Musical

 Musical is getting to the point of being fun, the point where everybody realizes,"Oh, yeah, this is what I signed up for." We all have a pretty good idea of the lyrics, the choreography and each other, so we can finally relax and enjoy ourselves. This also happens to be the time that our entire afternoon practices roll around. I have taken part in so many backstage games of Kung-fu today.

It also helps that we're getting attached to the musical. At first, it was a little hard to handle that we were in a musical about a prostitute that gets knocked up, but we've moved beyond that: it actually is a good storyline and musical in general. But seriously, we didn't know what to expect because it kind of launches off with this number:

Yeah. We aren't that crazy. But this managed to terrify a lot of people away from joining musical this year. It has so many good songs. In other news, it ends *spoiler* with the lead's suicide so that her son can go to America with his father.

Here's a less bawdy song, that Moriah made me watch like three times because, I quote, "You could grate cheese on those abs!":

 Love,
-J-

Past and future: another thought explosion.

Sometimes, I miss Kenya.

• The distinct smell of vegetation and diesel smoke, an overwhelming mixture that hits you at the airport and I see inseparable from Nairobi.
• The crisp mornings, waking up to birds, their sounds brighter and more exotic than anything that is heard around here.
• Passion fruit juice, strong coffee and tea with lots of milk and cane sugar, which gives it a distinct flavor.
• Everything coming to a halt for tea time in the morning and afternoon. 
• Time being a fluid concept. Everything is always late and people are so laid back they don't notice.
• Ridiculously dusty roads that get in your lungs.
• The beautiful gardens. To create more jobs, most people who can afford it hire a gardener and well kept tropical plants are fantastic. 
• Meeting so many interesting, inspirational people. At the guesthouse, everybody had a vastly different story that they would tell you over a meal.
• The adorable dusty little dukas (shops) with blaring music and selling everything you can imagine in a miniscule space.
• Soda in glass bottles.
• So many picture worthy opportunities.
• So much joy in the little things. An ecstatic little kid with a bouncy ball or someone cautiously eating jello for the first time.
• The definitely not safe playground equipment. Some genius designed that playground equipment and didn't not take safety into account. But it was so fun. 
• My personal favorite, rain on a metal roof. 

Despite that I only spent two of my seventeen years there, it still feels like a home to me. I never had a permanent house there but that doesn't stop me from feeling like I belong there.

I can't help but feel that I don't belong here for the rest of my life.  Everything whizzes past in a flurry of chaos, people never relax and often feel discontent with their lives without reason. In Kenya, so many people have so little but are happy, despite what terrible cards life has dealt them. I want to live a simple life, content with what I have and in a place I want to be, doing things I want to do. I want to focus my life on things that matter to me.

If this involves me living in a grass hut with few clothes, no stove and always looking disheveled, I don't care. Bold statement? I willing to give up a lot to live my dream because it's worth it.

Is this too much to ask? A bit of a fairy tale? I don't think so. I've seen a lot of people live their crazy dreams so why can't I be one of them?
Love,
-J-

Toto - Africa

Johnny Clegg - Africa Sky Blue

Intrigued: a thought explosion.

You know when you meet a person and they really intrigue you? Like, you have no idea how you feel about them, apart from that they are interesting?

Tonight I met a guy at youth group who was not really the youth group type. He came with one of my friends, arguably also not the typical youth group type. I met him once before, a brief encounter years ago, but nothing worth remembering.

So, everybody got to youth group, they put us in cars and we zipped off to the mall to do 'random acts of kindness' (though no one took into account that the mall on a Wednesday night in February is deserted.) We were put into groups, and I ended up with Allan and this guy, who I will call WGB (White Gangster Boy).

In the hour and some that the three of us hung out at the mall, I discovered the following about WGB:

• He dresses like the stereotypical gangster kid, the type that old ladies throw death stares. 
• He was fully aware of above statement.
• He has watched Doctor Who.
• He stole an apple from the grocery store, as we stood there with him.
• He is currently suspended from school for 'a stupid reason.'
• He proposed to a girl last year because he believed he loved her.
• He hates menthol cigarettes because his parents and sister smoke them.
• He dislikes his school because the people aren't interesting.
• He doesn't smoke weed during school. 
• He hangs out with a lot of douche bags. 
• He does a lot of 'ass kicking.'
• He likes being in relationships.
• He loves the Hunger Games.
• He seems completely at ease with his delinquency. 
• He manages to still pull off the convincing appearance of being a nice guy. 
• He wants to be a nice guy, even if he has bad habits.
  
• He has an incredibly amount of honesty and sincerity about him. 

I was so conflicted as to what to think. Despite me and my clean cut self, I felt strangely comfortable around him. The only concluding idea I have about him is 'intrigued.'
Love,
-J-

More or less a self inflicted intervention.

 I'm giving up procrastination for Lent. My future in IB French depends upon it. Basically, no/very little Tumblr or blogging until homework is sufficiently completed. Why has my life come to this point?

Why yes, Eleven, I am dealing with it. By using Lent as an intervention to fight the overwhelming urge to open a Tumblr tab, with it's endless scrolling and ability to turn hours into minutes. Anybody giving up anything for Lent?
Love,
-J-

Inspired awkward webcam pic Sunday (IAWPS) #2

So, incase I decide to make this a thing:

You're welcome for that picture of Nyan Scar (stolen off tumblr, naturally.)
Love,
-J-

Febuary is dreadful.

I'm staying home from school today and I'm not sick. Now, you may be thinking, What badassery is this?

Essentially, I have something due for my (terrifying) English teacher that I have yet to complete, and am unsure if I could complete before D block.

Another thing is that I have to read 18 chapters of Great Expectations. Considering that I started reading that book in October and have yet to finish it, it seems like it will never go away. It will haunt me in my old age. I'm currently on chapter 42 and apparently it begins to pick up around chapter 47.Yeah. I hate whoever paid Dickens by word. 

Also, this entire week has been an increasingly awkward experience. I mean, the sex talk at youth group on Wednesday was a breeze compared to the other social interactions I've had this week.When you launch off a week with wallowing in your inevitable end as a cat lady, you'd think it would go uphill from there but this week proved me wrong.

There was that lady yesterday who did a presentation on career planning, or rather, "Why you should give up on your hopes and dreams now as opposed to later." My hopes and dreams blew away in the wind:

 Through this presentation, my classmates and I came to some conclusions:

• IB is a lot more pain than the actual benefits in the real world are worth.
• Aiming low is key. If you aim to stave for the rest of your life, your dreams have a lot of potential to go uphill.  
• Apparently joining the reserves is the key to all that is good. 

The only good thing this week was the coffee house last night. Everybody who played was quite fantastic, everything from satire reggae to a duet from Les Mis and everything in between. Adorable, eccentric musicians were adorable and eccentric.

So basically, today I didn't want to face the world so I stayed in bed for an extra hour and would rather interact with homework than people. I shall now resort to the healing powers of herbal tea, Coldplay and perhaps Netflix while I do homework.
Love,
-J-

(P.S.- here is a good Coldplay playlist on 8tracks.)

The inspirational mustache man.

I was inspired by a picture of mustache man in the city market, in a bit of a crayons draw blanks style. Maybe I should make "awkward inspired webcam picture Sundays" a thing. Thoughts?

In other news, Valentine's day is this week (in case, you know, you live under a rock), the one week a year I allow myself to be annoyed by everybody, the icky sweet couples and the angry singles. But thankfully, most IB kids are single so hopefully they've come to terms with it and people don't bitch too much. A lunchtime tea outing is planned for Tuesday for all the single ladies (I know you just sang that in your head.) What are your plans for Valentine's day? I won't be annoyed at you guys, I promise.

Love,

-J-

Birthday alpacas.

 

Today was my birthday. I am now 17, a very unexciting age to be. The awkward place between 16 and 18. It was a good day. Moriah gave me a fantastic card, made of fabric stapled to a shreddie box, and pictures of all the things that remind her of me in it.

In English class, for part of Theory of Knowledge (essentially Philosophy) we did that trust game where you lead someone in a blindfold around. Maddy and I were leading Amy into the girls washroom and the class beside us experienced something like:
Seeing three girls arm in arm, one blindfolded, walk into the bathroom.
The bang of Amy walking into the paper towel dispenser.
Hysterical laughter.
Their teacher, poking the head out the door and yelling,"Do I want to know?"
My response of "Theory of Knowledge."
Three girls walking away in embarrassment. 

I hope that fiasco entertained that Chem class.

 Today was also the open house for my school, where we attempt to overwhelm eighth graders with our awesomeness and brainwash them into going to our school. The hallways were littered with paper mache alpacas (actually, there was only one, see above) and the science labs were filled with fun things that don't need lab reports. I spent a good portion of time in the history department, but nobody actually cares about the grade 10 and 11 history curriculum. I headed over to Physics, where I got to play with a bunch of experiments and be genuinely excited about motion and static electricity. I might have scared a few kids with my enthusiasm over tuning forks. Goodness, I'm a dork.
Love,
-J-

This song is stuck in my head. Boy band are so 90's. BUT IT'S SO CATCHY. You've been warned:

One Direction - What Makes You Beautiful

Large cookies, weekends and general nerdiness.

This weekend, I survive Permafrost, where each winter my youth group brings a bunch of kids into the sticks to a camp for two nights. Every year, insanity happens. This year was no exception. Some notable moments were:

• The team with this name:

Team "Moses didn't survive the trip to the promise land" had a rap. It wasn't that bad, considering that they wrote it in ten minutes, Rodney's beat boxing was terrible and Moses hadn't actually read it until he was rapping in front of everybody.

• Tempting eternal damnation while watching Soul Surfer. All the high schoolers cracked jokes at 1am about everything limb related. We laughed when the line,"Call me when you get better" was said to the girl who just got her arm eaten by a shark. We are terrible people.
• Losing faith in humanity for the fifth time in one day after an incident where one of the boys put icy hot on their nipples.
• Seeing Montgomery for one of the first times since the summer. We discussed Gilmore Girls and other beautiful things in life.
• Obnoxious middle school girls who finally fell asleep when a leader told us a story. Mind you, it was an hour long, incredibly detailed epic of a story about a hike he took. 
• Realizing, after much interaction with middle school girls, that middle school was ridiculous and is behind me forever. Hallelujah.
• The kitchen team, with their fantastic food of wonderfulness and giving me my caffeine supply.
• Making a pizza sized cookie with Moses. 
• A spontaneous cinnamon heart endurance challenge. 

'Twas a good weekend.

In other news, I thoroughly nerdified my phone and made the Sherlock theme my ringtone and the TARDIS noise my notification sound. I geek out whenever my phone does anything, then slightly ashamed. 
Love,
-J-

School approved, pretend brothels FTW.

This is my bag. I have named the big elephant Herbert.

Musical has begun. The first number we're working on is "The Heat is on in Saigon," which takes place in a bar/strip club/brothel. There is a lot of physical contact going on which makes me want to hide in a corner, as my few years in Christian school and youth group have programmed me to do. I'm one of the waitresses, one of the few girls who is not essentially dancing on a guy in the first song. Instead, I get to pass out bottles and break out in choreography every now and then. Really hardcore choreography with kicks, spins, jazz squares and other madness.

Yesterday I went to find my outfit and I can't say that I've ever gone shopping with the objective to find an outfit worthy of a waitress in a bar/strip club/brothel. Katie and I yelled across the aisles at each other things like,"Do you think this shows enough skin?". We got dirty looks from middle aged women. I got a white shirt with an awkward zipper on the back and a shortish black skirt that shows me how incredibly pale my legs are this time of year. Now I need to take preventative measures against all possible wardrobe malfunctions with the help of spandex, tape, etc.

Back to school after a five day weekend plus today's snow day.  I've had an awful lot of time to recover from exams. I'm ready to go and discover what Fine Arts class is, as it's a new class and a mystery to everybody taking it. I'm only taking two IB classes this semester which is probably good news for my workload.

Here is some nifty music for your listening pleasure:

Love,
-J-