Smart Girls Have More Fun!

I don't know why but I saw this Cosmo Magazine thing on MSN.com today and for some reason it made me laugh and grabbed my attention. I'm not sure if it's cause I'm sick and delirious or the fact that I'll be 27 next week and my sense of humor is becoming a little twisted with age. This made me immediately think of Legally Blonde for some reason....so in my best Elle Woods voice, "Things any Cosmo Girl would know"! Cosmo suggests some steps to do in 30 days to apparently snag your next boyfriend. These things seem pretty basic, but for some reason I'm intrigued to put Cosmo to the test. So lets see how many of these steps I can get through in the next 30 days and if I'm actually gonna land myself a boyfriend..... Some of these may have to be skipped or tweeked a bit considering I am in a foreign country where I don't speak the native language and I'm no longer in a corporate environment, so no business cards to pass out. According to C...

If you're born between October 24th and November 24th HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU! It's Scorpio season and I am a proud Scorpio! We are the best sign in the Zodiac! I am kinda biased because it's my sign, but also because almost every member of my family is one too! Aunts, Uncles, my mom, brother, cousins. November is full of birthdays for my family! I know a lot of people don't really believe in astrology, but the more I read about my sign the more I am convinced there is some validity to sun signs. I feel that I am very much Scorpio. So I figured I'd tell you a little about scorpio traits and my personality using a little help from a pretty cool book I read this summer, by Linda Goodman called Sun Signs. An encyclopedia describes a scorpion as a nocturnal arachnid that attacks and paralyzes its prey with a poison injected by the long, curved tail, used for both defense and destruction. Its sting is sometimes fatal. People often draw back visibly when someone say...

So I am a fur-mommy! I have 2 adorable fur-babies! Unfortunately my landlord here wouldn't allow dogs so I couldn't bring them. I was planning on bringing my Boxer Axel with me seen as I knew he'd be a lot for my mom to handle. She's not really used to big dogs. We've always had a dog, but they're always small. Our family dog Ladida (a shitzu) is 13. He's sadly not going to be around much longer. Nemo and Axel are at home in the Bahamas with my mom. I am so sad. I miss my babies. In the past year or so I spent more time with my dogs than with anyone else. It's so weird not waking up to walk them and not having my daily park trips with my favorite boy. My Boxer puppy is quite energetic and requires lots of exercise so everyday we'd take a trip to a park so he could run and play with his friends. He loves water so this summer we spent lots of time playing in creeks in Atlanta and then at the beach in the Bahamas. I miss that. They were just as much...

So today my roommates and I went to City Hall to take care of one of the bills for our apartment. Right outside of City Hall is a memorial of the site of where Yitzhak Rabin was killed. He was an Israeli Prime Minister, during my lifetime. I actually remember hearing his name as a child. My first sightseeing/historical site in Tel Aviv. After we got done at City Hall, I decided to stay out and walk around a little more. This was my 1st trip on the bus and exploring alone since being here. I figure I have to learn my way around sooner or later so I need to explore as much as I can now. Once school starts I may not have as much time to do stuff so I have to do what I can when I can. So I went to this smoothie stand on King George street. The same one I went to earlier in the week with this cool Ethiopian Rasta guy. I hadn't eaten yet for the day so I had to get something in me... I was quite irritable. I think I should find out my Rastafarian smoothie man's name cause he mak...

I saw a tweet this morning about trying new things and it got me thinking. People keep saying to me that I'm brave. It actually kinda annoys me when people say it to me. I don't feel brave at all. The people that really know me can attest that me moving to Israel is not shocking to them. It's totally something I would do. Like I said in a previous post, I've grown a lot in the past 3 years and part of that growth was to embrace the true spirit of me. I'm adventurous and I'm inquisitive and I have a desire to learn and see the world. Now short of doing something quite obviously dangerous I will try things that excite me or appeal to me. There's no time to get caught up in what everyone else wants for you and how other people live their life because they aren't you! Part of the beauty of being human is that we're all different. You're different for a reason, embrace it! Life is short, so you might as well enjoy every moment of it as much as you can...

Emma Goldman said that the most violent element in society is ignorance. She's right because I wanted to slap the hell out of that ignorant ass man tonight. His ignorance definately brought out the violent side of me! LOL! No but seriously most animosity is rooted in ignorance. So tonight I was walking to the grocery store near our apartment and on my way this man turns to me and asks if I want a job cleaning houses? I was immediately stunned by this question. I'm working on my 3rd degree here and the audacity of this man to assume that because I am black, I must be a maid is offensive! I told him no and he then asks me if I am Ethiopian. Strike fucking 2 sir....not all black people are Ethiopians! I said no I'm from the Bahamas. He asks where is that is that in Africa? Umm no, it's in the Caribbean, where he then assumes I mean Columbia. At this point I am thinking to myself he's only making matters worse and further displaying his ignorance. I said no it's ...

Ok well time for another cultural adjustment/reality check. I grew up in a house where we didn't really speak about, poops, farts and burps. Flatulence is a part of normal bodily function; but where I come from they're just not spoken about publicly. In the past 3 weeks I have come to realize that though I grew up with the unspoken understanding that these excretions occur, but more so in private, I've had to adjust that not everyone else was. My roommates very openly discuss poops, farts, and burps. The first few times the discussion of poops came up or they burped aloud I was completely caught off guard. I mean we just didn't know each other well enough for all of that, in my opinion anyway. But it's so common now, so much so that I have affectionately nicknamed 2 of them "The Gassy Twins"! They can burp louder than most dudes I know; and often too! I've never met anyone gasier than my grammy, and I can safely say these 2 have her beat.  For some t...

October's always bittersweet for me. It's a month before my birthday, which is kinda exciting, it's my brother's birthday and Halloween of course, but it's not all sweet! In recent years October has been marked with a lot of death. It marks the anniversay of the death of Grandpa Maynard (my best friend's granddad), Lia Lashley ( a girl I grew up with), Andy Gathers ( A friend I made in Atlanta) and the worst feeling of all it's the anniversary of the death of my beloved Uncle Sterling! Tomorrow makes 5 years since he died and every year I can't help but relive the pain all over again! I can't express how much I miss him! Sometimes I still can't believe he's really not here anymore. When I'm at home for holidays sometimes I still wish he'd walk through the door or I could hear his voice again. And then I think about how quickly the past 5 years have flown by and how much he's not gotten to see. 5 years of not seeing his 2 sons gr...

Well Tuesday night was my first night out partying in Tel Aviv. On Sunday we went to watch some football at an American sports bar and met 2 guys there. One of the guys was a promoter and told us about a party on Tuesday night and said he could put us on the list to get in free. Before we'd even left the house Shoshana was molesting my bedroom door! LOL So on Tuesday night we all got dressed up determined to have a good time! :) It was my first night out after all so we had to make it fun! Before leaving the house I had a half litre of beer, Shoshana had half a bottle of wine and we asked the taxi driver to stop on the way to the club too! Ben and I both got a half litre of beer each and then Ashley and Shosh split a bottle of Champagne. Needless to say by the time we got to the club we were ready to party! Before we went into the club we had our drinks outside in the middle of the road at first! SMH! This didn't seem the safest idea so I suggested...

It may be the fact that I grew up with a "no-nonsense" mama, or the fact that I went to a proper British boarding school, or maybe because I lived in the South for so long, but I believe in being polite and minding your manners. I've come to realize that here in Israel this is not as common. People don't say good morning when they see you in the street. They rarely say excuse me if they're trying  to pass by and they are quick to cut you off in line or push by you if you're moving through a congested space. Polite smiles when you make eye contact with a person aren't reciprocated and more often that not I've gotten uncomfortable stares (longer than a casual glance). This is definitely not what I'm accustomed to. In several instances I've had people push by me as I'm trying to enter a building or anything short of running me over to get past without so much as an "excuse me" or "I'm sorry". My roommate actually to...

So these pics I'm about to post are of my new apartment here in Israel. I share a 3 bedroom apartment, about 10 mins away from TAU with my three roommates. Ashley and Ben, who are recently engaged, woohoo! :) and Shoshana. Ashley and Shoshana are both in the same MA program as me. We met through facebook and are now sharing this space for the next year. I've not had roommates since high school so this year will be interesting for sure. Learning to share a space with 3 other people will be a challenge. We are all slowly learning each others likes and dislikes, but so far none of us have attempted to kill each other yet or had a big argument so I consider this a good start! LOL! The Kitchen The Living Room We live in the building to the left. So now to my room. My room is actually the safe room, it's actually an in house bomb shelter. I have a 6 inch thick steel door and a steel shutter that blocks off my window. My roommate Ashley joked this week that if the ala...

The first few days I was here I didn't really do a whole lot. I was so delirious and jet lagged that I slept half the day and was up all night. Given that I am 6 hours ahead of EST this makes sense. Also a few days after I arrived was yom kippur so everything was closed half day on Friday and all day Saturday. By the time Sunday came around I had cabin fever for sure. I was ready to get out of the house and explore. Saturday night I was so bored I walked around the neighborhood for a bit alone at like 11:30pm. Before anyone panics it's actually pretty safe here to be out at night. In moving to a new city I'm not one to sit around, I want to figure the place out, learn the culture, find cool places to shop and eat and just genuinely emmerse myself. Up until Monday of this week the only places I'd been were the grocery store, ikea and the mall. As much as I love to eat and shop I needed more. My first trip to the grocery store was so overwhelming anyway because everythi...

Chag Sameach - Happy Holidays in Hebrew. A phrase I've learned in the past week and could've used almost everyday since being here. I've been in Israel a little over a week now and there have been 2 holidays already. All religious holidays here are observed. This is definitely an adjustment/culture shock. Usually the only time things close down in the States is Christmas and maybe Easter, and even then you can always find stores open. Here the sabbath or Shabbat as it's called in Hebrew and religious holidays everything closes. Here people actually get their days of rest! Last weekend was Yom Kippur, this is probably the biggest Jewish holiday. It's the day of atonement. For some Jewish people this may be the only day of the year they go to synagogue, but this holiday is very important to Jews. I'm not sure if there is really an equivalent to this holiday in Christianity. It's where you repent for your sins to God and ask for forgiveness. During this holid...

So I left for Israel on Sunday, October 2nd at 7am. My flight schedule was NAS ---> MIA --->LHR---> TLV. With all of these layovers I didn't actually arrive in Tel Aviv until Tuesday, October 4th around 4am! Needless to say it was a long journey. I left Nassau around 7am Sunday morning on a little single engine plane with an Israeli pilot. I had no idea before that morning that the guy that flew for my mom was Israeli, but I took this as a good sign. The night before I couldn't sleep so as soon as we took off I fell asleep. Once we got to Ft Lauderdale my cousin picked me up with all of my luggage, 3 large suitcases, and took me to do a bit of shopping. My next flight, to London, wasn't until 8:30pm and there were a few stops I needed to make before he took me back to the airport. 1st stop was Target! Target is hands down one of my favorite stores ever and for 2 months I'd been without one. I needed to get a few supplies to take with me to Israel so of course ...