Throughout my life, I have been relatively healthy, with the occasional times when I get out of shape or have some other health issue. In recent years, I have prioritized staying physically fit by doing things like weight lifting, running, and volleyball. However, there have been some repercussions for my lifestyle. One of these is that my tendons and bones often hurt daily. Now, this doesn’t make my life impossible to navigate; however, the little things bother me the most. For example, when walking down the stairs, one of the bones on my left knee will pop now and then, which throws me off balance just a tiny bit, making me take a moment to regain my balance. Also, my tendons hurt quite a lot, making it hard to do things like squat down without feeling my knees. My main issue is my finger joints, which are always uncomfortable throughout the day and hard to move if the weather becomes too cold. This causes me to warm up my hands in my pocket constantly. Not to mention, I crack my knuckles such an absurd amount that I feel it makes the problem worse, although I continue to do it because it provides slight relief of the pain in my fingers for about 5 seconds, then it comes back just as bad. My fingers experience this, and my wrists and knuckles hands pretty much have arthritis. In short, I’m an old man in a young person’s body. 

PC: https://cdn3.vectorstock.com/i/1000×1000/89/82/arthritis-doodle-icon-hand-drawn-vector-37698982.jpg

Now, this isn’t the Cold War, and she’s no communist, but boy, is she something. In this past week, a lot has happened in my life. My junior year of high school has begun with lots of work on the horizon. I’ve started playing volleyball at a club. I failed my driving test, and my sister left for Italy, Rome, never to be seen again.

Before she went on her adventure to the land of independence and pizza, I had been preparing myself to live the quiet life. Spending my days being able to sit anywhere in the house that I wanted to without an overwhelming presence always a room or two over. As I sat at my desk, imagining myself being able to eat food out of the fridge without worrying about whose it was, my wonderful mother knocked on the door.

As she entered the room, I could feel that she had something serious to talk about, and serious it was… I asked her what she came to talk about, and as she began to speak, she said something that I was truly not expecting. My mother proposed the idea of a Russian girl, who had been my sister’s best friend and travel buddy to many places around the world, to live inside the house as my sister was leaving and we would have the space.

I thought about it for a while, and after listening to the circumstances of this Russian girl and being as I lived with an older sister who has one of the strongest personalities I’ve ever seen, I thought, “Sure, why not? It won’t be any harder.” and, well, I was right.

As the school year started, I woke up. Another day of my usual morning routine, except this time I woke up to find someone else in the house. Now, this didn’t come as a shock as I knew she was moving in for about 3 weeks at that point; however, it was certainly different. Her presence brought along many changes in the environment that I wasn’t expecting.

As she came into the house, one of the first things I noticed change was my skin. Since she forced me to use some of her many skincare products from her two endless bags of products, it almost felt like she was the Santa Claus of skincare coming to my house to give me my gifts every other night.

Another unexpected change I experienced was the number of times I used the words “What was that?” or “Huh, could you say that again?” as I have nowhere near the experience of “Raglish” (Russian English) that my sister had. So, as she tries to talk about her day or whatever she is feeling, I only understand about 60% of what she’s trying to convey to me. Although I have a feeling this skill will improve with time.

Overall, my life really hasn’t changed all that much, but we will see in the future to come.

PC: https://jsis.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/800px-Vladimir_Putin_and_Barack_Obama_2015-09-29_01-800×494.jpg