doodles of pictures i take
20.02.24
it's been like 3 weeks since i last wrote in here so here are speedy disconnected things going on in my life teehee.
it's the 20th over here, which means that it's my birthday >:) happy 23rd to me! feels like high school again where i dont have any friends to celebrate with lmao oh well. my mum is still here, so we'll go out for sushi, which is really all that matters haha. classes started yesterday and it's already pretty full on. the profs all seem super nice though, which is a relief. it's been hard to connect with people so far, unfortunately. not a lot of postgrad students but also just a lot of people in general that seem to exist on a completely different wavelength that makes it very hard to have a conversation. just feels like we are speaking past each other. most people i've met speak english as a second language so there's been a lot of miscommunication as well. hopefully ill meet some more people in my classes.
i'm amazed by all the wildlife here. so many parrots and cockatoos. i've made 3 trips down to the lake now, so i've seen probably close to a hundred kangaroos all up. got to see a couple boxing and kicking each other yesterday inbetween rounds of fucking. weird creatures. lots and lots of bunnies around here too, which really shouldnt be here and i think are meant to be culled or something, but i gotta admit that they are cute. there's a fish pond sort of hidden away on campus that my mum showed me, so i tried to do some readings out there yesterday but i was attracting too many jumping spiders and it all got to be a bit much lol
my mum and i had lunch with her besties on sunday, which was actually really fun. ended up staying there for 7 hours and it looks like i might have a babysitting gig lol. the oldest of the kids was super insistent that i borrow her copy of anne of green gables, so it looks like i'll finally get around to reading it.
anyways. fingers crossed that 23 is a good year. i dont think i've ever heard anything good about 23, but i gotta stay positive :') the day started off with a fire drill at 7am though, so maybe i should just give up now...
30.01.24
tomorrow's the big day! i've been frantically packing for a few days now, trying to condense my life into 2 suitcases. thankfully they're very big suitcases, so while it's still not easy, it could be a lot worse. thanks to a stupid thing called the pacific ocean, i will be in transit for over 25 hours before i reach my final destination in australia ;-; I'm excited to be living in a new city (in a new continent!) but oh my god i am sick of packing/moving lol. this will be my 6th move in 5 years and i am doneeeee. i mean, i know that i will have to move again in december/january, but stilll. nice to have a break for a while now.
lately i've been feeling pretty worried about starting school again. I really liked undergrad and i'm comfortable with the level of difficulty i came to expect from my classes then, but i'm not sure how steep the change is going to be going to post-grad level courses. tbh, i generally only did ~ok~ in my linguistics courses. very much B+/A- range. My gpa boost really came from russian literature courses, which I won't have to rely on anymore ;o; it will be all linguistics all the time. I love linguistics courses, but i know that my strength is in bullshitting lit papers lol. i just don't want to feel stupid :( because of the impending increase in difficulty/timesuck, i am also already worrying about the threat of having a nonexistent social life. classes are of course my #1 priority but... a girl likes to hang out with friends and go to the occasional party lol.
in other news, our dog is,, fine? a week ago we took her to the vet bc she was Not Well and got told that she very likely had stomach cancer and that she may only have a month to live. but now? she's nearly completely back to normal. the vet is even more confused than we are lol. she's thinking that it was maybe just a stomach ulcer, but she (and all the other techs that looked at our dog) stand by that what they saw was really really bad and that her doing so well just doesn't make sense. hopefully she continues to make a full recovery! I think the biggest relief for me is that my mum won't have to deal with her sickness/death while she is helping me settle in (*knocking on the biggest piece of wood i can find omfg*). we've chalked up canada to being a cursed place for us bc as soon as i moved there in 2019, my mum's dad died, and then when my brother moved there 2 years later, her mum died. for a while last week, it was looking like the problem wasn't moving to canada, but just moving away from home in general. (edit from future tillie bc i've had this tab open for a few hours, writing in it sporadically: i just found out my ex's family dog just died and now i feel like i somehow wished for some kind of cosmic trade of dog lives. she was a very very sweet dog. she was very well loved and i have many good memories with her. sleep well, puppy)
i've always assumed that i would live in australia at some point, if only for a couple years since i need to live there for at least 2 to be eligible to pass my citizenship on to my hypothetical future kids, but i worry that by moving there now, i will settle down and never leave. australia is so so very far away from many places i still want to visit. when my parents where my age, they were living in england and finland and so could take quick trips w/in europe for dirt cheap and on short notice. i'm nervous that i'll never get to visit the places i still really want to see. i also have mixed feelings about being so far from where i grew up. i havent visited oregon since 2019, but i've been feeling pretty homesick over it lately. i would really love to go back some day. i have a fantasy of moving to the coast when i am old and dying there. oddly enough, it is that dream that has kept me going sometimes. i cant die yet, because i am not back home.
i just have to believe that good things are coming! in 2 days time, i will be in summer starting my new life
14.01.24
first journal entry woohoo. not a whole lot has been happening, hence the 2 week gap in journal updates. currently bunkered down as the first day of the freeze hits this part of the country. winters used to be so mild here, but since 2021 theres been about a week of extreme weather each winter than shuts the state down. luckily i havent been in the country for them until now, but my mother has me convinced that we are going to have to resort to cannibalism if this turns into the shitshow it has been for the last few years. i think during the 2021 freeze, over 700 people died. my parents + brother didnt have water for a week and many others in the neighbourhood didnt have electricity or gas/heating. fingers crossed that this one doesnt get too bad.
my aunt and uncle stayed for a week, which was a lot nicer than i expected tbh. my first memory of my uncle is of him fucking terrifying me at my 3rd birthday party and so i think that just like imprinted on me for 20 years but it turns out he is a nice and funny guy oops. it's weird to see my dad's siblings because theyre all so much older than him. this uncle is 13 years older than my dad and his health isnt great. i remember when he was first diagnosed with leukemia when i was in 3rd grade, but what i didnt know was that he still has it! i didnt really know that that could happen... he's also legally blind and diabetic and it's really hard to see my dad see how,, slow and frail his brother is getting? it took minutes for him to come down the stairs and he speaks at the same halting pace as my grandfather. anyways. the real highlight of them staying was that my aunt had known my dad's family for a long time before she married into it since they grew up in the same small town, so she had many good stories that i hadnt heard before. turns out she was in the same kindegarten class as my uncle and that my grandfather was her dentist lol.
another cool thing was that we drove out to the old missions in [city] and got to see some beautiful old churches. the plaques that they had scattered around were.. difficult to read at times re: "civilizing" via christianizing. we went on a sunday and got to hear the "mariachi mass" held at one of them. so cool to see them come out of the building. truly some of the best outfits out there.
unrelated but i feel that i'm reverting to my sad shut-in life. sometimes i realise that i havent left the house for a week and that when i do go out, it's only to get groceries with my mum. i have my license, so technically i could go places, but there's truly nowhere i can think of that i would even want to go. everywhere around here is just stripmall surrounded my highway. the other week, i thought of 2 places that could maybe be fun, but within 48 hours of having that thought, both places had had shootings. they kinda lost their appeal after that. i would like to go on more walks, but i just feel so... surveilled. my mum has a ring camera by the door, i dont even have a house key, and my phone has a tracking app. not to mention that my neighbourhood it just so exposed. just identical house after identical house forming a labrynth of paranoid suburban moms. only 2 and a half weeks until i move away and it cant come soon enough
