I'm off from xanga for a bit unless I have something I really really want to post. I'll be back, but in the meantime I've got too much here to do before school starts.

Two photos I found today when looking at my very first website:

^one of my rabbits, King David, otherwise known as Davie.

^Me on the train to Vienna when I was thirteen.

A thought from Paulas' xanga:

Successful man is he, who can build a foundation upon the bricks that were thrown against him.

As I came on here a few minutes ago, it struck me that I was sitting exactly like my picture. Well, almost exactly. The hands were switched so I was leaning on my left hand (same position) and my right hand was stretched out on to the mouse and I was leaning back in the chair, just leaning on my left hand. Funny how you don't always realize what you do until it's pointed out to you, like that was to me. But really, I do that a lot when I'm thinking. And usually I'm staring out a window at the time, too. Funny how that was caught in the picture. Up until it I hadn't realized how often I do it, but now I keep catching myself sitting like that staring out at something.

I wish it was easier to communicate long distance. A friend and I have been writing emails back and forth that are each between five and ten Word Document pages long, on this one particular subject. A hard one, and it's hard to always keep track of your thoughts as you go back to what the other person says, debate it or agree with it-- depending-- and then continue with your own. It's so much easier to talk face to face, and I miss doing it with that friend.

It's been a long time since my last ARoRT-- to those of you who remember what that is--, and it feels like another one right now.

I wish I could fly. That was one of my biggest dissapointments growing up-- realizing that I really could never fly by myself, with no outside forces helping. To fly over everything, way up in the sky, just looking down.... to be able to swoop down close to everyone and then zoom back up again.... to fly in the evening as the sun sets lower... to fly as the sun rises in the morning...

When I was eight and living in Venezuela, I had one book. It was the abridged version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, and it was terrifyingly good. I read it start to finish at least once daily while we were there. To this day I'm not sure why I found it so fascinating, because I always got the goosebumps reading it. And when the housekeeper people were found shining the light to someone out on the moore, I remember all of a sudden my body shaking quickly and then stopping, and I couldn't figure out why. It was a feeling I'd never had before, and I didn't know how to describe it. Every time I read the book I'd get it, and after that I didn't feel it again until the winter we moved to Slovakia-- the following year. I had shivered, but had never felt it before-- that I remembered-- because I never read anything else that I found frightening and it was never cold enough for me to get the shivers. I can still remember someone telling me that they had the shivers that following winter (we were in the US just before moving to SK) and I asked what they were, and they told me. Then I was like, "I got that too!" and they explained that if you're anticipating something or cold or scared or something, you'll get them. By the way, when we left Venezeula the book was worn to the point of pages falling out, dirty pages from my hands holding it, torn edges...

I used to be pretty fanatical about sewing. I can remember begging my Mom for some needles and thread and material, and how excitied-- exuberant-- I was to get it finally. It was the hugest thing for me to be able to sit down and sew, actually making something with my own hands by myself. I loved making pillows and actually begged to get pillow stuffing for my birthday and Christmas. And I got it, too. A big bag of American pillow stuffing. That was the best present that year : ). I can remember excitedly making a pillow for a friend and stitching her name onto it- then the dozens of pillows I made afterwards for friends and family, all with their own name or a heart or some such thing on it. My oldest sister has several with "Allison" stitched on them that she keeps on her bed from me. While I haven't sewn a project in a long time, I still get sweaters and pants and shirts from my family to be sewn up or patched, and many a time someone has come to me on a Sunday morning with a button to be sewed on. I do more knitting and crocheting now, though I've wanted for awhile to make a quilt. It just hasn't happened yet. Not to mention I hardly had time to do any crocheting this past winter. I did more than half of a huge blanket in a months time, and then have only down about five rows since, purely because of the time factor. I wanted to finish it this summer in my abundant free time, but I quickly discovered that my time seems even more full now than in the school year somehow. Or at least just as full.

I used to have really curly hair-- my parents say it was as curly as Shirley Temple's-- but I didn't like it at all. It made me different than the rest of my family (none of whom had curly hair), besides the fact that I was the only dark-haired one for years. I was with a friend one time who's mother was British and who's father was American. Her Mom had some errands to run so she took the two of us along. One of them was to stop and pick something up for curling hair. My hair was bothering me a bit and I pouted a bit and said something along the lines of wishing I had straight hair like everyone else. Mrs. DeWalt turned around and said, "Melanie, girls with straight hair often wish they had curly hair. Girls with curly hair often wish they had straight hair. You have beautiful hair in its own way, just like Natalie, even though her hair is straight. Try to be content with what you have, because it might not always be curly and one day you might wish it were." She was right. It's so easy to have the "grass is greener on the other side" mentality and wish we had something other than what we have. My hair isn't curly anymore-- wavy, I suppose-- and there are times when I wonder what it would be like if it still curled like it used to-- and I wish it did, on occasion. (It's curled this summer some, which surprised my family and me as I had some pretty tight curls, but it's not much.) I wish it were easier to be content with what we have rather than always look at what everyone else has.

I used to take riding lessons. As in, horse riding lessons. The first week I couldn't walk the day after because I was so sore. But I loved riding the horses. I went every Tuesday with another friend at a place near her house while Heather babysat her daughter. I kind of miss that right now. Haven't thought about it in a long time.

I need to go do Algebra now. Maybe I'll make some hot chocolate and baked beans (do you guys-- those that were on here that long ago-- remember how much I had baked beans last fall? And that big conversation in the comment box, either mine or someone else's, that several of us got in to about Heinz ketchup and baked beans and making it and whatnot? An odd conversation, but it was interesting.) for while I work. Later, guys.

From CNN International:

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) -- The two young American men rolled up the dusty street on bicycles, stopping at the feminist-run labor rights center to earnestly deliver a message they have been pedaling across Southeast Asia to spread: "Real men support women."

Raphael Parker and Jacob Richardson scribbled notes while former workers from a nearby garment factory gather round to tell how thousands of them toiled under tough conditions and then got scant compensation when the plant closed.

The bicyclists, high school friends from Cincinnati, took turns explaining their purpose: to teach people back in America about the plight of women in Southeast Asia -- "because we believe that real men support women," Parker said.

That elicited chuckles from some of the workers who apparently found the sentiment a novel one, especially coming from men.

The curly haired Parker, 24, who is fond of cracking jokes, started Tour for Equality -- a project that is taking him and Richardson, 23, over the bumpy back roads of Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos to talk with local people and humanitarian groups.

They relay their findings on a blog, or Internet journal, whose readers include supporters around the globe, Parker said.

Their small organization, a partner of the Washington-based Men Can Stop Rape, received a US$4,000 grant from the Ford Foundation and other donations for the Southeast Asian trip.

"They have an inspiring and worthy project and goals," Tade Aina, a Ford Foundation representative, said in an e-mail. "It is indeed most gratifying to see young people think beyond their own immediate needs and want to work for social change and social justice."

Tour for Equality had its beginnings in a different field of activism: voter registration. During the 2004 U.S. presidential race, Parker rode his bike from New York to Florida, registering more than 3,000 people.

He said the experience taught him that a bicycle is a "good vehicle for social change," and a way to reach people who "don't read The New York Times."

After that, Parker rallied friends and family behind a three-month Tour for Equality bicycle trip around the United States to talk with children about women's rights and masculinity as they are in real life, distinct from the images projected by pop culture.

The group chose Southeast Asia for its next mission due to the region's serious problems with the trafficking of women and children.

The State Department recently put Cambodia on its list of worst trafficking offenders, citing its failure to combat severe forms of the trade -- and to convict public officials who are involved.

Many Cambodian women and children are trafficked into Thailand and Malaysia for labor and commercial sexual exploitation, while most male victims are sent to Thailand as laborers, the State Department said.

Parker said Americans become incensed when they hear about human trafficking.

But many still have to learn about it, chimed in Richardson.

"It's just so far away and you feel distant from that, so we're trying to ... help bridge that gap quite a bit, through mainly our Web site and visiting these organizations over here," he said.

The pair have had their tough moments. They were robbed in Bangkok, Thailand, unknowingly ended up at brothels that appeared to be guesthouses in Cambodia, and slept among pigs and cows on a stormy night when a kind Cambodian family took them in.

In Phnom Penh, the garment workers seemed impressed with their efforts. One woman called them heroes and models for Cambodian men.

But after meeting the garment workers and hearing about their difficult social and working conditions, including low pay and long hours without even trips to the restroom, the feeling was more than reciprocated.

"It was amazing to see the determination of these people who are in worse situations than I could ever imagine," Richardson, an aspiring music journalist, wrote in his blog.

He and Parker have been "witnesses to slavery," he added. "There needs to be a change and if they have the perseverance to do something, I would like to think that everyone reading this does too."