4 Resons Why I'm Smiling This Fine Friday

1. I booked a trip to Texas to visit my buddy Andy in January. Look out San Antonio, I'm coming for ya! I haven't left San Diego in 6 or 7 months, so this is much needed.

2. My roommate's friend (who got married fairly young) visited us a few weeks ago, and had this to say about Lainey and me: "I admire those girls for supporting themselves completely. They don't feel the need to jump into marriage, or ask a man to support them. They do it all on their own! They don't even need marriage." THAT'S RIGHT, GIRL. Now, that's not to say that I'll never get married...who knows? What I do know is, I am able to support myself, on my own, until the day I die. There is something very powerful in knowing that I'm a badass who is able to take care of herself.

3. I'm starting a Master's program at the school I work for...on Monday! Whew! This will keep me majorly occupied, which I am happy about, because I get so DAMN BORED! Guess I won't be so bored anymore...

4. I finally started Turkish classes last night! For awhile I was the only person signed up, but now I have a friend...we have all of two people in our class. As I suspected, the first class was quite hard, as they used the immersion technique. Anyone who has heard Turkish probably knows that pronunciation is the most difficult part of the language. So hopefully I get better each week!

Well, have a good weekend all...for the reasons stated above, things are going well (and busy) for me. Yee haw! (you know, for Texas)

The Eternal Student

"Ne var ne yok?"

^

^

This mean's "What's going on?" in Turkish, or something to that effect. It's one of the only Turkish phrases I know.

It's always angered me that my mom never taught me Turkish. She said, "It just wasn't common in the 80s to teach your kids your native language." Excuses, mom, excuses.

So instead of complaining to my mom, or trying with Rosetta Stone (not my cup of tea), I found a language course here in San Diego. As soon as I found it, I signed up right away. I'm thrilled. Not just for learning the language, but because I get to learn something new!

I've realized that when I'm feeling stuck in a rut, bored and disenchanted with life, it's because I'm not learning anything. I am an eternal student. I'm always craving knowledge and always wanting to see and experience new things. Since I can't take a vacation anytime soon (stupid vacation hours at work), I knew I needed to find something in SD that will fill my brain with something useful, so I don't feel so useless.

So the next time someone asks me, "ne var ne yok?" I can reply, "fantastic!"

Er, but in Turkish.

A Casual Saturday (and cussing to boot!)

I'm having a gloriously lazy day today. I did a little work in the morning: studied a little Turkish, and studied for my TEFL certificate. Did a little laundry...you know, a little here, a little there. But now I'm reveling in my complete, unadulterated laziness. I didn't have any real plans and I'm not really gonna make any plans.

It's one of those Saturdays where I am fulfilled by doing nothing.

Status: Currently watching Love Actually and wasting the day away...

P.S. Just for a giggle, let me teach you a turkish curse word! I was having a convo the other day with a co-worker who knows arabic, and she was telling me how to say the "s" word in her language. I then realized that I didn't know any Turkish curse words. I thought to myself, "well that is just unacceptable!"

My mom thought it amusing when I asked her how to say 'shit' in Turkish that very day. I'm surprised she told me: Bok. Bok bok bok. (pronounced 'boke'...like you are saying poke with a b).

heh heh heh.

Just thought I'd share that new little nugget of info with you fine people. Hope you are having a great Saturday!!

Back on Track

I feel as though I've been incredibly lazy after my spring break excursion into San Jose. Guess I wanted my spring break to extend a bit longer.

I also blame Cutie with the Glasses for showing me this website, after finding out I share his passion of relentlessly trying to figure out the meaning of songs. ARRRRGGG!! I've looked up, like, a GAzillion songs!!!! Procrastination is indeed my middle name.

Things I have been procrastinating from, that I need to get finished/do more often:

• Working Out!!!! Must get in shape! MUST. It is sad when I run after kindergartners for all of 3 minutes and start to lose my breath. To my defense, those munchkins are fast. I have worked out the last couple days, and I want to keep it up. Nothing too rigorous, just a daily workout to make me feel more awake, alert and healthier.

• Learning Turkish. As much I yearrrrrrrnnnn to learn Turkish, this language is DIFFICULT with a capital D (and I capitalized all the letters, haha). So learning it from the Rosetta Stone is cool and all--except that it's hard to discipline myself to sit down and do it!! There is no professor to tell me to do my homework, I have to tell myself.

• Apply for more summer jobs. I loathe applications.
  

• Look into loans to go on my summer vacation to Ireland/England/France. I'm really really really hoping that I can pull this off!!! Europe is calling my name (it is always calling my name).

• Getting ready to take the CBEST and start the journey to becoming a teacher. Working with kids is indeed my calling, I've found out.
  

Yeah, those are the main things. SO I will not allow myself to be lazy...NO MORE LAZINESS!! And I will limit myself to looking up only a few songs per week (hehe).

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THIS WEDNESDAY I AM GOING TO SEE DEATH CAB IN CONCERT. SO CLOSE!!! YAYYYY!

Ashley, the Teacher

Today I start my first day of work. Today is the only day I'll be going to work at a "happy" hour. Tomorrow I'll be waking up at 6 a.m. For my whole life, 6 a.m. and I have been enemies. I talk badly about 6 a.m. behind his back all the time and in return, he attempts to hide the sun from me. Talk about Black Hole Sun.

I haven't had to deal with waking up at 6 a.m. the whole week since high school. So this will be interesting.

In other news, I'm still learning Turkish (through Rosetta Stone). Turkish is the hardest language I've learned to date! Although, I've already forgotten a lot of my Spanish and Italian--haha, oops!--they were fairly easy to learn/pronounce/write. Turkish is more involved and has some different characters. The pronunciation is the hardest by far and will take some practice. Want to learn a quick sentence? Of course you do:

Yeşil araba eski mi?

That means: Is the green car old? --you know, in case you were just dying to ask someone that :) Maybe I will give you random turkish lessons in the future...