An Ideal

In the past year, things have changed drastiacally, and I find myself constantly asking myself the question, "What do you want to do with your life?"
Yesterday at church, the pastor was preaching on 1 Timothy 3--specifically the qualifications of elders--and he encouraged young boys to see if there was a certain burning in their hearts, a feeling that maybe they should head toward ministry. He said that, at 10, he had felt a strong desire to go into pastoring, and therefore, had spent his life heading down that course.
I paused in my notetaking, and I tried to think of anything I'd felt a burning passion toward.
I work in a Kindergarten at present, and I'm taking evening classes to become certified to teach Secondary English. I love Kindergarten, but it's not my passion. High School English is much closer to a passion (certainly, it's easier to feel passionate about Chaucer and Dante than it is to feel passionate about the letter "M").
There are only two things that burn in my heart as passions: traveling (and good luck making a career out of this) and writing (good luck making a career out of that either!)
But then, it hit me. And now, naturally, I have the rest of my life figured out.
I want to be a teacher in a foreign country who moonlights as a travel writer.
In other words, when I have my certificate in 2013, I want to move to one of those overseas boarding schools (Dakar? Santiago, DR? Vienna?), and then, in my free time (let's hope I have some), I'll write accounts of everything I do and learn and experience while overseas.
The idea seems brilliant to me.
Of course, let's examine my current position.
I'm sitting behind a desk at my night job, preparing to answer calls that rarely come in. I'm reading Lost on Planet China and eating leftover Lunchables.
About anything sounds good right now. Still, I think I can say in a clear-headed way that I want to moonlight as a travel writer.
Let's see how this goes...

Wanderlust Continued....

Tonight, I've been looking through pictures I took while I lived in Europe. I continued to feel this overwhelming need to travel. Since Monday, I've dreamt of traveling. I've written about traveling. I find myself constantly talking about where I'll go on the next trip.
I cleaned out the library's travel memoir section, and I find that I cannot stand to stop reading.
It isn't quite the trip I would have hoped for, but in those few moments I spend inside the pages, I do feel that I'm somewhere special and unique.
And yet, the feeling doesn't last after I close the book.
It's.time.to.go.

Speaking French Continued and Wanderlust Hits

So, I thought my French speaking was challenged by the Alliance Francaise meeting a few weeks ago, and as it turns out, the French speaking challenge continues.
Last Tuesday, I walked into work and a fourth grade teacher approached me and said, "I hear you speak French."
I nodded.
"We got a new kid in the fourth grade," she said. "She's from the Ivory Coast."
I felt my heart begin to race. Could it be that, finally, there was someone in my day-to-day life who spoke French?
"And the bad news is, she speaks no English...and neither does her family."
Now, I felt bad for the little girl and even worse for her family who, as it turns out, work as maids in a hotel downtown in the heart of the city, and yet still, I couldn't quite believe the good fortune.
We parted ways that morning, and I urged her to come find me if she needed me. The first day went well. We exchanged pleasantries and talked about small, insignificant things. But then, on the second day of school, I went up to the girl's classroom to help her make her lunch choice, and she wasn't there. The school called up her sister's school. The sister had made it to school and assured us that her sister had been at the busstop when she left. I finally phoned the mother, palms sweaty and hands shaking, partially wondering how clear my French would be and partially worrying about the girl. I told the girl's mother that she hadn't gone to school, and the mother rushed out of work, drove the streets of the city until she found her daughter, wandering around in the snow.
The girl had begun to doubt that she was in the right place, she told us later, and she went home to check where her busstop was. Meanwhile, the bus passed, and the girl coudn't find her house. Her mother was already at work, and not knowing English, she didn't know how to communicate to anyone around her. But thankfully, disaster averted. The principal picked her up at the family's apartment and brought her to school. Thankfully, things have gone more smoothly since. I struggled to explain what a tostada was this morning (do you know what a tortilla is? No. How about a wrap? No. Well, I guess you could say it's like a crunchy pizza...), I translated a letter for the parents when they came in confused over something they'd received in the mail, and I translated a very awkward conversation a few days ago (the principal told her, after 4 days, that she should no longer wear the same clothes, because in America, we just don't do that), but for the most part things have improved. I do realize, however, that I have a long way to go in my French speaking, and hearby, reaffirm my resolution to work harder on my oral and written French skills.
And on a similar but different note, lately, I have felt an intense need to head out of the States.
A Norwegian friend of mine who currently lives in Paris wrote me a while ago and offered me her apartment for the next several months while she does an internship in America. I considered the offer, but at that point, my fiance had not yet left Paris for Pretoria, so I didn't want to be anywhere near him with so much healing left to do. I told her no, but vaguely regretted the decision.
Then, Friday, I began reading a book called Honeymoon with my Brother. It's the story of a man who is dumped by his fiancee (sound familiar?!), but he had already paid for their honeymoon, she along with his brother, he embarks on the planned Costa Rican vacation. The brothers end up having so much fun that they return home, sell their homes and possessions and head overseas for the next two years, and in the process, visit 53 countries.
And in addition to all of this, my cousin left yesterday for Togo, West Africa. She'll be working there for the next three months. She urged me to come visit, but ah life... Jobs, bills, responsibilities... I can't see any way to go.
Still, with all of this travel and talk of travel, I want so badly to head back oversea.
Prague is a must-see. I've heard people rave about how it's the perfect collision of Western and Eastern Europe. I heard amazing things about the spired buildings and interesting post-Communist atmosphere.
I also have wanted to see Capetown since my ex-fiance extolled its virtues when we debated where to honeymoon.
And then, there's the typical Ireland, Scotland, England trip I've meant to take for a while. My former roommate in Paris is living in London now and assured me a place to stay. And though I see 3 days' worth of Ireland, I'd love to see more.
So much to see. So little money.
Still, I've decided to save $200 a month toward an international vacation. After budgeting the cost of a plane ticket and the cost of a 9-day adventure, I think I could feasibly take said trip in the summer of 2013.
I already feel excited at the prospect.
But for now, I have to save and continue to be wiser with money.

Speaking French again

Time continues to pass, and little by little, I find myself thinking of S less and less. But there are still moments when he comes into my head, when I see someone who resembles him or hear a song that evokes memories of him. This past week, he's been with me almost constantly. I'm not entirely sure why, but I find myself dreaming of him, and then, during those conscious day-time hours, I try to force myself to forget.
I've been running around frantically, trying to keep my mind occupied. I find that I still cannot quite bear the thought of him.
This week, in an effort to have no free time, I decided to give the Alliance Française a try. I had worked my day job, then worked 4 hours at my night job, and then, met this French conversation group at a restaurant on Thursday.  I felt hesitant, unsure of what to think of the upcoming French speaking experience. French is a language that filled my life during the S years. I used to read hours and hours to him, and he would correct my pronounciation. We read through Little Women, through the book of Psalms, and on occasion, Pierre Belmar's real French crime books.
I have lost S, but I prefer not to lose my grasp of the language, so this January, I (you guessed it!) made the resolution to meet with the Alliance Française occasionally and read 4 books in French.
So, Thursday...
I arrived, and to my surprise, met the most interesting people.
There was H, a French-Italian man who had lived in France nearly his entire life, rubbed shoulders with Mitt Romney while Romney was working in France, befriended the great French actor, Gérard Dépardieu, when he was making a scene in a hotel in France, enraged that no one had recognized him.
There was E, a French girl who met her American husband while they both worked in Vietnam, and then, moved with him to the States, and currently works at an International School.
There were the Russians with their perfect American accents and interesting French phrases.
I was so relieved to be speaking French again, to see that I hadn't entirely lost my grasp of the language.
At the end of the night, one of the Russians, appropriately named Sasha, came to sit by me, and he asked all sorts of questions about my life and past and French schooling. He was so comfortable to talk to. We're the same age, in the same general stage of life. I enjoyed him. He was engaging, fun. When I got up to leave, he stood too, and he opened the contacts on his phone and had pressed "Add Contact." I watched all this with a sense of alarm, and I said a quick goodbye (too loudly, too clipped), and I left. I told my friends about the experience later, and they berated me. As they often do, one said, "You'll have to date again sometime. Why not now?"
Why not now?
I still have a strange sense that, in dating someone else, I'd be cheating on S. My heart is still strangely tied to his.
But then, I wonder if this would be different if I met someone I actually really, truly cared about. Someone who was genuinely an option.
I've told myself he has to be at least 27, has to be American (not to be racist, but the international route burned me), he has to be a Christian, and has to have had at least one girlfriend (I will not be the dating experiment.)
I hate thinking about dating again. It isn't comfortable.
But one day, I'll have to do it. I hope I'll meet someone someday that will make me want to date again.

Lettering

This year, I also made the resolution to do a better job of sending cards and letters. Ideally, I'll send them out for birthdays and anniversaries and baby births, but on a more practical (and frankly, a more attainable) level, I just want to keep up with sending out Thank you cards after holidays and to keep up writing to the "pen pals" I already have.
My current pen pal is my roommate from college. She is now living in a tiny studio apartment in Houston, doing her residency at Baylor. I love getting her letters, as it opens up my eyes to a side of life I don't consider often. On the sobering side, her first letter of this year read, "My world last month consisted of pediatric oncology. It's not exactly a 'lift your spirits' type of rotation when you go from room to room telling families that their formally perfect child has conver and needs surgery." On the brighter side, she wrote, "Only exciting news for me was the 'pseudo date' I went on earlier this week," and she went on to detail the expectation-free evening she spent with a fellow resident. Ahhh, the life. (Have I mentioned that's another one of my New Year's resolutions? One meaningless date this year. I'm pretty excited to try that out. I've always been a relationship girl. Never an "expectation free" kind of girl. I'm excited about trying something new...) So, in any case, I'm blessed and happy to have her sending me letters once a month.
So, in addition to writing to her, I'm going to start a one-sided pen palship with someone else. This Sri Lankan woman I met in France. She was, in fact, one of my French students. When I was in the Paris area, I tutored her every Monday, and it's been hard to not see her anymore. When I left, I told her I would return in the winter after the wedding, and we would continue the classes.
After the cancelled wedding, I had written and written to her, but she had never responded. However, just a week ago, I got a Christmas card in the mail from her telling me that she had moved and wondered when I was returning to Paris. "When we start class?" she wrote in her butchered English. So, today, after writing my Pen Pal 1, I wrote to Pen Pal 2. I carefully explained that S no longer wanted to marry, and I explained that I wasn't returning but that I would love to keep in contact through letters. She struggles to write in French or English, so I'm not sure how frequent her letters will be, but starting today, I will try to keep the pipes of communication open.
And now, having written, addressed, and stamped two letters, I sit back in my chair and breathe a sigh of relief.
I'm in contact with people.
I'm less of a hermit.
I'm even a little cosmopolitain with my out-ot-town friends.
So, you know what? That's something. There you go, 2011.
Watch me wrestle my way back into real life.

Starting Fresh

Here it is, after 1:00 in the morning. We are now three days (although, technically 4) into the New Year. I’ve had an out-of-town friend staying with me for the past week, so I’ve been a bit lax about my self-betterment. However, after dropping her off at the airport this afternoon, I rushed home to start knocking items off my To Do list (work and school start up again in 5 days…I need to get down to business!)

In the midst of washing all the clothes in my overflowing laundry basket, I sat down to begin work in one area of this year’s self-betterment: journaling.

This year, one of my resolutions is to journal at least three times a week. I have found that doing this is bittersweet. Just today, I went through my journals from the past few years in Europe. At the start of 2009, I was in Mosbach, Germany, making friends, eating weiner snitzel, feeling that nothing could ever go wrong with life. At the start of 2010, my parents were over visiting in France, and my dad unexpectedly suffered a stroke. S and I welcomed in the New Year sipping cups of soup in the waiting room of St. Anne’s Hospital in Paris while we read each other excerpts of Isaac Babel stories. And last year, S and I had flown to the US together, and he met everyone in my family for the first time. We had made the New Year’s resolution to get married in 2011.

And now, here it is, 2012, and I sat shivering in my cold apartment, because another resolution I have is to spend less money this year. The handwriting inside my journal looked cramped and messy as a result of my spasming hand (the thermostat told me the apartment was 60°), and I sat in my winter coat and boots and told myself this is probably what Dickens did once in a while. Money, as we know, doesn’t grow on trees.

I’ve been told that people who journal are generally less depressed—that they are in touch with their feelings and are better able to process their hurts.

I would love this to be true of me.

So, there I went. I wrote and wrote and processed and processed.

And here’s my conclusion on this third day (technically forth) of January.

I’m starting fresh.

And not only am I starting fresh, 2012 will not disappoint me the way 2011 did. I refuse to let it.

I’m starting out this year single, so chances are, I won’t have to cancel another wedding this year.

Not only that, I can work toward a whole host of things this year: sending articles off for publication, running two half-marathons, enjoying that one meaningless date.

It’s going to be a good year.

I won’t settle for anything less.

So, here’s to starting fresh!