mongolia

i was about to apply for this AMAZING internship yesterday. a month in MONGOLIA. with all sorts of crazy special permission forms to get signed and warnings from the government to read because apparently it's such a dangerous place to travel to. and desolate - the place you'd be doing research would have no electricity or running water! and they said people with special diets shouldn't bother applying because the food choices are so limited. but you'd get the all-expenses paid chance to do groundbreaking research in an area of the world where very few people have ventured.

i've wanted to go to mongolia ever since 1) i heard that so few people go and because of 2) the theory that mongolians are the people group we can all trace our ancestry to. i wanted to observe them and see what mongolian mannerisms i've inherited. so i was about to fill out the application for this amazing adventure BUT ... it's only offered to university of penn students. way to put that in very small print at the end of everything, sheesh. so i won't be in mongolia this summer after all. which is good because it's also cold there, what the heck was i thinking wanting to live there for a month of summer. and somehow i think the upenn students would be going for much more intellectual reasons than wanting to hang out with mongolians. oh and the research had to do with global climate change which i know nothing about. (and shhh, also care pretty much nothing about.)

as i explore all of the opportunities that i have as a writer i just get giddy with excitement! not only as a writer but a traveler. ohhh the places i'll go! mongolia someday. why not? ireland, scotland, brazil, argentina, california, colorado, oregon, maine, alaska, the grand canyon (yeah i haven't gotten around much of the usa yet, ok? haha), switzerland, italy, tahiti, south africa, france, israel, belize, egypt ... and greece! greece has been at the top of my wish list for awhile. i really should've moved the last item of my christmas list to the top. but i scribbled it at the bottom of the page (yup, i still write page-long birthday/christmas lists in my twenties, are you really surprised?) instead: "plane ticket to anywhere." :)

life is good and there are many more good things to come. i'm so very happy. granted, that happiness will probably be temporarily squelched in a bit as i head to my three-hour night class on 17th century post-restoration literature. barf. but at least it's the last night of that class before finals week ... h-a-l-l-e-l-u-j-a-h for being one semester closer to graduation!