Friday, May 22, 2015

Red Nose Day

Did you happen to catch it last night? Do you even know what it is? I know about it because of One Direction. In case you don't know, it's this fundraiser to get kids out of poverty, and all kinds of good things like that. I watched last night. Of course I did, One Direction was apart of it.

It was good. It was sad. This one part in particular really, really got to me. Jack Black went to Uganda and they were playing clips of it throughout the show. This part, around the three minute mark especially, really hit home to me. Really devastated me.


The environment, to me at least, was really similar to India. It broke my heart when Felix said he wanted to go home with Jack. I also found it really cruel to play Lay Me Down by Sam Smith during that clip, man. As if that song needed to be anymore touching.

There were at least, like, 11 Felixs for me in India. A massive upwards of 11, surely, if you count all the kids we met who actually had parents. Here are just a few of my Felixs.
These beautiful girls were at the orphanage we visited. They spoke amazing English and they were asking all kinds of questions like our favorite flowers, and they sang for us, and they asked Melanie and Autti to take our picture. We told them how we loved momos (a really yummy Indian dish that I mentioned earlier. Sticky, steamed dough filled with meat or vegetables. Flipping delicious) and one of the girls said she knew how to make them. One of my companions joked that we should take her home. This little girl actually looked at one of the caregivers, wondering if she could go with us. 

My word, my heart.

They all gave us hugs before we left. The girl in the center kissed my cheek, too.

One night we were in a rickshaw, my grandma, David, and I. It was dark, and late, and I was feeling a little homesick. I was texting my mom (and I racked up a massive bill on my grandma's phone. Sorry Grandma!) and a little beggar boy came up to us when we stopped. This was nothing new at that point, but that night it really got to me. It seemed to be a really long stop, and I fought crying so hard while he was there. He was so little. He was wearing a Snoopy onesie. My little brother Asher's room is covered in Peanuts characters. I got to thinking about what if that were Asher out on the streets in a little Snoopy onesie. As we pulled away from him, I don't know if I did well at hiding my tears from my grandma and David, but they didn't say anything.

We went to Wete's that night and my mind was wrapped around him. I remember walking back to get another rickshaw back to our hotel, just wondering if I could get him on the plane home with us, if I could adopt him somehow, if there was any way. I asked my poppy about it the next morning at breakfast. He told me to ask Sarah. It was a bit of an anecdote during his sermon at church.

For some reason, I get chatty at night. If you're interested in getting to know me, you might want to try to keep me out late. Ha. Anyway, Autti and I were talking about him. I told her if we saw him again, I didn't think there was any way I could keep myself from pulling him into the rickshaw with me and kidnapping him. (Would it really be kidnapping? I'd give him a better life. But... Yes, I know it's kidnapping if it's against his will. :/) We got onto the subject of what I should name him. I jokingly suggested Snoopy because of his shirt (It's also often that I get a bit silly later at night) and she said John Cashmere because John cracked my back and his co-worker kept trying to get us to go to Cashmere, where he lived, and we never got his name.

I also threw in that his last name could one day be Styles, but I think that's a whole different topic that I'm not going to talk about right now. Though it is getting late. Maybe give me a few minutes and I'll bare my soul even more while laughing at myself and the things you add. 

Anyway, Red Nose Day did its job of getting me to think and whatever. They also mentioned that some of the money they raise is going to Nepal. It's funny because, obviously, watching videos of kids in poverty has always affected me, it always affects everybody, but I feel like it's worse now that I've been somewhere like that. I wouldn't have even been able to tell you where Nepal was before I went to India (geography is not one of my strong points. I would have said Italy). Now, not only do I know where it is, I know people whose family lives there. Sarah and Wete come from Nepal. Their parents still live there.

So mostly I just wanted to vent tonight. The kids of India have been weighing me down, in the best possible way-strumming on my heart strings, as Ed Sheeran would say (oh, yeah, I also get rambly at night)-and I just wanted to talk about them. Red Nose Day is still open to donations if you're interested.


One last thing, I'd like to dedicate this blog post to all of the girls of the orphanage, to Robin and Sylis, to the girl with the smile, and her sleepy brother. To Anu, to the little boy who blushed when I hugged him. To the boys at the slums that held hands while crossing the busiest street I've ever seen and getting to the other side before we did. There's a lesson in that we all should learn. To the little waiter at our restaurant in Agra who carried my coffee like a champ and whose hands must have gone numb a long time ago. To the boy who followed us around in Agra and blew my mind by getting back to our taxi so quickly. To the boy who followed us around the Taj Mahal that I wanted to cry over when I barely whispered cello to (or however you spell that word, which means go). To Snoopy John Cashmere. To all of the kids that stole my heart in India. You were my highlight.

Friday, April 3, 2015

It has been a despicable amount of time...

I know. It's really rather awful. I'll give you my excuse: I wrote down a general list of the things I did in India down, by day, in a binder. I turned said binder into my local high school to get evaluated, and I still haven't gotten it back. I need to take care of that. I should get that done soon, and start up with the India account again. I just don't want to leave anything out in these blog posts, and I honestly would have a hard time remembering which day was which.

Why am I writing now, you ask, after all this time? Well, yesterday was the anniversary of the day that I left for India. I've been going through pictures, rewatching this video from my trip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cz73xkSuY4
and doing basically every reminiscent thing that I can. Including rereading my four blog posts about it. That lead me to rereading all of my blog posts. Which lead to me wanting to write something for my blog.

There's been a lot of stuff that's happened since my last blog post that I could write about, I'm sure. For instance, I published another book called The Way He Looks at Me. That's a biggy.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Way-He-Looks-Volume/dp/1502898292

I'd rather write about one of the items I've checked off of the list that I detailed in my first blog post. That is, to go to New York [for the first time]. It makes me so happy to think of all the things I've done in the last few years. It's so strange that a few years ago, I wasn't going anywhere, I wasn't doing anything, just hoping to some day get to New York, just thinking I was stuck where I am. It felt like such a far off possibility. A lot of things did.

The first time I went to New York was Thursday, April 18, 2013. Kevin and Danielle Jonas were doing a meet and greet in the NBC store to promote their show, Married to Jonas. I was supposed to go to visit a college with my grandparents that weekend. It was scheduled and everything. After a lot of deliberating, I canceled the college tour.

My mom hadn't been to NY either, but we hopped on a bus and went. We were really late by the time we got to the NBC store, and therefore pretty far back in the line. We weren't the last ones to arrive, though.

We stood in line for a long time, and people only trickled out in small groups after spending a ton of time in the store. I thought it was nice. Obviously they were taking the time to actually be with the fans. Or, er, the people that showed up to see them, anyway. Not all of them were fans. They shamelessly admitted so in the line. I've got to be honest, I was incredibly anger about that. Why would you hop in line to see someone you don't even like? I know why-just to be able to say you've met them-but it drives me crazy. I was there because I actually love Kevin and Danielle. The people who were in line who didn't care about them were taking away from the people who actually love them. Imagine if the people who didn't care for him weren't in line. Then everyone who did care would have more time with him. Probably every one would have gotten to see him without him having to make himself late.

Sorry. Rant over. It's just that fake fans really bother me.

As I alluded to, while we were still standing outside, some security said Kevin and Dani had to go. They were already late. They were going to try and squeeze in as many more people as they could.

I'm not going to hold you in suspense. I was one of the last people in. God was so good to me. I can't imagine how devastating it would have been if I'd waited all that time, in a massive city I'd never been to before, to be turned away from a member of the band I had loved the most.

My mom pointed him out through the store window when we were still waiting, still hoping we'd make it, but unfortunately for me, I couldn't tell with my bad vision. I don't wear contacts and I hate glasses. Makes things difficult, I guess, but I'm stubborn about this.

Anyway, back to the story.

We were finally ushered inside to this little roped off line and Kevin and Dani were right there. When it was my turn, I handed someone my iPod, my mom shook Kevin's hand, then I hugged him. That moment was a bit of a blur for me. I probably attacked him with a hug when he wanted a hand shake again, but oh well. We threw our arms around each other, smiled for the picture:
then we were in the store for a bit, looking around, and Kevin even walked by us with a body guard. It was incredibly cool.

We went to the M&M store, Disney store, and Forever 21 before we got back on the bus. As we were rushing to the station, this guy tried to hit on my mom, too, so that was fun.

Moral is, that was the first of many incredible trips I've taken to New York. I just wanted to go to New York because it was New York, but God made my first trip there more incredible than I could have imagined or asked for.

One last thing, I think I should mention that I have a website now and I've been writing an author update for that once a month. You can read and subscribe if you please. I just added a contact me section yesterday.
http://jewelsk96.wix.com/julianamae

Thanks for reading!
Jules ♥