December 21, 2019 Ballads and Boys “Abbie, are you coming or not?” I peeked my head out of my bedroom, peering down the hallway. Izzy, my roommate, stood next to the door with her arms crossed, clutching her cell phone tightly in one hand and her dorm keys in the other. Checking my watch, I widened my eyes.
January 2, 2019 Taking on Taiwan: The Start It’s a new year, and it’s officially (when you read this, not as I type this) 58 days until I step onto the plane bound for North America. Believe me, I find it hard to believe that my time in Taiwan is coming to an end. It seems that it was only yesterday that I stepped onto the plane to move here, to start working as an English teacher. Honestly, I had no idea of the places and people I would encounter along the way. That is precisely why in honor of my time in Taiwan and all the memories I have collected along the way, this blog post serves as the first in a series I am releasing, titled “Taking on Taiwan”. And there’s no better place to start than right at the beginning, in October of 2015.
December 23, 2018 What Happens After Your Last Game I remember the first time I stepped foot on the ice in hockey skates. At nine years old, I had donned figure skates for six years leading up to that, but nothing could prepare me for the dozens of bruises and bumps I had all over my body as I got used to life without toe picks. But yet, despite every fall and a few stifled laughs from my teammates that summer, I kept on trying. Thirteen years later, I would step on the ice for the last time, wearing my collegiate uniform and equipment way larger than the first set of pads I wore way back when.
December 5, 2018 Tattooed Back in May 2013, I went in for my first tattoo ever. I was terrified, but I spent a lot of my days back then in a constant state of anxiety. So, in an effort to push myself past my comfort zone, I sat under the needle for about an hour. I got my first tattoo, and one that would cause me a lot of controversy for a couple of years: a girl breaking out of chains.
October 3, 2018 That Time We Hid a Kitten In Our Apartment During university, I’ll admit: I did a lot of weird, out of character things. One time, I stole Santa Claus and hid him on campus. I’d go lay out on Chapel Hill and watch the stars when I couldn’t sleep, sometimes till the wee hours of the night. I often tried new things and much to my dismay, liking them was a hit of a miss. And a lot of the time, it didn’t take too long before I realized how much I really disliked something. But the time my roommate and I adopted a kitten and hid it from residence life for a week was definitely not something I regret doing.
September 4, 2018 That Time I Helped Steal Santa Claus College in America tends to have this reputation for being quite scandalous: raging parties, crazy stories, plenty of laughs and ample tears, and the…
June 16, 2018 Skyscrapers and Juice Boxes *This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used…
June 13, 2018 Denouement As the sun went down on the Steel City, a girl dangled her legs off a small foot bridge. In her right hand she held a clear unlabeled bottle of liquor and in her left hand, she held her small black studded clutch. Mascara was smudged around her eyes. Some stained tissues left a little trail of the most recent events around her. Footsteps approached her. She did her best to wipe her eyes.
