A 9 year old girl in China gave birth, so tragic and horrific. Underneath that article there was a link to a Daily Mail article about Britain's youngest mum, aged 11. It's a tragic and horrific story on a whole other level:

"The girl smokes 20 cigarettes a day despite being eight months' pregnant. She conceived aged 11 when she lost her virginity to a boy of 15 on a drunken night out with friends... The girl, who has shoulder-length dark hair, began smoking at nine and started drinking tonic wine and vodka cocktails at ten. She claimed her cigarette habit was not harming the health of her unborn child.

She said: "I can give up smoking at any time, but I don't find it affects my pregnancy."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-385968/Girl-11-Britains-youngest-mother.html#ixzz0eRGlQfss

Oh dead, this article pretty much describes the often used phrase "broken Britain."

I kind of love Adm. Mike Mullen.

From the Huffington Post: "No matter how I look at the issue," Mullen said, "I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens." Noting that he was speaking for himself and not for the other service chiefs, Mullen added: "For me, it comes down to integrity – theirs as individuals and ours as an institution."

Agreed.

Sometimes I feel so happy... Sometimes I feel so sad.

Classic.

I had a dream last night where I was pregnant and possibly in jail. But I didn't look pregnant, most chubby. So clearly there's some meaning in there. Also Ruth was a barrister for another prisoner, until she got replaced by this guy in my program. Oh dreams!

One visiting student's take on being an American in London. I don't know why they didn't ask me to write it! But seriously, it's a pretty good and I'm sure universal take. While I've found living/adjusting to living in London to be not too difficult, that's probably because I spent 9 months already adjusting to the British character. And Oxford was so so so much worse. But like subtly, so maybe it was all in my head. But probably not considering how long it took and how hard I worked to make British friends there. That might also just be the visiting student experience. Maybe it's different now that I'm an "actual" student and therefore on a level playing field. I don't know. It's probably way too early for me to be writing this much.

I do this...

via PostSecret

Wow, almost 24 hours and I am OFFICIALLY obsessed with Jens Lekman. Best lyrics ever, like these: And the music is amazing, catchy and beautiful and all round awesome. Super thanks to my girl Sara, who posted one of his videos on my facebook wall. I was looking for a new musician to be obsessed with and now I have one! And thank God for Spotify for allowing me to listen to all three of his albums legally, for FREE!

"When I said I wanted to be your dog
I wasn't coming on to you
I just wanted to lick your face
Lick those raindrops from the rainy days"

And the music is amazing, catchy and beautiful and all round awesome. Super thanks to my girl Sara, who posted one of his videos on my facebook wall. I was looking for a new musician to be obsessed with and now I have one! And thank God for Spotify for allowing me to listen to all three of his albums legally, for FREE!

The World Food Programme has begun a massive food aid distribution in Haiti. The most interesting part about this article is that the aid will only be distributed to women. Over and over again in my course I have learned that aid programmes directed towards women are the most successful. If that's not a loaded fact, I don't know what is. Also, I'm pretty hopeful that this distribution will be successful, even though food aid has had a shaky start since the earthquake. I wrote an essay about the WFP (who knows how I did on it ughhh) and they've been able to deliver food through some pretty extraordinary circumstances, so hopefully the Haitians will be able to get food. However, long term we'll see because the WFP has not been so successful with developing sustainable food security.