The start of something new
Friday August 1, 2014, 4:03 pm
I am always ready for a challenge, but it gets to me. Naturally, I am always ready for change because I always need to improve on myself while handling challenges. On my mind today are the challenges I took on this summer - RA job, intensive second-year Arabic, gaining health and losing weight, and having a social life all at once. To be honest, I have been handling everything okay except for the staying healthy part! While I have gotten regular exercise and significantly improved my diet (which has helped with getting rid of acne and losing weight), I have not been sleeping enough! This week in particular has been pretty horrible and it ended with today - I literally ate it while walking up the steps to get coffee at Peet’s and then I was dying through about 3 hours of class before I finally asked Haitham if I could leave early. I feel a bit better now that I took a 2 hour nap, but there’s so little time and so much to do! Starting long duty in ~45min now, so I can’t go for a run after that (there was some hope about working out before!). Basically though, I want to take better care of myself, and journaling at home has been super helpful in making me realize what this means. Also I needed to start a blog because I’ll be traveling soon and thus this blog came into formation.
I will probably use this for whatever I want. I don’t care if I have a lot or a little or no readers at all. It could get pretty personal (well duh, it’s me). I could decide to do a blog post in Arabic or Turkish or something, especially because I started journaling in Arabic recently to continue the learning process.
While I want to be realistic about my life, I definitely want to showcase what I am doing to become new! Because my life is at the brink of amazing possibilities right now and the best way to figure out these things in my head is to talk or write about them more!
Here is what is happening now that is getting me so excited:
- 2 more weeks of class! While I have loved this class, it is killing me quickly and painfully from lack of sleep! At least my Arabic has improved dramatically and rapidly.
- 2 more weeks of being an RA. This was a tough job for me in so many ways. I could elaborate later I guess. I am looking forward to a break from living in the residence halls!
- I am leaving Berkeley and the Bay Area (possibly permanently) in 2 weeks + 3 days! And headed to Phoenix, then Amman. There have been so many preparations for this - I have practice-packed multiple times, purchased essentials (like actual Q-tip brand!), made a point of meeting up with a million and one friends and, of course, getting better at Arabic! I still can’t believe I will be living in the Middle East for the next 2 semesters, but I don’t actually know what this will mean for me. I am looking forward to finding out!
Okay, I need to end this post now because I got to get to some errands before long duty starts in 25 minutes. Busy life, come at me!
Shimmy