With numerous letters and e-mails, my cousin Sasha and I have kept our friendship alive. We’ve known each other since we were three. We said goodbye to each other when we were 11 and since then I’ve seen her only once. During these years, we only spoke once on the phone. Phone conversations don’t make much sense when you’re 1000 miles away. You can hear their voice, but you can’t tell how they feel because their voice is distant and unfamiliar. We learn about each other through our many letters. We send each other birthday and New Year’s cards. We say a lot in one letter, at least we try to. Although we’ve been apart so long, I think we know each other quite well. I know her secrets, her desires, her dreams, what she values, what she wants, and she knows that I know. Technology has allowed us to stay in touch. I see her tears and laughter when I read her letters, her smile and frown; she sees mine too. When I visited her four years ago, I thought we wouldn’t know each other, that we’d feel like strangers meeting for the first time, but I was wrong. Our relationship was stronger than before. I was half-American, new and changed, but she knew me. She recognized me; she saw and accepted the old and the new me. I knew her too, she’d changed, her voice, her tone and her thoughts were different. But she was everything I need, the perfect friend and sister.
Now we still e-mail each other to say ‘hi’ and ‘how are you’, and sometimes our sentences cover the whole page. We have kept the memories of our past together and we are still making new ones, even from far away.

I’m drinking a half glass of Ginger ale and listening to Madonna’s latest album, Confessions on a dance floor. I’ve been sitting here for hours, searching through old photos, wasting time, thinking, deciding. “Time goes by so slowly,” Madonna sings. She is right I think. In reality time does go by slowly, but in our head we fast forward everything to the future. Nothing is good enough in the present moment. Why? Is it because we think things will be better later?
I’m going to a graduation ceremony on Friday in Blacksburg, Virginia. It’s a four hour drive, but they say it’s a beautiful city. There was a time when long drives bored me, tired me, annoyed me. But it’s different today. Today, long drives mean I get more time to think, dream, and look outside the car window to what’s out there, whatever it is. I listen to the little conversations we have in the car, the funny or lame jokes, the gossip about the distant friends or cousins, the little stories that are told in great detail. I lean back on my seat, listen to their discussions or close my eyes and imagine my own stories. Time goes by so slowly, yet so fast. It’s strange.

On my way to the laundry room, I lay out the day’s agenda in my head. As I walk through the dark hallway, carrying the heavy basket of dirty clothes that are nearly falling out, I make a list of all the things I have to do. After I’ve put the whites in one machine and the colors in another, I head out and stop by the window right before the elevators. I look out the window whenever it’s sunny. It was sunny today. The remainder of yesterday’s snow is slowly melting, along with my bad feelings. I wait a while, taking in the warm sun, allowing it to pass through me. There are so many things I want, I think to myself. I forget about the list of to-do’s temporarily. I can do them tomorrow, I reassure myself.
I carry the empty basket back to my apartment. I’m alone again. There’s so much I have to do.

Le liked walking through the crowded side walks of Washington D.C, the heart of where she knew belonged to her. She often went by the Potomac River for long walks. She stood, watching the dark water that glowed with the reflection of the stars. People told her she was pretty; she believed them. Le liked watching faces, reading them, observing them. She could sit for hours just to watch the faces that passed her; they all had different stories. While she stood watching, men and women walked in front of her, talking, laughing, and sharing their life stories and adventures. Among them was the usual crowd of women who publicly announced their break ups on their tiny, wireless phones. Le listened to them sometimes, picturing their lives in her head.
There times when Le no longer wanted to watch the couples who held each others’ hand. She wanted to be them. She wanted to break away from her loneliness, her depression. She craved for attention. That was the only reason she wore the make up. She didn’t wear it all the time, but when she did, she felt better, more determined. There were times in which she only went outside just so someone would see her. At the bookstore, she walked by the shelves, glanced at the books, then searched for people who sat across from her. There was an old man who came in on occasion with his drawing board. He drew what he saw, people, the tables and the coffee cups. She liked sitting across from him on a sofa where she read her books. At times she looked up to see if he was watching her. She always wondered if he ever drew her. She liked to believe he did. Maybe he thought she was still a pretty woman.
Le sat on her red rug inside the bathroom and closed the door behind her. Her tears automatically poured out of her brown eyes. Everything was an illusion. She knew she had been fooling herself. She knew they had all fooled her. Pretty, they had said. But, that wasn’t good enough. Pretty hadn’t given her anything. The definition of beautiful and pretty were not the same. Le leaned back on the closed door, still crying.

We had our first snow today. The little white flakes melted in my red hair and landed on my forehead as I walked home from the bus stop. The earlier boring, blue sky was now a mix of pink and blue. It looked more beautiful and I felt a sweet contentment.
The snow has stopped now and I’m wondering whether we’ll have school tomorrow. Sleeping in on a snowy school day is still as sweet as it was eleven years ago. These are the days I get occasional flash backs to those years, the years I now want to relive. Every snow day, every storm, every Christmas and every holiday has its own memories; memories that make you wish time would stop.
In eleven days I will be born again. I want it to be perfect and I think a little bit of white flakes will give it that extra touch.

History can never be erased no matter how much we try to change the future. Somehow the past leaves its marks behind, the good and the bad.
For as long as we can remember, the status of women has always been lower than that of men. Men were the boss of the house; they’d cut wood and make most of the money. While men were out drinking beer at the bar, their wives stayed home to clean and take care of the babies.
Even now that we’re in the 21st century women are still women in the eyes of men . Although women have taken over men in many cases and have proved society wrong about their abilities, their pay checks still remain a few dollars less than those of the men. In some ways, women have lower self-esteems because of the way society raised them.
“When I cleaned, it was my duty and I had to do it. But if my brothers decided to help with chores, my mother would appreciate it because it wasn’t really their job,” says one woman.
I’ve seen many women with little self-esteem, even those who seem to have everything: the looks, the money, the dream family. Whatever the reasons, some men, good-looking or not, think very highly of themselves. They have that assurance and confidence that many women lack.
Women are powerful; they’ve stepped to the top of the plate, they’re ruling the world. But in reality, men are still labelling them as the weaker group, the more emotional and sentimental. Society has tried erasing the definition of women in history books, but the pencil marks will always remain.

For three years we watched each other grow into more mature and independent young women. We watched each other become more beautiful, intelligent, and more aware of the world around us. We laughed together at our own silliness and embarrassing moments. We went through rough days, days that seemed never ending; days that we just wanted to get through without ever looking back. We went through good days where we spent money on junk food and jeans we didn’t need. We sat together at lunch, ate homemade sandwiches or chips from the vending machines, and talked about the teachers we hated or loved. We couldn’t wait for high school to end because we wanted to go to our senior prom, get the class rings, and throw our caps in the air at graduation. That was our motivation, what kept us going. What we didn’t think about was that we’d also have to say good-bye to the most precious four years of our lives. We didn’t realize that we’d have to say good-bye to our close friends or the ones who didn’t know us but were nice enough to give us a smile from across the hall. We didn’t realize that we’d have to say good-bye to the teachers who watched out for us and listened to our incessant complaints about our problems. We didn’t realize we would have to say good-bye to four years of good, bad, sweet, and bitter memories that gave us an identity.
We were exhausted. N placed her head down on her Science text book that had a paper bag cover. E gazed somewhere else. I was thinking. Thinking about where we would all be next year and whether we’d ever see each other again. Three years ago this thought never crossed our minds; it didn’t even matter. But it mattered now. Suddenly we knew it would end. It finally hit us. N told me to stop thinking out loud. She was too tired to cry.