It is officially 4 days and around 23 hours before my 18th birthday... and I do not know if I think that's a good or a bad thing. I remember the last time I was actually happy to turn another year older was two years ago, but that was just because I though everything good happened when you were sixteen. I now look back and realize, I actually didn't enjoy being sixteenth as I should have. I hoped for many things to happen but, really, not that many actually did. I think the highlight of my being six-and-ten years (as Jane Austen would say) was my short, but amazing, trip to Europe. Ten days strolling around Rome, Venice, Florence and Paris almost unsupervised with my best friends was truly a life-changing experience... Oh, wait, I'm drifting.
Back to the point.
Getting older. Sigh.
Here in Mexico, once you're 18, you are considered an adult . You can get into clubs (and drink all you want), you can get married without your parents consent, you can vote, you can gamble, oh well you get the idea. Basically everything Americans can legally do once they're 21. The problem is I have no interest in any of those things. I mean, sure I have snicked into a club just to see what all the fuzz was about, but I can safely say those kind of places are not for me. I hate the fact that you can't choose the music they play, I hate the crowding, I hate the taste of alcohol and the fact that all my friends seem to enjoy nothing else but to go out clubbing now (I'm hoping it's just a phase, since most of them just turned 18 in the last few months).
I'm afraid that once I actually turn 18 some kind of switch inside my head will go off (or on) and I'll forget how I felt about these kinds of things when I was still underage.
I firmly believe that, when your turn of age, you loose so much more that what you gain. You stop being a teenager to become a young adult. You stop living in the present worrying so much about the future. You leave high school and go to college. From all of these, I prefer the former.
I recall once being thirteen and being literally angry at myself for being so young. I felt I had no right to do anything and nobody took me seriously. I guess it was like that because thirteen is also somewhat an age of transition. From kid to teenager. Oh how I miss when shopping for me meant getting a new Barbie or roller skates. Now, I'll miss reading Teen Vogue or Seventeen.
Then I remember, I promised myself to look at the brighter side of everything, and so I will do. I'll now think about something happier. How about a list recent events :)
Mmmm... Let's see. I finally finished reading Pride and Prejudice and loved it. After reading it, I watched the 2005 movie version for the tenth time and the complete BBC version for the first time. I also watched some of the movie versions of the rest of her books. Oh and while on my search for these movies, I came across the most amazing movie-slash-short series called Lost in Austen. I felt so identified with Amanda when she says: "I'm not hung up about Darcy. I do not sit at home with the pause button on Colin Firth in clingy pants, okay? I love the love story. I love Elizabeth. I love the manners and language and the courtesy. It's become part of who I am and what I want. I'm saying that I have standards." I truly recommend it to all the Austen fans out there.
What else? Oh right, continuing with my Austen phase, I made this adorable bracelet with some of my favorite quotes from P&P.
And while being left home alone and after having my girlfriends bail on me, I did what I usually do when there's time and cake mix around. I baked a cake! Here's the result.
Now, don't get the idea that I'm this efficient everyday. I've actually been shamefully lazy this last week waking up at noon almost every day. It's all because I've been going to bed at almost five in the morning. I had never gone to bed that late for no reason before, but recently I've become very much of a night creature. And talking about late, it's getting very late again. So I better leave it here, go to bed, and today actually try to finish reading more than a chapter.
