China: Day 2

Hey guys I'm sitting in the airport in South Korea waiting for my flight to Weihai and am frantically trying to get a couple posts in before I get my Blogger privileges revoked in China. 

This was our room where we stayed last night. AMAZING. So high tech I couldn't even figure out how to turn off the lights. You had to have your key card in a slot to turn on the lights and then there was a monitor by our beds that I finally discovered controlled lights, music, air conditioning.....

 We had a little office area with a closet including robes and slippers and a safe and laundry order forms...

 Our sitting area complete with one of two TVs.

 Our giant bathroom that we managed to flood twice last night. This Jay who I roomed with last night. The shower curtain is not long enough to keep all the water in the shower area so we soaked through a couple of towels on the floor.

 I woke up this morning to discover that they had left chocolate for us on our pillow :)

 This is South Korea. FOG. Everywhere. Therefore, I didn't really get to see much of it.

And this is me.. drinking my wonderful smoothie and blogging with you. 

China: FlightS

From last night:

2/26ish, 2/27ish. (They blurred into one day for me as we chased the sun, watching it rise on one side of the earth and then seeing it set on the other side 1 day later.)

Hello world!

The last 48 hours (or so.. honestly, I lost track) have been.. long.

My flight leaving Phoenix was at 6am and somehow I managed to sleep through my alarm for the first time in 1.5 years. It might be due to the fact that I had been partying for the 3 previous nights and had then spent an entire day packing up my room and running last minute errands. I made it to the gate in time and met up with Crista and Rachelle who are from Gilbert. I spent the majority of the 1.5 hour flight to LAX staring at the chair in front of me because I was already too out of it to focus.

When we arrived at LAX we discovered we had to wait for the Asiana Airlines counter to open at 8am so we spent the next 2 hours sitting in front of McDonalds (where we ran into Sarah) eating, staring silently, and eventually talking. Down at the counter we discovered that luggage restrictions had changed from what we were told so my carry-on suddenly became a checked suitcase and my personal item (backpack) needed to be 10 kg (22lbs) or less. It rang in at 15kg (33lbs). Apparently I had a very valid excuse for sore shoulders today. Luckily the airlines girl was training and asked if I had a laptop in the bag (which I did) and let it pass. We'll see if I'm as lucky tomorrow morning heading from Seoul to Weihai. The first piece of luggage I checked in Phoenix was 5lbs over and they wanted $200 extra for that much weight. One of the girls with me in LAX ended up having to pay $100 for bringing her guitar. Another girl's bag was so heavy they wanted $400. Ridiculous.

We met up with Geoff, Mikelle, Jamie, Melanie at LAX and while we were waiting for the flight I spent a good part of the time on the floor listening to music and trying to make myself sleep. Didn't work. The flight was..... long. 13.5 hours is more than twice as much as I've discovered my patience for being on an airplane lasts. Fortunately the food was really good and they had a great movie selection so I ended up watching Wreck it Ralph, Pitch Perfect, and The Lucky Choice, intermingled with a grand total of maybe an hour worth of naps.

We met up with the SLC group in the Incheon airport in South Korea which I discovered when I happened to notice a white boy jumping up and down, waving frantically at me (Mark) through a set of doors. We rode a shuttle an hour to Seoul where it dropped us off at the nicest hotel I've ever stayed at (which is saying something) where we ate our sit down dinner and then walked around outside looking at street vendors. I don't think I've ever seen merchandise from street vendors that have tailored to my interests so perfectly. There were lots of scarves, hats, jewelry, sunglasses, socks, potato chips that they fried on a stick.. It was fantastic. I ended up buying a keychain to add to my world keychains and a pair of Gangam Style socks that I'm a little more than a little in love with. Driving around the city it surprised me how... European/American Seoul is. Granted, it was dark so I didn't see much driving in to the city but you'll find Starbucks, 7/11, and even Subway. The sky scrapers covered in neon lights remind me of being in Times Square or Picadilly Circus in London.

There were probably 10 other things I wanted to say about today but it's 7:40am AZ time and after only 3 hours of sleep in the last 2 days I'm gonna call it a night.

Love you all.

Miss you.

Had the phrase, “Amanda, what the hell have you done?” run through my head more than once today.

Goodnight.

 All the yummy looking fried food that my stomach had absolutely no desire to consume last night.

 A few of us at the airport in South Korea: Crista, me, Jay (Jamie), Sarah, Melanie

 Downtown Seoul next to our spiffy hotel

Our Gangam Style socks!!

China Preface

In 5 hours and 42 minutes I'll be on a plane starting my 2-day trip to China!!
Of course I left everything to the last minute so I'm totes out of time but here's a link for a video of the School I'll be teaching at.
Love you all!
~Mannadarlin.

My Nightmare on Elm Street

About a month ago I decided it was time to take a break from pretending I have any sort of credentials for giving advice on relationships and decided to give my blog a new topic for a while.

Here is the first post of many.

Two and a half years ago I took on one of the biggest projects of my life:

The Nightmare on Elm Street.

(N.O.E.S.)

I got the idea from a friend to buy a house and then rent out the rooms to other college-aged people to help pay for the mortgage. I spent a couple months looking at house listings online and mulling over the idea of taking on this responsibility. The market was the lowest it had been for years and I'd always wanted a house of my own to remodel the way I envisioned it could be so after a while I threw the idea out to my mom and she told me I was crazy-- that I was 19 years old and didn't understand how big of a deal buying a house was. Why didn't I just focus on college and then maybe a car once I got a real job and then I was allowed to start thinking about a house.

That changed within the month :)

I showed her a few of the houses I had been looking at and after explaining my ideas she became hooked too. We spent the summer stalking houses online and then in person. 

I found a house I loved that had recently been remodeled. 3 bed, 2 bath. Beautiful pine cabinets in the kitchen. Adorable little breakfast nook with red walls. Giant 3-car garage that I planned to renovate. We put down $1000 and waited... and waited.... and waited....  Moral of the story: short sale=never gonna sell. We walked away. Found out later no one ever put another bid on the house and it sold on auction for about half of what we offered. Guess they should have sped things up.

Another house I fell in love with I called the "dream house." (When you're looking at that many properties you have to come up with nicknames and I had quite a few-- dream house, dead cat house, 3-car garage house, AZ room house, backyard stairs house.. usually named after the features that left an impression.) The dream house had also just been remodeled. 4 bed, 2 bath. Gorgeous kitchen with beautiful dark tiled countertops and a red barn across the back fence. A house full of my boy friends live there now.

The house that I saw and knew I'd found what I wanted was the 9th Place house. 5 bed, 3 bath. Living room and family room. Basement. Kitchen cabinets I was going to paint all the colors of the rainbow.

We didn't get it and I was devastated.

At that point I kinda gave up. I was sick of looking for houses. I had already found the one I wanted and it was gone so I marked my project as failed. Shortly after my mom woke me up early one morning informing me that she had found the house we were going to buy. That's really confusing when there aren't any houses you're looking at.

The house had been listed that morning and we made an appointment to look at it first thing the next day. When I walked in the front door I thought... okay this is a whole new level of gross. I've seen some pretty dirty, abused houses on my tours but this beats everything. Then I walked into the master bedroom and knew I wanted it.

Thus begins the story of...

THE NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.

I plan on writing a post for each section of my house-- showing the change over time.

The links below are posts I wrote while the house was in progress and they contain writing and photos about the house along with all the other things going on in my life at the time.

I don't expect anyone to read all of them but I would recommend the first.

The House

It's amazing what can happen in a week... or two

Pictures to prove I'm still doing something with my life

Today I ate a box of Popems

A Resting Place For Exhaustion

Un'amica stretta

I was chatting with a couple friends the other day about how you would define a best friend and as I was reading a book last night my interest on the subject was piqued once again.

Whenever I think of best friends my initial thoughts jump to jewelry pieces with "best" on one half and "friend" on the other. I think of FB pictures that my teenage EFY girls have written "best friends!!!" all over and posted on their profile. The picture above is actually of 2 of my favorite girls who I'll add my amen to the fact that they are indeed, best friends. I had the opportunity of having Tabby in my group my first summer at EFY and then having both of them in my group the second summer. I got to observe their incredible friendship and take part in it myself for a wonderful week.

But what is it about their relationship that defines them as best friends? I went to a few of my favorite experts to get a little more information: Wikipedia, Wikihow, and Urban Dictionary. Totally accurate sources, I know.

On Wikipedia I was reminded of the several types of friendship that exist. I've listed a few of the more common ones along with a few I appreciated because of their title--

Associate, bloke, blood brother (or sister), Bromance, Buddy, friends with benefits, family friend, comrade, Frenemy, imaginary friend, internet relationship, mate, opposite-sex friendship, pen pal

Whew! and those are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to relationships.

As for telling me about what a best friend is specifically, Wikipedia kinda failed me so I moved on.

Wikihow was slightly more helpful. They even have a page that gives you step-by-step instructions on How To Be A Great Best Friend.

But still, not what I was looking for. 

Urban Dictionary it is. This is where I hit the jackpot. My wiki pages are great for strictly informational matters but Urban Dictionary has the raw thoughts of real people and who better to ask?

Here's what the people of Urban Dictionary had to say about what a best friend is:

• the first person you think about when you make plans
• the first person you go to when you need someone to talk to
• the first person you call when something great happens or when something horrible happens
• someone you can talk to about nothing or the most important things in your life
• when you're sad they will try their best to cheer you up
• shoulder to cry on
• take a bullet for you
• someone you trust your life with
• someone you always remember no matter what happens
• gives you the opinion you care most about
• tells you what you need to hear whether you want to hear it or not
• someone you can always be around and never get sick of
• someone you don't envy
• someone you are grateful to have as a friend
• someone who will always forgive you
• someone you can be totally yourself around

"The best friend in your life is the person you are thinking about as you read this."

I think they did a pretty good job of summarizing the characteristics of a best friend but I still felt like I was missing the answer as to what a best friend really IS.

I love what Eat, Pray, Love has to say about this:

"...un'amica stretta means "a close friend." But stretta literally means tight, as in clothing, like a tight skirt. So a close friend, in Italian, is one you that can wear tightly, snug against your skin..."

I think she meant to write, "one that you" but hey our brains are trained to put the words in the right order anyways, right? So no big deal.

I like the idea that a best friend is someone who is so close to you that they're practically a part of who you are. They're their own self but also very much a part of yourself that completes you.

They're the one who you complete your thoughts and ideas with.

They're the one who shares the majority of your time.

 They're the one who fills your gaps and you feel you can share your vulnerabilities with.

They're the person who when you can't be everything you want to on your own, they take on the rest.

Of course everyone has their own imperfections and a best friend is as human as anyone else so they're not going to be a literal superhero but most of the time it still seems like mine are to me.

I'm incredibly grateful for the few people in my life that I consider to be my best friends and can't imagine any better of a gift from God.

Since when?

I've had this quote/draft sitting around for quite a while now and found it perfect for tonight.

It's depressing, especially for Valentine's Day so if you're still all twitterpated this is bound to bring you down.

Let me start off by saying I don't really hate Valentine's Day. I think it's nice that there's a special day each year that people put a little bit extra effort into showing the ones that they love just how much they care.

What I don't like about it is how serious it is. It's not so bad if you're already married but for anyone in any sort of relationship stage leading up to marriage it seems to push for a DTR and put unnecessary stress on the situation. I don't like how commercialized it is with the demand to buy flowers and chocolate and giant teddy bears that no one knows what to do with. I don't like the competition for being more romantic than someone else or the year before.

It should just be simple.

And it's often not.

This post isn't about Valentine's Day at all. I just wanted to say my little bit on it and my news feed on Facebook is already far too full of Valentine's Day haters and lovers. 

Here's the quote I mentioned at the beginning: 

"According to astronomy, when you wish upon a star, you're actually a few million years too late; that star is dead, just like your dreams."

I love this quote. It's not that I love the meaning, its more that I love how it is so perfectly destructive of any happy thoughts and hopes I've ever had for the future. 

Sometimes when I am bitter at my life and the world I want to take on this view of reality and see the stone cold dark side of the truth.

Luckily, I'm a dreamer so no matter how bad things get, no matter how many times someone breaks my heart, no matter how many endless dead-ends (lol) my dreams reach, I still rebound to the positive and won't give up hope.

It's a good thing, most of the time.

But what do you do when you have that positive view, when everything is going right and wonderful and perfect and then you find out that it's all a lie because that star you wished on-- yeah, it died a few million years ago.

?

And now we get to what I actually want to write about:

What can you do to best ensure that the person you're marrying will still be the same person you married X amount of time later?

I understand that people change.. that 20 years later you're married to someone different than the person you said "I do" to. That happens and it's necessary for the two of you to adapt as your relationship and lives change over time.

I get that, it's normal.

BUT what about 1 year after you marry them? Or 1 month? Or 1 week?

What do you do then when you discover that the person you married is not the person you thought they were at all?

Simple solution you say-- date longer. Get to know them better.

Well how long is long enough? 

6 months?

A year?

2 years?

5?

At what amount of time spent getting to know someone can you say you really know them and have the assurance that you're marrying the person you think you are?

You can't answer that.

Some of you may think I'm exaggerating a little bit with this--thinking that people don't just change personalities that fast, especially in a week. No way. Doesn't happen.

But it does! I grew up in homes watching that happen with my parents. I've watched it destroy friends who thought 1.5 years of dating was enough only to discover after marriage the numerous amount of addictions that plagued their spouse.

Oh you're an alcoholic and smoke weed? 

Since when?

You're emotionally and physically abusive?

Since when?

So what do you do?

You spend more time dating, more time with their family, widen your variety of activities, make sure to not brush off the little things that could be indicators of bigger problems, pray... 

As far as I see it, you can do your very best to wisely prepare and educate yourself but in the end it requires that leap of trust and faith that it will work out.

No wonder people are scared of marriage.

I've been asking myself the past week-- am I guilty of this change? 

I think the answer is yes.

How long does it take for someone to really get to know me?

What can I do to be honest about everything I am?

I know I have this part of me that's a huge jerk but the people who know that about me are the ones I care about enough to show who I can be in my worse moments because I trust that they'll still love me anyways.

This blog is all over the place. I apologize.

I'm terrified that after all I can do, I may still fail.

I may never know what a lazy, angry, manipulative person I've married until I seal the deal.

On the other hand, I might have the great fortune of marrying someone who really is as incredible after marriage as he was before.

But how do you tell?

I don't know.