Resolutions

This year I made 5 New Year's Resolutions, and, as always, intend to keep them.

Resolution #1:
VISIT 5 NEW COUNTRIES
This won't be terribly difficult, as I'm leaving the country for a week in March, am attending a wedding in August, and am planning to backpack for three weeks in October. See if you can guess some of the countries I'll be visiting:











Resolution #2:
GET MY TATTOO
Gasp! A tattoo? Why would you ever want one of those? Sigh..I have my reasons, and don't worry, it won't be something huge and ridiculous like a dragon wrapped around my torso. I know what I want, and I've thought long and hard about it, and have finally concluded that yes, I do want it. Now I just have to get past the idea of the pain. If you don't like the idea, don't worry, you'll never see it, and you can pretend I don't have one.


Resolution #3:
CHOOSE GRADUATE SCHOOLS TO APPLY TO
I won't be actually sending in any applications until I am comfortably back on US soil, but I've decided it will be a much more painless process if I choose the intended destinations ahead of time.


Resolution #4:
LEARN FRENCH
So I met this wonderfully handsome man in Paris, and he and I have been keeping in contact through email since my return to Bangkok. He speaks English well enough, but it seems a bit selfish of me for him to be the only one struggling with a language that I don't even have to think twice about. So, I decided I ought to learn French; it's only fair. I have two phrasebooks and an accompanying audio cd(that moves too fast for me at the moment, right now I'm concentrating on getting through my flashcards), and every once in a while Florian will offer me a few grammatical insights. I whimper about pronouncing everything wrong, he says it's cute, I disagree, he laughs, I practice more. On one hand, French is difficult to learn if you don't have a pronunciation guide(or audio something) because only about 5% of the words are written phonetically; on the other hand, it's a beautiful language when it IS pronounced correctly. So far, the longest phrase I can say correctly and without hesitation is: 'Désolé, je ne parle pas assez de français pour le moment. Aidez-moi, s'il vous plaît!'..which means..'I'm sorry, I don't speak enough French yet. Help me, please!'
Florian hears this a lot. lol
*Luckily, his and my Spanish skills are about the same, so this is a fun alternative to English sometimes, as we BOTH try to make ourselves understood. bahaha


Resolution #5:
READ WAR AND PEACE
I have read, as in started and finished, more books here in the 8 months I've been in Thailand than any other 8-month period in my life. I'm running low on books(I'll be swapping them with new ones when I visit home in May), but today Rani lent me Tolstoy's War and Peace, and I intend to finish it before the year is out.