Moving Out

I have decided that I want to get out of my mother's house by the end of March.  I will be 31 years old next week and I don't want to live with my family.  I don't hate my family, but I am old enough to be on my own and I should be.  I have decided to look into various jobs so I can get some income and move out ASAP. 
I have realized that I have changed a lot since I moved out of the house.  I keep changing too.  I don't want to do the same things my family does. I don't agree with them on every issue. I also don't want to attend my home church anymore.  I am still a Christian, yet I don't want to attend the same congregation for many reasons.
The two years I spent in Korea were rough.  I made many mistakes.  Yet, I learned from my mistakes. I realized there were many things I needed to change about myself. I did get angry at God over some things that happened to me, but there were some lessons I needed to learn.  I do wish I learned those things earlier.
I did grow up in a very overbearing family. I wasn't allowed much freedom and I couldn't make my own decisions.  I have had trouble making my own choices.  It has been a painful journey, but I know that I must be away from my family if I can ever learn to make choices on my own.  It's important to move out.

Hope For Orphans

Last summer I came across an organization called Reece's Rainbow that helps children with disabilities who are living in orphanages in various countries.  The disabled children in those orphanages usually are transferred to mental institutions when they are 4 or 5 years old. I never knew that happened. Yet many children with down syndrome, cerebral palsy, blindness, deformed limbs, deafness, and cranio-facial deformities are sent to mental institutions once they leave the baby homes.  They are left there to stay until they finally expire.  And many of them die within their first year there due to neglect.
It is an atrocity.  I feel that they deserve to be rescued and have loving families. Not everybody can adopt children.  Yet there are things we all can do to help them out.  This charity and some others have grant funds to help families with adoption expenses.  Many would have never been rescued if it wasn't for the grants.  Lives are saved, literally, because they were rescued from the institutions.
Reece's Rainbow is a charity that raises funds for individual children to get adopted. Most of the children are in Eastern Europe, but some come from China, other Asian countries, and Latin America. The younger children (0-5) have individual grants, and the older children (6+) have a collective grant for the next child adopted. 
Here are a few of the children:

This little girls' name is Alisha.  She has Penn-Sjogren Syndrome. Children like her have a lot of potential once they can live with a family.
http://reecesrainbow.org/alisha-1

Lovely Lauren is HIV+.  Obama has allowed U.S. citizens to adopt HIV+ children from other countries now.  She's such a doll.  I hope a family comes for her soon.
http://reecesrainbow.org/lauren-2

Dmitry is blind.  He has only one eye and the other is useless.  He was just transferred out of the baby home.  He reminds me of a blind student I knew at university. He also had blond hair like him and two glass eyes.  He was studying to become a pastor and wrote beautiful religious poetry.  He later got married and graduated.  I can see Dmitry being successful in life. He just needs a family!

http://reecesrainbow.org/dmitriy-4

Being Back.

I have been back for two months now. I think I have been at my mother's home long enough. I am very restless. I want to be on my own again desperately. I don't like the idea of stagnating. I also don't think that a woman in her 30s should be living at her mother's house.
I need to move out again. I have heard of a possible English teaching job in Korea. It's not near where I was before, and I would rather be with my friends I made over there.  Yet, I can learn to get used to a new place and blossom there. I could make new friends. Maybe I can really like it.

Jack in the Snow

My Mother's Birthday

My mother turned 62 years old on Monday.  She had to take my aunt to Willimantic to see the welfare office. My aunt has lost her health insurance and they had to settle things.  I stayed home. 
After a while I decided to take the dogs outside. I walked Benji.  After that I took out Max and Jack.  While I was going back up the street, Jack's leash snapped and he ran up the street.  Thankfully he went into the driveway and stayed out of the street.
When I got into my driveway, I tried to call Jack over to me.  He decided to run around the yard in the deep snow.  The snow is up to my knees. I tried walking toward him, but he kept running off.  I did get to walk on top of the snow, but sometimes I sank into it.  I decided to put Max in the house and when I did that, Benji ran out. I quickly grabbed him and put him back.
Jack decided he would run around the side of the house and the backyard. He wouldn't come.  The problem is that he isn't afraid of cars. I didn't want him to run into the road and get hit.  There is also a leash law. 
After about 45 minutes, he finally came to me.  I had to lay in the snow, and he came up and sniffed me.  I then grabbed his harness.
Unfortunately, I found out I had locked myself out of the house. The screen door had locked, yet the back door was open. I felt silly.  In my haste to bring Benji back in the house quickly I had locked myself out and not closed the inner door.
I tied Jack out and walked to Dunkin Donuts to sit and wait.  My mother finally came home, and read the note. I then told her what happened. I am glad I had a newspaper to read.  Our neighbor across the street helped us in with a crowbar.  The dogs were all barking at him.  The neighbor laughed. I was happy to be inside again.

Children Around the World by Jane Hodges-Caballero

I had this book when I was a child. I doubt my mother realised how much of an impact it made on me. This book was about countries around the world. It devoted a few pages to one country, introducing at least fifty countries. It showed pictures of children and dolls in native costumes. The book had pictures of flags, maps, words in various languages to learn, and some activities for each country. There were a few recipes and folk stories for some countries. I spent a lot of time pouring over the pages and wishing I could visit those countries and meet those children.

I didn't grow up in an area with lots of diversity. I grew up in a small town that was filled with mostly white people who were of Polish background. The town was a Polish enclave for many years. There was Polish food and music at church festivals every year. I have some Polish blood from my grandfather. I knew I had Polish relatives in town that we didn't know. They never accepted my grandmother who had parents from England. The few that did were dead.

I did experience some cultural diversity in my neighbourhood as many Puerto Rican families moved in. The friction between them and the white people there was palpable. The white people always complained about the Puerto Ricans using Spanish, having their apartments filled with relatives, and their getting charity. They blamed the problems in the neighbourhood on them, forgetting that some of the worse drug dealers in the place were white. Everybody there was poor and picking up welfare checks. It was nothing but prejudices in the way of common sense.

I picked up a few Spanish words and was told by a white person that I was ridiculous, that I am American and I should speak like one. Puerto Ricans are Americans too, and she didn't know that. She was prejudiced and I don't want to be anything like her.

I have learned to accept cultural diversity. It wasn't always easy because of my background, yet I have learned to shake things off.

The book made me want to be a world traveller. It became my goal in life to travel the world and see as much as I could and learn about the rest of the world. I would get a passport and go everywhere.

When I was seven years old I received a globe for my birthday. I had it for many years. It had ridges on it to show mountain ranges. I liked to spin it and look at it. I wondered what was inside that green mass called the U.S.S.R. and the little spot called West Germany. I randomly asked my teacher how to pronounce "Czechoslovakia". At that age a friend of my teacher's came back from being a teacher in a small island called "Truk" in Micronesia. I loved her slideshow and grass skirts and coconut bowls. I knew I was going to spend some time living in another country.

Since then I did just that. I lived in South Korea from 2005-2006. I returned in 2009. I met up with people from many countries in Korea. They were mostly South Africans and I loved nearly all of them. I met some awesome people from the Philippines, Japan, Australia, the UK, Canada, Nigeria, and New Zealand. I learned how to make clicks in the Xhosa language, read Korean, and more. I travelled around Asia and had extra pages sewn into my passport. I want to keep things like this.

Being Back Home

It was nice to take a break and go home for a while. I left Korea on Dec. 7.  Yet now I am feeling the urgent need to move on. I am going to look for new jobs in Korea. I will also look at study options. I must do it this week. I am not interested in living with my family, even though it will be cheaper. I am almost 31 years old.  I need to be on my own again.