Just got back from seeing Born Into Brothels with Carolyn and her mother. Despite the fact that it was a film about lost hope, lack of oppurtunity, and the red light district, my lust for India still beats deep in my chest.

A couple of nights ago, somewhere between departing and arriving, Carolyn and I had a conversation in the car about things we'd like to do before we die. Predictably, a lot of it had to do with location. Carolyn said she'd like to live in New York for a couple of years, or else California. I said I'd like to see Mecca and Greece and Machu Picchu (and countless other places). Since then we've been adding things to the list. This afternoon, on the front lawn of St. Elias church, festival music playing in the background, I turned to Carolyn and said, "Ride an elephant. That, and visit India."
"I bet it'll be easy once you get over there," she said. "They probably have them set up like pony rides."
"Had I gone this summer with Kat," I told her, "it would have been easy. They had this optional trip extension where you do some sort of refuge tour that involves riding elephants. So had I gone, I could have scratched both off my list," I explained.
"Wow," she said. "You could have died. Happy, I mean."

We spent most of the afternoon at the Lebanese food festival at St. Elias, milling through rooms with exhibits on the church's history, eating outside under a tent where the music was so loud it drowned out conversation. My favorite thing about Birmingham's food festivals is the variety in dessert. Almost all the food festivals (I guess there's only about three) have one dessert that no others do. At the Greek food festival, it's these delicious fried balls of dough soaked in honey and cinnamon (think Greek beignet). At St. Elias, it's the icecream, which tastes something like roses and pistachio. Though, it's hard to beat the music and dancing at festivals. Today they had some mild belly dancing (I think I inherited my father's fascination with it). Another thing to add to the list: learn to belly dance. Oh, and: learn to play Frisbee. Well.

Got my SAT scores back (from the new test). 1890. I think the only part I'm really proud of is the essay -- 10 out of 12, when I'd stopped mid sentence and barely formulated a closing paragraph. I like that my graders had that much confidence in my writing when the most they had to base their grading on was sentence structure. Yay sentences. I don't know what any of those scores mean in terms of what's good and what isn't, but I plan to take it again in the fall. I also plan to take the optional jumping-through-hoops-of-fire-and-swallowing-swords portion if it means that UVA will be pleased with my scores and give me money so that I can afford to go to school there. We'll see what kind of results I get on my ACT in a few weeks. The process of applying to college is such a strange world.

Sometimes when I write here, I start out with a point in mind, but I'm so distracted or forgetful that by the time I'm a few paragraphs in, I can't remember where I was headed or what I was going to say. We have reached that point. I guess you'll just have to follow the SAT people's example, and have confidence in my sentence structure.