I am about halfway through my abroad experience now and school is becoming is more stressful. I have three final papers that are due in about a month. One is sixty percent of my grade, one is seventy-five percent of my grade, and the third is one hundred percent of my grade, so I feel a lot of pressure to do well. I also have an exam worth one hundred percent of my grade. The good news is I absolutely love my classes. These papers and the exam will be challenging, but I will (hopefully) have fun completing them.
In an effort to get out and be more social, I recently I went an author event with a friend at Foyles (a bookstore in London). I have gone to many book events in the past meeting great authors such as Eliza Osborn, Lauren Magaziner, Jerri Spinelli, Nicole Dennis-Benn, Jacqueline Woodson and Sarah Dessen. I also wrote to Stephen Chbosky, the author of the Perks of Being a Wallflower and he wrote me back! Books have had such a strong impact on my life, so going to an author event in London was so exciting and it felt familiar to me.
I also recently went to Spain with my family! As I mentioned in my first blog post, I have always wanted to go to Spain, Italy and London partially because of the Cheetah Girls, Lizzie McGuire, and the Bratz. I cannot believe I was able to fulfill my childhood dreams! Being abroad has ignited a hope within me that I will live a life that is fulfilling and rich in experience. I have made an internal list of all of my dreams that have come true and my abroad experiences have added to my list in ways I never could have expected. I feel so grateful that I even have a list of dreams that have come true, and I can’t wait to continue to add to it while I am here. I have written more poetry to document my experiences. Here it is!
Spain
Guitar playing softly
Music curling around my ears
Joy bubbles in my stomach and makes its up way up to my heart
Spreading like the steam from boiling tea
Sultry saxophone blaring, bouncing off the walls of the subway
A rapper in the subway car
His words rolling around the bumpy train
Museu Nacional D’art De Catalunya
We look up at you
With layers of waterfall that fold in on each other like a three-step staircase
Trees surround you, hugging you close
I stand and stare
With my words
I try to hold you
Like one gingerly holds a lightning bug
In cupped palms
Living my Cheetah Girl Dream
“Can you play the Cheetah girls? Please oh please?” we ask. Mami says after a minute! So we wait and wait and suddenly
The music starts, guitar fills the room and dialogue begins
We look at each other
Nostalgia fills the room
We dance and shimmy, strut down the hotel room like the queens we are
What a way
To start our day
Street Art: London
We look for you
Like children playing hide and seek,
where’s Waldo, and I spy
Our eyes search the walls
Looking for bits and pieces of you
I see you peeking from around the street corner
Hidden on top of buildings
On store walls
A family of paintings pasted on alley walls
My eyes hop from image to image
We eagerly capture pictures
Then continue
to sift for gold
