The Last 100 Days

Warning: Lots of cake in this one.

It starts tomorrow.

Or, at least, I think it starts tomorrow, because I have been getting some pretty conflicting return dates. June 28. June 24. June 23. July. Aghh.

Nobody else knows who's gonna win this starting contest...

I received an email from the community theatre group I usually do during the summer, and we talked about how I would audition, and when, if possible, and they ask me, "When do you get back?"

To which I replied: "Nobody actually knows."

This is where I wonder if anybody has actually bought our planes tickets yet. AFS, sometimes you make me wonder. (Note: AFS in your home country is responsible for buying your return ticket.)

In Portuguese, there is this verb aproveitar, best translated as "to make use of (something)". We don't actually have a verb for this in English, but I think Thoreau said it best: “I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.”

I think aproveitar is a little more compact, but that's just my opinion.

But, let me tell you, I am gonna aproveitar these last 100 days. I have trips planned. I am going to Canoa Quebrada (a beach - check it out) this weekend with AFS. I am going to visit Salvador in late April with my host mother, Elif, and my host mother's friend. During the semana santa (the week leading to Easter), I am going to do...something. That I have no quite figured out.

I don't even know where to begin with a checklist. There's so much stuff I want to do. It's like a hysteria. I have to cram everything in there. I have to find some way around these obstacles that pervade my life. Jeitinho, I tell myself. The little way. Like rain, slipping through the cracks. It exists.

“Your name is Rain, isn’t it? Rain slips in the cracks and slides through the seams. You can do it? Can’t you?”

We'll start with number one: I just forgot how to spell "obstacles". I should be so much more worried about this...

But because I like to keep positive, I'm going to say this: I think the fact that there even are obstacles for me to work around is pretty exciting. Adventure. Challenges. That's why I'm here. When I go out, I get sidetracked so often I should probably get myself a behavioral correction device so that those fifteen minutes don't turn into four hours, but I don't because the very idea of doing something I didn't plan out is exciting.

Serendipity is the isle we seek; and her ship: she sails by the name of spontaneity.

Or something like that. For those of you who don't know what serendipity is (it doesn't translate into other languages), think of it as a fortunate discovery. Like you went looking for a needle in a haystack and emerged with the farmer's daughter in hand. Or something like that.

My last post was about this not being real, about how I can't believe that I can actually have my cake and eat it too. Now this post I'm going to tell you it's becoming too real. You can't put an expiration date on this. I've been so anxious for the point where my Portuguese is fluent enough so that I can actually understand what's going on around me, and now that it actually have the nerve to show up I want more time.

Gotta go squeeze it out.

Ugur, from Turkey, came to visit us this weekend.

Cake. It may be a lie, but it tasted great.
We exchange students love our cake.

That reminds me. We just bought a juicer. Time to make some orange juice. Peace.