The ending of an era and the turning of a page

After graduation, everyone kept talking about how they wished they could just repeat those four years, do it again, be young forever, etc.  It's like no one remembered how ridiculously dumb we all were four years ago.  Remember when I let someone convince me that a bob with bangs was the way to go and this happened?

Extra bonus awful points for repping the fever shirt.... 

The point is.  I learned a lot these past four years but the biggest thing I learned is that I definitely don't want to live them all over again.  If you know me at all, you know that I love my hair.  Chopping it all off freshman year was awful and I spent the next three and some odd years growing it out.  It has been every color under the sun, has been cut, layered, braided, curled, teased, and even had a dreadlock in it for 24 hours.   But dragging all of that hair to Israel during a drought? Seems like kind of a waste of water.  Bucket baths with hair that long? Practically impossible. My gorgeous hair just doesn't fit the lifestyle I've wanted for a while now. Which brings us to this next photo series entitled "Hair: a manifestation of Arima's mental space" (dear robertson friends, kudos for appropriate use of the phrase mental space?)

Exhibit A: Long hair bearing the remnants of bright red tips done in celebration of getting into Peace Corps.  Fried, unkempt, and busy with a million different styled rolled into one.  I kind of had bangs, kind of had layers, kind of had my roots grown three inches out, kind of never brushed it so I kind of had dreads, and I kind of a mess (not in any way implying that I am somehow less of a mess a few short weeks later).  If I ever was having a bad day I could just let my hair down and hide from the world.  But actually.  There was that much of it.



Exhibit B: Weird short limbo hair.  Short enough to feel really short but long enough to annoy the crap out of my neck.  Done in some strange role reversal with Jackie Jeffrey.  We were getting a hair cut together NOT in africa and I was the one chopping all of my hair off instead of her.  Everyone still recognized me and I got called the C word ("cute") about a million and one times.  Which I loathe.  On top of that I couldn't do anything with it.  It wouldn't stay up, got messy staying down, and was somehow still three different colors.  Good for a quick vacation from practical hair but not what I needed for real life.

Exhibit C: SHORT. sweet. kind of punky.  could be a fauxhawk if I cared enough.  Which I don't because the best part of my life now is that I can wake up, pat my cowlick down (who knew I had one of those? definitely not me), pick up the 40 lbs of stuff that I own, and go wherever the heck I want to.  No preparation.  No work. No worries.  I always look great. :)

I keep having to convince myself that this is not just a break.  This is real life.  This is my life for the next several years.  Just wandering.  It feels like a dream.  

In other news, the hold has been lifted from my medical clearance which means that Peace Corps is processing my medical clearance forms as I type this.  My placement officer has been in touch with me and when I told her about my situation (i.e. leaving for Israel for a few months starting June 4), she told me she would try to get everything cleared and have me placed prior to my departure.  On top of that, she was very excited to learn that I would be WWOOFing and told me it would be great preparation for my service.... and she didn't phrase it as a possibility but more of a fact.  So it looks like this might really truly be happening.  Hopefully I will have departure dates and a country of service to tell you all soon! :)

In other other news, I will be having a bat mitzvah ceremony while I am in Israel.  After being a practicing Jew for a year and a half, I suppose it's about time and I couldn't be more excited.  Also, I finally settled on a Hebrew name (something I've been thinking about since yom kippur).  It's still really weird for me to talk about my faith or to identify as religious but I'm just going to take this and all of the other ridiculous happenings in my life one step at a time.

-יעל