Personal

Letters Between Friends: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DARLING

Trish1 Comment

LettersBtwnFriends

Dear Sweet and wonderful and ONE YEAR OLDER  (Tomorrow) Tricia!

Happy-Birthday-Darling

I want to fill this letter with so many wonderful things…that you would enjoy on your birthday (tomorrow)!  So here is my attempt…

PICTURE #1

download

Photo creds to your mom.  She helped me with this one.  Your cat misses you, but because cats are so intelligent, he knows how important it is that you are there, so he completely understands.  He sits on the piano bench and only leaves to eat, drink, and use the litter box.  He’s doing great.

PICTURE #2   Continue reading →

So…I Tried Tinder

Trish2 Comments

I’m (three days away from) 28 now, and still single.  I know that as a society, we’re moving past the idea of online dating as being “desperate” but…I’m desperate.  Not just to find a guy, but to prove to myself that I’m the sort of person who can take risks and step outside her comfort zone.

But why now?  Partly it’s because one of my super cool, super intelligent, super self-possessed friends started using online dating, and I figured I’d be in good company if I did the same.  Plus she shared some really funny conversations, and I’ll be honest – I thought it might make good blog post fodder.  But the second reason was my old boss’s visit.  Chrisette told me that I would be single forever until I was willing to fail.  That felt like a lesson I definitely needed to learn so…I looked into a bunch of different options.

Match, Hinge, and Coffee Meets Bagel were all unavailable in Greece, which is unfortunate because they are the most Relationship Oriented (as opposed to Hook Up Oriented).  Bumble works here, but not many are on it, and within three minutes I had run out of people to swipe left.  I signed up for How About We, an app designed to get people to go out on dates instead of sit around talking all the time.  But you get ZERO information about a person other than their idea of a date, and my hyper-sensitive trust issues were not okay with that.

Elizabeth told me to try Tinder.  I wrote back:

11711765_10155788234560383_989348775_n

And also: no, that’s what people use when all they want is sex.  She sent me this article that convinced me to give it a try.  And so, on the 14th of March in the year of our Lord 2016, I signed up for Tinder.   Continue reading →

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 →

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 →

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 →

Overcoming a Language Meltdown

Trish2 Comments

Last week, six weeks of daily Greek lessons finally caught up to me and melted my brain.  It was the weirdest sensation – I could “see” all the information I’d learned, but everything was behind a mental glass wall.  No matter how hard I tried to break through, the wall remained.  I am happy to report that yesterday, everything came rushing back, and I’m actually enjoying learning Greek again.  How did this happen?  Well, I can identify three possible causes:

  1. I did no homework and spoke no Greek on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday.
  2. I skipped class.
  3. I repeated, “I don’t care about Greek, I don’t care if I sit there and say, ‘Δεν ξἐρω’ over and over again, I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.”

Many, many people told me to “stop trying so hard,” and I finally understand why.  It feels counter-productive to stop doing something in order to get better at it, but….at least this time, that is exactly what worked!   Continue reading →

Social Anxiety Disorder Checklist

Trish10 Comments
When I took my first psychology class as a junior in high school, I remember hurrying to the computer lab to look up “General Anxiety Disorder” and “Social Anxiety Disorder” because I was pretty sure I had some form of something.  Nevermind actual counselors or psychological tests – I recently came across this list on Tumblr, and it is law!
Totally kidding.  This is, by no means, a comprehensive or even slightly scientific list.  But it does cover a lot of things that make me go “eeeeeaaaaahhhh” on the inside, things that as a child I thought everyone experienced as horrible until I realized they’re mostly, like, no big deal to a lot of people.  So here’s a list of things that scare anxious people, and I’ve bolded the ones that resonated with me.  I also interjected thoughts or stories that I wanted to share.

Continue reading →

A Week in Greece #7: Language Meltdown but Nice Classmates

Trish5 Comments

Ahhh, this was the week I felt like I moved from “I know cool people in Athens!” to “I have friends in Athens!”  And it was the week I had a mental breakdown, but you know what?  You can’t have everything.

On Sunday, I met up with Tonya and her friend Janet.  If those names sound unfamiliar, it’s because they are pretty new me too!  Tonya was in Level 4 at the Athens Centre, and during one break when our classes were both out, we discovered we had some mutual friends because she’s from Seattle working in Athens with a ministry to refugees.  She’s been here for three years, so she took me to an Irish pub restaurant for fish and chips, then we ate gelato at an ice cream/waffle sweet shop.

When I got back to the school, I met up with Ioanna and Olympia to go out for wine at a hipster restaurant near the school.  There was a cat wandering around, and HE LET ME PET HIM, and it was the first time I’ve pet a cat since I left Rory seven weeks ago.  I guess it was also fun to talk with friends.  Hahaha, no really, it WAS fun, because Ioanna pushed me to use Greek, and when I got overwhelmed, Olympia said, “Hey, it’s okay, we’ll speak in English now.”  They’re a good pair to have around.

Speaking of Greek! Continue reading →

Language Learning Meltdown

Trish4 Comments

An hour and a half into our Greek class today, I excused myself to the restroom, stared at my face in the mirror, and allowed myself a couple silent sobs before drying my eyes and returning to the classroom.

I don’t know what happened!  Last week we started Level II, and I was feeling pretty confident!  I knew a lot of vocabulary, I was translating for myself into Greek as I went about my day, and I was trying out conversations with strangers on the bus.  But yesterday, something broke in me.  Absolutely nothing was making sense, to the point that our teacher asked me the Greek equivalent of “a or the” and I thought she was talking about a verb.  That is like, day 2 information.

But I left school yesterday determined to catch up.  I copied everything into my Official Grammar and Vocabulary notebook.  I spent four hours on homework last night, and I read through my lists of irregular verbs on the way to class this morning.  The class started, and again….nothing.  My brain could not process anything that anyone was saying.  Hence the bathroom breakdown.   Continue reading →