My Wagon is stuck

Today’s Daily Create assignment was #tdc1481 Put a Western Reflection in your Front Window

I immediately liked the idea of Arches National Park out my window. However, it wasn’t looking good in photoshop. Instead I decided to take a picture of a Snow Covered Wagon from Flickr (Thanks so much!) and put in my view.

Guess I’m not gonna make it to California anytime soon with all this snow. Dang it!

Dude, I’m like so blonde, riiiiight?

A while ago I posted about  Sarah Kay’s Ted Talk on Spoken Poetry.

It made me reflect on my own style of talking and how much it has been influenced by various factors probably one of the most important being I was born in California.

I spent most of my young life in California before moving to the East Coast. While I may have spent more time on the East Coast than I have lived in California, I still talk like a Californian.

Look I even got linguistic test results to prove it:

Linguistic Test

Linguistic Test

 

I remember when I first moved to the East Coast I thought to myself:  People here sound different than the people at home.

Then I all but forgot about it after being on the East Coast for many years. Then when I was in college I took an Alternate Reality Game class. While working on a group project I mentioned to my group members that I grew up in California.

A guy in my group said, “Oh! That makes sense.”

I asked, “What do you mean?”

“You sound like you are from there.”

I was curious. “Really? How do I sound like?”

Then he seemed to get a little flustered, like he didn’t want to say I sounded like a valley girl or something. He ended up saying something along the lines of “The way your voice rises and falls sometimes, it just sounds very Californian to me…”

Hmmm. Okay then.

I never found out if he meant “You sound like you’re from California” as a good or bad thing…..

Good or Bad?

Some of the most common Californian things I say are as follows:

I say “like” waaaay more than necessary:  “So I was like, I need some, like, space because I, like, feel stressed out by this, like, whole situation.”

I would be more than willing to scrap this part of my vocabulary which as I use as a filler word. Actually, I feel my time in Korea has cut down on me using this word, except in situations when I am excited and talking extremely fast to English native speakers.

I say “I know, riiiight?” whenever someone mentions something I agree with.

I say, “Totally!” and “Dude!” all the time. I have even said “DUDE” to my mom before  a couple of times which makes her irate: “I am not a DUDE!” Nope, definitely not. Not sure why I say it, but it just feels normal to say it to everyone.

Dudeee

Funny story: A older Korean man at my middle school dropped his keys as he was walking down the hallway. I noticed, picked them up and then since he was so far away from me and headed downstairs, I started saying “Hey! Dude! You dropped your keys”

Of course, he didn’t turn around; thankfully another Korean teacher yelled “Seonsangnim!” which means Teacher in Korean, and he turned right around.

Later I thought about how I called him “Dude” which, if he had understood me, would had annoyed him since “Dude” is not a respectful term of address. Korea is all about titles of respect.

Overall, I like that some people can identify me as being from California. It’s my homehomehome.

Graduation & life after!

After  eight semesters of hard work, plus a couple of summer classes here and there, I’ve graduated from the University of Mary Washington!

I’ve graduated with departmental honors and a BA in English: Creative Writing, summa cum laude.

Me & Meghan E --> Both of us received honors in English 😉

So now that I’ve graduated I’ve faced an exponential increase of family and/or random people asking me:

“So what are you going to do with your life now that you’ve graduated? Are you going into journalism? Are you going to teach?…”

Then they stare at me, unblinking, until I say something.

Like many of my fellow peers, I don’t really have a plan for my career yet (most of them fell through for various reasons), and thus, these questions get really old, really fast.

If I was smart I would say something random, like “I’m going to become a scuba diving instructor in Hawaii.” (I’m an actual Scuba diver but no-where near experienced enough to be an instructor! Although I would love to move to Hawaii for a few years!)

 

But really this is what I tell people I have planned for the next few months:

1) Figure out how to fit everything I brought back from my apartment into my room at home. My room here is the size of a cardboard box, no joke,  so this is going to be tricky!

 

2) In 11 days I am flying to California to meet up with my Australian friend Rose who I met in New Zealand last year.

postcard I bought last year. love it!!

 

Then we are going to travel together around  California, Arizona and Nevada for a little over two weeks. After that we are headed over to the East coast to do more traveling until she leaves in mid-July.

I am super excited because Rose is one of my closest friends and I haven’t seen her in almost a year. Also, while I’m from California, I’ve never been to Arizona or Nevada, so I am looking forward to traveling there.

Viva las vegas!

Vegas, anyone?

I’m also looking forward to showing off the best of America to Rose because she has never been to the U.S. before.

So definitely be on the lookout for more blog posts about her and our trip in the upcoming future!

3) Once Rose leaves its all going to be about applying for jobs or internships or seeing if I have any money left over to do more traveling. I got the travelin’ bug and I want to see as much of the world as possible before I’m 25.

Goal in life: Visit all the countries in the world plus Antartica. This can happen I just need to invent/write something that I can make bank on!

 

I am so there!