Pretty little elephants

So I thought this just too wonderful NOT to share.  My mother recently returned from England and brought with her pictures of the Elephant Parade that is going on in London.  Apparently in a bid to raise money and awareness for African elephants there are multiple elephant statues across the city, each designed by various artists which are to be auctioned off this week.  One in particular is of special note, her name is Just Joey.

She's so pretty!  Why is she of particular note you ask?  Well, primarily because the rose after which she is named was created by my relative and bears the name (though is not named for) of my grandmother.  Nifty huh?  I wish I could bid for this beautiful specimen but unfortunately (or rather fortunately for those spectacular elephants) her current bid is £6,000!  Oh well, I am content in the knowledge that her new owners obviously love her enough to spend a great deal of money on her.

Exploring the locations of many of these pretty elephants: http://www.elephantparadelondon.org/ just reaffirms my desire to travel this fall.  I am continuing to seriously consider going overseas to study at some point next year.  In my quest to figure out what I am doing with my life, as well as give myself some legitimate direction, which I currently feel I am sorely lacking, I have this nagging feeling that I need to make a change, and a big one at that.  Since college I have, unconsciously I'm sure, found a way to stay relatively within my comfort zone in terms of where I went to school, where I took my first job, etc.  I wouldn't say it was completely intentional.  There were many factors that went into my eventual choices of where I ended up, and believe me when I tell you I tried hard to get out of Maryland, I always managed to end up right back where I started.  Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I spent such an inordinate amount of my childhood traveling overseas.  I recall vividly wanting to spend a summer at the beach, or Disney World like all of my friends, but instead, found myself being trooped around the greater boroughs of London, the outskirts of the Jurassic Coast of England, all the way to tiny towns in Italy and the cacophony of colors and sounds that was my father's home country of Jordan.  Don't get me wrong, I did love parts of these experiences, but some part of me thinks that this constant moving around set within me a huge desire to just be somewhere relatively permanent when I finally had the choice to do so on my own.

Regardless, due to the lack of movement I've had in the past ten years or so I feel myself almost itching to get out of my current rut of a city.  I love Baltimore dearly but I do find myself wistfully thinking about living somewhere else; somewhere with a bit more culture, different people, smells, and sights.  Whether this will come to fruition in the next year I'm not sure.  I used to think a year was a really long time and I'm learning in my old age that is actually not the case at all.  A year moves quick, so much so that there are days I wake up and I wonder where the month has gone and what the heck I've done during the past 30 days.

Despite my tendency to look much further ahead than I should I have narrowed the next task on my plate down to the completion of my first letter.  I have decided that it is going to an old student of mine.  She is currently traveling the world and perhaps that is part of the reason I chose her.  I am happy to say that we have begun a travel journal of sorts that is being passed back and forth between us.  The more amusing part is that this journal has been in my possession since high school (a frighteningly long time ago) when it was given to me by one of my best friends.  I think at one point there were plans for us to use it, though of course that didn't really pan out the way we planned.  The more amusing part is that this journal is constructed such that anyone over the age of about 12 would find it virtually useless after about three trades back and forth since it only has about 30 pages worth of paper in it.  However, we are making a go of it with the intention of graduating to a much more adult version (moleskin anyone?) in the near (read: about a week) future!

Despite the lack of space on which to write, we have managed to accumulate quite the collection of scribbled bits of this and that and this round will be my first official letter in my quest to reach 365 before the year is out.  And yikes, I am realizing more and more just how much writing that is going to be.

Best get to work I suppose.

and so it begins...

When I look back, I chuckle a bit knowing that this project of mine is based on something I used to hate doing. Once upon a time I was a young girl that wanted nothing more than to receive birthday and Christmas gifts that were something other than stationary. I used to think it was some sort of sick joke - giving me paper and pens and thank you cards - sort of like a not-so-subtle nudge that I was supposed to turn around and use those gifts to write and give my effusive thanks and boundless gratitude for a present I really didn't want or understand why I was given.

From an extremely early age my mother instilled in me the importance of writing. Not just writing thank you cards, that was always a given, but writing actual letters to others. I've seen her do this frequently, in fact this habit is one of the earliest memories I have of her, and she continues it today, most recently writing to every single person that came to her father's funeral only two months ago.

Until recently my desire for sitting down and actually writing to people had nearly evaporated. I remember vividly in high school having various notebooks that were passed around among my best girl friends with various bits of gossip scribbled in between the pages. At one point I recall some really horrible poetry, as well as an homage to our hated band teacher set to the tune of "Speed Racer," ahhh, the memories. Despite my foray into the world of creative writing, and I use that word extremely loosely, the advent of things like Instant Messenger and email (EMAIL! INSTANT! FREE!) virtually extinguished my need for letter writing. I find it bizarre that I can remember my first IM screenname (Rosie222) and email address (the same at good 'ol hotmail.com) as well as the first computer I did both of these things on (Dell P60, oh baby), but I can't remember the last actual letter I wrote, which horrifyingly, wasn't that long ago, but I have a suspicion was so short and pointless it probably wasn't worth writing to begin with.

Which is what leads me to my current adventure. Having acquired a new obsession with stationary (and yes, people really do come full circle) I want to find a way to start using some of the stuff I have acquired, AND to use up some of what I've had for years. Literally...decades. The purpose of my project is pretty simple, write 365 letters in the space of a year. I don't have to do one a day, though I suppose that would make sense, but then again, life happens and there are days I forget to do things that I've been doing everyday for years (hello brush my teeth) so I figure, as long as I am getting them written and I'm relatively close to my goal I will be a happy camper.

I'm not sure where all of these letters will go, I suppose I'll start with the obvious and branch out. I do know one thing though, each will be hand written and each will be chronicled. Which for me, will result in an interesting library of people I've written to and things I've written about, as well as a memorial (I mean they eventually WILL be thrown away) of some of the coolest stationary EVER, some of which I love so much I don't want to write on. But I will, after all it is for a good cause.