update about my travels in Latin America, but all of Europe is complete (only like a year later).

I would love for travel to be cheaper, then I would go visit my best friend in Australia and my boyfriend in Albany, NY. Did you know that a plane ticket to Albany, NY from Pittsburgh, PA is $350?!? And that's not even at a peak time, like a long weekend-I was going to try to go for Labor Day weekend, but that's even more expensive, so virtually impossible. He only moved back to Albany three days ago, but it seems like a lifetime since I've seen him last. Which is lame, perhaps, but he left while Jess was in Vegas with Kate, and Anna's been in Australia for a month already, and I just felt very sad and alone when he left.

It's just strange; we're actually growing up. I'm looking into graduate schools and plans for after graduation, people are getting engaged and married, we're all going our own directions and moving away. It's scary and weird after spending the last 3-4 years with these people, some of them you may never see again. Not that that's

necessarily a bad thing, but it will suck to see the people I do actually care about move away, or for me to move away from them. I grew up here in Oakland, really. I became the person I am now, the person who will make the major decisions of my life. Its terrifying really, but I do have good friends and a wonderful boyfriend, all of whom will listen to me, be great sounding boards, and let me know their opinions on my potential life paths.

But really, does life ever get any easier from here?

Decisions, Decisions

I'm graduating in less than 5 months, and that is the most terrifying thought ever. What am I going to do once I graduate: Peace Corps, teaching English abroad, or going straight to grad school? What about going directly into a career? All of these things are horrifying, as I am naturally an academic, going to school for 18 years of my life, to now, the real world-which doesn't let you have summers off and barely allows enough time for yourself, let alone having time to see your friends. It's hard to even talk to friends about such decisions, as everyone wants different things and has various plans, so of course their opinions are biased in one way or another.

I've got a few opinions I'm considering right now:

1. Peace Corps

The Peace Corps is a 27 month program in many regions in almost every continent of the world,

helping the local community in one of six specific areas- education, health, and environmental sustainability just to name a few. I'd become fluent in at least one other language, if not more, and the area in which I would be placed could be the focus of my graduate work in anthropology in the future.

2. JET Programme

The JET Programme, or Japanese English Teachers, sends native English speakers to Japan for a full year to teach English in local schools. It's shorter than the Peace Corps, and they help you find housing while you make a decent salary, especially for being a new college graduate. The downfall is that it's in Japan, which I really have no desire to focus on in my graduate studies nor do I really care to learn the language, so it would just be a fun year abroad. Of course, there are programs similar to this all over the world, but they do not pay as well, nor are they as safe or through the government, like this one.

3. Graduate School

Last, but not least (or maybe it is...), is going straight to graduate school. I know that I want to continue on at some point to do graduate work in anthropological linguistics, but other than that, I'm at a blank. I'm taking my GREs in a couple days (wish me luck!), so I can apply to grad schools to further weigh my options, but its terrifying. I am looking into Arizona University, Columbia, Princeton, and a few other Ivy's, because, let's face it, go big or go home (or abroad!), but if I had to pick right this moment, I'd go with AU because they have the best anthropological linguistics program I can find, and the housing is pretty cheap and nice out in Tuscon, so that would be convenient. We'll see!!

Music makes my heart beat. Lub-Dub[step]

Best songs to listen to during a walk in the park :)

1. Cinema -Benny Benassi (Skrillex remix)

-And the original Benassi mix.
2. Bass Down Low-The Cataracts
3. Anything by Ratatat-i.e. Loud Pipes, Swisha, Biggie's Party and Bullshit, Nostrand, etc.
4. Satellites-B.o.B.
5. Most mash-ups by The White Panda (who I'm going to see this weekend!!)
6. Mitsubitchi-The Subs
7. Woo Boost-Rusko

Update #1 (1.18.12)

8. Guilt-Nero

9. Rock'n'Roll-Skrillex

This list will definitely be constantly updated, for sure!

Mid Year Resolutions

I would like to preface my first official post on my newest blog with a hello! I finally got my blogger account out of my Pitt email and onto my gmail, so I can start to post. I have a few posts that I've started on, but saved as drafts, so I plan to first go through those and post my previous [and hopefully, still relevant] thoughts.

So its July. Where did the first half of the year go?! I feel like the Black and Gold New Years Blackout at 319 Meyran was just last weekend!! Since then, we've countless 21st birthdays (mine included!), and had our ups and downs as a group of friends. Life is good all around. But its July. So its time for Mid Year Resolutions. Everyone can make New Years Resolutions, but does anyone really keep them for more than a couple of weeks? Mid Year Resolutions give me a chance to reevaluate my life so far and decide what I want to change about myself so far through 2011. So here goes:

1. I want to stop needless gossiping. I like gossip as much as the next girl, but sometimes the things said [myself included] could really hurt someone. If someone wants me to know something, they will tell me on their own terms. Now, that's not to say that I won't engage in the occasional what-happened-last-night gossip and whatnot, but I want to try to scale back certain types of gossip in my life.

2. I want to be a vegetarian again. It makes me feel so much better and healthier-and it's cheaper, which is definitely an added bonus. Along with that, I want to go to the gym more often and get into a little bit better shape. Not that I am unhappy with how I look or feel now, but there's always room for improvements.

Other than those lofty goals, I just want to make the most of everyday, enjoying time with my stellar friends, my amazing boyfriend, and with the kids I work with. Life is good. :)