Excitement!!!!

Last night, we had our first meeting for getting ready to go abroad in January.

Even though there are a lot of things to be excited for, I am really excited to pack. I will be an awesome packer. 1 carry-on suitcase and a backpack for a month. No checked luggage for me!

Also, the hostel and institute we will be staying at/studying at both have wifi, so I am definitely bringing my laptop.

I've decided to use of my free weekends to go to Venice. It's about 2.5 hours away from the institute we are staying at in Piran, Slovenia.

We are also taking a bus tour of Croatia and Bosnia. I will be going to Sarajevo. I am really excited. And nervous. There is so much real history there. Not like here in America where there are very few monuments or museums dedicated to the bad shit that happens/ed here.

There are no monuments to the genocide against the First Peoples. I'm not used to this. When I went to the Holocaust Museum in France, I almost puked. It was so intense. In America, it's easy to just ignore it and picture it happening far away but never where you live (even though it did).

The bombing of Sarajevo only happened less than 20 years ago. I was alive during this. I innocently started school, got a dog, was a kid. How can life just go on when people are being killed, slaughtered?

How can it still be happening now? I'm still sitting comfortably in my apartment while ethnic violence is perpetrated. Kids are dying. People are scared and trapped.

God, what a shitty post.

What a shitty world.

I see him there and I feel pity

Today I watched Hamlet 2. It was pretty funny, but mostly I just felt bad for the guy. (I give it 3 out of 5 stars. Not great, but far from bad). It just reminded me how shitty some lives and places can be.

Granted, I don't like when people say things like 'oh, your life is so tragic. It must suck to be you," (they say it much more tactfully, but you know what they mean). One person once told me that they were glad they weren't me. I wanted to punch him. Granted we were only 9 and he wasn't me nor was I him, but that was a blow. Pity is the worst feeling in the world.

My opinion: if you feel pity for someone, keep it to yourself. Give them sympathy and support, but don't tell them that you pity them. It's like someone saying there is no possible way they'd ever want to be you. And no one's life sucks that much.

The guy in the movie had a really shitty time during the movie, but his life could have been a lot worse. Life is always worth living unless you are no longer willing or able to try to live it. We are all extremely fortunate to have life and to have as good of a life as we have.

Ok, I'm off my soapbox, now. : )