AHEM, some thoughts on this blog

Hello!

So things are a little bit crazy here with orientation and meeting all of these crazy-cool people, in the program and out, so alas you might have to wait a little bit longer for any post accounting for either that stuff or the mainland Europe stuff that I got up to this past weekend. Not only is orientation crazy, but I'm currently trying to pull together co-op for next semester, and apparently that means I need to write a 6+ page paper for the co-op department. Apparently I need to prove in this paper that I'm a nice person with cultural awareness who isn't going to fuck up too badly if you dump me in another country for 6 months. Maybe I can just send them the links to these blogs!! Probably not. Argh. No. Time.

Anyway, speaking of blogs!! I have a request for you readers. Apparently, there are more of you than I thought, which is so great. And a lot of time, I get comments and feedback about the blog through email or AIM or Facebook or something where you guys tell me that you like it or you love it or you think its a boring piece of trash, and that's AWESOME. Thank you, seriously. It's wonderful to get the feedback.

HOWEVER. This blog is just as much for me as it is for you guys, perhaps more so. Now, while abroad, it's my connection to home and all of you. Later in life after I've returned or when I'm off somewhere else doing something different, it's going to be my connection to my time here, and my key way of looking back.

Maybe what some of you don't realize is that what YOU think of these posts, what you think about what I do or what you have to say to me during this time, all of that a key part of this experience for me. That you read it at all is a great thing for me, but I'm going to request just a little bit more of you. Because it turns out, I have no way of knowing who reads, or what they like, without you all telling me.

SO, if everyone could bear with me for a second and move your eyes down to the bottom of this post, where it says "posted by Elisha at a-time-when-she-should-be-showering-and-not-blogging". Now move them to the right. See that little link? The one that says "Comments" with a number next to it? That's the one, yes. Leave it for now, but head back to that when we're done here.

Blog comments basically make my world go round. It lets me know that people are reading, what they thought, if they liked it, but mostly just that they're reading. And that is a truly fantastic feeling. So from now on, I beseech all of you: as much as you can when you read, leave a little comment afterward and tell me what you thought. Some of these posts have one comment now. Some have two. But most have none. Do you have any idea how happy it would make me if I logged into blogger and saw 10, 15 comments on a new post??? More?? For the rest of the day I would be flying, seriously. Even if its just something small that you might think to be worthless, like a smiley face. It just lets me know that you're out there. And later, when I look back on this experience, I'll be able to look and see how much my friends and family supported me being here. And that's all part of it.

Example: say I do something crazy like jump off a cliff, again, and then write about it here. You hit "comment" and say something like "Holy fucking shit Elisha, have you lost your damn mind???" and then later, after all that, we can discuss my questionable sanity via AIM, email, skype, what have you.

Think you can do that for me? Work with me here, guys. Love you all.

To the parents of potentially younger readers: sorry for the swearing :S