OK is OKAY

            I swear I’m leading some sort of double life.

            Like the second school ends, I’m immediately shipped to the United States.  Destination?  Broken Arrow, Oklahoma: a suburb outside of Tulsa.  It’s true-to-blue suburbia out there; we go to Wal-Mart to go grocery shopping, Sonic for lunch, and then we’ll grill burgers out by the pool in the backyard for dinner.  Sometime in the week we’ll be treated to Olive Garden, and then my brother would beg my aunt to go to Chuck E. Cheese’s.  But I digress...

me, my sister, and our OK peeps

            It’s the only place in the world I truly feel special (on account of my skin color).  Oklahoma is 80% white, 15% Native American maybe, and the rest is made up of us minorities.  Luckily, I’ve found an Asian friend (this really cool guy, btw) to help me feel semi-normal again. 

            Speaking of friends, that reminds me.  The whole reason I even go to Oklahoma is to go to church camp.  Yeah, I know, that makes me some constantly-wedgie’d, boring, stick-in-the-mud.  But it doesn’t!  There are rules, yeah, but even if I didn’t go I wouldn’t follow the stupid rules that most teens follow today (see previous blog, “High School is a Lie”).  It’s just a really cool place with really cool people away from all the not-so-cool people that are out and about in the world today.

            Every year I go and make great bonds and have fun, and then I disappear for the next 11 months until I see them again.  This year though, Facebook’s been (forcefully) keeping me connected to all of my pals back on the mainland.  My goal is so that this year, I don’t walk in to meet everyone with the awkward stares.  I’m hoping to get there and immediately be accepted into the middle of the food chain.

            Aside from the Broken Arrow circle of friends, I have friends I’ve met in Peru as well as a couple good ones I visit sometimes in the Philippines.  I guess you could say I have an international network of friends, which brings (conveniently) to my next goal…

5.) Create an international web of friends and connections.

me and my Peruvian friends: the llamas

            Just you wait.  I’m going to be that chick with all the connections that you wish you had.  I’ll get people with signs with my name on them waiting for me at the airport and Facebook with everybody.  It’ll be legit.  Bragging rights are a cool bonus, too. 

Yeah, I know this goal is a little bit self-centered, but it’s actually a cool idea once you get to think about it.  If you have the opportunity, make friends everywhere you go.  That way when the end of the world hits, you have connections that can save you.