If there is magic on the planet, it is contained in water.
-Loren Eisley

aedesign

My sister has been working with jewelry for some time. I decided to join her and experiment along with her. We have set up an etsy shop at http://www.aedesign.etsy.com/. I am not asking you to buy them (although that would be awesome), but please do stop by to see them and then come back to give us some feedback. Thanks.

sick;mom; brother; toothache

As you all know I have been quite sick with the cold all of this week. Las night my mom, finally decided that she had had enough hearing my complaints on the phone delivered thru my transformed, sore, man-like, deep voice. She got in her car, advised me to pack a few things and swept me off my home so that she could have me under her care in my old room. Her remedies are hot liquids, i.e. tea and soups, which I do not mind. What I hate is milk, and this morning I had a cup full after perhaps one year or so of not having had any. During the day I managed to escape for a quick stroll at the beach, since I was feeling quite better.
If she hears me cough, then she is off to the kitchen to pour me some more hot tea, and I usually like tea but not when it’s offered to me as a medicinal, so I have learned to suppress my coughing with a whole lot of cough drops. Tonight she gave me the ultimate remedy, made me soak my feet in extremely hooooot water. Five minutes into it and my feet swelled up like rising bread and were bright and pink like a ripe watermelon. Every time I complained that I was ohh so hot, and my feet were burning she said, that is the purpose of the whole thing, and that I would thank her tomorrow when I would suddenly feel much better. Sometimes, it’s better not to argue with my mom, so I sat there measuring my tolerance of hot water. I guess it was somewhat beneficial since I gave myself a mini pedicure, or at least relieved my nails from a bright red nail polish and trimmed them.
Right after the hot bath for my feet, she sent me right to bed and said that I should rest under the covers, sweat and maintain the heat in my body. I tried to ignore the sweating and the heat by reading, it almost worked. In fact I started to doze off into sleep, when it suddenly hit me that I had promised my brother to revise his paper on Nikita Khrushchev. I got up while also enjoying the cold air in the room, slowly my feet were returning to normal. Then, I felt somewhat guilty that my mom’s efforts had probably gone to waste, but I realized that I really had to read his paper. I discovered that my brother had used a font size of 15 so that he could make the paper cover the 6 pages that his teacher had asked for. I smiled and wondered if he thought that his teacher wouldn’t realize the reason behind the huge font, or if he was simply trying to get by. I changed the font to 12, and made an effort to lengthen the paper so that he could still have six pages.
Now I am going to bed, with a slight tooth ache. I am supposed to have a crown on it, and interestingly enough I had an appointment with the dentist yesterday which I cancelled. It has never bothered me before, but I think it decided to rebel against me tonight since I cancelled yesterday’s appointment.

vdeksha une per tabellen

se habla español...

(t)issues

I apologise for the disgusting view of my nightstand, but it was the only way I could partially justify my lack of new posts.

Going back home.

Before I enter a new phase, which I have been advised will be “the three most miserable years” of my life, I have made some very exciting plans to visit Albania this summer-the country where I was born and raised. Where do I begin to explain to you how overjoyed I am to take this trip back (mind you I had initially planned to visit last summer, so you can imagine my disappointment after having worked myself up so much that the possibility of not actually taking the trip was not even imaginable; but it happened and I was crushed). So let me begin by saying that I have not been back since 1998, a full nine years, which is quite a long time, but is even so much longer for a former communist country which experiences change (for better or worse) at a very fast paste. I was not much more than a child when I left. Hence, I am thankful to my parents and my country (along with its numerous problems & paradoxes) for having planted in my heart such an enormous and ever lasting love, that regardless of the fact that I essentially became an adult in the US, a part of my heart will forever belong there.

Having said that, I am scared shitless of going back! Being born and lived part of my adolescence in Albania, and then moving to the US, becoming a US citizen and reaching a certain point of maturity in my life, my heart is divided equally between the two places, with my personality having been influenced equally by both cultures. But somewhere in the middle, there is a hollow gap, which tells me that in pieces I am a little bit of both, but as a whole, I am like neither of the two places. I have forever lost that feeling of belonging. I feel as if I have been left hanging somewhere in the vast grandness of the ocean which separates the old world from the new one. I am scared to the very essence of my core, of breathing in the air of a city which will surround me with unfamiliar streets and unrecognizable human faces. I am scared that I will get lost in my own city. I am scared of walking by the windows of my old apartment only to see the strangers that inhabit it now. I am scared of feeling like a stranger in my own country!

When I go back, one thing is for sure, I plan to walk all over my city (Tirana), without aim, purpose or reason. I simply desire to walk every square foot of that city, perhaps in a desperate attempt to catch up with its soul, ask for forgiveness for having been absent for so long, and get reacquainted. I do not know for sure if these or other fears will materialize when I am present there, but I know that I will experience a feeling which I have not felt in a long time. In spite of feeling like a stranger or not, I will know with definitive certainty that the noises coming from that city will speak to me in my mother tongue, and that would be enough to make my visit back a splendid adventure!

why are we here?

Last night he wanted to know, why are we here?

Without much thinking I answered: we are here to love each other, learn more about ourselves, become somebody, explore the world and give to it as much as we can.

So today, I am asking all of you, why are we here? Answer it in whatever context your heart desires, just be true to yourselves.

random

-After a weekend with friends, I am feeling the blues and missing their company.

-My home feels empty.

-It's good to surround yourself with genuine people who bring laughter in your life.

-I had a dream last night like I was blown away by a tornado...and then somehow I also remember an enormous pumpkin.I have a tooth ache.

-I keep looking at the pictures from this weekend and they are incredibly funny.

-I am looking forward to the summer!!!!!!!