A Very Lucky Girl

AKA--the Dundee Hunger Games.  Renan, one of the what seems like thousands brazilian exchange students, suggested we have a competition complete with water guns. I heard the word gun so obviously this American was up in arms about participating!   I needed a tutorial to fully understand the game, but after an intensive learning session with Zee, Renan, and Nat, coupled with Macca's fries and a trip to the 24-hour bakery, I think I've got it figured out.  Basically, everyone who wants in on the game chooses the name of another person, secretly in a folded sheet of paper. I've selected my target, and I was just relieved to actually know who they were! My next order of business was to purchase a water gun, both for defense and offense, which I did today at Poundland.  You see, I am obviously after a particular target, the name I chose, but if he or she knows I am coming for them (which they won't because I'm sneaky) and they spray me with water before I can attack?...

I have three favorite drinking games that I want to share with you. Obviously, when I say "drinking" I'm referring to water or sparkling grape juice since I'm not yet 21 (48 days--not counting or anything). First, the Bachelor/Bachelorette drinking game. Savannah helped come up with the rules for this one and they are as follows: Sip every time someone says "journey" or "amazing" Finish your drink if a contestant insists they aren't here to make friends Sip for every tear you see Gulp for every cheesy metaphor (i.e. "hiking up a mountain is like falling in love") Sip every time the main character references their previous season or relationships Sip for every rose handed out You get the picture and probably can add your own rules. Making them specific to a season is even more fun (i.e. for Emily Maynard's season we added drinking every time she referenced her deceased fiance or her daughter). My all-time favorite televi...

For the first of our last two days at sea, Tyler and I quietly met in the library in order to hike to Deck 12 for the 6:29 AM sunrise where we watched pink and yellow streak across the sky as a fiery orange ball inched its way from the depths of the deep blue of the ocean.  We attempted a few sunrise selfies, but Tyler suffers from "squinty eye disorder" when it comes to pictures with flash so most of them were immediately deleted, and judged others for their obvious sunrise selfie taking in a truly hypocritical way. However, we were following the  rule of having another person in your selfie, transforming the image into a groupie.  We graced the Windjammer for an early breakfast and made the exciting discovery that the sourdough rolls we'd been devouring at every dinner also were available for breakfast. I stocked up.  After an invigorating nap, I recovered from such an early morning by laying out and soaking sun into my already slightly sun-blistered skin....

My competitiveness brings an interesting dynamic to relationships. Especially the one I have with Tyler. I've recently been paying more attention to my dictionary word-of-the-day notifications and tweeting a sentence a day using the new syllable(s). Today's word was "hamartia", a noun meaning "tragic flaw". It's hard to narrow it down when you have lots, but my tweet today read: "I have countless imperfections, but one glaring #hamartia is my extreme competitiveness when it matters least. #wordoftheday"-@AVeryLuckyGirl   It all started a few weeks ago with a trip to OKC to see my family one Sunday. I challenged Tyler to a game of Battleship. He was convinced that he could probably beat me. False. From the bonus room emitted a symphony of "hit"'s from Tyler and "miss"'s from me, followed by a few muffled choice words as Tyler realized he was losing to the Battleship Queen. I sank all of his ships with only minor s...