It always amazes me that you are amazed by the amount of things about me I share in this blog. I read a lot of blogs and online diaries. They are weight loss or cooking related. And in many of them I read at times that "if you don't like what you read stop reading this is my blog and I write it to manifest/monitor my feelings".

I write for the same reason too. When you are in any situation where you need to work on feelings and see their relation to patterns of behaviour, such as weight loss, or need to go back and see how things worked in the past and what might be the things that cause any kind of different outcome now, a blog is a magnificent tool.

But really, so is a little Moleskine notebook. So why I traded it for an internet blog?

But for the interaction of course!

Truth is I have been always amazed by other cultures. I had my first pen pal at the age of 10. An irish girl named Fiona. Back then my communication in english was very specific:

" Hello Fiona. New boy. Me love new boy. He red bicycle. You new
boy? My mom stupid. You mom? Swim too. Summer good."

Then, at around the age of 14, with a lot more words in my vocabulary to share, I was well into pen palling. George from Boston. Gina from Milan. Belen from Madrid. Jaquelin from Nice. Guy from London. I not only was writting to them at least every couple of days, but I slowly introduced them to each other and we became a group of friends, scattered in all corners of the globe.

Then at the age of 16 I begun my island hopping. My friends would gather sea shells, I would gather foreign friends. I was always drawn to the unknown. I was always amazed by different ways of eating. I was always intrigued by the different ways of expressing feelings. I was always curious about the way families functioned in different places of the world. I wanted to know how boyfriends treat their girlfriends in America, Australia, Italy, Germany, China, everywhere! I was even trying to see how people from different countries peel an orange. Such a thirst for knowledge for "the others".

And then, in 1997, I discovered chat rooms. I, of course, spent my first couple of months in all the sex related rooms. I was stunned at both the possibilities and the sickness. I was moved by the loniless. I was paralysed by the psycho's. And most of all, I was really very shocked about the lies. Then I spent a bit of time in different religions rooms. There I was shocked by both the strength in one's beliefs and the fanatism.

And then I got into a truth or dare room. Where I met my friends. My wonderful Englishman. My Danish sister. A wonderful Australian girl who spoke Greek and Indonesian and was brighter and more intelligent than any woman I know. A weird and lonely boy from Plymouth whom I cared a lot for and who hated me cos I called him Cornish. A wonderful middle aged man from the village of Elvis Presley who gave me his wife's secret recipe of Missisippi Chocolate Mud Cake. Liz from Newscastle who taught me how to make Pavlova. A gorgeous young man from England who lived in South Africa. A lonely boy from Ireland. A spunky woman from Lake Tahoe. The sweetest single mother from Canada. I begun to easily distinguish the poms from the aussies from the yanks. I learned different dialects. I used y'all with the southerns. I greeted the aussies with G'day. I could really spot a redneck in a minute! I was drooling over crumpets I never had. I ate vegemite. I made a danish mushroom pate. I have my Englishman's secret recipe for the most devine cheesecake. 42 grammars of butter. Such precision *smile*. I learned to drink and adore Guiness. In room temperature. Me, the ice cold drinks freak. I was sent several parcels. I was preparing more to send back. A magnificent new world with so many different colours, feelings, ways of life, smells.

Interaction. Interchange. Interrelation. Interdependence. Reciprocity.

This is why I started blogging. Not because I just miss all this. But for me, besides the support, the encourangement, the comradeship and the new information I receive on a daily basis, the most important thing I get from you all is the curtain you leave half open for me to see into the window of your hearts and lives.

I have been lucky to have grown up in a house where the curtains were wide open most of the time. Surely there is the closet with the sceletons..hehe. But the curtains are open. I just want you to know a bit more of who I am. Because I value your openness. I value the time you take to help and support me. And because I been a terrible weightloser lately (though a brilliant maintainer thankyouverymuch ;) and I still need to read from you and give you some of me to read, I been writting here about general stuff. Yesterday I actually started a new blog for more general things, like cooking and personal stuff, but I am certain I have such bad syntax in the title that till I work it our, you readers and frieds of 25 to Go will have to bare with my tendency to open the curtains of my windows a bit more and more.

After all...it is summer here :) Enjoy your weekend!