The first post!

First of all, let me just say that I've made my share of blogs in the past and I always think to myself, "This is going to be the one. I will definitely keep up with this one." And, as you can guess, I never do. So no promises, but here's to hoping. I doubt anyone will be reading this anyway, but I just wanted to keep track of things for myself and have a way to formulate my thoughts. Here we go.

The reason I made this blog is that today has been absolutely amazing. It started off a little shaky. My sister was visiting me at college this weekend while she's on spring break and she had to fly home today. My BlackBerry is broken and I have a temporary go phone which has a crappy alarm, so I planned on relying on her phone alarm. (What ever happened to alarm clocks, anyway?) We were supposed to leave around 10.15, but she woke me up at 10.30 panicking. In our rush, we decided to take a taxi instead of the subway to the airport. We got in the taxi, and yet another flaw in my day -- the credit card machine was broken. Luckily my sister had cash because I am out of it right now.

Anyhow, this is when my day started to turn around. The taxi driver was extremely friendly and we started talking. He asked what I was in college for (political communication and journalism) and I was talking to him about what I want to do with my life (international news/political correspondent) and how I want to learn Arabic. He told me that he knew Arabic (he was from Morocco) and that he would help me learn it for free. He said something along the lines of, "I'll send you a sentence every day. You can learn one sentence a day, right? Well in a month, you'll know 30 sentences." It was so kind of him to help me -- someone he doesn't even know and wouldn't be likely to run into again. When we got to the airport, he gave me his phone number and said to call him any time I need help with Arabic or French and also that he would give me his email address. Then, he wrote my name in Arabic two different ways. It was very cool to see someone just write in Arabic. Of course, it's as natural to him as writing my name in English is to me, but it's so foreign to me that I was extremely impressed and happy.

After dropping my sister of at the airport, I decided to just take the subway back to my dorm. When I was waiting on the bus from the airport to the subway station, this woman came up to me and asked which bus to get on. She was probably in her 50's and she had 2 suitcases. I told her that I would help her because I was getting on the same bus. What started off as a simple question ended up with me rolling/carrying her big suitcase to not only the airport subway station but also helping her figure out what station to get to in order to go to her hotel and then getting her to the stop where she would ride the train to her stop. It was complicated because she had to take 3 different lines to get to where she needed to go. Thinking about it, I went out of my way, but honestly I didn't think of it at the time. I had nowhere in particular that I needed to be. Of course, I had other things to do, but if I were in this woman's place, I really would have appreciated help. I don't write about this to try to gain recognition, but rather as a way of hoping that other people in the world would do the same thing. After I helped this woman, I felt very happy and also proud of myself, that I can't deny. I'm proud that I did the right thing when it would have been so easy -- especially in a city -- to just ignore her and simply answer her question. It was nice to talk to her and get to know her a little, even though I probably won't ever see her again.

Naturally, all of this was a wonderful beginning to my day. Afterwards, I did a lot of homework and accomplished a lot, which was nice. My friends and I also went to the gym. It was the first time I went in like a week and a half so it was nice to do that and I hope I get back in a routine. The weather here has also been wonderful so we got dinner from the dining hall and took it outside to eat. We did the same thing yesterday and I hope the weather stays nice so we can continue to do it, at least on the weekends. Unfortunately, the next 3 days are supposed to include rain, but hopefully it will be sunny and warm for a while after that. I ended the night with more homework (boo...but I accomplished a lot) and watching tv with my friends. It was a very nice day and I am going to bed quite happy.