15 years in 10 bullet points

A while ago I read That Girl’s meme on “15 years ago” and boy is her life amazing!… Basically, you're supposed to sum up your last 15 years in 10 bullet points, as if you were talking to someone who used to know you before. It made me want to try and sum up my own previous 15 years in 10 bullet points and so I promised her I would be posting my own soon….

So here it goes.

15 years ago = July 1993 (yeah.. I'm a little late posting this one).

1. 1993 = I was graduating from Jr Highschool – and sick glad about it too!
Before High school, my family moved quite a lot. I’d been to 4 different elementary schools and 2 Jr High! Worse, we moved to Puebla right in the middle of my junior year and so I never really was able to make any friends as most of the “clans” were already formed when I arrived. Needless to say, I was glad to move on.

2. 1994 = Entering Colegio Cultural High school – life changing moment for me.
Not only did I immediately find my « crowd » but I changed my name. From day 1 of school I introduced myself with my second first name and dropped my first (to my family’s great regret). Ever since that day I went from being PAS to FAS.

3. 1995 = I lost my best friend.
She was kicked out of school for flunking every single subject of the year (even PE!). From one day to the next she moved back to her home town and my world came crushing down. My first real and stable friendship ending so abruptly. Back then, there was no such thing as internet and long distance calling was out of my budget. I still had friends around me but it just didn’t seem the same. That year is like a blur. I stopped wearing colours and dressed exclusively in black. I even permed my hair (something I WILL NEVER DO AGAIN BTW!).

4. 1996-1997 = Met new crowds, fell in love (with the wrong guy – typical)
A new gang of friends slowly came my way without me noticing it. I loved Senior year in high school. One of the best times of my life I think. Lots of partying, lots of dancing, lots of laughing, lots of bullying the freshmen, lots of meeting new people. I wont go into detail about the fella – not worth it – but I can’t not mention him… our “relationship” lasted 4 years and he was a big part of this period of my life.

5. 1997 Graduation from high school – sabbatical year.
Not having the smallest clue of what I wanted to do after high school I took a year off. I went off to Chiapas for some time, took up French 101 lessons (big help that wasN’T) and started working for a law firm as a secretary. Don’t remember much of that year except that I enjoyed working in an office doing secretarial work. A prelude to my soaring “corporate” career it seems. LOL

6. 1998 = Freshman year in College.
Best of all 4 years of college. I met great people, got into all the school activities possible (cheerleading squad, student board association, softball team, theatre company, flamenco group) worked in the admissions office to pay off my scholarship and travelled quite a bit around Mexico on promotional tours for our school. Oh yeah… I also studied from time to time. Broke up first time with Fella. Thought that was over. It wasn’t.

6. 2000 = Exchange student in Indiana, US – got back together with Fella
My first taste of living in a foreign country. Ok, not too foreign, but still… Try going from a Mexican school system to an American one and you’ll see what I mean. My first of a lot of things actually. First time away from home. First time living on campus. First time meeting people from all over the world. This year made me realize traveling to Europe wasn’t that impossible. When I came back home Fella came back into my life as well.

7. 2001 = The year I decided I had to get away.
Things with Fella got weird and nasty and complicated. I decided I could not stay in Mexico. But I didn’t want to go back to the States either. I had to get away much further. Like to the other side of the world further. And so on a whim I signed up for a nation wide contest for a student scholarship/internship in one of Mexico’s Consulates in Europe working for the Chamber of Commerce. I entered my papers on the last day of the contest and passed three exams. There were 700 candidates for 76 places. No guarantee was made on a desired destination. During my interview with the panel of judges they asked me where I would like to go if I could pick a placement. I replied Dublin (a very good friend of mine was living there at the time). I was solemnly informed that Dublin did not have a Mexican Chamber of Commerce (all business is handled from London) and suggested I do a little research when entering a contest of this sort. I was sure I’d lost my chances then and there. They asked me again and the only three cities that flashed in my mind as SURE places where there would definitely be a Mexican Chamber of Commerce were London, Madrid and Paris. I said Paris. Months passed and still no word. I was starting to get desperate. I had to leave. And then, one October morning I got The Call. I was leaving for France in two months. Two months to get my visa and find an apartment and learn a language. I did the visa, the rest I figured I would take care of when I got to Paris.

8. 2002 = Landed in Paris with 600 bucks in my jeans
And nothing else. Well, yes… two suitcases. That year is indescribable (actually I did describe it here). Somehow I managed to settle in in Paris and become semi-operational at work with my non existent French. Even though having only 4 days of vacation per semester I traveled more than all the years I’ve been having the mandatory 7 weeks of paid vacation in France put together. I had a roadmap: a different country per month. Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Greece, Italy, Turkey, the Netherlands…if I could scrape enough money for the bus ticket and take a Friday off to have a three-day weekend, I was gone.

But hands down that year changed my life forever because that year I met hubby. It wasn’t meant to be that way. I was getting away from IT ALL. I wanted nothing to do with boys. All I wanted was to travel, learn a new language and drink gallons of wine. But two weeks after having hopped off the plane I met him. And thus my life did a 180°

9. 2005 = Married at 25!
Who would have guessed? Certainly not my closest friends who’d heard me go on and on how I would NEVER marry before 30! But you make plans and then life gets in the way. After three years of common life together (except for the 7 months apart when I had to go back to Puebla to finish my degree and save some $ to come back to Europe) I figured I could marry the guy. I said yes to his proposal without him even having set foot in my country or met my family. A year (and a trip to Mexico to meet the in-laws) later we were married. And so again I changed my name and went from being FAS to becoming Fned.

10. 2008 =???
Well, seems like my 15 last years can be summed up in less than 10 bullet points. I’ll say that 2008 has been a great year so far (knock on wood). We finally got around to going to our dream destination (aka our late honeymoon trip) Japan, we’re both (sorta) satisfied with our current jobs and we’re still not sick of each other. That should account for a bullet point right?

If you want to do the MEME - let me know that you've done it, and I'll be the first to come by and read it!

Fned.