Amanda Goes East (and other stories)

I finished my first scarf ever! I'm going to wear it excessively once it gets cold enough.






I probably should have closed the closet door.

Well, my 8 weeks of solitude are coming to an end. Now I just need to get the house in order, cram everything from the last 9 months of my life into 2 suitcases, and find my way to the airport. Nothing too bad, right? Right. Sort of. Maybe.

Cleaning is one of my least favorite things because it's just a continuous cycle. I completely cleaned the whole house about 3 weeks ago, and now I will have to do it all over again because it's messy again. How lame is that? I still haven't caught up on the dishes...and there are so many of them that I could feasibly not do the dishes for at least 2 or 3 weeks (note: this is a theory, not a practice). The problem, though, is that only a few days' worth of dishes fit into the dishwasher at once, so the same key dishes and utensils always have top priority..leaving all of the particularly delicate or odd-shaped dishes out of the loop until it becomes convenient to wash them. I have to say, I am looking forward to some good not-home-cooking from McClurg.


I still miss trays though.

Yesterday I got back from a trip down to Seward to see the Chases. I was feeling pretty good when I got back -- settled down on my bed to check e-mail, caught up with a few people.....and then I fell asleep. I can't imagine why on earth I would be tired! It's not like I had to go exercise with Mark or anything....

Thursday after (a very tasty) dinner Mark had an idea. He had a hankerin' to go roller skiing -- it's active, it's outside, and it's fun. I don't happen to know how to roller ski (but it looks interesting, I may have to learn), so he suggested I could ride a bike instead. We'd go from the fire station to Safeway and back..an easy 6 miles. I thought that sounded like a good idea, so I got suited up in some too-large borrowed rain gear and an ever so attractive helmet, and we set out. It was pretty easy at first, I kept up alright, and the bike was a little small, but not too bad. But then Mark started getting a little ahead...."no big deal", I figured, "I'll just catch him on the next downhill". Wrong. You see the problem is while Mark has been off running mountains, I haven't been up to much at all. I walked a lot in Russia, and climbed my fair share of stairs..but that's about it really. So, while a couple of miles of skiing just invigorated Mark, I started getting a little tired. I was relieved to see Safeway come into view..I wasn't quite dying, but I was starting to feel it a little in my legs. Then to my horror, Mark puts his head down and powers past our check point. For the next half mile or so I consoled myself by thinking maybe he just wanted to try out some hills, and we'd be turning around soon. I finally got a moment to catch my breath when someone Mark knew stopped him for a little chat. After he finished talking, Mark came over to see how I was doing, and inquire if I would like to go all the way to the Sealife Center. I looked balefully at the rather massive hill between us and the Sealife Center and told him no thanks, I was quite happy with what we'd already done, and wouldn't mind turning around now. This wasn't quite the answer he was looking for, so Mark worked some of his persuasive magic and said the hill wasn't that bad, and it was all downhill to the Sealife center after it, and that we could take a nice break once we got there if I wanted to. I rolled my eyes and said fine, and struggled my way up the hill.

Our nice long break lasted for about 5 seconds. Then we spent some time debating about which side of the hill was harder. He said the side we'd just come up was the worst because it was longer...so really the worst was behind us, and it was just an easy coast back to the car. I said that this side looked pretty bad from our current vantage point and reminded him that there were still 5 miles between us and the car. In the end, I managed to stretch our break into about 5 minutes, and then we set back towards the car...all the way Mark encouraging me and telling me how it was just an easy straight shot back to the car (untrue, it is actually slanted slightly uphill most of the way). Once we made it back to the car I did have to concede that I felt pretty accomplished.

The next day after dinner Mark looks at me again with that gleam in his eye and says he has a proposal for me. I didn't see a ring or anything, so I figured it was probably bad news. He suggested that today we can just go easy..just to Safeway and back. I said I wasn't falling for that one again (he defended himself by saying that yesterday he said "at least" to Safeway). I told him about the only way I'd go would be if he pulled me...

We had a good laugh about that, but then Mark got a thoughtful look and said there could be something to that idea. After scrounging around the house we came up with the following objects:
-Dog harness
-2 leashes
-roller skis
-bike
-Mark
-Amanda

Can you see where I'm going with this?

Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures of this momentous event...so I have created my own rendering of what it probably looked like via paint:


(if Russian doesn't work out, I'm thinking there could be a place for me in graphic design)

I can only imagine what the tourists thought. We got passed by 6 tour busses and a train along the way.

Mark pulled me the 6 miles to Safeway and back while keeping up a pretty reasonable pace and only complaining about how the bike's weight would kick in while he was gliding and not when he was pulling. When we got back to the car Mark felt so good that we turned around and did another 6 miles (but this time I got there by my own propulsion). I'm pretty sure the only thing this experiment proved is that Mark is a beast (that's a compliment)...however, if this ever becomes a fad, we totally thought of it first.

That's about all that's going on here.

Here are some good links of the day:
(I do apologize that they are not clickable...so you'll have to copy/paste)

1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zI3_pnUU3k

2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ABAmEl6_Yg

Oh man...Flight of the Conchords makes me laugh. I don't know about you, but watching those sure brightened my day

I saw this in the Wal-mart parking lot today. I was just so in awe of its beauty and practicality that I had to snap a picture of it (surreptitiously of course..thus the grey ford escape occupying half of the photo). I'm not quite sure if they were going for the limo effect, or if their family was just so large and rugged your average van wouldn't survive the rigors of daily life. Unfortunately, I didn't encounter the owners of this fantastic vehicle (I'm really curious about what sort of gas mileage it gets....side note: what if you did this to a Prius?). Alaska is awesome.

Speaking of Alaska and awesomeness, the moon has been spectacular lately. My camera skills are not quite capable of capturing the magnitude of awesome the night this picture was taken, but it can at least hint at what I'm talking about:



Enough talking though, now it's time to do what I do best: criticize. I'm sure anyone who has a blog on blogger has noticed how utterly annoying adding pictures is. I would gladly add more pictures..but it's just such torture! Blogger assumes that I want every new picture added to the top of the note, I do not want to move it anywhere, AND that I want the cursor to disappear afterward. The first assumption I could perhaps understand. I'm sure a lot of people DO want their pictures at the top of the blog. I could even forgive the benevolent creators of blogger for thinking that I wouldn't want to move the pictures (indeed, it's such trouble I generally don't want to move them).....but making the cursor disappear?! That's just cruel! I was always taught that one should add 2 spaces after every sentence...and now I can't tell if I've added 1, 2, or 30! Plus the whole obnoxiousness of having a touch pad and clumsy fingers (I have had far too many occasions where I have accidentally simultaneously touched the touch pad, clicked in the middle of a paragraph, somehow highlighted everything, and then hit backspace before I even know what's hit me).

Oh hey..my cursor came back.

Weird.

In other news, the great blogger experiment of '09 hasn't really been working as expected. I got one more "plastic spatula melt" hit, but other than that nothing changed...except for a peculiar rise in readers. Maybe word just got around that I'd been updating. So, I have decided to lower my expectations/goals. I now aspire to just be on the first page of google's search engine for the query "plastic spatula melt". I feel like that's reasonable...and anyone who is searching for information about melting spatulas probably deserves a reprieve in the form of my delightful blog.

Here's to you, oh frustrated melty plastic spatula owners! ( I recieved an e-mail from my dad a few days ago. He said he'd read my blog and thought I'd been alone for too long. He's probably right)

I have not touched a plastic spatula ever since I discovered that my favorite plastic spatula was melting and leaving unsavory slivers of plastic in my ham. Actually, this is more to do with the fact that I've been behind on dish washing and haven't felt like cooking anything requiring a spatula than my utmost horror at the discovery that plastic spatulas melt. Here's a tip though: don't be in a hurry and just leave things cooking on "high". Plastic spatulas are much more likely to melt when your stove is on high than, say, medium. It's a fact. However, had you used a metal spatula, you probably wouldn't have this problem...unless your stove is just insane. Then you'd have bigger issues than your spatula melting..like your skillet melting. I have to imagine that would be considerably less pleasant than a few scraps of plastic. I've also discovered that once a spatula begins to melt, it is much more likely that the melting process will occur with less provocation the next time you use it. I would imagine the plastic is the same throughout the spatula..but a lot of things in life seem to go like that. When one corner starts melting it just gets worse and worse from there. Spatula is a funny word. That's probably at least 60% of the reason why I've become so dedicated to the goal of my blog reaching fame through the phrase "plastic spatula melt".

I was casually talking to my friend Jared earlier (Hi Jared!!) about cold weather clothing when I realized how extreme I sound sometimes. I was saying how my favorite boots are bunny boots (google them, they're sweet), but they'll only keep your feet warm until about -30F. At around -35 your feet will be cold..but not to the point that they hurt (which is the worst, by the way). Then he asked what the coldest weather I'd ever been in was, and I'm pretty sure the coldest I've ever been in was around -40F when I was in Irkutsk. Possibly a little lower since I wasn't carrying a thermometer around with me at the time (however, that experience is how I learned that Fahrenheit and Celsius meet at -40). That was also the day Claire and I got lost in town. Then I threw in that -40 wasn't really that bad...when my dad was mushing in a race it was probably in the -50s (I believe I remember correctly..sorry dad if my facts aren't straight). What's absolutely mind blowing though is the Siberian town of Oymyakon. Not only does it have an unfortunately umpleasant sounding name, but it also has the distinction of being the coldest town in the northern hemisphere with a temperature of -71.2 C (-96.2F). There was also a prison camp around there somewhere. Talk about bad luck.

I'm really not that extreme though. I'm just normal...ish.

I was also reminded today how inaccurate a gauge my expression is in comparison with my actual mood (unless I'm smiling..then that usually means I'm happy). I was walking in a parking lot today, thinking about how glad I was that I had my coat because it looked like it might rain, when a middle-aged passerby gave me a friendly reminder to smile. I flashed him a little smile and said "Thanks"..but then I got to thinking about how people always accuse me of either being depressed or angry, when in reality I'm just thinking about random stuff that doesn't really have to do with anything important. I'm very rarely depressed...pensive sometimes, yes, but depressed and angry, no. I just happen to direct my thoughts to other things besides what happens to be on my face at the time.

I also make pretty inaccurate first impressions (although sometimes it works to my advantage). I will guarantee you that most people who have spent a very minimal amount of time interacting with me think I am: quiet, shy, nice, smart, rarely smile, perhaps uptight, and a little condescending. I've been hanging out a fair deal with someone I used to go to high school with (if you're reading this, you know who you are...and I'm pretty sure you fell asleep before you answered my e-mail, but I'll forgive you since it's your birthday =P), and they've been quite amazed that I'm actually quite different. A lot of people are usually surprised to find out who I really am. Ok..that makes it sound bad, what I mean is that I'm actually pretty cool (in my own opinion).

So, to save people some time in the get-to-know-Amanda process, here is a portrait of me:
(although it'd be weird if people read my blog before meeting me, so this is probably pretty useless)

--A sense of humor is one of the most important things to me
--I think I'm hilarious
--I'm not shy, but I can be socially overwhelmed at times. It's just so much effort to entertain more than 4 people at a time, that I usually don't try
--I'm only condescending if I think you're being dumb =)
--I'm good at keeping a straigh face, so if I say something outrageous, it's probably not true
--I like to be unique. I think it's an only child thing.
--If I am smirking to myself, it's probably because I thought of something really funny, but it would be too hard to explain
--I am awful at small talk..so if I seem quiet at first, it's probably because I don't know what to talk about with you
--I feel socially awkward quite often, but I'm mostly ok with that
--I really enjoy outdoorsy things, but sometimes it can be hard to convince me to do things (because I enjoy being comfortable too)
--I am stubborn. You probably won't change my mind...but I'm also not unreasonable, so I won't disregard ideas just for the sake of being stubborn.
--I'm very competitive when it comes to board games
--I will probably beat you at foosball
--I am afraid of the dark (I'm talking woods by myself, not my room)
--I'm slightly nearsighted, but I don't wear my glasses very often (driving, classroom), so if I act like I don't recognize you from across the room, it's probably because I can't see your face.
--I get along pretty well with animals..cats and squirrels are my favorites. Sharks, bears, and tigers are my least favorites.
--I really hate it when my plastic spatulas melt
--I'm pretty laid-back..so don't be fooled by my haughty/dour-seeming demeanor! I'm probably just thinking about the weather...

There's a lot more that I could say (like how banana bread is amazing), but that would take away all the fun of getting to know me!

On a parting note, this is something that always brings a smile to my face, and I think everyone should watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCHqLCbb8P4

So I recently downloaded this program called statcounter so I can see how many people read this (just because I never know unless people leave comments)...and I discovered the most humorous thing. I can track the keywords that people used to find my blog. Now, you'd think the most common would be things like "Siberia" or "study abroad" or something normal like that. NO! This is not the case. The most common are "plastic spatula melt" (2x) and "i donate clothes to Goodwill". To think all this time I've been writing I thought people were reading my blogs for more noble purposes like making sure I'm still alive or getting a first-person account of a semester abroad in Russia. While I'm a little disheartened to learn this is not the case, I've decided to make the most of this and have some fun with my newfound knowledge.

I'm going to write a list of random and highly diverse keywords and see if this increases the traffic of my blog, and which keywords are the most popular.

Take this google search:

what to do if zombies attack
John and Kate plus 8
polar bears
marshmallows
I can see Russia from my house
global warming
haiku
magic tricks secrets revealed
leather
shark attack
Michael Jackson
best tips for weight loss
Queen Elizabeth
Russian is the best language in the world
I read War and Peace and survived
microwave disasters
true love
Monty Python is awesome
I love squirrels
I hate itunes
it's hard thinking up a bunch of topics
muscle pain
ice cream
dolphins
everyone wants to take an Alaskan vacation
If you cut Alaska in half Texas would be the third largest state
bad pickup lines
how do people learn to like running?
has anyone even read any of this?
giant squid attacks
did you hear twitter quit working for a day?
it made me happy, I think twitter is a dumb idea anyway. Hurray for hackers (assuming of course no one hacks into my computer or facebook)
how many people are honestly looking up "plastic spatula melt"? I bet they'll all be directed to this page because I say it at least 5 times now
I'm curious now
Amanda is the best name ever
my arms hurt from rock climbing
why aren't sugar gliders allowed in Alaska?
wouldn't it be awesome to have a pet squirrel?
chicken
oriental flavored ramen noodles are my favorite
I'm sad that most people have not seen The Shakiest Gun in the West. It's an amazing movie
I really need to wash dishes
The Iditarod Trail is kind of close to my house
When I was little I used to catch lizards. If you did it right you could get them to bite your ears and then wear them as earrings (no joke).
My cousin also liked to make war paint out of lightening bugs. I preferred to just put them in a jar.
Why is English spelling so hard?
This list is rather absurd.

That's all I can think of at the moment. We'll see if it helped any. I'll keep you posted if I remember to.

Two blogs in a row, MAN I AM ON A ROLL!

Some of you may have noticed something different. Yes, I made an addition to the title. I decided that the old title didn't really fit any more. I'm not really going east anymore. No...well...that's not true. I am going (south)east to Tennessee pretty soon, but that's not really the point. The point is that I've been to Russia and back, and now it's time for some new adventures (which hopefully won't just be restricted to courses in an eastern direction...northwest is pretty cool...and maybe south, I hear they have beaches there).

Oh...and, um....I added a new background. Yeah.

Ok, I'm being modest. I think it's an awesome background and I'm really proud of myself because it took me forever to figure out how to put it up. That's really why I'm writing. I keep finding myself straying back to my page to admire what I've done, so I figured in the time I'm here I might as well do something useful, right?

I've been feeling a little philosophical lately. Sometimes you just get hit with pensive moods, and lately I've been a little bit troubled by something. I've realized I don't truly know what I look like. I have a set picture in my mind, the girl that I see every day in the mirror. Then I'll run across a picture of myself and have to do a double-take. You think to yourself "wait..really?? That's what I look like??" I'll elaborate:


What I think I look like



What I actually look like

Notice that my bangs are on the opposite side of my face. I think I look like the mirror image of myself, not what everyone else sees! I don't even know what I look like!!! My life is a lie!!!!!!!

Alright, maybe it's not that extreme. But seriously, doesn't that bug you a little bit?

I've also been thinking about how weird living itself is. Looking back time has gone by so fast, and I know I'm only 21, but 21 years is still a lot of years to have gone by so fast. In some ways you just want time to go by faster because you're curious about the future -- who you'll marry, what you'll do, where you'll live, if you'll have children or grandchildren, will advanced math ever actually get used on a daily basis like they assured us it would in middle school? But at the same time, you wish life would just stop so you could fully process just what exactly is going on. Have you ever just gone through a day, and then stopped to think about it, and realize that you've done a whole lot of things, but haven't really thought about any of them? Your average person only lives into their 70s or 80s, so it's quite unfair that you don't even realize how valuable time is until you've gone through a quarter of your life. It just seems to emphasize that there must be something after life, otherwise what would the point be? In the grand scheme of things 80 years is nothing. Although I guess we can be glad it's not a couple of weeks like flies (but who could really stand being a fly longer than that). This reminds me though that I've had a fly stuck in my house for what seems like forever, and I wish it would hurry up and die, because I certainly am incapable of killing it (believe me I've tried).

I also think it's silly to make plastic spatulas. I mean, really? They're plastic, that means they melt. No one wants a melty spatula, because then it gets in your food, and that's just gross. Why not more metal? I'm bringing this up because today my favorite spatula was leaving bits of plastic on the ham I was heating up. No.....I am not a bad cook. I am a lazy cook, but I am not so awful that I would inadvertantly melt spatulas. Clearly the flaw is in the design. The worst of it is that of 4 spatulas, 3 are plastic. At least this is the first one I've noticed melting.

Sex and the City is actually a decent show.

How do you know if you've had a power outage, when none of your clocks are plugged in? Moreover, how do you know if you've had a power outage, when your home is run by oil and is not connected by powerlines. And if the powersource is right next to your house, how could you have had a power outage?? That seems like it would be pretty serious! This morning I turned on the tv, and it had the menu screen (like usually happens if it gets unplugged or the power goes out), and the oven clock was flashing.....but the microwave clock was not. I know there is plenty of fuel, because I checked yesterday. Everything is still working...soooo....I guess it was just a fluke?

I miss cats.

Why does everyone think snuggies are so ridiculous? They get picked on mercilessly, but I think they were a good idea. I have had many a time when I've been trying to use my hands in a cold room, but have to sacrifice my arms from the elbows down or my shoulders. Then you can always try just rolling over and using one hand...but then when you're reading it gets hard to turn the page. An alternative is a robe. However, then your feet are exposed!! My feet and hands are the coldest parts of my body. The only problem with snuggies is that they have to be restricted to the couch. If you tried to use it as a blanket you'd have holes in your blanket..which is the worst. So give snuggies a break. I do agree though that the name is kinda silly.

Cherry yogurt is delicious.

You can tell that you're a bad blogger when you so seldom write that when you do, you feel the need to explain to your readers what has prompted this miraculous event . Luckily I noticed and analyzed this urge before I began, and have come to the conclusion that this is MY blog and I'll write as I please.

So far my summer has been an on-going vacillation between absolute boredom and extreme activity. Sometimes I'll go 3-4 days without getting dressed or talking to anyone at all. You start memorizing the schedules of your favorite tv shows, sleeping, and doing crazy things like trying to become interested in knitting. I got through about a foot of my new scarf before I gave up on that madness. There can seriously be no more mind-numbing process than knitting....but at the same time...I love knitted objects like sweaters and scarves. If only I had a machine to do my knitting for me...or an elderly relative who had nothing better to do... Or maybe if I was just faster, and could double-task while I knitted. If I didn't have to look at what I was doing or pay any mental attention to it I'd probably be a knitting fiend.

Yes, I honestly have nothing better to do at the moment than rant about how much I hate knitting.

However, when I'm not losing my sanity by sitting home alone for extended periods of time, I'm left with no time at all. I've found that weekdays I am a social outcast, and weekends my company is highly sought after. Is there no happy medium? Can't I just be liked all the time? Or at least take precedence over silly things like jobs?

An example of this is the last 5 days: Starting on Wednesday (an unusual occurance..generally I don't do much until Thursday or Friday) my friend Sarah hijacked me and took me to Eagle River to watch a movie. Hijacking is perhaps not the right term, but she did have to work pretty hard to convince me to get off the couch and out of my pajamas to go see a movie. Unfortunately, we were too late by the time we got there, so we had dinner at McDonalds and went back to my house, resulting in Sarah spending the night, and the pleasant discovery that a how-to guide for opening champagne with a sword actually works (Sarah happened to have a sword). Thursday progressed as usual -- I woke up at the crack of 1, ambled down to the kitchen and computer, then stayed there until bedtime. Now on to Friday (where the real fun and sleeplessness begins): Sarah was having a garage sale to get rid of old clothes (conveniently all in my size) and other objects from storage, and I volunteered to help. I got there a little after 9 am and put a whole lot of clothes on hangers. Unfortunately, we missed a lot of the garage sale sharks due to our mutual disinterest in mornings. We did, however, manage to catch a few haggling stragglers right at the beginning. You know the type -- where $3 for a pair of designer jeans that have barely been worn just isn't good enough, it's gotta be $2. Luckily normal people started coming by after that, and business was good..until 1 when it started to rain. Then we packed up and hung out until 6. Then we drove to Anchorage to have dinner with Sarah's parents and some family friends...which ended up lasting 3 hours and involving a whole lot of food (which I regretted in the morning, but appreciated at the time). Exhausted, Sarah took me back to my house for pajamas and any old objects from the garage that I'd like to donate to the garage sale....but we ended up just spending the night at my house again.

Saturday started off the same way (except some loser tore down Sarah's garage sale signs, so we had to make new ones...garage sale drama sucks). We quit around 5, and since Sarah was just going to donate the unsold clothes to goodwill, I got to pick through for anything that I liked. After hauling my new wardrobe to the car, I checked my phone. To my complete shock, I found that I had 1 text message, 1 missed call, and 1 voice message. After checking all of those (and trying not to stay awkwardly long in Sarah's driveway) I discovered that my good friend Mark was coming to Birchwood, and perhaps to my house later that night. The message said he was leaving at 5:30, and it was 5:50 when I listened to the message..somehow I figured he wouldn't have left on time, so I called back anyway. My suspicions were correct. After confirming that a visit was indeed in order, I finally went grocery shopping (I'd been putting it off for at least 3 or 4 days). I knew that I could survive another day on ramen and spaghetti o's, but I was pretty dubious about the contents of my kitchen being able to support a boy. It was quite fortunate that I did go grocery shopping, because it turns out Brett came too, and even my fully stocked kitchen barely survived the onslaught of two very hungry young men. It would have been really sad if my guests had starved to death...especially because their parents probably would never let them come over again if they had. For dinner we went back to Birchwood (a church camp in Eagle River), and Mark's mom was nice enough to make us grilled cheese. Dinner was followed by an exclusive Mark/Amanda walk around the lake (which used to seem like a huge deal at 12 [like you'd almost think you'd have to pack a lunch to make it around], but at 21 it's really a pretty short walk). That was nice, because it can always be odd to see old friends. Sometimes you have to rediscover what it is about a person that's made you stay friends for so many years, which in our case seems to be easy conversation...and that he's not afraid of bears (that is a very important quality in an Alaskan friend, because I happen to be very afraid of/worried about bears).

Today I went back to Birchwood to help with a building project. There I developed both a fascenation with and hatred of a product called Blueskin. Basically it's tar on one side, and water-proof blue stuff on the other, and you stick it on the sides of the building. I feel like there are so many interesting thing you could do with it...like make hand-shaped cutouts and climb up things or something....but when it's being used for its original purpose, it's super annoying. After that I came back to Wasilla and was feeling particularly productive, so I stopped and got a haircut that I've been putting off for a while (don't worry, nothing drastic, just cleaning up the ragged ends). Now I am back to my original control center (the couch) and have no plans at all...except for a hike at some still unplanned time before the 7th.

I've also started thinking about the future. Funny how being by yourself will do that. After staunchly denying any interest in further schooling (I've read enough books and written enough essays for at least 2 lifetimes), I've changed my mind and am definitely going on to grad school of some sort. I'm still tired of school, but I've come to the decision that for what I'm interested in, it's mandatory that I get a higher degree. Now I have to decide where and what I'll study. The question of where is completely up in the air, but possible majors are Slavic languages or International Relations/Studies/Something like that. After that my idea is to join the foreign service (unless I get a better offer, which is entirely possible). I've also given the military some more thought. I'd pretty much decided I wasn't interested in any of the job options there until a friend told me about Foreign Area Officers (http://www.faoa.org/main.html), which intruiged me. I really like that they'd include a graduate program and further language training, and I'd be starting on a career track rather than doing ambiguous scholarly things which may or may not be able to get me a future job. With an interest in Russian/Slavic languages and living abroad in general, it's pretty much inevitable that I'll either end up working for the government or the military. I'm sure no matter where I go it'll be interesting, and I'm just as interested as everyone else to find out where that will be.

Life....it's tricky..but in a good way usually