Presentin' Teddy Smile

in a garden in Scotland

Moin, it’s me. I suppose most of you reading this will probably be friends, so I hope you’ve all been good since the last time we met, to everyone who is not a friend yet, hope you're fine as well, and I hope we'll meet sometime. Welcome to my attempt to keep everyone up to date about the stuff I do as I am heading east for a while.

For everyone who doesn’t know me: I’m Tilly, straight outta high school straight into a 15 month summer holiday. I’ve got a cat called Woody Toast, and a huge world map and a picture of a shark hanging in my bedroom. I really like mayonnaise, I often just lie on the floor, and I find philosophy and physics to be the dopest things to study, always. I hate when people take about hate like it’s normal, so I guess I hate hate. Therefore I’ll just use the word dislike. So just to say, now I think about it, I “dislike”, people who start every second sentence with “I do this” and “I do that”. Hello, there’s a big difference between confidence and arrogance.

Other than that egoism is stupid, Ignorance might be bliss, but it also just something people do because they are too lazy to think.

About that some smart person (don’t know who) once said that “Thinking is difficult, that is why most people judge”

To that person: You’re right.

Conveniently I just kind of realized that I’ve just started a blog on mainly myself. Hello hypocrisy.

But bare with me, I’m pretty sure I’m on the right way to not becoming such a person that is so full of him or herself. Actually, I’m just documenting what I think will be one of the most humbling experience ever.

After all, it’s safe to say that my throwing myself out there will most likely show me very quickly just how small I am in the big world.

Not to say that everyone who has not yet jumped in the cold water one way or another is on the way to become an ignorant Know-it- all. But I think everyone who has been to the other side of the world or somewhere close to it, especially at a young age, will tell you that those travels are like a shock therapy in what It means to be a human right now.

Angelina Jolie ( who is very boss btw) once held a speech talking about how everything you do will have no meaning if you are not doing to be of use to others.

Here is the speech, needless to say, I was crying by the middle of it.

I don’t understand it either, why … this is my life. When most people in most places, can only dream about the sense of security that I have known for all my life.

“My”, that’s the tipping point. “My life is MY life”, I can choose whatever I want, and I chose 5 months in Nepal, not later, but right now.

I am just 19 now, still learning, I’ve had my mind well occupied by schoolwork for about a decade now, and I did love the classroom, but I would never want to let 4 walls contain me. It’s been long enough, to everyone who apparently knew me so well, you can still tell me who you think I am, I'm just no longer listening.

My point here probably is, that a lot of people, probably everyone in our corner called third richest country in the world, forgets every once in a while that all planets and stars don’t turn around oneself.

If I was to introduce one law, it would be to oblige everyone to look at a picture of the earth from space for a few minutes (a few hours for people like Trump) every day, just to put things into perspective.

Were close to flying to Mars, but we can’t keep ourselves from being led into a crossfire by our own arrogance. If people had the image of the small in mind while going through their day, I believe a lot of things would be one very differently.

This idea is not entirely mine, it is very inspired by one of the coolest mecs ever if you ask me. His name is Carl Sagan, he was a physicist who did all kinds of dope things like engraving messages to extraterrestrials on golden records and then sending them to the borders of the galaxy, he also made my favorite TV series named “cosmos- a spacetime odyssey” (new and old versions are 10/10). Anyhow, here’s another link to his video about that picture showing the earth as seen from the moon. He explains it faaaarrrrr better than I could.

I’ll write more about why I am doing what I’m doing later, promis.

For now, I’ll just quickly explain why the blog’s called how it is.

Last Christmas break, Irma, Natali, Paula and I went to Italy. On our last night, we went for dinner in some worn down dodgy restaurant next to the airport. Some Italians started talking to us, all the others knew either Spanish or Italian, so there were talking back, I for my part, just sat there smiling like a lamp post.

After about an hour, one of the guys asked what “Smile” (me obviously) in the corners was so happy about. After we left, we laughed so much, I had a cramp.

Then this June, when the crew and I went to a festival, I was most of the time among the last people to go into the tent at night, and almost always the last person to come out. One time, some guy called his friend Teddy, which woke me up, and I said “here”. Ever since, “Teddy Smile” has been up and first in line when it comes to hilarious ideas, not rarely leading to spontaneous trips and memorable night outs.

On two occasions this names made me cry from laughing, so in honor of moments like that, I then decided this alias will be my signature for clumsy attempts at blogposts, mainly destined to reassure my mom that I’m still alive ( she reallllly trusts me you know)

I liked the sound when I added exportin’ to the name, so here I am, your classic privileged white girl trying to find herself.

No one really told me how that is supposed to happen? Do I just fly to Bali with a printed picture of myself and ask around if anyone has found or knows this girl? Then take 100 Instagram picture titled with “I love exploring new cultures”, in which I am showing some food I actually couldn’t eat because it was too spicy, showing me with an elephant in Thailand (the poor dude’s most likely mistreated 99% of the time), then maybe me from the back in some Vietnamese temple and then some random pictures of the nature so people won’t think I’m entirely self- obsessed on Insta (just partly).

And then I just come back? Do I have to book two seats on the plane, one for the old me and one for the new one?

Jokes aside, I’m unserious about my life most of the time, but my motivation for this is among the first things that I know I’m absolutely sure of.

I’ll write about a post all about what got me here sometime soon, for now, I’ll briefly explain what “this” is.

I am currently working for the ONGD FNEL for one month as part of a voluntary service, again, I’ll write another post about how we work here, later.

On the 16 of November, I am flying to Nepal where I am staying for 5 months. I’ll be working for a Nepalese NGO focused on educating young local farmers in the field of sustainable and innovative agriculture, in the long shot the project is aimed at making the people involved more economically independant and thus providing them with a better quality of life.

After these months, I’ll be somewhere around Tibet, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos or Cambodge. Apparently, in Asia, one doesn’t really plan things, which suits me quite well.

That’s all for now folks,

in friendship,

TEDDY SMILE