It has been exactly one month since my birthday!
This is very exciting, especially since I noticed only a minute ago, and it's already evening. Only 11 months to go until I age again!
I can't wait till I retire.
That will be a birthday to celebrate:-)
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- Wednesday, Aug. 08, 2007 @ 21:48:06
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JuliaAtCavalia
- Wednesday, Aug. 08, 2007 @ 22:55:12
OOOH, 18 is sophisticated and free. Of course, if we lived in Europe we'd be free since 16, or was it 11?
I didn't know you had to be 18 for an ATM. I've got American Express and Mastercard in my own name because my mother originally wanted me to go buy her some Vegenaise (which is the most disgusting, sick stuff on the planet, like Mayo, except for vegans or crazy people with crazy tastes like my mother) and she didn't feel well and didn't want to get out of the car, and we didn't have any cash, and my mother decided to get me credit cards so that I can buy her the gross white mush whenever she needed it at her beck&call...
I like signing off on them, and I have develped a really snazzy signature, but I don't use it often, because I don't buy stuff, and if I do, I have to pay her back the moment I come home from my own money.
I don't have my own checking account or whatever it's called, and my credit cards are attached to my mother's account.I don't know how that works, exactly. I don't know anything about banks yet, even though i"ll be majoing in economics....
I think on one of your posts you planned to get a job. It would be cool to work in Borders or Barnes and Nobles and you can be around books and book lovers and be in a clean environment. Or you could find some envornomental club place to work at, like the camp that i"M attending now, which I haven't written about yet.
December is my favorite month of the year!!! I'd love to have my bday then. Instead, mine's in July, which is the only reason I like July, hot, sticky, dry, no-school-and-you-can't-see-any-of-your-school-friends-because-they're-on-vacation month, but december is THE best month, for the new year and lots of resolutions (lol) and lots of happy people that are happy even though they are frantically trying to find stuff for their happy-but-frantic holidays...
Plus, if I lived in a normal place on the planet there'd be snow, and there is nothing better than snow. Snow = happy people= happy december....
The only thing is, that you're lucky to have made it in december, instead of january the next year. It's like a slim door-closing gap, a close-shave, putting you into the year-older gap...sort of....or in the previous decade.....
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- Thursday, Aug. 09, 2007 @ 21:22:57
No you only have to be 17 to get an ATM. Thats why I was so excited to get it because I didn't have to wait until I was 18 haha
My signature is horrible! lol I even spent one day just writing it over and over on a piece of paper and it is still horrible. I hope it will improve as I use it more often
It would be nice to work at a book store(or something with the evronment) but the closest book store is over 30 minutes away. There is very limited opportunity for me since everything is so far. But I need a job because I want to save up as much money as I can for after college when I leave for europe.
lol the bad thing about winter is that it gets dark very early. I hate it when it gets dark so early becuase i always feel tired.-
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JuliaAtCavalia
- Thursday, Aug. 09, 2007 @ 21:44:00
true, lethargy comes with darkness. All my college classes are after 6, except i've got one at 2, so I'm going to be dying of sleepyness....I hope my professors won't be boring...
I actually have very nice handwriting. I developed it in 7th grade, and I don't think it's changed much since. Of course, it gets rusty over the summer, but I write in cursive-mixed-in-print, and everyone seems to like it....Yesssssss, cursive-with-print definitely kicks ass.
Are you parents planning to help you with Europe? I think that instead of buying anything like shopping, my mother has been saving up ,so that we can travel, and so that I dont' have to work while I'm a student. I think that's awfully nice, but I really want a job, so that I can LEARN how to have a job. Most of my jobs have been editing newsletters, doing computer work in databases for our friend at the Jewish Bureau of Education. So I've never really had a boss, or hours....
I DO want to work and have a boss, and shifts, and have to welcome customers and slave away so that I can write about my first REAL job. lol. But I am very grateful to my mom for economizing....
If you go to Penn, then you'll be living on campus? Then you can work on campus, or around it....
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- Thursday, Aug. 09, 2007 @ 21:56:39
Well they will but they won't. They are helping by paying for my college completely. Which I am very grateful for because I wouldn't want to start my life in debt by student loans. I also have some bonds things that I can cash. And plus I'll probably be getting more money for christmas and birthday gifts. But the rest is up to me.
I'm appling to PITT not U of PENN. Pittsburgh is close enough(45-minutes to 1 hour) that I can still live at home. I will probably get a job on the weekends and take the weekdays to go to classes and study.
How far away do you live from the college your going to?-
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JuliaAtCavalia
- Friday, Aug. 10, 2007 @ 16:19:00
JuliaAtCavalia [Member]
2007-08-11 @ 00:11
that's right, sorry. Pitt...
SMC is just about 40 minutes with traffic in the car, but for Los Angeles, where everything is spread out, 40 minutes is nothing. It took me 1 hour and a half to go to highschool, and 2.5 hrs to come home, so I"m used to the commute...
I'll need to start learning to drive ASAP, since to go on my own will take 2 buses, meaning over an hour and half including the wait and all....
Sometimes, you can make your college schedule be 4 days a week, if not less. Then you can have time for work after you study and for gym or blog or photography, or whatever else you feel like doing. This upcoming year, I have Fridays off from class, so It's like a 3 day weekend each week. Plus, two of my classes are only twice a week, while the other two are once a week....and it's still considered a full load, since I've got 15 units and you only need 12 to be a full time student....
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- Friday, Aug. 10, 2007 @ 17:19:21
oh yes I heard about your commutes in LA. An hour is not common here. The entire parkway east(for all of the eastern suburbs) only takes 15 minutes to go the entire length of it(with no traffic). The bad part will be coming home because we have tunnels on the parkway that cause traffic backups..it will probably take me an hour and a half to get home.
Will you be going for a ba. degree or will you go on to graduate before you go on to the UK?-
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JuliaAtCavalia
- Friday, Aug. 10, 2007 @ 18:14:28
I loved tunnels! We used to play "hold your breath and make a wish" the whole time you're under the tunnel. I suppose that if you sit in a jam under a tunnel while playing this game you'll pass out or die, lol.
I'll be 2 years (what is that? A.A degree??or is AA one year?? at SMC, and then transfer to UCLA, for the major....I don't know how these degrees are divided or called, but I probably won't be going over seas for about 4 more years....
Plus, sometimes my mother takes me on guilt trips (though I SHALL NEVER GIVE IN) and tells me that I"m trying to take her grandkids away from her...even though every time she's not on this guilt trip, she's encouraging me going away and all, but the previous behavior...which is absolutely rediculous, b/c she wants to live in Pasadena which is a really dumb outskirts of Los Angeles... There's nothing there except the Southwest Museum of American Indians, where she was a docent about 5 years ago, and also there are a bunch of antique car shows once in a while....It's just not cool. I do not want to live there, nor to have my kids die of boredome there. It's far from everything, and to get there, you have to pass through bad neighborhoods, though itself, Pasadena is a very expensive place....
So I'm out of L.A. as soon as I apply to some university in the UK....or Norway:-)
My friend's sister lived in Germany for a year, stuyding to be a teacher of the language at an institute....
She loved it....Well my friend's mother is the granddaughter of Baron von Wrangler, who owned some estates in Germany and Austria, so I suspect it wasnt' a problem for them, lol...You really got me caught on the lols...lol:-)-
- Friday, Aug. 10, 2007 @ 21:04:03
Oh our tunnels are too long to hold your beath lol. In elementary school when we went on fieldtrips to the city kids would try it and it is impossible(especially for kids), but of course some kids said they could do it..complete liars though haha
yep usually AA degrees are 2 years. I won't be going for 5 years(one high high school left, then 4 years university) but I hope to do a study abraod while in college. They have a program in Berlin for engineering that I might do. I hate the fact that I have to wait so long since a lot of things could happen in a couple years.
Thats cool about your friends sister. Usually nobody leaves the country here(unless it's canada)..but my mom knew this one girl that actually went and lived in France(and I believe is still there). I wish she still was in contact with her!-
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JuliaAtCavalia
- Saturday, Aug. 11, 2007 @ 09:22:19
hen I was 9, I had a pen pal in London, who was a close family friend's neice, and we exchanged a few letters...She however, went into university or another prestige form of higher-education in England at age 11 or 12 and stopped writing me. I also wish that we kept on writing because being from different parts of the world, you learn so much about yourself as well as the person you're in correspondance with, even if one discusses tunnels, haha, and because she was so busy, our pen palling broke off.
Do your friends also get inspired to go abroad and move to Europe if you talk to them? I bet you talk about it or think about it a lot?
My Wrangel friend is probably the one that got me thinking about Europe.
(Even though she is the daughter of a baroness, she is the most modest, smartest friend I have, and she is the one who is interested in art and literature and travel and she really instilled this fascination for European life in me...I believe it was around 7th grade, even...and it's still so...)
Where do you research about Europe?
I've googled and yahooed any combinations of things I could think of about UK, from moving to UK from US, foreign exchange, student life, Cambridge, Oxford, from the music they like to the history and literature (in addition to what we learned in AP European Hist) and I can't seem to find anything realistic, or even valid, except the history, haha, because you can't change what's already happened.
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- Saturday, Aug. 11, 2007 @ 11:16:28
No, nobody here(that I know of) wants to leave the country. Most people hang on to the 'greatest place on earth' and seems to think anything outside the US is a third world country with no human rights. I guess they just ignore the fact that we never have the highest quality of life..or even the highest average income.
Well two years or so ago I actually wanted to go to Canada. I'm not sure why, but as I researched more on it(using the internet) I decided it really wasen't for me. And I found that I would fit much better into the euro society. Since I am much more liberal than america tends to be, and europe is much more modern.
And the more I researched the more I liked it, from the high speed trains that can take you from paris to brussles in just a couple hours, to all the culture sites.(not to mention that it's usually much safer).
lol i've googled a lot too. I even look at wikipedia even though it's not a great source. But I also researched things like "moving to german" or "living in france" and one time I searched "american in france" and got a great site that somebody who moved to france made. Very helpful if I were going to go to france.-
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JuliaAtCavalia
- Sunday, Aug. 12, 2007 @ 12:17:24
I've found tons of blogs of expats living in UK and germany and norway, etc.
Its great because it's first hand from someone who experienced it already...
I get so carreid away reading what they've written that that is what actually got me looking for blog sites. Once you asked what sites people've tried out. I did Blogger, Expat-blog, livejournal, select-a-blog, and about 5 others including blog.uk. I just couldn't find one that I could figure out how everthing works. And I didn't want livejournal, which would have probably been the easiest, because I was aiming for one on a european site...haha
I've been to British Columbia, in Canada and it was gorgeous. We went from Vanvouver to a cruise in Alaska, and it is stunning scenery and great homes. However, in agreement with what you said, Europe is the center and being a few hours from France, and 5 from Belgium and a few more from Berlin, is so easy. You don't even need a car in UK, for example, because the transit system is so developed. Plus, geographically, US is so much spread out, and by size is probably bigger than a few european countries together...
None of my friends are enthralled by my European ideas either, except for the one who's a Wrangel, so I expect to be making friends there in UK in University. Or else at work or something. Plus, people in LA are so caught up in their own lives and speed that there are only a few handfulls of those who I regularly keep in touch with. Some, from one of the three high schools I went to, only call me to invite me to their superbowl parties and birthdays...and I end up seeing them twice a year. My other good friend is going to the Navy and won't have too much time to email...In LA everyone lives far away from each other. It's impossible to get around without wheels, especially if most people commute far to school and live in complete opposite parts of the city.
Hopefully there are stronger relationships between people in Europe, where they are brought up differently...I cant' wait!haha
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- Monday, Aug. 13, 2007 @ 11:32:52
The BC and alaska trip sounds very nice. My parents always wanted to go on an alaskan cruise, perhaps they will once my dad retires. Most of the people that went to canada here have went to niagra falls and then crossed the boder there.
It's impossible to not have a car here too. The bus network doesn't start until the suburbs...and once you're there you are only 15-20 minues from the city anyway so there is really no point.
Another thing I like about Europe is how aware of the rest of the world it is. Here it seems like we live in our own little american world. Where usually the only international news we hear about is iraq and the other middle east(that concerns us). Which is the main reason I listen to other non-american media..I like to hear more about what is going on in africa, asia, ect, ect.-
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JuliaAtCavalia
- Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2007 @ 17:21:15
My mother wants an AK cruise, too. I went with my dad's parents on that one, so there was no way my mother could have gone...haha
But i think the "little american world" isn't so little, and that many people do reach out and educate themselves, but there are TONS of ignorant people, who don't care, or don't know, or just simply haven't been exposed to anything. For example, I was in the highest level class of A.P. History in our magnet school, with the valedictorians and all, and half of them didn't know about the holocaust, or about Stalin, or the cold war. It was shocking how much these 17--18 year olds in my school had yet to learn in the middle of their senior year....-
- Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2007 @ 21:39:28
I do not know how it is even possible to not know about the holocaust. I mean alright if they don't know many details but EVERYONE should at least know what it was and that it did exsist.
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JuliaAtCavalia
- Monday, Aug. 20, 2007 @ 18:58:05
Yeah, I know. It was very disturbing, especially in AP Euro.
Lately, there's been a lot of arguing of whether or not it DID exist; obviously it did, but as the survivors are dying because of age, it's up to their grandkids and other jews to make peace within the Jewish community and their own Israeli politics (within Israel and between Jews themselves), so as a people, we could be a unified nation that works together, gets educated, and support each other in hard times. For example, the orthodox don't like the reform, and the ultra orthodox don't work because they study Torah, and the regular don't like that, because the ultra orthodox don't go into the army, so it's such a place of strife and poverty... I'm really worried about it. -
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Happy 1 month!
I'm excited about turning 18 this december..just for the fact taht I can just about sign up for anything without my parents having to sign with me. I was excited about getting my own ATM card last week just for the fact that it had MY name on it and ONLY my name.