diagnosis

So, rather late in the afternoon yesterday, I was informed by the health center that I do NOT have a fractured ankle, THANK GOODNESS! It's a severe sprain (type 1 or type 2, which means a ligament was torn or something), and this weekend is supposed to be spent icing and elevating like nobody's business. Their estimate for heal time is 4 to 6 weeks and I could just feel my heart sinking in my chest. I'm not even allowed to try and stand on it until next Friday when I have a follow-up appointment at the health center, and physical therapy and strengthening exercises are off limits until they say I can start to move it. This means Sectionals are out. I know that the better I take care of it now, the more I rest it, the faster it'll heal, and I'm trying to feel optimistic about it, but I've worked SO HARD this year to get to where I am as a player right now, and I've worked SO HARD to help make the team the way it is right now, and the fact that I can't compete at Sectionals is killing me. Don't worry, I'm not crying right now, more just melancholy, though the sunshine is helping lift my spirits a little bit.

It is, in fact, gorgeous outside, sun is shining, finally, and it's supposed to be in the mid-to-high 70s for the next week or so! We deserve after all this rain we've had.

Self-prescribed treatment: get over it. All of it. Obviously the ankle will take some time, but I need to re-focus on my own life and focus on having a great rest of the senior year, being aggressive in my job search, and being happy with my friends and family, and the amazing team that I've had such an amazing time with these past four years!

Here goes nothing!

good, good, GOOD, then BAD day

Considering how ridiculous this week has been, today was a pretty damn good day. It was incredibly productive and enlightening, and I was in a really good mood. My Spanish presentation went superbly, I had a nice lunch with my friends (as usual), I went to a documentary screening (it was really really well done) hosted by a group I'm in called ANKHR (Advocates for North Korean Human Rights), I went to a really informative and inspiring alumnae panel about careers in Microfinance, and then I got an email from Professor Weerapana in the Economics department saying that my resume got passed on through the first cut for an opening at the Boston Federal Reserve Bank. AWESOME!!

Then, one of my worst nightmares came true. I'm not trying to be dramatic, I've literally had nightmares about things like this and woken up crying. At practice, we were starting our sprint workout for the day, a 5 x 200m sprints. As I was crossing the finish line for the first 200m, I was trying to avoid tripping somebody else who was just about to start her first 200m (we did them relay-ish style), I veered too suddenly to the right and my right foot rolled to the outside, and collapsed under my ankle which subsequently made a heinously loud popping sound. Then, I fell over, and it didn't even hurt at first, I kind of just sat there in shock and winced a little, and then I started sobbing and yelling about how "THIS IS NOT A GOOD TIME. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME. OF COURSE THIS WOULD HAPPEN TO ME NOW OF ALL TIMES!" Yes, a flair for the dramatic. WHATEVER. You would be that frustrated to if you had the week I've been having and it was a week away from College Sectionals, the tournament I've been looking forward to and anticipating all year during your last year of college ultimate. Yeah, so I sobbed and screamed about the terrible timing.

I have no idea what the diagnosis is, but I can't walk on it at all, and I'm getting really fucking tired of hopping around on my left leg, and it's only been like 11 hours. I am going to see health services first thing when they open at freaking 9:00am because on our campus, medical emergencies only happen between 9am-4pm, so that's when the health center is open. I had my alarm set for about half an hour later, but my body woke me up nice and early so I can enjoy waiting around until the health center opens.

This sucks.

¡puedo hablar español!

My first ever oral presentation in Spanish is now DONE!

I spoke for about 2-3 minutes about Mexican Muralism, an art movement in Mexico during the late 1920s and 1930s. It began as a way for the government to rebuild a Mexican nationalist culture but eventually turned into a means by which artists and social groups protested the status quo. I was nervous...I've been practicing since the beginning of Spring Break, but I think it went really, really well!! One girl in my class came upto me later in the day to tell me that she thought that I sounded like a native speaker, which, to me, was a big deal because she is Puerto Rican and her extended family speaks Spanish fluently. YAY!

So, the reason I chose this topic was...porque este movimiento era una combinación de unos ideales bastante modernos de la sociedad del siglo XX y de los temas estéticos del indigenismo. In other words, I found it interesting that the artists used the art styles of the indigenous people of Mexico to express dissatisfaction and responses to contemporary social issues.

Here are some examples of the pieces from this movement, some pretty cool stuff:

Omniciencia (Orozco)

El Vendedor de alcatraces (Rivera)

In other news, I just applied for my third year as an Overnight Hostess for the Spring Open Campus program on our campus where all the prospective students come to visit and see if they like Wellesley enough to come here or not, hehe. It's always been really refreshing and fun to take a couple days to be really proud of Wellesley and share all the positive things about it with people who are taking a look for the first or second time. Seeing as I'm about to leave this place, I might as well take this one last chance to tell people why I decided to stay here for all four years and am now clinging to this place like nobody's business because I don't want to leave.

As challenging as it is to be a student here and to live here (this is definitely the most intense group of people that I think I'll ever be around in my whole life), I have grown and learned so much, and I wouldn't take any of it back. Even all the shitty stuff, all the tears from being homesick my first year here, the incredibly challenging academics, and I've grown to adore and admire all the people that I've met here that are the walking definitions of "Type A" personalities...much like myself ;)

Well, I've got to get going, as ANKHR is hosting a documentary screening about North Korea this afternoon, then I am attending a panel about microfinance, and then tonight we have practice indoors since we're not allowed to use the outdoor fields because of all of the rain, unfortunately. I was SO looking forward to practicing outside. *sigh*

the waiting game

The job search is, well, going. No positive results yet. I'm assuming that the places I applied to way back in late January/early February that haven't responded have decided that I'm not quite their type. Bleh.

Oh well, right before Spring Break, I submitted applications to the Open Society Institute (a policy think tank that does fiscal policy research), the Institute for Children and Poverty, and I just submitted an application for a summer internship at ETS. Yes, ETS. I'm interested in seeing how these standardized testing methods are developed and what the inner workings of such an organization are like. It'll be informative no matter what, seeing as I'm interested in making a career of educational policy and all, heh. I'll hear back from ETS before April 30th. Oh, the waiting game, how ridiculously not fun you are.

I'm still waiting to hear back from the Institute for Women's Policy Research and the Teaching Assistantship Program in France...I'm assuming they'll be getting back to me soon-ish? Not sure, but I'm eager to hear what they have to say.

It would be really nice to get this ETS internship because it would let me spend another summer at home (hopefully I'll be somewhere else next year), it would be incredibly productive, in many ways, and it'll be a nice transition into the working adult's life, I guess.

I guess all I can do for now is keep working hard and being proactive with this job search. If I keep sending out all of these applications, something's GOT to turn out in my favor, right?

On another random note, some songs that I've really been enjoying lately, some new, some old:

"All Day and All of the Night" - the Kinks

"Hey Soul Sister" - Train

"Teeth" - Lady Gaga

c'est trop.

c'est trop compliqué, tout ça.

ma mère m'a dit des mots vraiment sages l'autre jour quand mes parents m'ont rendu visite. elle m'a dit,

"quand on est petite, on s'occupe de ses notes, de ses études, de son travail, mais enfin tout ça, c'est facile. mais les personnes, les rapports...sont compliqués et dificils. c'est frustrant, hein?"

que ma mère ait raison. quand je me concentre sur mes cours, l'exercice, mon équipe, ma recherche d'un boulot, la vie me semble d'être simple, beaucoup plus facile à controller et vivre. mais ajoute les considérations de l'amour, tout les affaires du coeur et je suis perdue. on sait qu'on est dans la merde quand on pleure toute la journée sauf quand on est dans une classe. ce n'est pas la vie, ça.

i can read

Mom and Dad came by my tournament yesterday to come see me captain/play one more time before I graduate from the Wellesley Whiptails (oh god, the nostalgia. sorry. i'll try to stave it off, but when it comes to emotions and feelings and touchy-feeliness, i'm like a neverending fountain of sappy), and they left me with some crackers and food, including a bag of crackers which I'm eating right now as I finish my application for a summer internship at ETS.

There was this random small plastic packet with white ball-like things in it, and I thought it might be those poisonous silica gel things or something, and the packaging was in Korean so I thought I was just going to have to throw it out in case I read it wrong and accidentally ate something that would kill me.

BUT THEN SOMETHING AMAZING HAPPENED. I read the characters out loud, which looked like this:

I sounded it out, "byul...sa...tang," and then I was like "oh, star candy. sweet. I can eat it." And then I realized that I had read it and understood it! YAY. For those of you who don't understand why this is so important, well, let me tell you a story about me. Again. Whatever, this is a blog, my blog, actually, so it's just going to be stories about me anyway.

When I was very little, I spoke Korean fluently with my parents. I learned English with my parents and quickly switched over to English as my dominant language and now I can barely speak any Korean at all. It's really quite tragic. It never bothered me before, but now that I'm going onto my second foreign language (first French, now Spanish), I kind of have been itching to learn Korean. It's also a point of sensitivity, the fact that I can't really communicate that well with my extended family, but I think that that's something I can amend.

So, basically, everytime I'm able to understand/read/speak Korean, I get really excited. Pretty cool, huh?

Whiptails Extravaganza: Part II

Onward! For the second part of our Spring Break in the South, the Whiptails caravanned to Folly Island, South Carolina and stayed there from Monday through Thursday! We kicked off the week by participating in a inter-team hat tournament. Dartmouth and Cornell also participated. My team won :)

The week was filled with all sorts of fun social activities, and the captains took it somewhat easy on the team this year. We gave the team a day off and held practice the day after for about 3 hours. But the rest of the time, people had to go into Charleston, frolic on the beach, relax, and do whatever they felt like doing. On Monday night, we celebrated Steph's 22nd birthday by having a big party at the beach house. Sara made Steph a birthday shirt, which she is modeling in the first picture below. A few of my teammates and I had brunch/lunch at the Lost Dog Cafe, a lovely restaurant in the center of Folly Beach, and enjoyed some delicious Southern food. I had a biscuit with gravy and also creamy grits with cheese, shrimp, and some vegetables...so so so good. And so heavy.

After practice, the next day, a whole bunch of the team went to the beach! It was warm, sunny, and gorgeous...though for the first time in my life, I didn't go into the water. I usually make a point of going into the water at least once, no matter how cold it is, if I go to the beach. But the combination of the ridiculously low temperature of the water and the potential of me being in immense pain from the salt water stinging my abrasion and blisters were enough to deter me from going in. We spent a few hours there, some of the team built sandcastles and buried a teammate in the sand in the from of a mermaid, some of them flew a kite, some of them went swimming, some of the read and basked in the warmth of the sun.

Sara, Steph, and I were also ridiculous and went back to high school and took Myspace profile picture-style "sexy beach photo shoot" photos. I'd say Sara succeeded...me....not so much! But it was fun, anyways :)

After 3.5 days at the beach, it was time for the team to head back up North to get ready for our second tournament, Get Skyy'd, which was held in Stonehill, MA. We went 5-2, not bad, and came in 9th place out of 20 teams. We're hoping to make a better showing at Sectionals in a couple weekends, but for now...back to practice! I'll leave you with this adorable shot of our team in front of the beach house before we piled into the cars and headed back up the East coast.