LEMON SODA

I can spend hours in a bookstore; when I am surrounded by books I ignore everything else in the outside world and get wrapped up in all the colorful covers and beautifully stacked shelves of words and knowledge and pictures. Sometimes I’ll read a few pages before I decide on a purchase, others I’ll just grab the cover that catches my attention the most. (I bought Standing Room Only by Eva Rice because the cover was pink – I couldn’t put it down!)

Needless to say, I have bought quite a few books for different reasons over the past year, and sadly they are bored to bits just sitting on my shelves. So, I have decided to start the 50 Books Challenge to keep myself on track and actually read them!

My list:

1. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
2. The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffeneger
3. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger
4. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
5. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
6. The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
7. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
8. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
9. Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser
10. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
11. Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
12. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
13. Germs Guns and Steel by Jared Diamond
14. St.Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
15. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
16. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
17. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
18. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
19. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
20. My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
21. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
22. Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster
23. Sex, Drugs, & Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
24. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night by Mark Haddon
25. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
26. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
27. Perfume by Patrick Süskind
28. The World According to Garp by John Irving
29. Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin
30. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
31. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
32. Franny and Zooey by J.D Salinger
33. Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
34. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
35. The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien
36. The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien
37. The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien
38. The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien
39. Dracula by Bram Stoker
40. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
41. The Magician’s Nephew by C.S Lewis
42. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
43. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
44. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
45. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
46. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
47. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
48. Wittgenstein’s Mistress by David Markson
49. This Is Not a Novel by David Markson
50. It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be by Paul Arden

“It’s the tragedy of loving,
you can’t love anything
more than something you miss.”

A lot of couples have been there; whether it’s 1,000 or 7,000 miles in between, distance finds a way to come between two lovers. What distance doesn’t know is, two hearts that are truly in love will also always find a way to overcome it. Hearts just know.

Distance decided to get in the way of three past relationships in my life, and has decided to come barging in a fourth time – with Tom. The difference this time is everything. Let’s bundle up the past three relationships: I was very young and inexperienced so to speak. I held on more to the idea of love and being loved than love itself; I shut my eyes from the whole picture, and while you are allowed to float above the clouds when you are in love, you have to manage to be able to land again. I didn’t. I pretended that any imperfection was normal, and I was willing to settle for any of it. So on the surface it seemed like we would last, and we of course said we would. But it wasn’t realistic, the bond between our hearts wasn’t strong enough. And so those relationships faded, some suddenly and others took a little more time. Do I regreat any of it? Am I sad over it? The answer is no, not really. Those relationships ended because they had to, and would have at some point or another (something I was well aware of myself).

It has been a year and a half since, and exactly a year ago I met Tom in Beijing. I had seen him around campus before and was completely blown away! All I knew was that he was English*. One day we were sitting at a cafe, he with his friends and I with mine, and I heard Death Cab for Cutie coming out from his computer. This is the moment I decided he was perfect. But I didn’t approach him, I just left it as a passing thought. Then comes Wednesday night, Pub Quiz night, and that is where we happened to be in the same group (and not by chance, I made sure I joined his group thanks to a common friend of ours). We talked since the minute we introduced ourselves til the second he dropped me off at my door. I was confused at first, didn’t want to get into anything serious because I knew that a year later we would each be on our own path. But Tom persisted, and I gave in, and ever since then we spent literally every day together. We lost touch with the whole party scene because we would rather stay home talking or drawing or just watching a movie together.

Now we have both returned to our countries to start university, and having to say goodbye was a punch in the stomach. It hurt. And I have no problem crying when I am hurt, so I did; I cried my eyes out, I let the tears collect in my lips, I gasped for air once every now and then.

When I arrived home I got on skype and we talked until he had to go to bed to catch his flight in the morning. All of a sudden, I wasn’t as close to death as I had previously thought. There is only one hour of time difference between Cardiff and Spain; we can be on skype all afternoon after classes if we want to. We can visit each other on long weekends, spend holidays together, send each other things through the mail (because snail mail is so underrated).

So far, long distance is proving to be hard, and I am anything but patient. So I have come up with a few ideas that I will put to practice soon enough, to ensure that we don’t go crazy while we wait. What about you, have you had any LDRs? How did you survive?

*We later found out from him that he was actually born in Wales.

NAME (include all the names you are called by): Luana, Luani, Lumadi, Lu, Maruna, Pollyanne

Address:
* Past: Miami, Hong Kong, Beijing
* Present: Madrid, Spain
* Future: New York/an island of my own

Age: I am at the age where…I have realized how short life is & am still finding out my raisons d’être.

What you like:
* Place: my bed.
* Time: night, especially in the summer.
* Weather: rainy, so I can sit inside and snuggle up with a book, preferrably with Tom.
* Color: so many, it depends for what. Right now purple is on my top five. Neutrals always.
* Sound: rain against my window.
* Smell: bread right out of the oven, Tom, wet ground.
* Taste: Tom.

Describe your world as you see it.
a) Inner: Quiet, observing, selfish.
b) Outer: Chaotic, fast, decisions decisions decisions!

Your regret: not taking Mandarin so seriously my first year studying it.

Your pride: seeing everything as possible – I will conquer the world some day, just not yet!

Your attachments:
a) Animate: Tom, my family, Chimbo (the cutest 14 year-old puppy, who is now blind & deaf :c)
b) Inanimate: my computer, my shoes & my giant earring collection.

Your wish:
1) To be happy doing whatever I decide to do in life.
2) Health for me & those I love.
3) To make a change in my society (hopefully on a semi-large scale)

Via 100 Acorns

In life I have had the fortune (misfortune?) of moving around, calling different countries home. I was born in Spain, but moved to Miami at eight, where I devoured any book put in front of me (except Harry Potter, for some reason I never got into it)- I learnt English without really noticing it. I spent the next four years in the Sunshine State developing my inner nerd and watching Cartoon Network, WB & Comedy Central almost religiously, as well as spending time with some people I will never forget.

But nothing ever stays the same, and the summer after I turned 12 I found out I would be moving to Hong Kong. I was sure this was the end of my life. In a sense it was, because everything I knew changed completely. A new house? New language? New school/friends/life? What had I done to deserve this?! At 12 I didn’t really have a say in anything of course, so I boarded that plane still crying from saying goodbye to my best friend. Hong Kong was unlike anything else I had seen in my life. I came from wide avenues and palm trees – the US1, the Dolphin Mall – to a concrete jungle of hundreds of skyscrapers inches apart, Chinese neon signs and tons of racing red cabs. I loved (and still love) it! I found out that life over on the other side of the world was exactly the same sort of cycle, just different sights and people. I made it through highschool, where I have met some of the most important people in my life.

Before returning to Spain to start a degree, I took two gap years to study Mandarin in Beijing. I did my last bit of growing up there, experienced everything I needed to in order to steer in the right direction of who I am & what I want. There I met my person, Tom. At a good time, too, because my first year included a lot of partying and drunken nights, random hookups and sleeping in a lot. I’m not proud of it all, but at least I found out a bit of who I am not. I met Tom last September, and since then we have shared absolutely every second together! It is amazing, and I have stopped trying to explain it to anyone because unless you are me or him, I guess you won’t understand exactly – though you can probably relate if you have found your person in the world. This year we go long-distance, which deserves an fml with a capital F.

I have spent the entirety of my teenage years in Asia, which obviously demanded a celebratory tattoo: a lady buddha on the back of my neck/back. I was in excruciating pain by the end of it, but am glad I did it and have not regretted since. Last April 27th I turned 20, much to my heart’s discontent. The exact day, I felt it was a “nothing age”, not 18 anymore and not yet 21. Just 20. However, I put everything aside and decided to make the most of this year. It will be my starting year, where I will build the foundation for all my goals/dreams, no matter how batshit crazy they seem/are! Yay for optimism, dreams & pro-activity!