Twenty-Five

I wasn't going to do this at all, but for a while everyone on Facebook was making these lists of random facts about themselves, and the more lists I read the more I found myself thinking about what I would write about myself. It reminded me of a time when someone asked me to make faces at a video camera for a minute as part of a school project, and after about the first 10 seconds I couldn't come up with any new faces. After my time was up, however, I started coming up with all kinds of interesting faces. So here are some of the facts I've come up with:

1. I have a scar underneath my chin. Apparently I got it falling down the stairs when I was little, but I don't remember that.

2. Lady Macbeth has always been the role that I wanted most in a play. I got it my senior year in high school, and people told me afterward that I really was evil. Later, when I went to India and played the game "two truths and a lie" with my team, they all thought that this was the lie.

3. If I feel like other people are unhappy, I will be too.

4. I will read absolutely anything while I am waiting for something. I usually have a book with me, but if I don't I will read boring magazines, posters on the walls, instruction manuals, or anything else I can find, and I will read them over and over.

5. I love nicknames when people who know me well use them. Almost everyone I know has called me Anna Banana at least once, and I like that except when people that I don't know use it, and that happens a lot. Someone at the restaurant where I work calls me Anna Phalactic. There are also people who call me Anna-La, and one who calls me Cat.

6. My mom has passed her extensive love of literature on to me, and although I have not read most of the classics, I can recognize most titles and can usually name their authors.

7. I failed the drivers license test 5 times. To this day when I drive down the street that they always took me on for the test, I get nervous. But I also have a great sense of victory because I can drive and there's nothing they can do about it.

8. My list of things that I hope to do sometime in my life includes riding an overnight train, skinny dipping, hitch hiking, riding a horse, and going to a lot of interesting places.

9. One of my favorite places in the world is the beach near my grandparent's house in Nova Scotia.

10. When my family and my cousins get together to celebrate birthdays, we sing four different birthday songs.

11. I had to get my passport renewed while I was in India. This included two trips to the US Embassy and two sets of passport pictures because they couldn't see my ears well enough in the first set.

12. Because my mom was born in Canada, I have claim to Canadian citizenship. Sadly, I have never actually gotten a citizenship card.

13. My camera case is in the hands of an unknown kid living at the Baan Nana center on the Thailand/Myanmar border.

14. I ate durian fruit once. That was enough.

15. I really love cats. I have had many of my own, but the only one that stayed for longer than about 2 years was a black and white tuxedo cat called Francine.

16. If I could instantly be good at any language right now, I would choose Thai.

17. I was never a coffee drinker before last summer, when my brother decided to try to make me into one at the same time that I decided to make him a tea drinker. Now he drinks tea and I drink coffee.

18. I love skirts, scarves, and bright, dangling jewelry, and I own way more than I ever actually wear.

19. I also love getting anything in the mail, even bank statements.

20. I turned 19 in India, and was totally and completely surprised by the birthday party my friends threw for me. I remember thinking that three of us were going to get in trouble for missing curfew, and instead when we got back there was a party waiting.

21. My family can quote hundreds of movies. We sometimes have entire conversations made up of things other people have said.

22. I have never eaten a hamburger.

23. I am horribly afraid of sharks and almost anything else that lives in the water.

24. I have glow-in-the-dark stars on the walls above my bed that my roommate from last year gave me. When I lie in bed at night, I make up constellations.

25. I firmly believe that a cup of tea can solve any problem.

...And Then I Saw Durian Ice Cream

These questions are from the lovely Cuileann

Please list three things that have made you either (according to your need to release sadness or share joy) happy or sad recently.
1. An email from a friend describing her work with kids in Cambodia.
2. A few good words with a girl at work, whom I have been working with for a while but never felt like I have really gotten to know.
3. Hearing that a good friend of mine is pregnant.

What is one thing you would tell someone about yourself to help her understand you better?
Just because I don't tell you right out how much I love you doesn't mean that I don't.

If you could magically and instantaneously have one skill/talent/ability that you don't have, what would it be?
The ability to carry on a meaningful conversation with someone that I don't know very well. Or else being able to write music. Or the natural ability to dance. I am lacking in all those areas, and I can't decide which I would pick.

Last thing (not necessarily book) that you read and loved?
A poem whose title I have forgotten. I read it last week as homework for my poetry writing class.

Where do you want to be?
Phnom Penh, Cambodia