and I threw us into the flames

I am extremely frustrated with a lot of people and a lot of things right now, so I'm going to make a lovely post about something that makes me smile.

I spent two weeks of this past summer at a marine biology-centric program in Sarasota, Florida. There were twenty-four of us in "fish camp," and while I didn't care for a lot of the other kids in the program (for the most part they were immatureeee. and really girls, talking about how people look gross in their swimsuits is not cool), I met a wonderful gal who goes by the name of Maja. (pronounced 'Maya' - she's Polish)

In icebreakers at the beginning of the program, Maja told us that she sings at local coffeeshops in her hometown in Arkansas, and a week after the program ended she was trying out for American Idol in Nashville. Of course we made her sing for us, haha. She had a beautiful voice, and we were all blown away by her. So I decided to be friends with her. :) That's how I roll at new programs like that, folks. A little friendliness goes a long way.

Maja didn't hang out much with anyone except her roommate McKenzie for the first few days, but I was persistent. A few nights into the program we slept over at an aquarium, and Maja and I put our sleeping bags next to each other in front of the amazing tableau of fish swimming all around us. We ended up "tenting" our sleeping bags so we could text without having our phones blind people, and we stayed up and giggled and talked about life until both of us fell asleep.

And from then on, Miss Maja and I were buds. She hung out with a group that called themselves the "Sexy Six" - one of them was McKenzie - but as we became immersed in our intense research projects and started bonding over dissections and lectures and dolphins she started always coming back to me. She might sit with the Sexy Six at breakfast, but whenever we'd walk across campus to do our morning lab work or wade into Sarasota Bay in the evening for field work, we were always together.

And let me tell you, it was nice. I haven't had a best friend since my elementary school bud Emilee, and having someone that I knew held me above everyone else was, well, special. For the first time since Emilee I wasn't paranoid about how I was interacting with someone or worried when they hung out with other people. Because I knew my little fish would always swim back to me.

I'll make another post about Maja another time - it's getting late and I'm losing my train of thought. We didn't have a relationship beyond anything platonic, but she's been one of the most important people in my life in the past year, and she warrants at least two or three posts.