Monday, August 22, 2005

   The Story About Jo-chan
So... I'm new here... I'll do a quick little introduction thing...

There once was a girl named Jolene, whom all her friends called Jo or Jo-chan. She lives with her Mom and her younger twin brothers. She is 18 years old and her brothers are 16, 17 in October. She lives in a dumpy, little townhouse in Ontario, Canada and her family is continuously having financial problems. Her mother works at a job she hates (an insurance compay) in order to support and raise her family, but there never seems to be enough money to get by (especially since their house is falling apart and they can't afford to fix it. For instance, there's a huge hole in the wall beside the bathtub. Jo's family can't have showers because the water from the shower drips through the hole and into the basement two floors below and makes a big puddle where a bunch of bikes and junk are kept. This hole hasn't been fixed since Jo was 8 or 9 years old. All it costs to fix it is roughly $100-200. Appliances need to be replaced such as the fridge and the stove. The fridge's doorhandle has broken off, the temperature fluctuates, sometimes freezing bottles of water in the the back. The stove's door doesn't close. Jo's family uses the large garbage to sit in front of it to keep it shut. Among other repairs on the house includes a hole in the floor beside the bathtub, where if someone splashes too much water on the floor, it leaks through the floor and drips down to the main floor, right where the family's crap-of-a-computer sits. The screens to the back sliding door and the front door have huge holes in them and need to be replaced, as do the doors themselves. The door knob on the door to the family's one and only bathroom needs to be replaced because it broke off. There are many other little things that need to be fixed as well, but they are not so important to mention.).

Jolene is a hard-working 18 year old, as is her family. In this coming September, Jolene will be going to her first year of university and living in residence. Even though the university is in town (although it's clear across town and takes 40 minutes by express bus--Jo doesn't own a car or has her full license--or 80 minutes by regular bus), Jolene has decided to move into residence for her first year only because she wants to get the experience that everyone says is worth doing. Since Jolene is such a hard-working young woman, she has saved up more than half of the money she makes (just a little over half) from her part-time job in a movie cinema. For almost two years, she went from pizza-girl to team leader (ie, supervisor) earning a buck over minimum wage. Hours are long and busy, but Jolene is strong (and sometimes too stubborn) to give up. Although, come September 1st, she will no longer be working as she will spend all of her time in university studying, writing her Furuba fanfiction (as she is a Fruits Basket addict) and partying--which she lacked in her final year of high school--but still came out with an A- (just barely!). She has been recognized for her hard work in school by receiving a German Award for top student in her grade 11 and 12 German classes and her high school with be giving her a scholarship as well that is worth roughly $1000. She has also been granted an entrance bursary from her university worth $3000. Jolene should be okay financially in university, should all things work as they should (which didn't happen in July because the computer crashed when she discovered that everything she did back in June didn't work out somehow that had to be fixed via internet, but since her computer crashed, she had to use the public library's for several hours which took several days because you could only use the computers for an hour a day only--which was all organized electorically of course which was the reason why she couldn't sneak another couple hours in a day). Jolene recently bought her laptop for university and no longer has to put up with the disfunctional family computer, even though a friend of hers hooked her family's computer with a new hard-drive.

To this day, Jolene is a rape victum. She suffers from a bad case of "mosquito-bite-tis", the physical desease of being raped by mosquitos. The effects of this desease appear on the surface of her skin in large, red bumps, which are very ichy and cover every inch of her hands. She was spared some grief by being careful and using protection (long sleeved sweater and jeans and knee-high hooker-boots), but others in her situation were not so fortunate. The outdoor party, which was the cause of this tragic desease, has left a lasting effect on her as it was the best party she had gone to since Prom.

And now, Jolene moves onto the next challenge in her life (between scratching the bumps on her wrists and her hands); she will make home-make cream of brocolli soup for her family for the first time with the left-over veggies she brought from the party.

She pulls back her shoulder length, golden brown hair into a ponytail and sets out on her mission...
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