Christmas break update

December 25^th, merry Christmas! My break has been really good and relaxing sofar. I flew from Pittsburgh to Jacksonville on the 16^th to stay with my brother, but I keep thinking of what happened when I was at the airport that day.

When I was reading a book while waiting for my flight to Atlanta, I noticed that a very old lady in the wheelchair had dropped her bottle of water on the floor, right underneath her butt, where she couldn’t reach it nor see where it was. I said "Heey, I gotchaaa, don’tworry!!" and gave her the bottle back. She then looked at me trying to say something. I guess I made her repeat herself a couple times until I finally got that she was actually saying "bathroom bathroom bathroom!!" I said "BATHROOM! Let’s go to the bathroom," so I pushed her wheelchair tothe first bathroom I found and then we came back to the gate, where we were before. Right after I grabbed my book to finish reading it, one of the guys working by the front desk of the gate came to me and said "hey, I really appreciate that you took that old lady to the bathroom. Can I see your tickets for a second, please?" When he gave my tickets back, I looked at it and: 4B,f irst class! Haha. Free glasses of wine, more room for my legs, a pillow and a blanket: CHECK! But in all seriousness, that reminded of how awesome it is todo good to others. It certainly makes us feel great for being able to help someone out or to at least make someone’s life easier whenever possible. I like the idea that “when you give a little love, you can get a little love of your own,” and that this world would be a better one if it was filled with kindness and people who care about one another.

Anyway, after arriving at my final destination, my brother and I (and his friend Geovanne) spent the next couple days either going to the beach, visiting downtown, shopping, watching movies, going to the pool or sleeping a lot. Not bad at all! Also, I am glad I had the chance to meet Geovanne and to hear a little bit about his life story. He was born in the state of Goias, in Brazil, and was raised in a not so developed area of the city, having to work  at a really young age in the farm where he used to live at with his family. Access to proper education and support from his parents were not so present during his childhood, forcing him to almost always have to manage his life and make decisions by himself. His family did not have enough money to pay for a private university, so he studied hard and got accepted into a public one (in Brazil, public universities are usually the best ones and you don’t pay for it, so you can imagine how competitive the selection process is). After completing 4 years of college (his major is civil engineering. Not sure what is the length of the program in the U.S, but in Our country, it usually takes around 5 or 6 years), and thanks to his willingness to learn English by his own, Geovanne was later accepted into the so-called “Ciencias sem Froteiras” (science without borders). This is a program created by the president of the country to provide full scholarships for certain students to go to a different country for up to an year in order to acquire a more global perspective of thew orkforce, to enhance their language skills of the chosen country, to learn abouta different culture, etc. He told me that neither his family nor even himself could have ever imagined to be given such an amazing opportunity, and now he is here, just getting ready for spring semester. It is funny to see how much confidence he has gained by this whole experience. He was talkingto me and saying: “You know, I came from the very bottom and made my way to the top. I talk to my friends from back home, and they are still living that same life, talking about the same things, but I feel like I have grown so much as a person after coming here. Here I am completely responsible for my actions and, when it comes to the classes I am taking, my presentations are simply great, and grades are higher than what I expected (whilealso saying how funny it is to see his American classmates getting “mad” at himwhenever he gets a better grade on a test or assignment!). I know I will goback home way more mature and ready and able to conquer whatever I want to, youknow what I mean, Isabella?!” “YES! I know EXACTLY what you mean,” I told him.It is that feeling that you can do everything, that you can overcome all theobstacles along the way or achieve anything in life. Perhaps we won’t, but itis to have that feeling that matters the most. And his beautiful life story hasproved me that everything is possible. “If you want something in life, reachout and grab it,” as I read once, somewhere.

Geovanne is now in NY for a couple days, and Yuri, my cousin,came from Iowa to spend the rest of break with us. Yesterday we decided to go to the mallin the afternoon to buy stuff to cook and some shit to drink for Christmas Eve.When we got back it was already 9pm (midnight in Brazil), so we Skyped all thefamily and kept talking to them for a while. I don’t know, it is not the firstChristmas day away from my family, but I guess I will always think that it is weird not being with them on this day. When I was younger, Christmas waspretty much the best day of the year. The only day when each member of thefamily would get together (driving long distances never seemed to be a concernon this day!), cook tons of the best types of food in the world, catch up oneach other’s lives and laugh and make jokes and exchange presents and etc.! Itmakes me smile only by remembering those moments while I write :) 

Well, thistime it was not like that, so we had to make the most out of what we had at the time. Good food (which really impressed me, since our cooking abilities arecertainly not one of our best traits haha), great company and drinks. Today weare here, doing absolutely nothing for the whole day! Tomorrow we are taking thebus to go to Orlando and staying at a friend’s house until the 28^th,when my parents finally arrive! Just can’t wait. I hope to write about the tripas soon as I get back to school for my very last semester of college (:O).

xoxo
Isa 

End of another school semester :)

Damn, how wonderful is it when it is only Wednesday and you take your last test and leave the classroom thinking that you have no more school work to worry about and that you can finally pass out on your bed for unlimited time?! What a happy and relieved Isa I am :)

These last three weeks of class were pretty intense and I am glad I am done with it. To be honest, I guess that was the only time that I really felt like I was giving the best out of me. As I look back and think about this whole semester while I write this post, I can tell that this was such a messy and crazy one.

I don't know. I believe that it all began after going to Texas visit my friend Annah, from August 30th to September 3rd, right on the first weekend after school started! I got there Thursday night and, after being lost for two hours until we finally got to her place, we stopped somewhere to get a few beers and catch up on each other's lives. The funny part is that we had agreed on waking up at 6am to be on the road before the sunrise, and so we did! All I know is that we had a huge map in hands, looked through it, circled the places we have heard before, showered (since we had no idea if/how/when we were gonna  have the chance to shower again haha) and left. No computer, Facebook, and cell phone only if necessary. We went to Austin the first day and it was a hell of a long one! The weather was insanely hot, but we still walked and drove around as much as we could. At night, I remember we were feeling pretty gross and tired, but the night had come so why resting at this point, huh?! We ended up bar hopping for a couple hours and meeting people from everywhere (saying that we were doing a road trip in the U.S and that we happened to stop in Austin for the night lol) until we finally crashed in the car where we had parked earlier before. It was terrible! I remember waking up around 4:30am with those big noisy trucks washing up the street and feeling like I was in a microwave. Homeless people were napping just next to us on the sidewalk and cops were passing by every 5 minutes. It was time to leave. It didn't take us too much time to learn how to use our big map and the sun as reference points, but we surely got lost a number of times, giving us a lot of "freak out and non-stop-laughing moments!" San Antonio was the second destination and then Corpus Christi, all the way down South. Trying to drive down a little bit more to try to cross the Mexican border seemed to be a very acceptable challenge, but I would say "fortunately" it was already time to go back to Houston and finally think about getting my school semester started.Truth is, when I got back to RMU on Monday night, I realized that I had a buunch of homeworks, assignments and group projects already going on, without a single clue on how to even start working on all that.

You know, getting things done is usually something that I'm good at,  but this time my mind was somehow not focused on school. It took me a little longer than usual to get used to the new and faster pace of senior year, and even though I was taking only four classes, they were all from either my major or minor requirements, which made me feel as busy as when I was taking five or six classes before. Besides that, I should say I partied way way too much as well. In between party buses to Southside or any other bars on the weekends, Crossroads Bar was fun on Wednesdays and I obviously couldn't miss any of my friends birthday parties or those "for no reason celebrations" if nothing better was going on. Yeah, I guess all the number of irresponsible attitudes and wrong decisions, coupled with the awful and useless following days were not enough to make me stop.

I guess when I was finally ready to get my life straight for at least the last weeks of class, it was pretty much Thanksgiving break, and I knew all I wanted was to have fun during those few days we had free from school since I was going to be with my brother, cousin and a friend from college. The destination was Las Vegas. We arrived on Friday, November 16th (and still recovering from my birthday the day before), for a whole week of craziness and fun. We spent the first three days drinking, partying, going to clubs and casinos, visiting the city and walking around the area. On Monday, we were just exhausted. We woke up and went to Fogo de Chao, the best Brazilian steakhouse you can ever imagine (especially when you haven't eaten food from your home country for a while!) and it definitely made us feel better, even though nothing really happened during the rest of the day. We needed that time out. Everyone wanted to be recovered enough to get to enjoy the Grand Canyon during the next two days of the trip. Renting a car to visit both the West and South Rim of the Grand Canyon region was without a doubt the highlight of our Thanksgiving break. The landscape is just mind blowing and I am not even sure whether I have seen many other breathtaking places such as the ones we saw during those two days. Wonderful. After 5 hours driving back to the hotel we were staying at in Vegas, we went to the Guns and Roses concert to close up our trip and get back to school the next day. As soon as I was back at RMU I promised myself "Isa, your body seriously needs to rest. Please try to get you stuff done and be ready for the end of this school semester." Well, that was on Thursday, so I did not put that into practice until Sunday night.

The only positive side, though, is that I did have a great time and met many people along the way. As far as my final grades are still good, I am glad I took this semester to enjoy college and spend more time with some great friends I made throughout these three and a half years. I am now looking forward to have my last semester of college started. You cannot have that reckless life for too long. At least I can't. So, I am excited to be as productive as possible during my very last semester at RMU (and let the depression time begin!). Lots of things are about to happen, tennis season will be more intense than ever, and I am willing to take the most out of these next months that are yet to come. Before worrying about anything else, though, it is almost time to pack and head to Florida for Christmas break. "The goal is to never settle down," is what I always tell mom and dad!!
xoxo
Isa

Yeah, why not having a Blog to add to the list?!

     Not a week goes by that I don't tell myself: Isabella, sign off from Facebook. This is taking far too much of your time and I know you can survive without it for a while." I cannot actually count how many times I came up with a random new password and wrote it down on a tiny piece of paper, closing my eyes before throwing it somewhere in my messy room, hoping to never find it again. Well, turns out that I have always found it!

     After realizing that I'm never going to delete my Facebook nor stop using the other ones (lets include Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn, etc...)  for at least a couple hours on a daily basis, I decided to create a blog instead! After all, having one more little distraction shouldn't be that bad, right? Anyway, I decided to have a blog because of a couple reasons. 

     First, I do regret myself for only now coming up with this idea. Looking back on my life, the last 5 or 6 years represented a timeframe where literally thousands of things happened to me, a number of mistakes were made and a LOT of accomplishments and events have caused me to become what I am today. I'm afraid, though, that some of these life events are, at some point, going to fade away from my memory, and I really don't want to let that happen. I want to get to my 30s, 40s or even 50s and rely on some sort of source where I can refer back to and remember what kinds of things I did, the places I went, the situations and experiences I was going through and what kinds of thoughts I had in mind when I was younger. 

     Second, it took me a while to realize that, but after coming to a different country, the long distance was making me lose contact with my closest friends and family. Technology has greatly helped me maintain the few (but immensely important) relationships I left behind, but the not so frequent talks and news updates, coupled with everyone's busy schedules were creating a huge communication barrier between us. I still wanna make them aware of whatever might be going on with me, as well as what my stories and moves are, and hopefully this blog will help me close this gap a little bit. 

     Lastly, I like writing! I guess I enjoy reading more than I do when I'm writing, but writing (about whatever comes to mind or about something that I feel like I HAVE to write) stills gives me enough pleasure and state of peace when I need it. I will be doing so in English as I believe more people will get to understand my next posts and as a way to keep practicing the language once I leave college. 

     Alright, I better go now. Last days of classes are always intense. Study time. Uhn, perhaps!

Isa