Monthly Archives: October 2014

Selfie!

http://instagram.com/p/t-u0wIDbBo/

I didn’t see it.

Or maybe I just didn’t want to see it.

When I think of time, I think of hours, minutes, and seconds.

24 hours in a day and it seems to me that it just isn’t enough.

Time is defined as “The system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another”.

I believe that the worst feeling in life is the feeling of wasted time.

855,360 minutes in which I could’ve grown as a person.

855,360 minutes filled with  such an arrogant, irresponsible, selfish and machiavellian person

855,360 minutes of wasted time

Self Portrait: #chronicbitchface

 Monologue 

http://https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152856022296834&set=t.100000239611136&type=3&theater

I see myself as a person who loves life. I enjoy traveling and visiting foreign countries. In the picture that I chose, I am on the coast of an island called Krete in the beautiful country of Greece.

Monologue:

It was August 28^th, 2013, the day that I had to move my sister into college. I woke up at 9 am, quickly threw on some clothes, and started packing her boxes in the U Haul truck. We were running late as usual, so my father and sister started arguing with each other before we even left the house. My sister and I drove up in her car while my parents followed us in the moving truck. The entire ride there I was trying to act normal but all I could think about was how different my house would be without her there. Frequently, I would try to make small talk in order to make the car ride less glum. I would say things like, “You’re going to have fun there. It won’t be so bad after you get all settled in.” She would just look back at me and say, “Yea I know”. It was clearly a conversation neither of us was interested in having.  When the small talk came to a stop, I would zone out and just reflect on memories we had together and how all of that was over now. She was going on to bigger and better things and I was being left in the past. Eventually, we arrived at the university of Albany, or better known as her new home. My father and I began unloading boxes and didn’t stop for about an hour. By the end of it I was dripping sweat. Once the boxes were in her room, we had to help her unpack. This process was at least a couple of hours long. We had to set up her television, put together her desk, and even install her microwave. By the end of the day I was exhausted. However, it was now time to do the thing that I have been dreading for months and that was say goodbye to my sister.  My sister and I have been inseparable since we were born. We have done everything with and for each other. Every favor either of us needed, anytime we needed to lie to our parents, or even anytime either of us needed relationship advice; we were there for each other. To think that after this day she would be living somewhere else was killing me inside. Somehow, I worked up the strength to wish her the best in college. I told her to be safe and make smart choices. I mean that’s all I could think of at that terrible moment. What else does a younger brother say to his older sister who’s leaving for college? After I said goodbye, I gave her a hug goodbye. She was as distraught as I have ever seen her and there was not a thing that I could do about it. I had no choice but to leave the campus and drive 4 hours back home in complete misery.

Self Portrait: 

Hanna Backlund’s Monologue

I believe that my greatest accomplishment in my life so far is how I learned to embrace cultures around the world, and experience being a Third Culture Kid (being raised outside of parent’s culture for a significant part of my developing years). It all began when I was born in Sweden, where I moved around a lot within the country, however I don’t remember much as I was still a baby. I learned Swedish at home, which is my first language. Following this, I moved to Italy in 1999, where my kindergarten was primarily English speaking but my tiny school was Swedish speaking (which I started at age 6). During this time, I was introduced to the Italian culture from my surroundings, for example the “meals” consisting of pasta drenched in olive oil in school, and learning the Italian language for a year (however I don’t remember this either). Since I was still a slightly ignorant child, I didn’t appreciate the trips to Venice, Rome, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa as much as I should have. In 2003 I moved to Switzerland to a strict British school with a uniform, where I was shocked by the teacher’s behaviors, coming home crying because I didn’t know what had gotten me in “trouble”. Throughout my years here, I learned to speak French, started skiing, continued learning how to horse-ride, and switched to an international school in 2008. Carrying on, I moved to Indonesia in 2011 (one of the most shocking but also best moves), where I stood out from the locals for the first time, but met some amazing people. Finally, this leaves my latest move in 2014 to the US, which I am still adjusting to, but am sure that I’ll learn a lot while I am here.

Being part of an international community has given me both friends and “homes” worldwide, which I have learnt gives a huge amount of benefits (I hardly have to pay for hotels wherever I travel). Even though I am originally a full Swede, my cousins will still make fun of my Swedish language and the way that I talk. Despite this, I will always cherish the lagom of Sweden (just the right amount), the range of pasta types in Italy, from tagliatelle to rigati, the beaux-gosses or mecs in Switzerland (handsome, dudes), the macet in Jakarta, Indonesia (traffic), and finally the _____ in New York, USA.

Self portrait: Jonah Tarmu

Blog post #2

due 9.23.14

Maahi and rhegina Fro

Outward bound is a program that changed my life. Outward bound is a program that tests your willpower. They purposely make things harder to show that a person can handle more than they think. The particular program I was a part of was the kayaking program. And afterwords I never thought I’d want to get into a kayak ever again.

The program was two weeks and was more than I ever thought I could handle. It was two weeks of living in kayak. Of kayaking from island to island. Only stopping to sleep on islands, develop a team, and further develop ourselves.

The most important part of it to me was the time we spent developing ourselves. We had to spend about a day by our selves. sitting in one spot. only thinking. nothing else, no writing, no music, no human contact except when someone brought us food, and the slowly growing realization of who you were. For some, less horrifying than others. But only a few of us came back without tears running down our face. It was here I realized there was more and less to me than I thought. It was truly a strange realization to me to realize I was better than I thought and yet somehow not as good as I thought I was. It truly made me a better person.

Overall my experience with outward bound was a rewarding one. But it wasn’t until much later that I realized how much better that it made me. It must have been at the same time that I got back into a kayak.