Independence.

"Blessed is this life, and I'm going to celebrate being alive"

It's Fourth of July! My most favorite holiday of the year!! I just love love love barbeques and fireworks and just having fun with friends. Last year I was at camp and it was POURING, so we went and saw a movie...it didn't even feel like 4th of July. I'm hoping this year is more fun, even if we don't get to catch fireworks. (It's supposed to pour AGAIN this whole weekend!) BUT...I am really excited because a bunch of my friends who worked at camp last summer are going down to Rutgers, and I'm going up, so I'll get to see everyone tomorrow night. Two of my friends are from England, so I haven't seen them since August!  

In other exciting news...MY COUSIN MEGHAN GOT ENGAGED TODAY!!!! Ahhhhh!!! I had a feeling it would happen this summer, and Meg called my mom this morning to tell her the good news!! Her ring is GORGEOUS and I know that her and Ray are going to be so incredibly happy together. I am so happy for them...they both deserve nothing but the best, and I love them both so much. Ah, I love weddings!! (PS. Meghan... DON'T GET MARRIED WHILE I'M IN SOUTH AFRICA!!!!)


Took this picture from the garden Em planted at home. I can't get the edges to look right, no matter how hard I try. But, I'm still learning. :-)

Speaking of Independence...Kelsey had me and my mom watch this awesome documentary on HBO tonight. It's called Ganja Queen. It's about a 27 year old woman named Schapelle Corby from Australia. She was visiting Bali, Indonesia to see her sister who was living there at the time with her husband. She flew out of Brisbane to Sydney to Bali. When she arrived in Bali, she was arrested because her boogie board bag was found to have an almost TEN POUND bag of marijuana in it. She did not bring the weed with her, they're thinking that the airport baggage people were using her as a mule without her knowledge to traffic the drug to Indonesia.  Her bags were never searched, and when the bag went through security in Brisbane, no one noticed anything out of the ordinary.  (And don't you think someone would have noticed a 10 lb bag of weed in a bag!?)

The maximum sentence for having drugs in Indonesia is the DEATH PENALTY BY FIRING SQUAD.

You have to see the documentary, it's put together so well...this poor woman and her lawyers are fighting a downhill battle with a third-world country who's police are corrupt, accept bribes, and have NO sort of system like ours to protect those who are accused of ridiculous crimes that they did not commit. They basically just take the airport security guard's word. It makes me sick to my stomach.  Also, the Indonesian government completely botched the entire investigation.  Wait, I take that back, there WAS NO investigation.  They burned her bag and the marijuana, so no fingerprints were taken from the bag.  They did, however, do a urinalysis, and Schapelle had no trace of any drug in her system.  She also had no criminal record or previous run-ins with the law.

To read more about Schapelle and her story, visit the website her family has created for her. This is one of the worst injustices I have ever seen or heard of. Schapelle is extremely lucky that she was not given the death penalty, however, she was still found guilty of a crime she did not in any way commit, and she will be paying for it for a very, very long time.