gross taste in my mouth

I'm 20!

What a weird age. It's not really that celebrated. It's kinda like 19 and 17... no one cares! oh and 11 isn't so great either. But my 20th was amazing. To start, I had a party on friday night with my closest friends. we dressed up obnoxiously 80's style and went BOWLiNG!!!!! It took weeks but i finally found a place IN MA that actually had REAL 10-pin bowling. Up here they have this weird bowling called "candlepin." I don't think it should be considered bowling.... you use miniature balls and i don't even know what. I don't know who made it up, but apparently I heard something like it was the original bowling? Naw... I won't believe it. It's made for people who have no strength and who want to make it easier on themselves. And people have candlepin bowling birthday parties? No thanks. I reserved lanes at a place like 25 mins away and we paid for an hour. it was so fun but needless to say,... my bowling skillz were lacking. Sometimes I used to get lucky. But seeing that I hadn't bowled in 3 years,... well... it was inevitable that I wasn't going to do very well. No matter what I did there would always be about 2 left standing. Not enough power!!


But yeah it was sweet. Everyone's costumes were great... and we went out for ice cream on the way home! Richardson's ice cream.... dairy fresh :-p Oh and then we watched a movie when we got back to campus!!

Saturday consisted of trying to make myself do my weekend homework. I failed.
Sunday was supposed to be just church and out to lunch for my birthday. Instead, I got something else.
Very early in the morning, becky, savannah, char, and koto come in my room and wake me up. I was totally disoriented, and asked what was going on.
"Get up, we gotta go!!"
"What? Where? Why?? It's so early!"
"Just come on"
"What time is it?"
"Just get dressed and put on sweats and a jacket!"
"I don't have a shirt on."
"Here, now hurry!"
"Are we going outside?"
They all look at me, laughing. (They are all dressed in coats and sweats. Of COURSE we're going outside.)

As soon as I could get out of bed and put on clothes, they threw a blindfold on me and led me downstairs outside. They made a rude joke about leading around a special girl. ;-) :-( They start running with me still holding their hands, I hear a car pull up, and Char pushed me in. Except I was turned backwards so i tried sitting but fell into the crack between the front and back seat (where your feet go)... i almost got stuck... it was the funniest thing ever since i was still half asleep! I was like WHERE ARE WE GOING?? the whole time and they wouldn't answer. They just kept saying hurry!! They helped me turn around and find the seat (i felt like i was upside down) ... and then we drove like 10mins... I had no idea where we were headed. I felt like I was being kidnapped. They dragged me out of the car again and started making lots of noise so that I wouldn't be able to tell where we were until we had walked a little bit. Then they took the blindfold off and I realized WE WERE AT THE BEACH!!!!!! And the sun hadn't come up yet! They threw down some blankets and I shouted with "glee" (haha i've always wanted to use that word!). We were here to see the sunrise on the beach!!





A little background break: I had written a list of 20 things I wanted to do when I was 20, before I turned 21. And on my 21st birthday I toast to the things I got done. Well number 16 is to watch the sunrise at Singing Beach.... so I got to check one off on the day of my birthday!!



It was the most perfect day and the most perfect sunrise! It was absolutely gorgeous, and not too cold! I felt pretty special. Just the fact that my friend Char had arisen at such an hour in the morning was a miracle and made me feel really good.... and Becky had gotten up too, and Koto drove us! And .... the idea was Charlotte's!!! It was sooo amazing. Now i've seen the sun SET and the sun RISE over the ocean and I still believe it is one of the prettiest things you can ever watch. And both times I saw such epic events (lol) I was with someone [or some people] very special. People I love. So it made my birthday! But that wasn't the end. I got blindfolded again (i think they just enjoyed watching me stumble around and ask dumb questions) and we stopped at Dunkin for breakfast. Then we went home and I took an hour nap before church. Church was so good, and then we dropped Lucas off at his dorm and Koto & Char were like "Eva we have to go to one more place now." I was like, what? Because we were supposed to just go back to Gordon and hang out until my friends could go out to lunch. So I had ANOTHER surprise ahead of me. We went to the mall, and when we got inside koto was like, "Eva our gift to you is a manicure!" So the 3 of us got manicures. I got a French:-) Looks so nice!!
As we were leaving, "Asian Island" caught our attention and Char said she wanted to pay for me to get a back massage. So we 3 got massages too! It was sooo nice. A little uncomfortable when the guy was massaging my BUTT ... but it really felt nice:-)

Then we went back to Gordon and picked up Emily, Savannah, and Becky, and went out to Carrabba's! That's a restaurant i used to love when we lived in SC so i wanted to go there again. It's Italian food.... and so of course I got fettuccini alfredo...with Shrimp! and i got sung to in Italian and a piece of delicious birthday cake! We didn't make it back to campus til like 5 and then it was basically the end of my birthday... time to STUDY and write a speech and paper... ew.
But Catacombs was at 8 so i went and practiced....and THEY gave me CUPCAKES and i got to blow out candles:-) and they gave me a signed card! So sweet and very much a surprise.
WHAT A BIRTHDAY!! It just made me realize what AMAZING friends I have here. I don't know How I'd do it without them. But they're so generous, genuine, sweet,. . . and FUN!!! Birthdays without family are always a little weird (still getting used to that) but this one was sooo good.

so how am i doing? Well... it's been rough. My birthday even was a little sad. There's a big part of my life that's still missing. And it'll be this way for at least another month. Maybe longer. Maybe forever. I don't even know and that is the hardest part. I don't know what there is left to hang on to but I can't forget about it or drop it either. It's part of me. Silence is NOT very golden right now (that was very cheesy; sorry). I have made it exactly 2 months but only because of God. I feel like this last month will be the hardest. It's been awesome having the support from my friends, and the great birthday they put together. I'm not ungrateful but life is different. I am just TRYING to get through... TRYING to focus on looking forward to when I'll be with my fam for thanksgiving (only 2 more weeks!)....and I feel like once thanksgiving passes things will start going really fast. We don't have much school left but most of my motivation is GONE. It's really hard to do work now.

I don't know why.

I don't know what my problem is.

I will get through with God's help though... I know that... I just want to feel sorry for myself and wallow a bit. :-(

evangeline

18 shegaes

November 9 was my birthday, and it was a good one...

I'm already 18! Life's going by too fast, but i think i like being 18. Feel almost like an adult, but that's kinda scary. Why is it that you can go to jail, enlist in the army, vote, and get a license, but you can't DRINK? I just don't understand that. You can lose your life (by enlisting) but still you can't drink. Hm. LoL ...
I haven't blogged in forever. What should i talk about?
Well Thursday i had 3 tests in a row -- physics, pre-calc, then african studies which is my history class this year. I think i did poor on all of them! But that's just way too much information to try to memorize for one day. WAY too many tests. I'm a bad enough test taker as it is! But that was the only bad thing. My friend Alisha's birthday was thursday also, so that was pretyt cool! Thursday night the Cabalkas and the Stones went with us to Ma Colonel's--a chicken restaurant with out-of-this-world chicken, fries, and fried plantains!! It was so good, but the best part was that Mr. C. said everyone should say one thing nice that they like about the way i am. That was so sweet of him, and it was awesome hearing what people said. I was like do people really think of me like that? wow, i can't be all that amazing. And then along with that, we were serenaded by these 4 congolese musicians. Really cool music and had nice voices!! The lady dancing was REALLY gettin into it, it was so funny!! She really knew how to "move it" or shake it I am just so thankful for the Cabalkas and Stones and the fun thally good times in er for us --- we've had some really good times in the last few months! they will be going to Cape Town with us too, so that'll be awesome! There are like 4 other families also going.
Friday night i went out with Alisha, Mehreen, and Liz to La Piscine (the pool) restaurant. The food wasn't the greatest this time, but we still had a good time! They gave me 2 really neat necklaces... i love those indian chicks! Then i spent the night at Elizabeth's and of course we had a good time!
So it was a REALLY great birthday and the Cabalka's card said "Looks like birthday fun on the horizon" meaning we might be doin more in Cape Town to celebrate! partying it up 18 baby...
Tomorrow i'm headed to the beach!! Pray that the airport doesn't close because there was violence starting already today and it could get worse. There were sheggaes (pronounced "shaygays"-homeless ppl) on the streets downtown shooting, throwing gas on cars and lighting them, etc.. scary stuff!! I was at Elizabeth's house today since i spent the night and she wasn't allowed to go out and she didn't have a driver so i messaged my dad to come get me... he was like "Well right now it's not safe to drive so we'll have to play it be ear. Looks like you might have to miss out on the cape town trip. you okay with that?" lol ummm NOO dad ... but he did get me, at like 12pm and we didn't see anything going on-- it seemed quiet outside of Liz's compound but the embassy was sending an advisory saying "STAY AT HOME -- shooting downtown continues" .. so we went home and laid low. But nothing is happening around my house. We're so far from downtown, i think it's okay but there is a chance they may close the airport tomorrow. I just pray that they won't. I wanna get outta here!
lol
Crazy shegaes!