Dani 2.0

A friend once asked me how I had managed to clone myself, after spending an hour hanging out with me an my brother. To tell the truth, I don't know how I managed to make my brother so much like myself. The most likely culprits are social media and my family's interesting property of idolizing older siblings.

That last part probably made me sound like a complete narcissist, but it is a real pattern that has emerged. At age six, I denounced the color pink and decided that my favorite color was black, because Israel was hit with the grunge movement in 2005, and my sister became an emo tomboy. She herself only became emo because our older cousins were in high school and they found it cool. So just like I idolized my sister, and I probably still do, my brother ended up idolizing me for the greater part of his life (which is probably how he let me get away with all the torture I put him through).

But all in all, having a brother so much like me makes him a great best friend. As I've said before, anytime I feel like randomly going on an adventure (usually the grocery store) he is always up for it and we have a blast discussing current events in memes and talking about different things that are happening in our lives.

When he came to Uni, our relationship really accelerated, because suddenly I was always driving him everywhere and we spent more time with each other than we were even at home. During car rides we have nothing to do but talk, so we often know everything that goes on in each other's lives. I also have a class with my brother, Latin. People always ask if it's weird to have a class with him but I really like it. Sharing homework and notes brings a whole new level to our sibling relationship that I usually only have with friends.

It is really interesting how much our relationship has changed just because we are in the same school. My brother has never had a teacher that has had me, so he has never been "sarah's brother" before. Now, he is commonly known as Dani, even though he kinda hates how Americans pronounce it, because I call him that and anyone who knows me automatically calls him that.

It's gonna be interesting to see how next year affects our relationship. Thus far, the most time we have been apart is one month and even that felt like forever. Maybe we'll start a snapchat streak so we can still talk everyday, that would be interesting cause he usually only snapchats me fry recipes from tastemade.

Dani

If you know me, you probably know my younger brother Daniel, or Dani, as I like to call him. Even though he is 14, he fits in pretty well among my friend group, and we often talk about him before swim practice. If you had just met us, you would guess we were always best friends, but that's not really the case.

When I was little, I was what I like to call a devil child. I was confident, surprisingly strong, and had no empathy. I loved being the alpha and I also loved making up new games. Among these games were me sitting on a pillow in a cardboard box and having Dani drive me around, playing town with our stuffed animals (my room was the house and his room was the store if you're wondering) and something I liked to call matatovdo where I spun around randomly and told Dani it was a new martial art that you had to feel within you to master, and then criticized his every move.

But perhaps the most evil of the games was one that lasted well past our move from Israel and until Dani was at least nine years old.

It all started when I noticed a bowl on the floor and I decided to make a game of it. And I told Dani to fill it with water. Of course he asks me why fill a random bowl with water, and I, being myself, told him that we needed to pray to the gods.

Obviously he didn't know about these gods that I had just made up, and asked me to tell him about them. I told him about how every person who is born is assigned a god based on where they were born. And I had the Santa Clause god (the only American entity I knew of at the time) and he had the Pharaoh god (because obviously a Pharaoh is Israeli).

So he filled the bowl with water as I instructed him and then got one for me. I told him that in order to keep the gods in our good graces, we needed to pray to the bowl of water every night and then leave it under the couch overnight every. I made Dani pray to that bowl of water for about a month, until one day my mom was walking by the couch and noticed something underneath. That was the end to the water-bowl praying.

A year and a half later, after we had moved to Champaign, and got settled, so my family decided to buy a new car. But, this wasn't any regular car, it was a 2009 silver Toyota Sienna. This silver mini van had a button on the right side of the back seat that could open the door automatically (a spectacular invention at the time). Dani, at this point, was around six years old, not as easily tricked into doing what I wanted, and fought me over the seat next to the button.

I, the genius that I am, remembered about our respective gods. I told Dani to remember his Pharaoh god. I said that I had talked to both of our gods ( I could communicate with the Pharaoh because I was an Israeli citizen, of course,) the Gods had said only a person with a Santa Clause god could sit on the right side of the car and that people with the Pharaoh god had to sit on the left (this was because America was on the right of Israel, a 100% proven fact). He gave up the seat.

Another couple years had gone by, and the gods had only made minor appearances, until we were ready to buy another new car. This car came fully loaded with a DVD player, a dvd player with only one remote that is. So of course we fought over it, so I pulled it out, my go-to reason for why I should get something, the Santa Clause god had told me that only people born in America could control the TV remotes of car DVD players, because the remotes were made in America. Logic right? Dani, now eight, was super skeptical and told me, “you know, sometimes I think the gods aren't even real,” But after I professed my deep belief in the Gods he kinda believed me, and guess who still has the control over the TV remote? This girl!

Even though all of these "games" are a part of my "pre-gender studies Sarah phase." I like to think that I made my brother's childhood interesting with all the games I invented. Sometimes I would get a burst of joy and we would play for hours on end instead of doing homework, or we would take all the cushions out of the couches, stack them up, and sit up high while watching TV. Of course the older he gets, the less of my shit he is willing to take, I can't even beat him up anymore!

The Grocery Store

I don't know what it is, but being in a grocery store feels like being surrounded by opportunities. The opportunity to eat pizza for dinner or scarf down a dozen pirogies.

Sometimes when I'm in peak procrastination on a Sunday afternoon, I'll walk into my brother's room and say, "wanna go to Shnucks?" and I'm always greeted with "sure."

Then I do some verbal gymnastics and convince my mom that we need to get groceries and helpfully volunteer to go to Shnucks.

My mom hands me the credit card, I put on my coat,  slip on my vans, yell at my brother to hurry up, and begin the 3 minute ride to Shnucks.

When we get there, my brother an I, even though we promised not to buy any "junk" start our shopping journey at the produce section.

We contemplate on wether or not to get salads, or some soup, or some amazing smelling olives.

Then we move to the cheese and buy some fresh mozzarella. Which leads us to the fresh bread where we squeeze every baguette until we find the crunchiest sounding one.

Next we move to the small but mighty Israeli food section wedged between the canned tomatoes and beans. My brother sticks his hand into the shelves and sweeps down eight bags of Bisli into the cart.

Then I ride the shopping cart to the milk where we decide if we should be bougie and buy the chocolate milk in the glass bottle or Praire Farms chocolate milk that doesn't make us feel fancy.

If we're running low (which we usually are) we go over to the Ramen section and grab ten creamy chicken packages ($.21 each --> pretty good deal).

Next we hit up the cheeses again and grab shredded mozzarella and cheddar and sour cream.

We follow the aisle to the juices, where we stock up on fruit punch, and then hit the frozens.

If we feel like it, we pick out our favorite pint of f Ben and Jerry's, if not, we just grab some packages of frozen pirogies and head to the checkout line.

We usually go to the self checkout and grab a Snapple each while we're at it.

We put everything in bags and head bag to the car.

Going to the grocery store is probably the most bonding my brother and I do other than the car rides to and from school and the memes we send each other on Instagram DM. We complain about parents, homework, school, we "treat" ourselves with some rule bending of "no junk" and we just talk, which is really nice.

My friends used to think I was really weird for loving the grocery store so much, but its a place filled with happy memories of convincing my mom to buy the food I want (again from a combination of verbal gymnastics and some begging).

There are no worries in the grocery store, you could go there in your pajamas and if anyone looks at you weird it doesn't matter cause you can laugh it off. If you're like me, and have no self control, you buy all the junk food your heart desires. And most of all, the most wholesome conversations come when you least expect them, and the grocery store is a perfect platform for this.

Rant About Myself

Sometimes I get so frustrated with myself that it seems I have two people controlling me, one logical person who thinks ahead and makes a plan to get things done on time so I don't get stressed (aka smart Sarah) and another who controls my physical being and disregards anything that smart Sarah for instant gratification (aka no impulse control Sarah).

I wasn't always like this. Freshman year, for example, I would finish every paper two weeks in advance and write about one hundred flashcards to memorize for every Bio test. I would watch TV if I had time left over.

Since then, my work ethic has only gone downhill.

Last year in particular it was at an all time low. So low that I wouldn't start anything until the day before and turned in 90% of my papers with an extension. But I would always get everything done. I would always finish all the physics worksheets before a quiz and make flashcards for every history test.

This year I somehow have much more work but my work ethic has become worse (with the occasional burst of productivity). It really annoys me because I know what I need to do, and I have everything planned out so if I follow the plan I can just finish everything I need. But no impulse control Sarah has other ideas (such as watching Shameless until 5am or getting home at 9 after swim practice and watching four hours of American Horror Story until I crash).

I would like to directly call myself out and ask why do I do this to myself.

The less I follow the plan, the more stressed I get, and as a result I get in a stress lock and just fall asleep. And I know this when I'm three episodes in and haven't studied anything,  one voice screams "DO YOUR WORK" while the other is like, "ehhhhhhhhh." (This is especially happening right now because I've been procrastinating on studying for my psychology midterm tomorrow (RIP me).

So wish me luck cause I'm gonna need it.

History

The history of medicine, the history of film, the history of roman civilization, the universe, and so much more. History encompasses all the knowledge one could hope to learn, but more than that, it teaches the process through which everything was invented or discovered, and it does so by stories.

In Sophomore history, Mr Butler used flowcharts to show how the consequences of seemingly small decisions could give something the final push to escalate to any number of huge events. For example, the marxism flowchart can single handedly explain the rise and fall of communism. And, in my opinion, ultimately, the world's economics will follow as the flowchart shows.

I also love history because it aid us in studying human behavior through how other civilizations lived. Last year, I took Latin 1; every Friday we had culture days and learned exactly how the Romans lived their everyday lives. The fact that one thousand six hundred years ago, life was so similar to today is astounding. A typical roman day, for example, would consist of leaving their apartment to go to work, then in the mid afternoon, going to the local bathhouse to exercise, swim, and steam. And in the evening families could go out to enjoy chariot races, gladiator battles, or a play.

Last year, I also took Mr Butler's World Since 1945 class, and I was propelled further into my obsession. This class didn't follow the conventional teaching style that most history teachers adapt, the lecture and test, instead we were immersed in history. We watched popular shows from that time period and country that we were studying. We listened to music, watched documentaries, and even spent time analyzing the rise of music videos and their impact on music.

We started each class by discussing current events, which was amazing for someone like me who had never gotten into watching the news. Sometimes our conversations go so carried away that we just discussed these topics for the whole class period or watched a John Oliver episode.

I felt like I was experiencing history rather than just learning about it, and I think that is why I love studying it so much. Because history allows me to learn how other people thought and did things through the legacies they left behind.

You're a Vegetarian?

I get asked this question probably anytime I go out to eat with someone. But then I reveal the fact that I still eat, grilled chicken breast (that and only that by the way, and only when it's dry); at that point "chicken is meat!" type confrontations follow. But in my eyes, I am still a vegetarian.

My non-meat eating journey began at age four. Conflicting reports from me and my mother point to two motivations: I think I just don't like the taste but my mother remembers a teacher who told me meat came from animals and that was why I denounced it. But nevertheless, at age four I stopped eating all red meat (except a single dish called galupchiki in Russian which I ate until age 8 and Israeli salami that was the bomb) and chicken, except for Israeli chicken nuggets that had corn in them (a surprisingly amazing combination).

The more years that past the less meat I ate. When I moved to America I denounced salmon as well as caviar, I stopped eating galupchiki and started calling myself a "junkfoodertarian."

By sophomore year I hadn't eaten even a piece of chicken for a year. But I realized that it was really silly, because (with all due respect for animal activists) at this point I was only refusing chicken based on my own psychological weirdness. So I decided to try and eat chicken. 

I started with a mango-chili chicken breast from Chilis, and it was really good. I started building up my chicken dishes. By junior year I would devour any grilled chicken breast in sight, and I even started eating shawarma again, which is a middle eastern sandwich with grilled chicken thighs. 

Now, even though I still only eat chicken breast (with the exception of shawarma), I seek out chicken. I get double meat in burritos and anytime there is shwarma in my vicinity you can bet I'm eating it at least once a week. So yes, I do eat chicken, and yes I do call myself a vegetarian, but what else should I called myself, a "grilledchickenbreastatarian?" I'm open to suggestions.

Craving Experience

Ever since I can remember, experiencing everything (or at least as much as I can) has been my life goal. I want to know what everything is and how everyone feels everything, and I hate missing out. 

I try to do everything I can. I do three sports (swimming, basketball, and soccer). This semester I'm taking 2 U of I classes (I wanted to take more but after some explaining from my parents that I would not survive, I settled for 2) and I only have one true free period, because I can't bring myself to sacrifice any interesting uni classes. Next semester, I have the same plan, take all the uni classes that I've always wanted, but also take all the U of I classes I can pile on.

I pile a lot onto my schedule, but if I were to have more free time, I would not make any productive use of it. I would either spend time procrastinating on all responsibilities or spend more time binge watching tv-shows.

The latter, is how I spend probably 70-90% of my current free time. While it is possible that I'm just a TV addict, I think that watching tv shows with varying subjects can really teach me about different people and their psychologies. I can get a feel for how each of the characters is going to react and the more I understand the characters, the faster I can try to figure out the psychologies of real people. I also treat TV shows as a fast way to gather mass information about a subject (i.e. I can now identify if a skeleton is male or female at a glance, thanks to Bones).  

Ultimately, I know that I can't experience everything, or even come close to be honest (http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/), but I'm always gonna fill my life with all the experiences I can; and but I've often said that if, by some chance of fate, I end up being immortal, I'm gonna spend a lifetime in each society in the world, so I can learn and study everything there is.