back to RWU!

I'm back at school! I've spent all week home for Thanksgiving and unfortunately didn't have time to blog. Isn't it ironic that I'm busier at home for vacation time than I am at school? I think so. This vacation was interesting because it gave me a true sense of who my real friends are. College is a funny time because the people who don't make the effort to stay in touch you won't end up seeing unless you do. It requires work. I thought that that was one really intersting thing about vacation. On the contrary, family is always there. We had a great Thanksgiving with all of the normal traditions of the holiday. I loved it. One thing that I found interesting is a conversation that I had with my older cousin Paul. He is one of my great friends, and I've always looked up to him. He's four years older than me and more or less, my big brother. He is my only cousin that lives near me, and we've grown up together as if we were siblings. Both being only children, it gave us someone to fight with and someone to get advice from. To others, he might seem scary. He is tattooed, ear gages, motorcycle riding, rock music loving guy. But to me? He's one of my role models. After Thanksgiving dinner, he helped me compile my movie for Lit class, considering he went to college for Film. As the movie was loading, I began to think about all of this. All my life, I tried to strive to hang out with the older cousins and be "one of the guys." I thought that it was so cool to have my cousin be in college and longed for the chance to go visit him. Then, I started thinking of whether or not my younger cousins think of me in this way. What kind of example am I giving to them? Given, I've learned mostly from Paul's mistakes, but throughout it all he has been nothing but nice to me and always there to help. When I started to think of it, I'm jipping my younger cousins. As much as I like to be, I'm not there to help them or anything that the older guys did for me. I made a point to hang out with them the rest of the night, and they seemed to really enjoy that. I noticed the same enthusiasm of when I asked them to go for a walk with me as when Paul and the other guys would ask me when I was younger. I promised them that when I got home for Christmas break I was going to take the girls out shopping for presents for Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas. Hopefully I can make this a fun tradition that will be forever in their memory. I hope that by doing this, I can have them someday realize about bringing down sincerity to their younger cousins, because as an only child, I know taht it was a significant part of my life. I hope that they can see that too.