It’s strange to me that I posted about life being hard only three days before the attacks in Paris. In my last post, I talked about things like being homesick, and then being actually sick, but while writing that post, I didn’t even consider the fact that something like the massacre at the Bataclan could happen while I was in that very neighbourhood.

Yet, three days later, with sirens blaring outside and helicopters flying overhead, I sat on my bed after a long day at Disneyland, and watched live news updates with horror as the death toll climbed higher and higher.

After the attacks, I spent a few days inside the apartment I was living in, because honestly I was way too afraid to go outside. The first time I took the metro after the attacks, my heart was beating faster than I think it ever has before, and no matter where I went in the city, I was always looking over my shoulder.

Until one day, I wasn’t. It took about a week, and then I was okay again. But I wasn’t the same. How could I be? Something of this magnitude had never happened in the same city as me, let alone the same neighbourhood.

At first, once my fear left me, I was angry, and then I was sad, and then I was angry again. I was angry how the U.S. responded to the attacks, but I was angrier that these terrorists took so many lives from innocent people and instilled fear, sadness, and loss in others. People just like me. All they wanted to do that Friday was see a football game, see their friends and enjoy a meal, or maybe even go see a band that they had only ever listened to one time.

After that night, a lot of people in my life seemed to want to assign some deeper meaning to what happened. A few weeks later on Thanksgiving, some reporter from NBC asked me if the holiday had “any special significance after the attacks”. Of course, being the nervous POS that I am, I said exactly what he wanted to hear, and talked about how thankful I was to have my friends all safe and that we should never take life for granted or something along those lines. Truth is, that was just a line of bullshit.

I wasn’t extra thankful, and I didn’t assign some special meaning to these attacks. In my mind, it was as simple as people died, and it was horrible, and I’m angry about it. In fact, just thinking about it as I write this makes me angry again, but after a little more than a month to sit and think about all of the shit that is going on in our messed up lives, I have finally found how the attacks changed me, and that being angry is good, but only to a point.

This world is crazy big. Especially the United States, in all of its gigantic glory, but when you throw people into the mix, combined with the power of the worldwide web, this world shrinks. It’s tiny. The planet itself could be considered fairly large compared to us (humans are rather small), but now that we live in a world full of jet planes, smartphones, and the internet, we have to realise that our planet is not as big as it once was.

That’s what the attacks showed me. They didn’t make me more afraid to go outside, because let’s be honest, living in the United States is more dangerous than living in basically any other developed nation (got guns?), but it made me realise how tiny and connected our entire planet is.

You may think that what happens in the Middle East doesn’t impact you because it is thousands of miles from what goes on in your everyday life. You might not even know what’s going on over there, but our politics are being influenced by what happened, and me, a person you know on some level, could have been caught up in these attacks as easily as I wasn’t.

That’s why it is so important to know what is going on and to understand what you can do about it. Fearing people of a certain religion is not going to make our world safer, and not knowing the who, what, and why of these attacks makes it possible for it to happen again. I’m not saying we all have to know every single detail, but I know that I definitely was not paying enough attention to our world before this all went down in the city I was living in.

These attacks made me angry, but they also made me realise that getting angry won’t solve anything. Telling people the facts about why this happened, and using our compassion to find common ground with other humans is how we solve problems. Nobody wants to live in fear, whether it’s from terrorism, a mean neighbour, or the government. Of course, anger can fuel us to act, but it isn’t the answer. The solution is to gain knowledge, and to use it to support each other in our quest to stop these horrific acts of murder and unnecessary violence.

Terrorism is designed to breed hatred, and it is designed to strike fear into your heart, but if you fight terrorism with knowledge, and get a grip on what is going on in the world around you, the terrorists won’t win. Because knowledge is power, and violence is not.

Life is hard. We all know that – especially considering it is the most repeated phrase of all time when grownups teach kids about the real world. Alternate versions include: “Life isn’t fair”, and “That’s just the way it is.” However, while I prepared for this study abroad program, not a single person told me, “Hey, don’t forget that life is still going to be hard every now and then.”

Well it turns out that it doesn’t matter where in the world you are, life still isn’t easy. 

Of course, it would be ridiculous for you all to think that I am miserable and that I wish I never came here, because that is as far from the truth as we could get. In fact, I’ve seen more in the past month than I think I have seen in all of my time living in the U.S., and each day that I discover something new, I fall in love with traveling all over again. Actually, here’s a quick list of things I found pretty notable so far:

I went on a boat cruise on the Seine.
I went to a castle and saw a lot of shiny things. 
I went to Belfast, Northern Ireland, and I met people who were extras in Game of Thrones.
I went on a Pub Crawl in Belfast, and had a REALLY good time.
I stayed in a hostel for the first time, which was ridiculously fun.
I drank a Guinness. In Belfast. It was pretty cool. 
I went to Versailles and saw more shiny things!
I have done a lot of homework.
I learned a few French swear words.
I went to a really hardcore cemetery.
I saw NWA, and Seul Sur Mars. (The subtitles did not convey all of the swear words)
I went to Berlin!
I ate schnitzel.
I stayed out from sunset to sunrise the next morning.
I wore a Pope hat for Halloween.
I dyed my hair blonde.

And all of these things, (plus all of the ones I have forgotten to list here because I know I did) have made me even more determined to return to Europe again and again and again.

The reality is though, that feelings will always happen no matter where you go. In Europe, I’ve laughed more than I thought possible, and I have had a lifetime’s worth of new experiences, but I’ve also cried because I was stressed, frustrated, and sad.

At first, I had a hard time coming to terms with the feelings that I now realize were inevitable. I wanted this trip to be the completely blissful, flawless trip that my imagination set it up to be, but let’s be reasonable here, that was never going to happen.

A combination of homesickness, a minor cold, and more walking than I’m used to (seriously the gardens at Versailles are infinite) made it possible for me to feel cranky, tired, and not one hundred percent good about every single thing that has happened while I’ve been here. I’ve had to adapt to a new living situation, school patterns, new classes, and a completely new continent! It would be INSANE if I could manage through all of this confusion and newness without feeling a little irritated or uncomfortable every now and then. 

But now that I have had the time to adjust and think/reflect on myself, and my personal expectations, I finally understand that it’s okay. It’s okay to feel not quite your best, because when the feeling good part comes back around, you know life is really good.

Even though I still miss my family, friends, and my dog, and not every day is a shiny blissful vacay, I would say without a doubt that life here is pretty damn good.

As some of you may know, I have never been out of the country. That is, until this week.

This fall quarter, I will be studying abroad in Paris, France, but before I started my program, I made a little pitstop in Sweden to see Louise’s cousin, Sandra, and eat a ton of Swedish candy.

My first day in Sweden was kind of strange to me. Jet lag was something I finally experienced for the first time, and I honestly didn’t know what day it was for awhile. Thinking about Monday/Tuesday still confuses my brain a little bit, too, because the combination of sleep deprivation and the rising and setting sun at times completely foreign to my circadian rhythm kind of just threw me for a giant loop.

However, after sleeping for roughly 14 hours, I woke up and was ready to be here, in this time zone/country/small village, so Sandra took me to buy some Swedish candy, and then we visited her farfar (grandfather) at the lake. We had “fika” which is like tea time, but with coffee and cookies. It was delicious, and easily one of my favorite things to happen here. Farfar was incredibly sweet and welcoming, and honestly I don’t feel like going there once was enough.

I cannot wait for the day that I get to come back here and spend even more time getting to know the people and places I’ve heard so much about from Louise. Hopefully I’ll come in the summer time and enjoy it when it’s just a tad warmer outside.

Anyway, the next day, Thursday, I was on my own. Sandra went to work for the day, so I went on an adventure through this tiny town called Nyköping.

I walked around town for almost 3 hours, and saw an old castle, a busy shopping street, and a great deal of lovely greenery in the park through the middle of town. The river has these twists and turns that make for a similarly oriented walk alongside the water, and the old bridges and artwork that ornament the park around the river are spectacular.

It’s clear that this place isn’t heavily focused on appealing to the tourist community, which I also really appreciate. Of course, the places I went to are the more tourist-y spots of town, but if you’re going to a place with any sort of cool history, it kind of makes sense that there would have to be some explanations and signs for those who want to come gawk at it.

So far, Sweden has been fairly relaxed, and I like that a lot. It would have been hard for me to come here and be constantly on the go considering the various factors working against my immune system, and since I can already feel myself getting sick, my vitamin game is about to get amped.

Today is my last day here, and while I don’t know what is in store, I know that coming here first was an excellent decision. Not only do I get to arrive in Paris with my jet lag already taken care of, but I got to see parts of Louise’s family that I honestly never expected to.

The more I think about it, coming to Sweden was more than just a tourist stop. It wasn’t just about me being in another country in Europe, or even coming to Europe for my first time. Sweden, for me, is a portal to an entire section of my best friend’s life that I haven’t gotten to experience or even understand until now.

Hannah and I have experienced similar things in our childhoods, heavily due to the fact that we both grew up in the US, but Louise didn’t, and for a weirdo from Idaho who barely knows the geography of her own nation, I had a hard time picturing what life over here was like for her.

Trips to foreign countries and cultures provide people with opportunities to learn. Whether it’s about history, language, or even other people, it doesn’t matter what you do or where you go, as long as you return from your trip with some sort of enhanced understanding of the world.

And I’ll tell you what, I’ve learned a whole lot. (But I still think white sneakers are outrageously impractical despite their fashion value here)

I have two words. The first is Kesem, and the second is camp. Toss them together (not in that order), and behold: Camp Kesem.

Now I want to tell you all about this thing/place/group called Camp Kesem, and what it means to me now that I have experienced my first week as a counselor.

Getting Into It

My first meeting as a Camp Kesem – UW Outreach Committee member was during my last quarter of freshman year. I went with my roommate, after she had been bugging me all year about going to one of these damn meetings with her. I knew the cause, (a free week-long summer camp for kids that have parents with cancer) and I definitely thought it sounded incredibly important, but I’ve never been heavily impacted by cancer, so I wasn’t sure if I wanted to dedicate my time to Kesem instead of something else I thought I might find to be more suited to me.

I am so glad I chose Kesem.

When I walked into the meeting, I was just starting to wrap up my first year as a rower and college student, so my mental state was annoyed by trying something else new after doing it what seemed like constantly for the past six months. The thing that shocked me though was how nice everyone was while meeting me. I came from a very judgemental place, and so for all of these weirdos to be so outrageously nice was a bit of a shock.

Afterwards, I don’t know if I was fully convinced, but I still went to as many meetings as I could, and then the school year was over, I went home to my parents for the summer, and nothing had really changed.

Then September rolled around and I started my second year on a new committee, the Development Committee, but I had no idea what to expect.

Getting Ready For It

The entire second year of my UW experience was peppered with Kesem. It wasn’t completely made of Kesem, because I wasn’t a coordinator, and I hadn’t even counseled at camp yet, so my responsibility was fairly simple. But Kesem was still there, and it was bright. The people I worked with for Kesem were all little points of light in my school year, because they always had a smile for me when I bumped into them around campus, and then I started doing the same thing. I started feeling some of the enthusiasm they shared for this camp, and there were friendships that started to grow in my heart, making me even more determined to be a part of it.

The Development Committee was fantastic. My roomie was one of the coordinators, and her co-coordinator was the sweetest, and kindest human being alive. They were a dream team, and working with them made my life a whole lot more fun. The other girls in my committee who had just joined Kesem or already been involved were incredible too, and we laughed more at our meetings than I have ever laughed anywhere else (besides camp).

My head was in Kesem, and I loved getting to know my new friends, but I still couldn’t figure out why I still wasn’t as fired up about this as I wanted to be. I knew it was a great cause, and I loved hanging out with the people who were making this camp happen because all of them are weirdly perfect, but something just wasn’t there yet.

Fast forward through a fall and winter of shenanigans, and I was finally to counselor trainings. I had already applied to be a counselor and was approved/accepted/recruited, so now all of the counselors had to attend these trainings that essentially taught us how to be Kesem and how to interact with mini humans. Some trainings were long – and before 10 am – so it was kind of hard to wake up and get my ass out of bed some mornings, but every single time I went, I knew it was worth it as soon as I got there.

Through the duration of planning and training, I also somehow managed to land the job of leading arts and crafts for camp once it happened, which is still incredible to me. (All of the crafts I ended up doing were completely foreign to me, so there was a bit of… panic the few weeks before camp too)

And then we actually went.

Being There

Okay, so the first thing I learned about camp is that it’s nothing without the kids. Since I was in charge of arts and crafts for the week, I left earlier than the busses, so I didn’t meet kids until I had already been at camp for almost 2 hours, and it definitely wasn’t camp until they arrived. The hills were the same and the buildings didn’t get up or change color, but as soon as I saw the swarm of kids at camp, my surroundings were completely different. These were the kids who I worked for all year to bring here, and these were the kids that I would be pouring paint on and covering in glitter all week. I was ready.

Throughout the week, I gave out a ridiculously generous amount of high fives, and I screamed and laughed louder and longer than I ever have. I cried, I smiled, I got stung by some asshole bee, and I met phenomenal kids that I will never forget.

These kids made me feel love like I never have before. Like the Grinch, my heart changed size, but I swear it grew to the point that it filled my entire body. My camp name is inspiration for the name of this blog/site, but now that I look at the name “Jukebox” post-camp, all I can think of  are the kids who screamed it at me all week, or decided to change it for the better (Mailbox and Juicebox were pretty popular).

As I sit and write this, my fingerprints are still healing from being burned off from too much tie dye, there is glitter on my scalp, and my nails are dyed along my cuticles. I have bruises on my legs and scrapes on my arms, a bee sting that still itches on my thigh, but my heart is so full and my mind is so clear, that I see every single one of those things on my body and I smile.

I know I was a leader and counselor and craft master to these kids, but I feel like they were also my counselors, my friends, and seeing each of their unique creations while they played in the Yurt was more fun than I have ever had.

Getting Over It?

Obviously there is no way to get over Camp Kesem, but since I have to wait so long to go back, and someday there will be a time that I don’t get to be the leader of arts and crafts all week, I know that I have to keep what I love about Kesem alive for myself.

At Camp Kesem there is a feeling. A feeling of love, respect, compassion, fun, awe, and togetherness. It’s that feeling that makes my heart ache when I think of how long it is until I get to go to camp again, but it’s also the feeling that makes it so hard to stop smiling.

I think it’s important to realize that everyone has this feeling within them, but I know that for me it took Camp Kesem to wake it up. Now that it’s been shaken awake, I will never let it go away, and I am ready to spread it to as many people as possible.

The name of this feeling?
I call it magic.

So, today I worked out. Not only that, but I worked out at a gym.

Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve worked out. In fact, I’ve been an athlete for almost my entire life, with the exception of the past year or so. And not being active has been KILLING ME. I don’t have the self-discipline (or haven’t, I think I’m getting better now) to maintain my own fitness routine, and since all of the sports I have ever been involved with have been team sports, I never had to worry about it because my team kept me accountable. Needless to say, since I stopped being on a team I have put on some weight.

The weight hasn’t been just because of my exercise habits, it’s also been because I have always been crappy at eating well. I always just shove whatever shows up on my plate into my mouth without even considering it. Believe me, it’s gotten bad.

With that being said, this summer, I finally decided I have had enough. I am so over being a fat girl that feels fat. Looking overweight has always been an issue for me, but when I was an athlete, I didn’t care as much because I was focused on my sports, having fun with them, and I was actually kind of okay at most of them. I didn’t feel like a fat girl despite my size.

But now it has gotten to the point where I feel fat constantly. 

When I say that, I don’t just mean when I look in the mirror, either. I mean literally, 24/7. I’m afraid to meet up with old friends because I’m worried their first thought will be, “Oh my god, she has totally let herself go,” and when I sit at my desk at work, all I can think about is if the people in my office think less of me because I constantly have fat rolls under my shirt because even though they can’t see them, I know they’re there.

But like I said, I’ve had enough, so I’ve started a journey of health.

Not just any journey, but one that involves actually being mindful of what I am putting into my body and treating it with respect, but also by working out. This brings me back to my main point: working out at the gym.

I usually detest going to the gym, because most of the things you can do there you can do anywhere else but with a better aroma surrounding you and less humans, but I went. Because swimming in Lake Washington seemed like an idea I was not ready to entertain.

Usually when I go to the gym, I am petrified of all of the people there who are more fit than I am. There is no greater fear as a fat person than to be in a room full of people that the mean part of your brain has trained you to fear and hate out of jealousy. But I went. I conquered my fear of fit people.

And it was awesome.

Why was it so awesome? Well,being there with a strong sense that my fitness was for me, and me alone, I didn’t even care about the other people there. In fact, I feel a little narcissistic for assuming all of these fit gym folk were judging me or even cared I was there in the first place. The thing is, before, when I was trying to get myself to work out because I felt like I had to work my ass off just to be considered “hot”, I constantly felt like I was being judged because I was judging myself. That’s basically a huge reason for me not going to the gym or being willing to try it. Honestly, I was kind of a total asshole to myself, and that was so obviously not the move.

The move is to be nice to you. I know it’s so cliché to hear, but really loving yourself is the easiest way to get your life on track. I know mine is not necessarily on track yet, but it’s been two weeks since I started actively trying to change my unhealthy lifestyle, and I already feel like I have learned so much about food, fitness, and myself.

I also want to say thank you to the people in my life who helped me get to this point where I’m starting to be more healthy and mindful. I asked a ton of people for advice because I wanted to figure out what the best way was for me to be able to change my lifestyle, and they all said the same stuff. I just had to hear it about a gazillion times before I started doing it.

Life is hard, you know? But treating yourself with respect makes it a little easier to navigate, and basically respecting your body is just treating it to be a little healthier than you were the day before.

Until next time, folks.

Hello, everyone that sees this. This is my first post in almost a month, and it feels good to be back. I have not had a minute to myself since this quarter started, but now here I am at this desk with some free time. 🙂

As I was sitting here with all of this free time smothering me to death, I was thinking about, of all things, twitter. I just finished a phone interview with Aleksa Manila, and I wanted to Tweet and Instagram a photo that I had just taken with some interview notes, my recording device for the call, and my laptop open to her website featured in the photo. In the process of trying to decide if I was allowed to tweet that or not, I realized that nobody on the internet has made a serious point to address the issues of “tweeting ethics”. Of course, people generally say “omg stop tweeting about this in general, it’s annoying” or “think before you tweet”, but to my knowledge, there has never been an actual discussion about what is ethical to tweet about.

I think I’ll look into this further.

Happy Tuesday!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone!

I honestly completely forgot that was today until I was out at brunch with some friends and I absolutely was not wearing any green.

Anyway, as promised, I want to tell you all about Knorr the pig, and what exactly that’s all about.

A few weeks ago, I went to IKEA and bought a stuffed animal pig labeled “Knorrig”. According to my Swedish roommate, that’s the Swedish equivalent of “Snort” in English? I don’t know how accurate that is because I’m bad at remembering things like that, but I thought it was cute and decided to keep the name Knorr for my new fuzzy friend.

Before this IKEA trip, I found out that I was accepted into a study abroad program to go to Paris in the fall. This will be my first trip outside of the United States, so I’m going to make it as fantastic as possible. With that in mind, I bought Knorr and decided that I will be taking him with me.

I see a lot of photos from when people travel and they come back with them to show off their experience. I think that’s great, but I want to try something a bit different and fun. It’s one thing to see a photo of the Eiffel Tower or me standing in front of it, but looking at a Swedish stuffed animal from IKEA traveling around France seems much more interesting. Before I go, I will be posting photos of him around where I live and where I go to school, just to kind of get in practice of carrying around a stuffed animal and taking glamour shots of him, but the main goal is for him to be my traveling pig.

Besides, he’s super cute too, so who wouldn’t look at him doing things? 😀

https://instagram.com/p/0JZok4QOKu/

This site is still under construction, but I hope to post at least once a week on my home page.

The end of the quarter has arrived, so life has been pretty crazy, but a little bit of progress is better than none. I added a page for some links to my work in journalism, and that will be up by tomorrow morning.

One project I wanted to briefly mention is my new #adventuresofKnorr on Instagram. I bought a stuffed animal pig at IKEA the other day, and I’ll be taking him to various places and posting his shenanigans on my various social media feeds. I’ll post a more in depth description of what the heck I decided to do that for once this week wraps up, but be on the lookout for Knorr the pig!

Happy Wednesday!

So I think I’ve decided to break this website into pieces. My main page will be for updates regarding content on various pages to act as a guiding hand, but the other pages will be for specific types of posts.

One page will be for professional pieces, one will act as a blog, and another will be for something else??? Whatever comes to me in my next prophetic dream will get to take that one, I suppose.

I like questions marks too, so you may or may not be seeing many of those.

Happy Tuesday!