Author: Trish

Personality Test: Color, Animal, Nature

Trish16 Comments

I was recently introduced to quite possibly the simplest, and most fun, personality test.  It consists of only three questions, and the results were wildly accurate!  If you want to play along, before you read about my answers and discoveries, answer these questions for yourself:

  1. What is your favorite color?  Explain why with a couple sentences.
  2. What is your favorite animal?  Explain why with a couple sentences.
  3. What is your favorite part of nature?  Explain why with a couple sentences.

Don’t skimp on the explanations!  That is the important part!

Okay, once you’ve got your answers….here’s what I said. Continue reading →

Sunday Summary #20: What’s on the Internet

TrishLeave a comment

Videos

1|  The entire video is pretty okay, but I watched the scene with Luke and Yoda (beginning at 1:37) FOUR times and screamed with laughter every time.

2|  Two of my favorite people (Stephen Colbert and Anna Kendrick) geek out about two of my favorite things (Lord of the Rings and musicals)!

A Week in Greece #9: The Pamurthys Visit!

Trish1 Comment

I returned from Berlin (read about my hilariously mediocre weekend here) on Monday evening.  Dina and Argyris took me to the Greek Evangelical Church to give a laidback presentation to a group of 20+ college students here to work with refugees on their spring break.  College kids are great because they still have that amazingly naive and powerful belief that they can change the world.  I loved seeing them learn about sex trafficking and HD and wanting to get involved.  And while I still very much hate public speaking, I really enjoyed talking to individuals and small groups about my involvement and story.  I’m looking forward to more of this in the future!

But the real story of this week was:  the Pamurthys came to Athens!  I worked for them for three years when I lived in Dallas.  As Anju and Ketan’s nanny (read about some of my favorite memories here), I was at their house every weekday evening, so they quickly became my Dallas family.  When they told me they’d decided to make their 2016 vacation to Athens while I’m here, I was thrilled to get to hang out with them again.

Unfortunately, Ketan came down with a fever during the flight from Istanbul to Athens, so he and Chrisette stayed at the hotel.  I met up with Anju and Sanjay, though, and we did a bit of tourist-ing to Hadrian’s Arch, the Temple of Zeus, and the Olympic Stadium.  Sanjay kept saying, “This is so COOL,” which was all the encouragement I needed to unload two months of Greek language, culture, history, and mythology facts.   Continue reading →

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

TrishLeave a comment

18293427It’s the easiest thing in the world to guess I will like a romance about two people falling in love because of books, but The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is more than that.  In fact, it could be read as an ode to books themselves, about how understanding and appreciating character’s and their fictional adventures can inspire us to make our own.  It’s about how we are living stories, so we may as well do what we can to make our life a memorable one.

A.J. Fikry is initially unlikeable.  Although his perpetual bad mood is understandable, given that he is a young widower, it’s also very annoying.  But Zevin’s book follows his transformation over decades of interactions with an optimistic book seller, an orphaned girl, a friendly police chief, a charming cad of a brother-in-law, and a put-upon sister-in-law.  As he slowly opens his heart to others, he finds happiness.  It’s the simplest story in the world, but one that needs to be told and retold.

That’s really all that needs to be said, but I’ll leave you with a couple quotes that show how beautifully the lines between fiction and meta-fiction are blurred.

They had only ever discussed books but what, in this life, is more personal than books?

and

The words you can’t find, you borrow.  We read to know we’re not alone.  We read because we’re alone.  We read and we are not alone.  We are not alone.  My life is in these books, he wants to tell her.  Read these and know my heart. Continue reading →

Letters Between Friends: SUPERGLUE

TrishLeave a comment

LettersBtwnFriends

This week I wrote to Lindsay about a DISASTER that occurred!  Check out our ongoing friendship pen pal relationship over at Wild Ginger.

Lindsay's Blog Logo

The Hamilton Book Tag

TrishLeave a comment

I saw this tag over on Uncreated Conscience, and seriously!  Books AND Hamilton? How could I resist!?

The Room Where It Happens: Book world you would put yourself in.

The easy answer is Harry Potter, and I would totally be down for that if I accidentally stumbled through a brick wall into Diagon Alley.  But I think really I’d want to live in Narnia where adventures are just around the corner so long as you go further up and further in.

The Chronicles of Narnia box set full color

The Schuyler Sisters: Underrated Female Character

By underrated, can that mean: is never talked about, ever?  Because I LOVE Flora from the Flora Segunda trilogy, and no one knows those books!  Flora is fat, feisty, and horrible at make correct decisions.  She loves and hates her messed up magical family in equal measures, and I’ve just realized that I desperately need to re-read these books!

51QkvJ1lrLL._SX320_BO1,204,203,200_

My Shot: A character that goes after what they want and doesn’t let anything stop them

My girl Frankie from The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks!  She never lets little things like cultural constructs or, you know, laws, stand in the way of her pursuing what she wants – which is to be the best leader of an all-male secret society even though she is actually a girl.

1629601

Stay Alive: A character you wish was still alive

This obviously comes with a SPOILER warning, right?  If not, well…SPOILERS.  Continue reading →

A Weekend in Berlin

Trish4 Comments

One of my goals for living in Greece for a year was to visit five other countries.  I don’t want to waste these cheap European flights!  So when Kaitlyn, one of my friends from Dallas, said she was going to Europe, and could we find a city that was cheap for both of us to get to, I said YES.  We wound up going to Berlin for two days, and I have…mixed feelings about the trip.

Kaitlyn arrived at the airport a couple hours before me and kindly waited for me to arrive so we could make our way to the hostel together.  We immediately hit a snag when we were directed to the most unhelpful help desk in the airport.

Me:  Um, hi!  We need to find the S-Bahn.
Help Desk Woman:  The S-Bahn?  The S-Bahn!?  This is the airport!
Me:  …I know.  But, uh, we need to take the S-Bahn to our hostel.
Help Desk Woman:  There is not S-Bahn here.  This is the airport, we have airport transport.
Me:  Okay, but.  The directions our hostel gave us say to take the S-Bahn, so is there, like, a way to get to the S-Bahn from the airport?
Help Desk Woman:  There is no S-Bahn here!
Me:  ….???
Help Desk Woman:  …But if you go out that door, there is a bus to your right that will take you to the S-Bahn station.

Continue reading →

Shockaholic by Carrie Fisher

Trish2 Comments

cvr9780743264839_9780743264839_hr.jpgWhen I saw Carrie Fisher’s infamous Twitter reply (“You’ve hurt all three of my feelings”) to the unbalanced hate she received after the newest Star Wars movie, I knew I had to find out more about this sassy, brutally honest woman.  Imagine my delighted surprise when I found out she’s written books!  About herself!  Exactly what I wanted, handed to me in the easiest way possible.

Shockaholic is my first glimpse into Fisher’s life, which is so much more dramatic than I realized.  She’s Hollywood royalty, with all the glitter and horror that you’d expect from such a title.  She has bipolar disorder, and she has no reservations about sharing what that means for her and how she manages to survive a crippling mental disorder (i.e. the titular electro-shock therapy).  And she cattily addresses the very things that drew me to her in the first place.

You know the saying, “You’re your own worst enemy”?  Well, thanks to the Internet, that’s no longer true.  It turns out that total strangers can actually be meaner about you than you ever could be about yourself.  Which is saying a huge amount with me, because I can really go to town hurting my own feelings.  I know where they are…

Yes, it’s true.  All too true.  I let myself go.  And where did I go?  Where all fat, jowly, middle-aged women go–refrigerators and restaurants (both fine dining and drive-thru).  To put it as simply as I can and still be me:  Wherever there was food I could be found lurking, enthusiastically eyeing the fried chicken and Chinese food and pasta.  Not to mention the cupcakes and ice cream and pies, oh my!

How could I have allowed this to happen?  What was I thinking?  More to the point, what was I eating?  And having eaten it, why did I eat so much of it?  And having eaten that much, why did I so assiduously avoid aerobics?

Look at all that talent!!  She’s such an engaging writer, and I’m totally sold on reading everything else she’s created.  Rock on, Carrie Fisher.  Never stop being you.   Continue reading →

Video Blogs of Jenna’s Visit!

TrishLeave a comment

I really like editing together vlogs with varying levels of seriousness, so when Jenna said she was okay with my documenting our adventures, I had a ball!  Here are the vlogs I made of her four-day visit!

1|  Jenna arrived in the afternoon and we hurried downtown to do a little sight-seeing and a LOT of eating.

2|  We made the most of our tourist day by visiting All The Things:  the Acropolis and its super-cool new museum, the Temple of Zeus, and the 1896 Olympic Stadium, where we were big weirdos and it was so much fun.   Continue reading →

A Week in Greece #8: Jenna Visits and My Greek Class Ends!

Trish1 Comment

I had SUCH a fun week!

Jenna came to visit me on Sunday.  She’s my friend Mallory’s roommate, and we met for the first time when I visited Mallory in Memphis last October.  “Can I visit you when you live in Greece?” Jenna asked as we binge-watched Jane the Virgin.  “OF COURSE!” I agreed, and five months later, here we are.

Jenna’s visit gave me a chance to be a tourist and enjoy the city in which I’m living with idiotic abandon.  I was both the expert, getting us around and suggesting foods, and the enthusiast, filming dumb videos of us “racing” in the 1896 Olympic Stadium.

IMG_9354

I especially appreciated Jenna’s visit because she’s familiar with Mediterranean cultures (she’s been to Turkey twice) but not with Greece specifically.  Her comments made me love my new home even more.  For instance, she was surprised by how clean and European Greece is (which, okay, Athens is NOT clean compared to the rest of Europe, but it’s not all that bad either!).  She also said that one day when she bumped into a guy she didn’t feel like she’d crossed a cultural line.  In Turkey and other more conservative places, girls get a LOT of warnings about avoiding eye contact and especially bodily contact with men.  In Greece, it’s no big deal.  I hadn’t really appreciated the difference until she pointed it out.   Continue reading →