Nine Months and Twenty-Two Blog Posts Later...

The end of the school year always gets me a bit sentimental. I teared up a little when I read the last page of my geography textbook and took my last notes for biology this year. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to miss staying up until midnight in a pile of chemistry homework or sitting in a class for an hour and a half with a bunch of people who have not quite yet established a hygienic showering schedule. However, the end of the year really makes me reflect on all the memories tied up in these short nine months and how much I have changed as a person over the past year. This year has been one of my best, and it has shaped my personality and my outlook on life a lot in several different ways.

Firstly, this year, I have learned the importance of relaxing. At the beginning of this year, I basically had my life planned out down to the clock I would own in my retirement home. I was positive that I wanted to be a pediatrician and go to Columbia and live in San Francisco for five years, then move to Shanghai, then to Dubai, etc. Now, I honestly have no idea what the fuck I am going to do with my life, and I am totally fine with that. And I am totally fine with the fact that I showed up last week not knowing I had a final in geography that day and that my passing at volleyball absolutely sucked last night. Learning to place my happiness above test scores, reputations, and expectations has probably been the biggest thing I have learned this year, and I'm glad I have.

In addition to being extremely stressed and slightly stuck-up at the beginning of the year, I was also pretty scared of people, especially those older than me, and I had horrible social skills. I remember sitting in my chemistry class on the first day of school at a table with a bunch of sophomores and thinking to myself, "Don't make eye contact. Don't make eye contact. Don't make eye contact." Eventually, I did make eye contact, and a handful of the people in my class who I was originally terrified of have now become some of my best friends. I even sit next to a senior cheerleader in my bio class who I actually talk to, so... *insert sassy girl with hand emoji here*.

Finally, this year, I have learned to follow my dreams. (Sorry, I couldn't find a less cheesy way to say that.) I started this blog at the beginning of the year as a "what if" sort of bucket list. I wanted to travel when I got older, but never really considered going anywhere in the mean time, because who has that sort of time? However, sometime in the middle of the year, I realized that if I wasn't going to pursue my interests now, I probably wasn't going to later. So I applied for a two-and-a-half-week service project in India, and this July, I am going to go volunteer in a leprosy colony in Chennai (which I actually talked about wanting to do in a post earlier this year). I also signed up for paragliding lessons and a number of other things that were previously just fun ideas that I had. 

Where I'm going in India. I'm also going to see Jaipur, Agra,
and Delhi after in the North! Maybe I'll do a blog post while
I'm there!
Image Courtesy of: Britannica Kids

Ninth grade has been a wonderful year for me, and I have changed a lot as a person. I hope I can carry the lessons I've learned with me into the future.

Eastern Europe: Home of Weird Accents and Pointy Buildings

I have a little bit of stalking problem (in fact, if you are reading this, I have probably Googled you at least once), and I may or may not be following my middle school English teacher's wife on Instagram who happens to be a photographer and recently went to Eastern Europe and grammed the whole thing. So, using her posts as inspiration, I am writing this next post (which happens to be the last real post!) on Eastern Europe, which has always really interested me.

One thing I would want to do in Eastern Europe is visit Prague in the Czech Republic. I would love to get to one day see this city's famous Gothic architecture, especially Old Town Square, Prague Castle, and St. Vitus Cathedral ('cause I have a weird thing for churches). I would also like to try some Czech food, even though I'm not entirely sure what it is. Originally, I was guessing somewhere along the lines of like dogs or something weird like that, but as I'm looking it up, it seems to mostly be beer, pastries, and meats with a lot of weird accents that I can't figure out how to type on this keyboard.

Inside St. Vitus Cathedral. Do you get my fancy church obsession now?
Image Courtesy of: In Mozart's Footsteps

Another place in Eastern Europe I would love to visit is Budapest. Budapest, like Prague, has a lot of really old and simply amazing architecture. I would want to visit Fisherman's Bastion and pretty much any church in Budapest. Also, I would want to take a walk along the Danube River, which runs right through Budapest, because, I mean, who doesn't love walks along rivers?! Finally, I would want to visit Miniversum, which is basically a mini village that I just found out existed. By "mini," I don't mean that it has a small population or occupies little land area, I mean like a little toy village that you would probably find in your grandma's living room or something but which sounds strangely interesting to me.

The Danube River running through Budapest. That pointy little
red building thing is Hungarian Parliament Building and makes
our capital building look like a shack.
Image Courtesy of: Wikipedia

Budapest and Prague seem like really great places, but they also tend to be very typical tourist attractions, and I think by visiting solely tourist attractions, you don't get a taste for culture and actual society in a place. I would want to spend some time visiting some less typical places in Eastern Europe to try to understand the lifestyle there better. Maybe I would spend some time in rural Austria (think Sound of Music sort of deal) or Ostroleka, some Polish town I found on Wikipedia. I would definitely want to travel by train throughout Eastern Europe to try to take in as much of the landscape as possible and maybe even meet a few Polish/Slovakian/Czech/Hungarian/whatever people while doing so.

The Grossarltal mountains in rural Austria.
Image Courtesy of: The Guardian

Eastern Europe seems like an amazing place with fascinating architecture, history, and attractions. Before I die, I definitely want to be able to experience all that this region has to offer, even that found outside the big cities.