Day 1: Learn All the Spanish

So here I am, sitting in a garden with WiFi on day 1 of my adventure. Let me tell you, Antigua is such a beautiful town. There are cobblestone streets and restaurants and shops everywhere. My house mom is very friendly but I feel awkward with the communication barrier. I have enrolled in Spanish classes that will start tomorrow at 9am and I will definitely take them every day that I am here.
There are a lot of dos and don'ts. The hardest for me is that we shouldn't eat fruit that is cut up and sold on the street because of how dirty it is and the word parasites was thrown out there and hell no.

The other volunteers are friendly and young. I am for sure the oldest newbie, but they are sure to keep me young!

This weekend I plan on taking a trip to Lake Atitlan. It is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places and I have been looking forward to it for awhile! I think it will be the perfect first tour.

Someone said that they hoped to be able to shop at Target. So there's that. Also, I've been told I have to go to the McDonalds here because it is the fifth most beautiful McDs in the world and you could get married there. (Next week's post will not be about me getting hitched in a fast food chain.)

Hasta luego!

Going On An Adventure

In 6 very short days I will be heading to Guatemala where I will begin the, er, beginning of a once in a lifetime trip.

I have so many feelings coursing through me right now, hence the insomniac post I am about to write. I am excited, nervous, scared, anxious, impatient, and a million other things. I'm not ready and yet I want to be on the plane already.

First off, I will be volunteering in Guatemala with children for 3 weeks. A month ago I held a fundraiser to help offset some of the volunteering costs and to raise money for the community. They have asked me to wait until I get down there to give them the money and see if I'd like to put it towards any projects I become involved in. In total I was able to raise $1200 and I am pretty proud of that.

Unless I stay longer to volunteer, after I'm done I will be looking for other backpackers to start my travel with. While I know I won't want to stay with the same group the entire time, I want to travel with people, partly for the experience and partly for safety. I'll be heading south from Guatemala and hitting up as many countries in Central America as I can: El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama. Then I'll head down to South America to tour Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Chile. That's the plan, but I know things change and that's part of what I look forward to.

Honestly I can't wait to get started on this journey and I will definitely be updating my blog. Finally, a reason to write again. I can't wait to take you all with me.

XO

Musings of a Muser Without a Muse: 2014

Hello internet.

I never know how to start these things. Should I apologize for not writing earlier? I meant to, it's just that, you know, I got busy, I didn't know what to say. I started to write something, a hundred times, but every time I hit delete, delete, delete.

Shall we start with some small talk? How was your New Years? Mine was great actually, went out for dinner and a couple drinks with some friends. I didn't stay home this year, like you heard me proclaim I was going to do. How bout this cold front?

I know, I'm being a terrible conversationalist. I've rewritten every paragraph, and it's still terrible. You are a kind and patient listener. I promise that I will reward you with a GIF at the end of this monstrosity of a post if I can figure out how to make one. You'll love it.

I wish I had something to rant or rave about or even something to make you laugh. LOL, at the very least. I'm writing this just to get myself back in the mode of writing. It's been awhile and I miss it so, and one of these days I will please you with a random rambling and make you giggle.

One thing that I will leave you with, my goals for 2014:

1. Pay off my credit card.
2. Organize my apartment so that it's more of a home.
3. Date more.
4. Volunteer.
5. Read 12 books.
6. Fall in love.
7. Connect with friends and family on a weekly basis.
8. Work out twice a week.
9. Give cooking a shot.
10. Keep blogging, write every month.

Okay, so I couldn't figure out how to make a GIF (I spent all of 30 seconds), so here is a video. I tried uploading the video 5 times. Figured out how to make a GIF instead. Love it. Cherish it.

Merci beaucoup mes amis, je vous adore.

À bientôt! xo

Semi-Sober: A Journey to Adulthood

Since I started drinking, I've had a problem knowing when to stop. There's been a couple of years (more specifically the summers of 2003 and 2007, especially 2007) where I was a heavy partier. It's gone up and down throughout the years, but I vary from being a bit of a hermit to an out-at-all-hours party girl. I'm good at extremes.

Recently, I've realized that I've designated myself as the "fun girl". I don't know if other people share this same notion of me, it's completely all in my head. I realized this in the car yesterday. That's how recent this actualization was. I'll spare you the manic train of thoughts that led me to that AHA moment. Anywho, being this fun girl, well a lot of the time it involved Drunk Alex, and I would let loose another part of myself. She laughs, she dances, she's bold and she falls. I'm also like that when I'm sober, but to a lesser degree. I still fall. Trying to be a fun girl is exhausting; I rarely said no to going out, was always up for more, more, more. Was I genuinely having fun? Most of the time, yes, I was. I was having a blast. 

But then it went from being funny to being reckless. My shenanigans stopped being cute. My hangovers became more of a nuisance because I actually had plans the next day. I'm not in my early twenties anymore and 30 is staring at me like, "buddy, get your shit together before you hit a wall." And I've hit many, many a wall. 

I'm sure many of you have had one too many drinks, forgotten to say to yourselves, "hold on, this tequila shot will probably result in my singing to the porcelain gods, no thanks." And it's not that I only binge drink. I don't. I can easily have 1 drink, or none, but more and more when I've gone out on weekends I've gone hard. Too hard. I skinned my bloody knees recently. Or rather, skinned them bloody. My friend's mom pointed out that I should have stopped skinning my knees when I was six. (At first I thought she said that I should only be skinning my knees during sex, and I was pretty shocked.)

I'm still nursing that one knee back to health.

Staring at all my reckless behaviour and stupidity over the past couple of years, rather than laughing it off as I've done, I realized that I need to change something. Anybody remember that scene from Sex and the City where Carrie's friend is still partying hard in her late 30s and falls out a window and dies? Yeah, I don't want to be her. (Also her name in the show is Lexi and yeah, I was all shit, son!) 

So here begins my 4 month journey of semi-sober. I put some guidelines down so that I couldn't cheat, especially because I have no self-control. I have only allotted 4 occasions, 1 per month, that I am allowed to drink, and only 2 drinks those nights. I could have allowed myself to drink a glass of wine or beer at dinner, but I think this will be a good test of character, will and self-discovery for me to go semi-sober. Why allow the 1 night each month then? Well it started because I have some big events coming up, such as my birthday and my friend's wedding, and because I think that it is way more likely that I will succeed if I make it realistic for myself. It's also a good test. Can I only drink 2 on my birthday when people want to buy me drinks? I 100% know that I can, and it will be cheaper for everybody. Win-win. Another reason why is because I can be a bit of an extremist, and that it never a good idea. This is in the middle, and it feels good.

With all this money that I'll have saved, I'm definitely buying myself a pony.

Do You Face Your Attacker?

I know, it's been awhile since I've written. Awhile? A long time. And I'm not sure when I will write again after this. However I felt that this was important to share, and it's taken me awhile to work through this. You may remember my post a couple years ago about a rando that I met at the bar whose name was Awesome. I posted a sound clip of numerous voice mails that he had left for me, as I had thought they were extreme and funny and wanted to share them with my readers. All of 30 people read that post. A couple of days later someone posted a nasty note on Reddit linking to my blog, claiming to be Awesome and making up random things behind the phone calls that they supposedly left. I knew beyond a doubt that it was not the person who left the voice mails and had an inkling that it was someone I knew that posted it. This didn't stop the hundreds of hate comments I received, death threats and my picture and personal information (Facebook account, email address, and other links to my personal information) being posted on other trolly websites. I received emails and Facebook messages and ended up completely blacking out all of my accounts. And then it ended and the trolls moved on to someone else to attack. I never thought that I would out who felt the need to do such a malicious thing. However a few weeks ago my brother told me that he was told who it was. I screamed. I screamed bloody murder for about 10 minutes. It was someone who I went to high school with. We were never friends, nor were we enemies. To my knowledge, I never did anything to him. When I found out, all sorts of revenge ideas were streaming through my head, I wanted him to pay, I wanted him to know what hell he put me through, I wanted to see his remorse. And I wanted to punch him in the face. With my fist. The next day, I wanted to contact him and meet him in person to let him know that there are consequences for your actions. And then the anger subsided. Nothing I said would change what happened. It was years ago and it doesn't matter any more. I'm not writing for anybody to get angry for me. More of a lesson. Every action has a consequence, and just because you can't see the person's face, they are human and they have feelings. Also, don't name your kid Awesome. Or Wispy. So, Jeff. If you are reading this I hope that you never do what you did to me to anybody else.

I was born with multiple personalities

My mother had my name picked out before she knew that I was a girl.

Alexandra etymologizes* from Ancient Greek. They didn't mess around back then, and I believe that there was a lot of thought put into this name. Let's break it up into its syllables. First, we have 'Alex', how do you do. Then we have 'and', a connector. Lastly, we have this tiny little 'ra'. Where does ra come from? More importantly, who is ra?

Keep up with me folks, I'm going somewhere with this. I believe that the Greeks knew that whoever was born an Alexandra, wouldn't just have some humdrum personality. They would have personality and a LOT of it. Alex would do for every day personality, but every now and then ra would come out. You wouldn't be able to put your finger on it, but when talking to Alexandra, at times something would seem just slightly ra-ish.

ra would like to say that she wrote this post. She is fairly quirky, and mostly crazy. She spins from one idea to another, and Alex apologizes if you couldn't keep up.

Yeah, I wrote a post about have more than one personality and have now convinced you that I am certifiably insane. Love it. Just love it.

After Skyping with my parents the other night, I ended with "love you both", to which she replied "love you both... err.. both your personalities." Proof that she knew I'd be deserving of the name Alexandra.

*I made up that word.

Brain Word Fart Block Thing

I miss writing. I miss being able to write, and sitting down and telling a story. But then this evil writing word fart block monster came and it hasn't left. I have all these drafts sitting here, completely unfinished and very lame. Did you know that there is one about life as a male poodle? And one about how I should probably become a lesbian? Oddly enough, I chopped off all my hair recently. Step 1, check. But that's beside the point. Point is, WHERE ARE MY WORDS AND STRINGING TOGETHER OF THEM CAPABILITY?

I've lost you now, haven't I? Well, if I haven't, I will tell you a little ditty of a story.

This New Years I decided I wanted to do something different. After spending a month actively trying to remember what I did last new years eve (I was home on antibiotics and was passed out before midnight), all I could think of were past years of disappointment. And hangovers, so many hangovers. Year after year, without fail I would wake up on January 1st with an overwhelming sense of blahhhh. And then remember how much money I spent and look over at the hooker next to me and think, "was it all worth it?" The hooker was of course worth it, the rest of the night... meh. I love me a good hooker.

So this year I actively made no plans. Instead I watched kick ass Criminal Minds marathon. It was amazing. Of course, no new years is complete without a hooker, and I have a special new years eve harlot.

Ok, so I lied. I don't have any hookers or harlots. I didn't want to alarm anybody with my lame sober new years. Even though it was the best new years ever. Really. Even without drunk Alex. New Years drunk Alex is a meanie. She doesn't like the hoopla either.

Sober Alex also has some slight anger issues that she needs to deal with and is unsure of how drunk Alex will handle them. It's all fun and games until someone pisses a bitch off.

Maybe there will be less drunk Alex stories, but don't worry kids, there will probably be some angry Alex stories. Do you think they will let me write in prison? Can you imagine the stories I'll have from prison?? "Alex Gets Searched", "Alex Drops Soap", "Alex in Chains", "Alex Gets Her First Bitch". I'll have to rename my blog lexintheclink. Catchy, no?

I think I found my inspiration.

I apologize for the nonsensical post.

Oh and here's my short hair. Perfect for both becoming a lesbian and going to prison.