To begin with..

So I started a blog. My friends have been telling me to do this for a long time and since I can't post very long messages on Twitter, I thought; "Why not?".

I'm sixteen, I go to school in the heart of Copenhagen, Denmark, I love to write, and the reason that I finally came around to make a blog, was because I started reading a book called "A Girl for All Seasons" by Camilla Morton, which (in one of the chapters) encourages people to start blogging.

This summer, when I took some of my exams, I had stress. This is something that don't just go away, and it's still haunting me. But stress has actually been an inspiration to me and I've been writing more than ever, I even thought of sending some of my essays to a publisher. But I'm starting with a blog.

Tomorrow's New Years Eve and I'm excited, but also very nervous. Last new year I had some thoughts about life going way too fast, and I got this feverish feeling, my stomach hurt and I felt like throwing up. I don't feel like I have the time to do all the things I want to, and it's like there's no end to the studying and reading and repeating... It all continues and I have at least three years left of it. And three years feel like a very long time, especially when you think of it as one fifth of your whole life. When I'm done, I've spend 13 years in school, not including the education I want after high school. I want to be a journalist and that takes about four years, so when I'm done I spent 17 years studying, and I can then relax. But I have to wait seven more years, that's almost half of the time I will spend on school in total. So I'm only a little over halfway in my education and with stress and all that leaves you with nothing but an empty feeling.

I've been to Africa. It's almost two years ago, but it's the only journey I remember like it was yesterday. We drove from Cape Town, South Africa to Swakopmund, Namibia, then to the Okavango Delta, Botswana, next stop Vic (Victoria) Falls, Zimbabwe and we ended up in Jo'burg (Johannesburg), South Africa. We were six people, me, my dad, Henry from Atlanta, Emma from ?, Mercedes from Mexico City and our guide, Alfred, from South Africa. Because of the small group we had a whole truck to ourselves, and that was our home for almost an entire month. My dad had given me this trip as a gift, and I was very excited when we left Denmark behind. But I had had my dark thoughts about it too, 'cause I wouldn't take any of my classes for four weeks -- I'd never done anything like that ever. All of my teachers told me that I would learn more in Africa than I would in school but still I was being taken over by the fear. Being a girl also includes being scared of all types of spiders, big animals that have the ability to eat you, reptiles, mosquitoes (well.. I'm allergic, but usually girls aren't frightened by them), big animals that can trample you to death and all insects that can lay an egg inside of you just by stinging you. So these were also fear factors even though my dad tried telling me we wouldn't see any of these (yeah right (!), I had between 20 and 40 allergic reactions to mosquito bites, several lions roared at us and showed some pretty nasty (yellow) and sharp teeth, our guide thought an insect layed an egg inside my hand, five elephants trambled through our camp in the Delta and I was bitten by a huge spider). I will get to the point very soon. When we left I thought of all my friends at home, who had to be in school, do their homework and live their ordinary lifes, while I was on my way to Africa. When we finally got there, I was homesick the first couple of days and I was sure only half of me would return (not physically). Just to make sure you know, this was before my stress. But after the first week, I felt more alive than ever and I felt at home. I found my home on the other side of Earth, and I could breathe. I had fun, I learned lots about nature and animals and Africa, I got to know some of the greatest people I've ever known and I was very much alive. Five days after we started the trip, we rowed down Orange River (the natural border between South Africa and Namibia) and I jumped in the water from a rock five times higher than my dad, this was something I would never have done at home.

My point is: In Africa I was alive. In Africa I could breathe.

Today I don't breathe. My body is filled with something I can't explain. I eat half the food I did a year ago. I don't have time for anything because my schedule is all filled with all sorts of things, yet I don't feel like I have something to look forward to. This feeling is not worth feeling and believe me, I'm trying to get rid of it.

Writing helps me getting rid of this feeling. I can't explain it in spoken words, so I write them down instead. This is what I want to blog about mostly, but sometimes it will be more random.

I really hope you'll have a great New Years Eve, and that this didn't bum you out completely.