another installment of One Year Ago.

                             (clicking the pic will make it bigger)

This is where I spent last Halloween :3 Much more eventful than this year. Hopefully next year i'll be somewhere just as beautiful. I believe this town was called Cortina d'Ampezzo. I'll never get over how beautiful the mountains are. I had never seen any in my life (sheltered child ;) ) I fell in love with them... I miss seeing them everyday.

37 Things You Should Never Apologize For (And Why)

37 Things You Should Never Apologize For (And Why)

this post is originally from here.

1. Never apologize for acting on your instincts.
 Listening to your body then taking action on what you hear
 is the hallmark of heroic people.

2. Never apologize for all the tears you’ve cried.
Crying cleanses the soul. Shoot for once a month.
Even if it’s just a brief mist at a tender moment in a sad movie.

3. Never apologize for anything in your resume/portfolio.
If you feel the need to do so, it probably doesn't belong
in there in the first place.

4. Never apologize for asking for what you need.
The answer to every question you DON’T ask is always no.

5. Never apologize for asking questions.
 When you stop asking questions,
you don’t just run out of answers you run out of hope.

6. Never apologize for asserting yourself.
 The word assert comes from the Latin asserere, which means,
to claim, maintain or affirm. And that’s exactly what you’re entitled to:
 Your opinion. Your belief. Your say.
Let nobody take it away from you.

7. Never apologize for being a health nut.
Next time someone says, What are you, on a diet or something?
 look them straight in the eye and say,
Yeah you got a problem with that?
Then, when they back down, you go right back to eating your tofu.

8. Never apologize for being a newbie.
Everyone great chess master was once a beginner.

9. Never apologize for being early for an appointment.
In the history of Corporate America, no employee has ever been
 fired for consistently arriving ten minutes early to every meeting.

10. Never apologize for being funny.
The world is too damn serious. We need you. Seriously.

11. Never apologize for being human.
Once you do, you’re no longer human you’re a cyborg.

12. Never apologize for being passionate.
Unless you’re passionate about stabbing strangers with
broken Coke bottles.

13. Never apologize for being smart.
 That’s the ONE thing the government, the media
 (and every other entity that’s trying to control you)
 is terrified of: Smart people who take action. Be one of those people.

14. Never apologize for being the age that you are.
It’s just a number. A chicken ain’t nothing but a bird, as my Grandpa likes to say.

15. Never apologize for breaking a rule that isn’t really a rule.
Be proud of yourself for being a rule breaker.
Then go break another one.

16. Never apologize for calling bullshit on someone.
Especially when nobody else is the room is going to do
 it and this person REALLY needs to be taken to task.

17. Never apologize for demanding respect.
If you’ve demonstrated that you deserve respect by giving it to others first,
you’re good to go.

18. Never apologize for disagreeing.
Especially if you do so respectfully. On the other hand,
if you’re disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing,
or because of your pathological need to be right,
that’s a different story.

19. Never apologize for expressing yourself.
That’s all “leadership” is:
The full, free expression of your truth.
 Don’t say you’re sorry for that.

20. Never apologize for falling in love.
Your heart’s calling the shots.

21. Never apologize for falling OUT of love.
Your heart’s still calling the shots
even when you throw up an air ball.

22. Never apologize for getting something off your chest.
That which you suppress will find a home in your body.
And then it will trash the place.

23. Never apologize for giving it your best shot.
 As my Grandpa also reminded me,
“You do the best you can with as many as you can.

24. Never apologize for growing up privileged.
As long as you scrap the entitlement attitude,
remain grateful for everything you’ve ever been given
and respect the life situation of those who are less fortunate, it’s all good.

25. Never apologize for having an overabundance of love in your life.
Instead, circulate what you’ve got. Pay it forward.
Share it. People need it.

26. Never apologize for lack of experience.
Instead, share your Learning Plan; demonstrate
your dedication to lifelong learning and practice
becoming the world’s expert at learning from your experiences.

27. Never apologize for lack of information.
Ignorance is acceptable. Staying ignorant, however, is stupid.

28. Never apologize for liking stupid movies.
Movie snobs annoy me. Some of my favorite movies
are among the most ridiculous films ever made.
So I love Hangover. Sue me

29. Never apologize for living your truth.
Few things in the world are more important.

30. Never apologize for looking out for yourself.
Self-preservation is a primary driver of human behavior.
 It’s how we’re wired.

31. Never apologize for loving yourself.
If you do, you probably don’t love yourself as much as you thought.

32. Never apologize for making a decision from the heart.
Remember: It’s not thee truth it’s YOUR truth.

33. Never apologize for needing alone time.
Solitude is soil. Solitude is medicine.
And if you don’t get your fix every day, your life will suffer.

34. Never apologize for needing to use the bathroom.
Yesterday a woman in my class walked out of the
room and actually said to the instructor,
I have to pee, I’m SO sorry. Unbelievable.

35. Never apologize for not being there when someone called.
You have a life, too. People can’t expect you to wait eagerly
by the phone all hours of the day.

36. Never apologize for not embracing someone else’s agenda.
Especially if that agenda robs you of your true talent.

37. Never apologize for occasional absentmindedness.
Everyone’s brain farts.

One Year Later.

This whole journey began one year ago. One year ago I packed my bags, left everything I knew that was comfortable to me. It was my second time ever on an airplane and my first time ever traveling alone. I hopped on a plane with a destination I knew nothing about,with no clue what to expect. I landed and met the most amazing little family and they treated me as one of their own. I can't even put into words how much I appreciate them and what they did for me just by letting me stay with them for such a short time. It's invaluable. I came home with such a heavy heart. I heard "how travel changes you" and finally knew what that meant *cue cliche*. I spent the next few months trying to figure things out and realized that maybe au pairing is what I'd like to do for awhile. I genuinely love kids. I want to see the world. Why not do something that lets me see the world in exchange for childcare. I didn't go looking for a family in Spain. They messaged me. I know nothing about Spain other than there is a crisis there right now. I don't know why I said yes. They seemed nice and they had kids in the age range I had experience with. I got there and I feel like we never "clicked" right. It was so awkward when we went to eat after the airport. Within 3 hours event happened and I felt so uncomfortable there. It went horribly bad after the first few weeks but I met the loveliest family who let me stay with them. The kindness of stranger is seriously amazing. I met some amazing friends while there. I've started coming out of my shell more, it's so crazy to me. I can't believe how much easier it is for me to make friends now that it was a year ago. I have no problem just going up to people and starting the conversation. I feel so completely different today than I did last year, in so many ways. Maybe I'll do little posts about them here and there on the blog. A year ago had you told me I would be getting a serious offer from the place at the top of my "places to go" list, I'd have called you crazy. I tucked it in my back pocket and had accepted that I wouldn't be going for a long time (I'll post where eventually, i don't want to jinx it :x) as soon as i said it out loud and put it out there it happened. The universe it weird. I wonder what where I'll be a year from now.

“I often feel like I want to think something but I can’t find the language that coincides with the thoughts, so it remains felt, not thought. Sometimes I feel like I’m thinking in Swedish without knowing Swedish.”

—	Peter Cameron, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

(i'm glad i'm not the only one who feels this)

Progress?

I hadn't heard from fam #1 in about a week. I kept getting more emails from families (some leads to setting up skype interviews and most lead to nothing) and I found myself dragging them out as long as I could before setting up interviews hoping I would get a reply from fam #1. I know She/They are super busy so I waited until the end of the week to send one back saying basically, "hey, whats going on? are you still interested or should I move on?" (obv. not in those words but you get the idea.)

and it was basically just She's been super busy (which I knew) and said they aren't talking to any other candidates and are still really interested in me. She said give her a week and she would draw up an offer and send me some info.

!!!!!!

I'm pretty happy right now. Crossing my fingers it works out.

A dilemma?

I'm talking with a family that I think would be a super great match. They've got everything I've been looking for. Our emails are going super slow though. The mom has told me she thinks it could be a great match and she has a good feeling about it though. So that leaves me hanging....

I've been talking with other families during the time I've been emailing with fam #1. I can't figure out if I should tell them, "hey, I'm seriously considering another family, but if that doesn't work out I'd love to talk to you more" or just not mention it and hope I don't look like I'm wasting their time if something does end up working out with fam #1.

in the last week I've seriously considered families in
-Amsterdam
-China
-Poland
-Turkey
and Italy again.

but I keep going back to fam #1 and just being all "this would be soooo freaking perfect" and just holding out hope that waiting around for more emails to come through isn't just a waste of my time.

Maybe I'm being too picky. But in the end being too picky is probably a good thing and I wont be in over my head?

“This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don’t get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can’t do anything, don’t get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it’s ready to come undone. You have to figure it’s going to be a long process and that you’ll work on things slowly, one at a time.”

—	Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

Starting to feel like I'm never going to find a match.

Ergh. I'm starting to get super frustrated.
I sent out more emails today to France, Germany and the Netherlands.
I'm starting to think it would be neat to just go to a bigger city in the US like New York or San Francisco but everyone here seems to want EU girls. womp womp.

I love the internet!

This is Castel Tures, in South Tyrol in Italy. We drove by it a few times on a trip to the mountains my first weekend in Italy. I could not for the life on me remember what it was called.... or even the name of the town or the surrounding towns. This picture randomly popped up on my tumblr dashboard the other day and omg thank you flickr for having all the info :') We drove by at night and it looks so amazing with all the lights, almost eerie.

A small update.

Since I've updated last I've talked a bit with a lovely american couple in Amsterdam. They only have one child, a new baby! If I am remembering correctly he is 3 weeks old :3 We had a Skype call a week ago and they said they had a few more people to talk to and would keep me updated. They want someone for a year! A year in Amsterdam would be pretty awesome.

I've also just started talking to a nice lady from Torino, Italy. It's not far from where I was last time. They've got two older kids (5 and 9, boy and girl) It's still early so I don't have much of a feel of them yet so we'll see what happens.

The third family I'm talking to is in the center of Rome (!!!) but has three kids under 4. I don't think it's going to go very far, the emails are very confusing. We'll see. 3 kids under 4 with what seems like not a lot of free time (the schedule looks like its all day 7 days a week, ahh) is not really something i'm interested in.