Elina's blog

Travel is something that’s perceived as a luxury. It costs thousands of dollars and we can only afford this privilege when our vacation days at work happen to spell out a week or two and our bank accounts concur with the evidence. However, for the last three months, I’ve been interning at a travel magazine, watching more amazing deals swim across my computer screen than the number of times Lindsey Lohan’s been to rehab.

Blaming the victim for a crime that has been committed against them is the most redundant mistake we have ever made as a civilization. Time and time again, people are made social pariahs for admitting publicly that someone hurt them, raped them, or robbed them. Well, you shouldn’t have worn that. You shouldn’t have walked down that alley. You brought this on yourself.

If I had to answer a question about my religious inclinations on a survey or questionnaire, I would probably answer Jewish right off the bat. But if religion is defined by “a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices,” according to Merriam-Webster, then I would have to say my religion is of the culinary persuasion. I believe in food, in its freshness, in its rusticity, its malleability and chemistry, in its complexity.

One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to start reading more. For a while, I got into the habit of charging my iTouch, plugging myself in, and tuning everyone else out while I rode the train into Manhattan every morning. Problem was, I would look over at the people with newspapers, those subscription squares falling out of the corners, pages in disarray as the train shoved away from the platform; people with books, trying to balance ever so gracefully, propped up against a pole, or a door, or an unsuspecting stranger, literature in hand (turning pages with puckered lips and wiggling noses). I longed for the days when I was a train acrobat, keeping my eyes steady on the page while my feet did the electric slide into the bibliophile next to me. In fact, I was very surprised by the number of people who were reading in my subway cars. If I had to draw a (very) rough estimate, I would say about 70 percent. Enough to shame me, for sure.

I’m going to admit something. I almost wrote a blog about The Jersey Shore. Alas, having just pressed the submit button and released my graduate-school applications into the stratosphere, I feel I must commemorate this moment somehow (I still love you Ronnie!- The Indiscretion [courtesy of the Jersey Shore nickname generator]). I want to talk about the application process a little bit, which is one part fear, six parts frustration, five parts procrastination sprinkled with willpower and ingenuity, and entirely fueled by sheer stupefaction about what is really expected of you.