Thursday, February 18, 2010

Lent...

Yesterday, being ash wednesday, signified the start of Lent (the 40 days of fasting before Easter... typically a Catholic celebration). Although I am not Catholic, I have decided to participate in Lent as a way to test my personal strength and to remind myself daily of my personal relationship with God. I will not be fasting, since I personally think denying your body of food sets it into "starvation, store, store, store calories mode" and I just like food too much. Instead, I have decided to really test my will power in my own healthy way; I am giving up all sweets and processed snacks (i.e. Chips... which I loooove), as well as the wine and/or beer I enjoy on the weekends with dinner or while watching soccer. Perhaps cutting things out will also help me to look my best for my sister's wedding at the end of May (which we are all soooo excited about), but that would be an added bonus rather than my primary motivation.

Everything here is pretty routine, as I wind down the last few months of being an Au Pair. At the end of Jan. we celebrated the bf's 29th birthday by going to a delicious Balkan restaurant, called Montenegro. We shared an appetizer and dessert and of course the main course was delicious too (i ended up taking most of mine home... where we enjoyed it for the lunch the next day). The family is working hard to find a new Au Pair, and the stress is picking up as the time winds down.

At the same time I am looking at Bridesmaid dresses and hair ideas for my sister's wedding, since I will only be home 2 short weeks before the big day. I think I will just order a few shortly before I fly home, and pick one and return the others once I am in the states.

On another completely random note, I found out yesterday that I have been accepted to the Monterey Institute of International Studies for Translation and Interpretation. This has pretty much been my dream since I found out acout the school while attending UC Davis. Now, however, that it is right under my nose, I feel there are so many decisions that have to be made about my future. The school itself is incredibly expensive (16,000 a semster), and without a scholarship being able to afford it seems impossible. (On that note, scholarship notifications have not been sent out yet). And I don't really want to add even more to the student loan debt I have left over from my undergrad days. In addition, the bf has applied to a year-long paid internship in his field in Germany for 2010-2011, so he is definitely staying here. He also desperately wants to break back into his field (forrest engineering) after two years of travelling the world and one year of desperate job searching, and asking him to delay that to live in CA for a year or two is selfish (unless he finds a matching job opportunity in the states). We could also do the "long distance" thing for two more years, but it seems like since the beginning of our relationship we have not been together more than 3 months, and now we only see each other 2 days a week... it's really trying and one longs for the monotony of cohabitation and eating dinner with each other every night and watching a film on the boob tube. The final problem, is that we would like to become financially stable and that's basically impossible as a student.... grrr.. then again, there are the future job opportunities that another degree could bring... Wow, no wonder my mind runs crazy when I try to sleep at night.

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