I don't want to be a Hallmark card/Lifetime channel voice/anything of that sort.

So I'm in London studying abroad. Most of you probably know this, but this was not my first choice. Last April, when we were registering for classes, I decided I would take Intensive Intermediate French at 8am Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, so that when I studied abroad in PARIS I would be at a good level of French. (I could have taken the class at 2pm, but then I wouldn't have been able to have an internship, also unacceptable.) Once I arrived in Paris, though, I was sure I would have an opportunity to really extend my knowledge because I'd be done with the required levels, and I might even pick up a French minor when all was said and done.

I didn't get into the Paris program. There were 75 more applicants than spots, so juniors got priority over sophomores. I found out sitting in the 9th floor of the library doing homework. Not ideal.

Because of the fact that I don't like not having a general idea of where I'm headed (especially when it concerns what continent/country I'll be in living in for a semester), when offered to transfer my application to another NYU location that would notify me about my acceptable (or not) by the end of the week, I made up my mind quickly. Multiple factors made Spring 2010 the best semester for me to be abroad, and some other various things made me switch my application to London rather than Prague, Ghana, Florence, etc.

By Friday of that week I had been accepted into the NYU London program. Happiness ensued.

During the disappointing Tuesday I was trying to figure out how to pick up the shambles of my life post-Parisian denial, my mom told me something that, well, is just play true. She said, "Dorothy, I don't understand why there's always such hiccups in your life."

Mom, I don't get it either, but apparently I have chronic life hiccups (hence my continuous string of failures). Often it seems that the grand plans I make seem to fall through. What I predict never happens. What I play and apply for early doesn't work out. Things inevitably change, resulting in my finding myself in very strange experiences (like the elevator this morning...uno! ooh! no!). As much as the hiccups continuously persist, I would be lying to say that things don't usually end up working out.

I wind up in a program better for me, one that might get me ahead so I can get an accelerated Master's degree. A better opportunity arises that I never saw coming. So despite the awkward sting of encounters and bizarre twists my life-plot takes, I trust that in the end it will be a comedy, appropriately ending in the manner which people have enjoyed since the days the first Queen Elizabeth was ruling over what's now the UK, with marriage and a bit with a dog (or cat in my personal case).

So as the streets of Islington clear for the evening, I send my sincerest hopes to all ya'll. I hope that you, too, keep some romanticism and trust in the Good. Yeah things get twisted and morbid, but that's no need to twist something as happy as Twelfth Night into a sad tale of poor, old Malvolio's misuse and destruction of traditional sexual paradigms.

Let the hiccups roll and wash you up on an unfamiliar beach. In mustering up a haphazard plan to disguise yourself and survive, you might discover the best thing ever.

xoxo & etc.
D