Now that you've forgiven me, grabbed a pint of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, and settled into your reading chair with your cat purring gently by your side, I hope you're ready for some fun and interesting posts. Don't be mistaken; by fun and interesting it should be understand that the actual meaning is droll and whiny. Deal with it.
Since the last writing, of which you all have invariably counted the days since our last electronic embrace, many fun things have happened in the life of Sir Benjamin Pratt. In March of 2013 I concluded my fellowship program with Princeton in Asia. Wow...I remember when I started this blogpost and I said to my dear friend, Rena, that I'm just an average guy. This blog was created for the purpose of watching me crawl, and scrape, and struggle, and bleed my way to self-betterment and growth while chronicling my inevitable failure...well jokes on you, pessimistic self-deprecating former me- You are totally AWESOME! (Kinda.) PiA was an incredible experience and I have so much to be thankful for because of the opportunity they gave me. To this day, I truly believe that without the help of certain people (Rena Chen, Bilesh Ladva, Diane Rachuba, Steven Freund, Douglas Graham) I wouldn't have been accepted into PiA. I wouldn't be where I am now. I would be going anywhere. I would have allowed my own lack of self-confidence deprive me of having the wonderful and amazing adventures that I am partaking in now. A brief aside for all of the aforementioned people- seriously, thank you all. I love you with all my heart and soul and can't begin to express my deepest and most sincere gratitude. I hope I make all of you proud as I continue to work my way through life.
I feel like I should be thanking Kanye West or God somewhere in there...moving on. After finishing up with PiA I left Thailand, my loving girlfriend, Pim, friends, and all the things I came to love in the past year to come home to visit with friends and family. I was so optimistic upon my return; there were numerous options for me upon my return to the homeland...all of which imploded on me and my 3-4 week visit quickly turned into a 3 month bout of self-loathing, boredom, and depression! Too much down time belongs in the 9th circle of hell. Regardless, I used this down time to work on my Thai language skills, study for LSATs, apply for law school, look for new jobs, and fix my backyard (it's beautiful now.) My speaking and listening skills are still ungodly atrocious but I did learn how to read and write quite a bit; I got accepted into a law school in Bangkok, Thailand (though that later fell through as well, which I won't get into); and got my job back with Chiang Mai University (my girlfriend is really happy...or she's lying to me about being happy...that seems more likely.)Additionally I took some time to travel down to Florida and see my wonderful grandparents and the rat-like thing they call a pet, Toby. While there, my girlfriend, who was on a J-1 visa program with Disney World (and thus leaving Thailand for the FIRST TIME EVER!), came up to visit. She then came to visit me in New Jersey right before I left. How amazing it is that two people can manage to find each other all over the world. Oh, young love.
That said, I left New Jersey to head back to the land of smiles. If I had stayed in New Jersey for one more day I would have died of boredom...or radiation poisoning. Thank you NJ. Even still, it's going to be another difficult year away from my family, friends, and all the people I love. I spent one day in San Francisco visiting with my brother, Steve and I am now sitting in the Taiwan airport, writing this blog post especially for my plethora of readers (does 6 subscribers count as a plethora?)
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