Baking Baklava

Baklava.... It began while eating pizza at a restaurant that used to be My Big Fat Greek Restaurant. "We went there for my birthday once." I said, "And we got baklava!"

"I saw a recipe for Baklava!" Stacey said, "I've been meaning to try it!"

And Cameron piped up, "Alton Brown [his cooking idol] has a recipe for Baklava!"

Thus our competition was born: The Great Baklava-ke-off (pronounced bah-klah-vah-klauff, a mish mash of Baklava and Bake-off) in which two teams go head to head to see whose baklava recipe is better!!! 

This week in Photos (6/2-6/7)

All iPhone photos this time. Perhaps I'll pick up the fancy camera this week... We'll see.

"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit your own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them."

-Thomas Merton

Days until Jake returns: 1

Stats:

days Jake has been gone: 16
days until Jake gets home: 1
days until I see Jake: 3
pages written while he was gone: 55
pages read: 91
currently reading: The Shack by WM. Paul Young
learning: where I am right now is OKAY for me to be. A lot happens in two weeks. 
highlights: talking to Milea, making a French roast chicken, spending time with friends
looking forward to: soccer game tomorrow, exchanging our letters

Weekly Update:

A lot of the posts this week were pre-scheduled so while I'm still wrestling a lot with discontentment, figuring out the future, and how my private desires fit in with God's plan, I can feel myself coming out on the other side through the encouragement of my friends. I'm learning that where I am right now is okay for me to be. I don't have to be anywhere else but here. Not in Paris. Not in Orlando (internship). Not in South America (teaching English). Or wherever. I'm still wrestling for sure, but I'm learning to trust God too.

Jake will be Stateside tonight! The few texts we've been able to exchange this week and last through iMessage have been a true Godsend, making the weeks feel a little more bearable. It will be good to have him home again. He flies in to San Diego tonight and then he and Josh will be driving back into Tucson over the weekend. I'll probably see him on Sunday. That's all for this week! 

How Facebook Feeds Discontentment

Lately, I've been really convicted by the discontentment and jealousy I harbor in my life. I found myself scrolling through the news-feed on Facebook and envying the experiences of others. So-and-so went to Argentina! I wish I could travel. Or seeing all the girls dolled up for prom- I wish we had had a prom in high school. Or the engagements and wedding photos! I wish I was closer to that stage of life. Seeing the pictures and trips and job promotions and funny stories of my friends just made me want things that I didn't have...right now.

There are some things that just cannot be (prom for example), but many other things that can be had in time. It is these things (travel, careers, marriage etc.) that cause me the most heartache for they are the earnest desires of my heart but I remain in a constant state of waiting and looking forward. I've always been looking forward. Things will be better when.... I'm older. I'm graduated from college. I'm living on my own. I have a good job. I'm married. I have money. I can travel. Or even more recently--things will be better when my parents come home or Jake comes back. I have constantly told myself, If I can just get through this thing now, I can move on to the next thing. And then (subconsciously I thought), I'd be happy. But these are only empty promises I make to myself; and when I finally get to the next thing, there is always something else

I've also noticed that in my hunger to hear (other people's) stories (something Facebook makes accessible without the pressure of "real" human interaction--a rant for another day), I often lose sight of my own. It's easy to think my mundane existence in Tucson, Arizona is less exciting, less adventurous, less valuable or less insert-your-own-adjective-here because it is not something else. It's not a foreign exchange program in China, or a mission's trip to France. It's not wedding-planning or scoring great internships in preparation for my "dream job" or starting non-profits for good causes. It's pretty ordinary. There are some moments where I can be content with ordinary. But it's hard. And I can't do it if I'm constantly immersing myself in the details of other people's lives to the point where I am not living my own.

So, in a couple days, I'm going to take the summer off from Facebook. The blog will still be running, but I really  want to focus on being present and enjoying my life for what it is instead of resenting it for what it isn't.

"Consolation"

Consolation

How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hill towns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every road sign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.

There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's
little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.

How much better to command the simple precinct of home
than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyed camera
eager to eat the world one monument at a time?

Instead of slouching in a café ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.

And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone
willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.
I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal
what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.
It is enough to climb back into the car
as if it were the great car of English itself
and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off
down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna.

Somehow, I'm not sure Billy Collins succeeds in convincing me that staying home is better than exploring Italy (or France). But perhaps I can still appreciate even his small consolation(s).

The Formula for Life

No one says there is a formula to life. And yet, young people are inundated with very formulaic advice:
Go to college so you can get a good job. Do what you love. Follow your dreams. If you work hard, you can be anything you want to be. etc. etc. As if these mantras are the key(s) to success and happiness in life.

The end of my college career has brought with it the ambiguity and uncertainty of the unknown future, which is even more magnified by the constant and ever-pressing question of, "What's next?" Everyone wants to know! (Even complete strangers who find out I've recently graduated.) But what a lot of people don't realize is that their well-meaning small talk can put a lot of undue pressure on students who don't know what they want to do yet.

Lately, I've been so frustrated thinking about post-grad life and wrestling to answer this question, "what's next."There are so many possibilities, but a lifetime would never be enough time to taste them all. Should I pursue this? Or that? At what point should I choose skill (what I"m good at) over passion (what I love)? Is it okay to sacrifice some dreams? And if so, which ones? What kinds of dreams should be nonnegotiable? How do I know that my decisions now won't have a negative impact on my future?

I've noticed that there are a lot of invisible standards to live up to. Asking a graduate "What's next?", however well-intentioned, demands that he or she actually know what's next or have a goal or a career or a dream job that they're aiming for.

But it's hard to say, I don't know. 

It's hard to admit that just because you have a degree doesn't mean you have your life together (or even decently planned out). It's hard to tell people your tentative plans knowing they might sound unambitious. Why? Because everyone ëxpects great things"from me. And I don't know if they're being vague on purpose or if it's just the "right"thing to say. What great things do you expect? Yeah, it sounds encouraging in the golden, romantic glow of graduation, but afterward? Life is not so forgiving or easy to navigate as academia.

The formula is easy: grow up, go to college, work hard, get married, save money for retirement, start a family, keep working hard and you can relax in your old age happy and satisfied (and surrounded by loving grandchildren if you're lucky). But life is not math, my friends. It's messy. It's unpredictable. As I've been learning lately, it does not go according to plan. As a highly-organized self-proclaimed planner, that's hard for me. I want the security of having my life carefully mapped out, but Life does not like to be pinned down so easily. And you know what? I'm learning (slowly but surely) to be okay with that, whether it's 16 love letters left behind, or rescheduling the same coffee date 4 times, or simply trusting God with my career path.

Besides, I was never that good at math anyway.

This Week in Photos (5/26-6/1)

"It is up to you to see the beauty of everyday things."

-Unknown Author