One Year Ago Today...

Me at the airport, on my way to see the world, one year ago!

A year ago today I began my journey around the world with Semester at Sea! I can't believe it's been a year. What an amazing experience that was, and I'm still in a bit of disbelief that it all happened. I am so lucky and eternally grateful to have had that opportunity.

My blog that I wrote as I was traveling: http://jturcios.blogspot.com/


Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa

Me and the SAS ship in Yokohama, Japan

Catching up

Me on the La Luz trail in the Sandias!


My very long, boring journey from Boulder to Albuquerque

I've failed at typing out the happenings of my life this past week and a half or so! Let's see if we can get caught up:

I took a little road trip to Albuquerque on the 19th to visit friends out there. Got to see Michael (how strange to discover that I would miss him after not seeing him all summer!) and a bunch of other awesome people from Sonlight!! The drive to and from was quite boring with the exception of getting to talk to Scott on the phone for a few minutes while I was in the midst of a detour off the interstate! Haha. But actually despite the boring scenery of southern CO and northern NM I enjoyed just having some time to myself to drive with good music playing, it's kind of relaxing in a weird way. Would have been a little more enjoyable though if the air conditioning in my car worked better! Oh well.

Things accomplished while in New Mexico:
-hiked La Luz trail in the Sandia mountains
-visited the very silly little town of Socorro and New Mexico Tech
-met a lot of NMT nerds!
-saw (500) Days of Summer and Inglorious Basterds
-had sushi with Michael and Lindsay and Michael's friends
-visited UNM and Nob Hill and ate at Frontier
-went to the Albuquerque zoo
-enjoyed the awesome New Mexico sunsets
-discovered that New Mexico is too hot and dry in August

So I drove home from Abq on the 23rd and then started school the next day! Woooo. So summer has come to an end and I have begun my very last semester of college! I am taking Abnormal Psychology, School and Society, and Primate Behavior plus an internship at Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice. In addition to all that I've got work and homework and trying to have a social life as well! So it will be a busy semester. I started my internship on Wednesday and I'm not sure how it's going to be yet. I have a hard time figuring out what it is they really do there at this point. They worked on shutting down Rocky Flatts back in the 1980s, and they have a lot of events and fundraisers now but it seems like the same people are coming to all their events so in a way it's a kind of "preaching to the choir" situation in which they bring up issues and discuss them but are not bringing in new people or tackling any new projects. The organization seems a little outdated but they've got their hearts in the right place as far as aiming for nonviolent social change, I just hope it's something I can apply to the classroom aspect of my internship because I need to write papers about issues relating to my internship and I'm not sure what those would bet yet. I am also worried that the whole internship and class experience for credit is going to be difficult to pull off because the goal seems to be to set me up for a career in a field relating to my internship or in sociology. It's not that I don't want to work for peace and justice or something relating to my degree in sociology after I graduate, but I'm not sure this internship is exactly something I want to use as a foot in the door for anything at this point in my life.

As you can see my future is taking over my thoughts lately. That's to be expected I suppose at the end of my college career but with the pressure of constantly being asked what I plan to do with my Sociology degree, and my continual uncertainty about the answer to that it's hard not to let it stress me out. I am pretty confident in who I am and knowing that I am not meant to hold an average, steady, well-paying job sitting in a cubicle or anything like that and I have many hopes and ambitions for my life but most of them include things like "maybe someday going to grad school" "living in a different country" "traveling" "taking photos" and "doing something to help people" and those are not things that you need an internship to be prepared for. I'd like to let life take me where it will and enjoy things in the meantime but it seems that everyone around me is choosing the more conventional path and it makes me worried that I won't be motivated enough to make things happen for me the way I want them to or that I won't be able to fund my vague ambitions of travel and such. I will also have a pile of student loans to pay off after I graduate so that will be another adventure to figure out. BUT at the same time, I'm pretty happy with my life at the moment and I try not to worry too much about what's going to happen in the future because whatever it is I'm sure it's going to be great!

Birthdays and Thank-Yous

Yesterday the family had a birthday party of my cousin's daughter who will be turning 6 soon. We had homemade ice cream and cake and presents and bubbles!

I was reminded today of the importance of expressing appreciation for people who make a difference in your life. With the recent death of someone who touched my life in a very positive way, I thought back and wished I had thanked him more for what he has done for me. I hope he knows! Don't forget to tell people how much they mean to you and thank them all the time for making a positive impact on your life, no matter how small a thing they have done for you!

Concert videos!

Kings of Leon

It's way too hot in Boulder. Today is supposed to be 94. Bleh. Yesterday I went to Elitches and it was really fun but so so ridiculously hot. Sigh. I think I'm ready for fall. Not so much winter yet...but fall will be ok :-) I'm pretty much ready for school to start back up as well. I'm enjoying not needing to do much but sometimes I get bored.

I finally got my furniture for my room last week! So I'm completely moved in now. Whew. Katie and I even got/made some chairs to match our kitchen, so it looks awesome and we've even been using our pink oven! Last night we had some people over and we baked a cake in it pretty successfully.

Sunday was the Kings of Leon concert at Red Rocks. Amazing!! So much fun. It was raining in Denver during the concert and we could see the lightening all night in the background, very cool. Red Rocks is definitely my favorite place to see a concert. I've seen KOL, Iron & Wine, Flight of the Conchords, and Dave Matthews perform there. It's just beautiful up there.

Tonight Kira is coming over for a dinner party!

We drank wine on the hood of my car outside before the concert, because we're very classy :-)

Rain storm moving toward Denver. Our seats weren't that great but it was a TON of fun!

Red Rocks lit up during the concert

50s theme

Fully furnished living room complete with James Dean and some flamingos!

New kitchen table!

New kitchen table with checkered legs! I LOVE IT!!!! I've decided our apartment is developing a 50s theme, the checkered table legs, the retro pink stove, plus we've got James Dean in the living room! It was a great decade. Well not that I was there, but I hear it was a great decade. Lots of cool things came out of the 1950s! Tomorrow my furniture arrives (and when I say arrives, I mean I'll be moving it in with a U Haul van in the 100 degree heat) which means our apartment will finally be complete! (minus some chairs to go with our awesome table but oh well who needs chairs anyways)

So I went to Water World today which was perfect because it was ridiculously hot today. Eeek! That was very fun. Lots of children everywhere of course and people with silly tan lines and unfortunate bathing suits, but hey, that's ok! I hadn't been there since I was probably 14 years old. I had a great time.

*peace and love*

New Apartment

Scarcely furnished living room...we have a little more furniture now though

Our new kitchen, with PINK stove!!! :-)

Katie and I moved into our new apartment yesterday! I couldn't get a truck though so I don't have any of my furniture, just everything else. My furniture comes on Wednesday...so I'm sleeping on the couch tonight, since I have no bed! Haha. That's ok though. We went around to thrift stores and Target in search of shelves and furniture and anything else we could find. We got some good stuff. We're still looking for a kitchen table and chairs...if anyone knows of a good table and chair set let me know!

Sooo we put together lots of shelves and stuff this afternoon and now we're enjoying pizza and Benny & Joon! :-)
*peace and love*