Delayed Flight

Well, I'm delayed right now in Charles de Guarde airport, so I thought I'd take the time to write about my trip so far.
The ride here did not go very smoothly. THANK GOD FOR DRAMAMINE cause I wouldn't have made it here without throwing up without it. The turbulance going up and especially landing was really bad, and even during the flight I kept getting woken up by our plane shaking and going up and down. There was also a couple with a small child that refused to stop crying almost the entire ride. As well, there was a large group of people who are mentally challenged, and although they did behave, they constantly were using my seat as an armrest, kept getting up during the first few hours to talk to each other and bumping into me (i'm seated now as well) and they could not stop talking and yelling over to each other from different aisles. OY VEY!
but despite all that I was able to get some sleep. The airline food was good, I had yellow curry with long grain rice, tofu and peas, with a fruit platter, a fruit cup, a salad with lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes, water crackers, and a roll with butter. For breakfast as well I got a vegetarian meal of mostly fruit, which is right up my alley since I'm trying to eat only fruit for breakfast.
However, i'm starving and eating sour cream and onion pringles that I bought for six dollars at JFK. The prices were so astronomically high. When I got to JFK and went through security, we got something to eat and my small salad and water bottle cost me $11.40. yeah, i know. ridiculous.
Thank goodness I brought my earplugs, blanket and neck pillow because if it wasn't for that I wouldn't've gotten any sleep. the seats were not very comfortable and there was very little leg room. I had an aisle seat that was in the middle of the plane, so I did have a little more room since I could put my legs out a bit into the aisle, but other than that it was very cramped.
Out flight was delayed out of the gate since the runway was so backed up; we had to let four planes go ahead of us and one plane land before we could take off. So it's a good thing our connecting flight was delayed because we definitely wouldn't've made it, we walked through the airport for at least a half an hour to get to the terminal and go through security again.

I guess that's it for now, I'll update again when I get to Spain.

Leaving Tomorrow

So tomorrow I leave for Spain. My flight leaves at 7pm and I should be in Salamanca by 9am tomorrow morning US time, about 2pm Spain time. I'm incredibly excited and I hope that I remember everything, cause knowing my track record I'll forget something and I can't go back and get it this time around. Everyone wish me luck!!

Vegetarianism

So I haven't updated in a really long time, and I apologize for that. I stopped having things to talk about and got incredibly busy with schoolwork for the past semester.

I could recap everything that happened in my life but I don't really feel like it.

Right now I recently finished reading a book entitled Eating Animals by my favorite author Jonathan Safran Foer. This book is his only non-fiction piece and it's about his discovery of what exactly we're eating when we eat animals, along with the way that these animals are treated when they live on factory farms. So, I decided to become a vegetarian. So far I'm doing well, it's been about two weeks and there has been no meat consumption. I did eat a piece of cake at a graduation party before I realized that cake has eggs in it and I can no longer eat non-vegan cake. I haven't cut out dairy from my diet yet, just because it's so prevalent in everything that I eat. I'm hoping that eventually I'll either be able to cut it out or only buy products from places that treat their cows humanely.

I am also currently in a production of three one-act plays in New Haven. The plays go up this upcoming week, on the 17th, 18th, and 19th of June. I'm hoping that whomever would like to go will come. Tickets can be bought here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/114112

or at the door.

I have also started exercising at the gym. I got a gym membership for the summer at Southern's fitness center. I went Monday, Tuesday and Thursday of this week and it wasn't that bad. I'm hoping to get to about 135 pounds by the time the semester starts up again, and continuing to get back to my old weight of 120. I would be happy if I stayed at 125, however.

As well, in July I will be studying abroad for the entire month in Spain. I'm incredibly excited and I hope to use this blog to keep everyone back home updated on what I'm up to overseas.

Children's Books

For my Children's Literature and Literacy class, I had to read a lot of children's books, so that's what I spent the majority of my semester doing. At first we only had to read books suitable for children in grades K-3. The best one by far was Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems. I was hysterically laughing throughout the book, and couldn't wait to show it to my roommates, that's how funny it was. I've been told that the author has a whole series of books about the pigeon, and they're definitely worth buying and giving to your kids. 

Afterwards we had to read more advanced books for children in grades 4-6. I read a lot of books, all of them had to be Newberry Honor or Winners.  It's hard to pick a few favorites, since all of them had qualities that I loved in a book. The Giver by Lois Lowry was definitely one that I would recommend to anyone, regardless of age. I was unfortunate enough not to read this book when I was in grade school, but it was one that had been on my list for awhile, and I was glad for an excuse to read it. It is a story that stayed with me for awhile, and made me think about the things that I appreciate in my life; things that are always there that we never usually give a second thought to. Like colors, or music. Not having those things would make life boring. Even just the simple yet beautiful act of feeling love is something that many of us take for granted. But not in this book.

Some other wonderful titles that I read were The Underneath, The Higher Power of Lucky, Savvy, The Princess Academy, A Corner of the Universe, and A View from Saturday. All wonderful young adult literature that anyone could pick up and enjoy.