2010, five days late

Sometimes I want for us too look at this in some other perspective than our own.  I want to say "this is the world."  I want us to perhaps look back on the year as the New York Times did on Sunday, with their different short editorials for every month.  The Haiti earthquake.  The Winter Olympics in Vancouver.  The Cheonan Incident in Korea.  The British election.  The attack on the Gaza flotilla.  The World Cup in South Africa.  Floods in Pakistan, Sarkozy expelling the Roma, the drug war in Mexico.  The Chilean miners, China's Zhang, Saudi Arabia on Wikileaks.  Some of these, I am ashamed to say, I had to look up to remember.  Because for me, this past year was way different than that.  

The way I remember it, I submitted in my college applications, and turned seventeen.  The Haiti earthquake happened, and turned my universe upside down.  I baked for bake sales, organized benefit concerts with my brother, wrote a ten-page paper for AP Biology.  Then it was the Winter Olympics, never-ending assignments, an independent senior thesis on the Cordoban Caliphate with one of my favourite teachers.  Skiing with my family in March.  Hearing back from colleges in April and deciding wear to go for an excruciating month of visits and make-up work for missed classes, hanging out with my best friends.  Graduating from high school in May in a white dress and a French braid down my back, with my best friend and my grandfather in the audience with the rest of my family.  Feeling so proud that I though my heart would rip open.

My brother and my father and I watched the world cup in June together.  We crowded into sports bars with tons of people for big games - US vs England, the day Cote d'Ivoire lost - and sat practically by ourselves for others - France vs Mexico, for example.  I visited my family in Tennessee and prepared to go to Switzerland for the summer.  I made pavlova for a friend who stayed over until four in the morning to watch movies.  In July, we left for Switzerland and I broke up with my boyfriend.  We hiked in the Alps, ate cheese.  My bother and I screamed when Spain won the World Cup.  In August, Caleb and I shared five days in Paris together, visiting the "very 1920s polar bear" at the Musée d'Orsay and the Botticelli at the Louvre.  I spent a week on holiday at the beach with my family, and another camping in Acadia.  And then my gap year really began.  

In September, I started taking a class at the Harvard Extension school and doing volunteer work.  I started this blog in October, and played music with my brother and his friends, walked my sister home from school.  I visited my best friend at college.  The Chilean miners came out alive.  In November, I celebrated my brother's birthday and Thanksgiving, and December was Christmastime.  Mass on Christmas Eve, making sheep cookies, getting dressed up.  Being with my family.

So, that was my 2010.  2011 holds wonderful things in store - everyday runs (my New Year's resolution), a move to Paris and classes at the Sorbonne, the possibility of Africa, and college across the country in the fall.  What does the new year hold in store for you?