Let It Snow

There's something about winter that makes you smile. It might be how beautiful snow looks as it falls to the ground, or it might be the relief of waking up and finding out there's a snow day, or it might be the excitement of the weeks leading up to Christmas. There's just so much happiness and joy that's spread around, and the atmosphere of the world seems to have brightened like the holiday lights that outline houses.

I'd like to apologize in advance for this post. I didn't have my camera with me this weekend so most of these pictures were taken on my phone and are really blurry and bad quality.

But anyhow, Christmas is in exactly one week! You wouldn't believe how excited I am. I think I like the days leading up to Christmas more than Christmas itself, just because I love the atmosphere that the holiday season brings. Too bad that after the New Year's hits, I find myself wishing that winter would hurry up and end. There's just nothing to look forward to after New Year's.

So on Friday, my dad surprised me and took me to this house nearby. They had so, so many Christmas lights, it was breathtaking. Everything was just so beautiful that I whipped out my phone and felt like a little kid at the zoo or something. The house even had a river in their front yard and had a bridge to cross.

I think I might go back sometime soon with my actual camera and do the house/lights some justice. Plus, I really love Christmas lights, and the house is only 10 or so minutes away. :)

Anyhow, let's see. Yesterday I went last-minute gift shopping. And right after, I drove to Giuseppe's to meet up with Andrea, Eddy, Emily, Iris, John, Michael, and Nick. We ended up ordering two large pizzas since we didn't know what to get, and it was just tons of fun catching up and laughing.

Right after we finished eating, we crossed the street and went to Thunderbird to go bowling! It was packed there since there was some bowling league or something like that. So we had to wait 45 minutes to get two lanes next to each other. We were pretty split on whether or not to wait. But in the end, we did, and I'm glad, too! To kill some time, we played on the two arcade games that were there. It wasn't until 75 cents into the game I was playing with Emily that I realized my gun wasn't even working................awkward.

So then after annoying the guy who worked there a countless number of times, we finally got our two lanes. :) We split up into 4 vs. 4 so we had the boys bowl in one lane and the girls bowl in the other. Eddy put in all of the names for the guys which ended up being Po, Wangstr, JK, and Eddhjjjjjii. John put in all of the girls' names which were Takimotors, Trackstar, Asian, and Siri. LOL don't ask. I don't even know.

We bowled the first game, and the guys beat the girls. So to make it interesting, we put a wager on the next game: the two individuals with the lowest scores would have to do whatever the other six came up with. We haven't come up with something yet, but Michael and Nick lost that. It was really, really close though.

So then in the game after that, we did a team wager: boys vs. girls. It had to be the most intense game I've ever played. The girls won in the end though! It was 394-374, and the only reason we won was because they kept throwing away their strikes by getting gutter balls right after. HAHA.

And we still had 30 minutes after that, so we did another team wager. The girls won by a lot since the guys gave up and competed against each other by seeing who could bowl the fastest. So now we're coming up with the punishments for the losers! I'm not mean enough to think of something good though, but thank goodness the guys didn't win any. Their punishments would have been..................no comment.

Yes. I was "trackstar" LOL. But I ended up breaking 100 three times, which I was completely surprised about.

After laughing and talking for the whole two hours we played bowling, it was around 10:15 so we all went home. It was tons of fun though, and I'm glad that we didn't leave and go do something else.

So when I got home, I had to go finish this application thing for some art competition. I doubt I'll win, but I submitted two of my paintings. I had them named as "Snowy Day" and "Autumn," but I realized how lame that was so I changed it to "Winter Solstice" and "Autumnal Equinox." Still lame, but at least they connect in a sense! Here they are:

Alright. I should go back to reading Romeo and Juliet. It's such a lovely play, but I can't understand half of it. Shakespeare, why must you be so brilliant but so complicated?

This upcoming week should be bittersweet. I have tests nearly every single day this week, but at the same time, it's the last week before we get off for winter break so everyone has the holiday cheer.

MONDAY 12/19: World Lit quiz, winter concert, AP chem test.
TUESDAY 12/20: Word Lit quiz, AP calc quiz.
WEDNESDAY 12/21: My brother comes home from college! Happy Hanukkah!
THURSDAY 12/22: Physics test, track meet, SAT scores.
FRIDAY 12/23: AP euro test, candygrams!, cousin comes, lunch table polyana!

Anyhow, have a beautiful week everyone! I'll be posting more this week, so until then. :)

Silent Bells

Every smile tells a story. Every wound is an unfinished chapter. And every scar is a painful reminder of what happened. The scars on my body tell me how foolish I was to ever let you into my life. They remind me that I was wrong for ever liking you, and you were even more wrong for trying to fix everything.

Taken back in October when we were celebrating my mom's birthday. (Really shows how much motivation I have to upload pictures.) I kind of like how this one turned out because the lighting wasn't all that bad. Normally birthday cake pictures turn out horribly wrong since there's no natural lighting. (Example A: the photos I took for my dad's birthday...those were.....no comment, LOL.)

But I just want to wish a very happy birthday to AAC. <3 Happy seventeenth, SISTA! :)
And now a quick shout-out to Christina whose birthday is in 5 days. (In case I don't make it on here. Which I'm sure I won't seeing as how busy school is.) <3 Enjoy your seventeenth!!

Anyway, this past week has been particularly brutal. I've averaged 3-4 hours of sleep every night, and then go to track practice after school every day until 5PM. To top it all off, the temperature's slowly dropping and the wind is picking up. Today it was around 30-40 degrees. It's getting too cold for my heat-loving self.

But the cold only means that snow should be on its way soon. :) I still can't believe we got snow in October this year, but not a speck of snow this month. I hope that there'll be a white Christmas, but it normally never happens here. :(

Speaking of Christmas, today I put up my Christmas tree! (Pictures to come in my next post.) My parents wanted absolutely nothing to do with it so I did the entire thing myself. /: My dad offered to help after I had the tree up, but then disappeared somewhere for the rest of the night. And my mom was on the couch sleeping as she has major jet lag after coming home from China yesterday.

But yeah. Other than that, not much has gone on. I've eaten a countless number of cake balls this past week (pictured above). They're so heavenly, my god. There's red velvet, coconut, chocolate fudge, and German chocolate, and they're all so delicious. Red velvet is my personal favorite just because red velvet makes everything better.

Oh, and my mom brought home tons of fun stuff from China that I'll hopefully put in one of my next posts. She brought me back some pens, a pencil sharpener (in the shape of a rabbit o__o), a pencil holder, some food, a bunch of small wallets, and...a slingshot. HAHAHA. Yes, a slingshot. She saw it at one of those little markets and it apparently was fairly cheap, so she bought it. I feel like I'm going to have so much fun with it, but I don't know how yet.

As for recent purchases (I really need to stop this bad habit), I went out and bought $20 worth of things at a dollar store today. Hahaha. It wasn't for me though. I bought little toys and gloves and such to put in stockings for the B101 holiday fundraiser. We basically give toys and other things to little kids! And after that, I went to DSW and bought a pair of Sperry's. Then went to Dick's Sporting Goods to buy my brother some more UA stuff. Oh, and I got him Inheritance today that I will soon wrap for his Christmas present. I really hope he hasn't read it yet.

And I bought Blink-182's new (ish) album last weekend. So much love on one CD. <3

Well that just about sums up these past few weeks! I promise I'll blog more often especially because winter break is only two weeks away. :) I'll definitely be blogging next weekend as many of my friends and I are planning on going bowling. ........That should be interesting, LOL.

Stay warm, and have a wonderful weekend. :) Bye!

Thanksgiving and Black Friday

Have you ever been so happy, but you don't know why? You feel as if you're on top of the world, but you're not sure what change of events occurred or why you were unhappy in the first place. It's a funny feeling, I'll give you that. It's like your insides were replaced and all of the anguish and pain somehow faded away. I don't think I'll ever know the true cause of this feeling, but who cares about the roots behind it when all you can do is smile?

I'm a wee bit late with the Thanksgiving wishes, but I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving filled with tons of food, laughter, and family. <3

I actually still need to upload some more pictures from my camera to my computer so I'm in a bit of a photo drought again.

Until then, enjoy some of my long overdue pictures that I took while I was in Las Vegas! This was taken inside The Venetian, which was definitely my favorite casino. The picture shows the shopping center that was there which featured the streets of Venice. They even had the gondola rides which I found particularly wonderful.

Anyhow, today is Black Friday! If you don't live in America, let me give you a synopsis on Thanksgiving/Black Friday. Basically Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday in November. It's celebrated in the US and Canada, except Canada celebrates it in October and doesn't recognize Black Friday. But Thanksgiving is a time typically based around giving thanks for what you have and who you spend each day with. Everyone gets off, and it's a time for family to reunite and enjoy a day together. I also see it as a time to watch beautiful parades on TV along with a time to eat tons of delicious food for dinner. The famous Thanksgiving dinner typically consists of turkey, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, corn, and cranberries, but of course there's always more. ;D

That being said, Thanksgiving is always tons of fun and many great leftovers always come out of it. Every year my family hosts a Thanksgiving party, and this year I spent it watching movie after movie. I ended up seeing Juno, Elf, Kung Fu Panda, and Wall-E. My brain felt like it was going to explode.

And since Thanksgiving is around 1 month away from the holidays, it's typically known as the start of the holiday season. So every year, the day after Thanksgiving is known as "Black Friday." It's basically a day where everything in stores, including TVs, phones, computers, clothes, etc., is marked down. Lots of people don't sleep, or they wake up at around 4AM to go shopping. If you go out to shop too late, everything will be gone! And this year was my first year of actually going out. I left my house at around midnight and came back at 2. Then I went out again at 10 after I slept for a few hours. ;) At midnight there were tons of good sales like buy 1 get 1 free and 40% off everything. I got three sweaters/cardigans for $61.20 which is fairly cheap seeing as they were all $40 at original price. :) I wish I stopped by H&M and Forever 21 though.

(The photo above features my another one of my favorite casinos that was called "New York, New York." It basically mimicked the streets of New York City on the inside, and on the outside, there was a huge roller coaster. I ended up riding it, and it was tons and tons of fun. You could see the city while you were riding it which made it even cooler.)

When I went out at 10, I bought a video camera (that I'll be getting for Christmas!), some sportswear for when the days get colder at track, and a pair of shoes. :)

After that, I went to Emily's house once again to work on our atom hotel project. We basically have to build a hotel for electrons that represents quantum mechanics. It's basically been a huge pain, but we're nearing the end. Maybe I'll take pictures when we're finished.

And after, I went to a sushi buffet with my parents, brother, and cousin. Everything was so delicious there: from the rolls to the udon to the hibachi to the crepes. Mmm.

(This was inside the casino entitled "Caesar's Palace." It was another one of my favorites, too! Inside, there were all of these beautiful structures like this one.)

So, if you went out shopping today, did you buy anything that you really like? Or did you buy presents for your family/friends? :) I didn't buy anything for anyone else as I'll be doing that later in December, but I got tons of new things that I love. I'll most likely upload photos later.

(The streets of Las Vegas/a fake Eiffel Tower!)

Enjoy the rest of your weekend! <3 Bye!

The One That Got Away

When you leave this town, will we still talk? Will we ever see each other again? Will we pick up where we left off or pretend like we've never met each other? You say that everything will be alright, but how can I be sure? How can I believe you after all of these times that you've pushed me down? How can I believe you after you've torn me apart? I can't. And that's what scares me. I'm so scared of the future and all that it'll bring. But this is life, and life stops for no one.

I wish this picture turned out better than it did. It was overcast that day so the colors aren't too great. I might mess around with it later to try to make it better. But the inspiration for this was seeing all of the leaves turn to orange and red and begin to fall. It's autumn's high point right now meaning that it's extra beautiful around here. But soon, the leaves will all be gone, and winter will start. I'm not sure I'm ready for winter coldness. It's already 30-40 degrees around here.

And I'm sorry for taking so long to post again. I planned on making a post sometime this past week, but I've been super busy and exhausted. Plus, I'm too lazy to move my pictures from my camera to my computer which is why this post will ignore the things that happened last week (i.e. my friend's surprise party, my trip to the city, my tennis banquet, etc.). But I'll make a post on those soon, I swear!

On a different note, school is horrifying. The first quarter ended the other day, and I never want to go back there. My grades were terrible compared to last year's. But I know I can still try to bring them up this quarter. I. Will. Do. This.

Anyhow, Thanksgiving's on Thursday! I'm so excited that the days seem to go by even slower than they did before. Thanksgiving's a time of happiness, family, love, friends, food, shopping (Black Friday!), and so much more. I can't wait to sit down and have an amazing Thanksgiving dinner then stay up late/wake up early to go Black Friday shopping. :) If you live in America, what are you doing for Thanksgiving? And if you don't, do you wish you celebrated Thanksgiving?

Alright, well I need to go study! SAT IIs are coming closer, and I haven't even started studying yet. :(
And if I don't come on here before Thursday, I hope all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. <3

11/11/11

Even though it's 11/11/11, we shouldn't be too caught up in all of its glory. What we don't realize is that each day won't occur again for another 100 years, not only special days like 11/11/11. We can't ever get back yesterday, and soon enough, today will be just a memory, too. But the important thing is to just remember to take each day and life it to its fullest. Take a risk, go on an adventure, stay up until 4AM watching videos when you have school the next day. Do all of it, and think of more. Simply live, enjoy, and sit back for the ride.

Happy 11/11/11! I've been waiting for this day for over three years, and now that it's here, I'm not exactly sure what to think. I adored writing the date today on all of my papers--the unity of the numbers made me smile, for really no particular reason. But me being the superstitious person that I am, stared down the clock endlessly until it struck 11:11:11AM while in physics class. As soon as it did, I gave a little smile and made my wish. I hope it comes true. I really hope it does.

I want to keep this post short as I have pictures and a whole rant to write, but I want to keep it for the end of the weekend/early next week. I think it'll ruin the mood now, and I have a friend's surprise party tomorrow and a tennis banquet on Sunday, so the post should be more interesting than most of my posts here now. But basically to sum it all up, junior year is tiring. The end of the first quarter was today, and let me tell you, this is not exactly how I wanted to finish, grade-wise that is. But I'm promising myself that I'll try harder, so I hope things work out in the end. And other than that, I bought a few new things that I want to share. But I'll save all of that for later. (As a spoiler, I bought two beautiful, beautiful books today. I'm $30 less rich, but it was so worth it. I can't wait to read them.)

I hope you all had an amazing 11/11/11. :)
Have a wonderful weekend!

Haikus and Halloween

I scare myself sometimes with my thoughts. I think of such unhappy things that I start getting the chills and feel the need to just sit down and take some time to cry. The unpleasantness that my mind undergoes affects my entire soul, filling my eyes with hate instead of love and fear instead of strength. I wish that these times would go away. I wish that I could wake up and realize that all of this was just a dream. All of this pain, this sorrow, this difficulty, all of it was made up. I wish that I could just find my way out of this nightmare, for the nights are beautiful, but the mornings lead the way.

I am so into writing haikus lately. I feel my mind thinking and breathing in a 5-7-5 meter. You probably think it's weird, but it makes me happy, for some odd reason. I used to hate writing haikus because of all of the restrictions, and now I feel like it's a sort of puzzle, testing my abilities to manipulate words and meanings into such a small margin. About the picture above though, please excuse it. First off, I'd like to move "broken chains fall down" up to the top of the haiku, and then this was all just a really quick test to see how it'd look like if I were to scan in some images. My scanner's not yet connected to my computer though.

So this past Monday was Halloween! (It's literally felt like ages ago, no joke.) I was super lame and dressed up as what I did last year, but to tell you the truth, I wasn't even planning on going trick-or-treating until a few hours before I left. I ended up being an M&M. :) I only went with Emily because everyone else ditched us. Yes, long story short, our group of 8 became 2 in a matter of 30 minutes. So cool.

But it's okay because we were out for a few hours and had a lovely bonding experience. Just kidding, it was actually freezing outside and our hands were about to fall off from the cold. But overall, it was really fun.

I also got some UNICEF money so that made me happy. :) Basically every year, I go trick-or-treating, and while I go, I ask if people want to donate to UNICEF. All the money goes to charity which is really nice. :)

Other than that, the rest of the week slowly tore me apart, piece by piece. I found myself staying up late again, and this morning, I took the SATs. If you don't live in America, the SATs is this test that basically tests your knowledge. It's basically essential at this day and age to take the SATs if you want to get into college. If not the SATs, then the ACTs, though the SATs are more national. Just an FYI, the SATs take 4+ hours to finish. So by the time I was finally done the 10th section, I wanted to scream with joy. Such an amazing feeling when you put your pencil down after that final question. :') Too bad I'll most likely be retaking them in January or March. Fml.

But I have so much homework to do that I haven't already done yet. Tomorrow's going to be brutal, but I'm sure that I'll somehow manage to get through it (AKA I'll stay up until 3-4 to finish everything). In the mean time, I'm extremely exhausted and worn out from this whole week, so I'll leave this at that.

Have an amazing rest of the weekend!

Don't forget to turn your clocks back tomorrow morning. :)

Homecoming

As much as I want to leave this little town, I'm apprehensive. I feel like I'll miss waking up to the hum of a lawn mower. I feel like I'll miss the runs around the neighborhoods. But at the same time, I want to live in a place where I can stop by a few thrift stores on my way home or eat at a little creperie with my friends. I want to walk the streets filled with bustling people, each with his/her own story. I want to have the wind from the sea push my hair back while the sound of gulls' laughter and children's shrieks fill the air. I know that even if I end up somewhere far, far away, that this place will always be my home whether I like it or not. This little town, the shadows of places like New York City and Las Vegas, this little town will always be a part of me whether I'm here or not.

(Just as a heads up, this post will be extremely long. So much has gone on these past few days, and I've finally opened up some memory on my computer for my pictures from back in August.)

So this past week was spirit week. I explained it in one of my earlier posts, so I'll spare you from repeating myself. But it's basically one of the best weeks of school of the entire year. It's a shame that it's over already and we still have 7 months of school left before summer.

Every day during spirit week is a new theme!

 

Those were the five days! Friday was hat day, Monday was dress up day, Tuesday was Hawaiian day, Wednesday was inservice (no school!), Thursday was pajama day, and Friday was class color day.

The class colors are black for seniors, white for juniors, blue for sophomores, and red for freshmen. And each grade has to come up with an original theme that fits their class color! This year, seniors were end of the world (because they're class of 2012), juniors were milk, sophomores were Facebook, and freshmen were human/student body.

My class (2013/juniors) is pretty spirited. We came in 2nd both freshmen and sophomore year, which is a major accomplishment. This year, we tried beating the seniors once and for all! So essentially this year's spirit week was just a major battle between the junior and senior classes.

(These new two photos are Christina's. Please check her blog out! She's amazing and adorable.)

(C) Christina.

Throughout the first four days of the week, we take part in bringing in as many soda tabs, pennies, dimes, nickels, dollars, and cans as we can. The class with the most cans at the end of each day wins a certain number of points, and the other classes win points as well, just not as many. At the end of the week, the soda tabs and pennies are counted. The class with the most pennies gets a bonus, and then the class with the most points remaining wins the most points. (For the penny jar, other classes can put in other coins/dollars to try to subtract points!) In the end, we were putting $20 bills in each other's jars. We, the junior class, ended up coming 2nd in the penny/soda tab competition even though we had over $70 in pennies.

Then on Friday, everyone tries to bring as many quarters as they can to try to get the most time for foul shooting during the pep rally! We came in 2nd for that as well.

But throughout the whole week/a few weeks in advance, 10-20 of us stayed after school to help out with hallway decorating! The hallway has to deal with the class's theme, and a skit must go along with it. On Friday morning at around 6AM, the skits were presented. I wasn't in the skit, but I arrived at school before 6 to do some last minute helping out. The hallways are probably my favorite part of the whole week because of how well they turn out in the end.

Part of our skit!

I drew the cardinal! It looks so disproportionate though, but I couldn't be bothered to fix it at the time. The main thing I worked on for the week looks amazing, but I'm not posting a picture because it shows my school name on it. But take my word for it, it looks good. :)

After our skit was over, a bunch of us ran over to the sophomore's hallway to take a look/listen to their skit.

A very blurry senior class! These are just the seniors that came early to help on Friday. If you're wondering why some of the girls are dressed so interestingly, it's because on the Friday of spirit week, the senior girls dress up for "senior slut day." What bothered me was that the sophomore girls tried doing the same thing, but it's tradition that only the seniors do it.

The freshmen's alcove/hallway!

The school day was also really laid back and relaxing. I only learned in 2 of my 7 classes which is a pretty good deal, if you ask me. The picture on the right is Cory standing on a table in French class. Don't ask me why, haha. But in French, this kid from France came in, and we all started just asking him questions. HIS VOICE/ACCENT WAS GODLY. I wish I could speak French that well.

Kim/me/Berenice in English class. :)

Then in chemistry class, Emily and I spent the entire time staring at the clock, waiting for the pep rally to finally arrive. We started freaking out when we heard the marching band play through the halls. :)

The pep rally was my favorite part of the week. :) The juniors/seniors tried to out-cheer each other the entire time, which was just really fun. The male cheerleaders weren't as good as last year (hahaha), but it was still extremely interesting. When I got home, my throat felt sore from screaming/cheering so much. We ended up coming in 2nd place overall, but we still think it's rigged. THAT'S OKAY because next year we're going to dominate! AND we came in 1st place for hallway decorating which is really incredible because that's typically a senior-win. :)

Then on Friday night, it was our homecoming football game! I didn't go because I wasn't feeling very well/I didn't plan it with people, but it was against our school rivals. And basically if we won, we were going into the playoffs, and if we lost, we would be done for the year. And we won, 17-10! :)

Yesterday (October 29th), I woke up to a scene of...snow! It's only October, but for some reason, we experienced our first snowfall of the season! It was all so beautiful. (Currently there's still snow on the ground, but it's melting.) Please excuse the quality of these photos. I didn't dare go outside so these were all take through a window/screen. Sorry!

We ended up getting around 3-4 inches of snow, which is a lot for December, let alone October! Normally our biggest snowstorms here come in January. But I ended up losing power at around 2PM yesterday. I was actually dying of boredom at one point there. There was no Internet, no TV, no lights, and no HEAT. By 5PM, I was already freezing cold which resorted to many many layers. I ended up doing some calculus homework by the candlelight, and in the middle of a problem, the lights flickered back on, thank god.

And because of the snow, our homecoming dance, coronation ball, was rescheduled for today. I wasn't planning on going, but tons of people were upset about the change since it's a Sunday. I hope that everyone who was planning on going has a beautiful time. In the mean time...tonight IS mischief night...just kidding. :)

I'll be sitting at home trying to finish as much of my work as I can so tomorrow night I won't have too much homework. I'm so excited for Halloween, except I don't know what I'll dress up as yet!

Have a great weekend everyone, and happy almost Halloween!

Broken

It feels almost as if the pieces of me have shattered with no way to put them back together. I feel so broken inside; I feel as if every time I think something's going right, it falls apart the next day. Each time I think I'm rising out of this dangerous stage of life, it just gets worse. I can't take this. I can't take this.

And as sweet as everyone is to tell me, "It'll get better over time," I'm so sick of hearing it. It's easy to say that things will get better, I know that. Trust me, I've been leaving people messages everywhere telling them that the storm will pass, that better times are near. But I just want someone who's suffered, who's experienced this pain, to talk to. I want he or she to explain this suffering, this piercing of the heart. I want someone who's come out of the abyss to tell me that there's always hope. Because I know there is, but I don't know how to endure through this. I've never had to undergo something so painful before.

All I'm looking for is somebody that can be there with me while I sail through this storm.

These broken pieces,
These tears streaming down my face,
Inadequacy.

Life in Technicolor

As much as we hate admitting this, we need pain to survive. Where would we be without it? We'd be soulless creatures living in this big, vast world. The problem I see with so-called "utopias" is that we wouldn't know what true happiness felt like. Through all of these fights, these wars, these heartbreaks, these misfortunes, these losses, these hardships, we become better people. We learn through our suffering, and in the end, we're stronger. This pain that we hate so much, this pain that makes our insides twist and turn, this pain that pierces a hole in our hearts, it's what keeps us going.
                Pathei mathos. "With suffering comes wisdom."

I apologize for 1) not posting for a few weeks and 2) not having new pictures. This photo is indeed a scrap of my last "photoshoot" (if you will), but I'm still contemplating uploading it elsewhere. I've taken maybe 3-4 new pictures ever since this, but I'll upload them when I find the time.

I have so many things to say that I barely know where to start.

Well I guess first off, junior year is a pain. I find myself struggling in so many classes that it stresses me out. Physics will certainly be the death of me this year, but I think I'll somehow find my way out of this storm. We took a test yesterday on a subject that was somewhat straightforward, only for the exam to be difficult and disappointing.

Secondly, yesterday was the start of spirit week! If you don't live in America, spirit week is the week leading up to the homecoming football game/homecoming dance. (It's essentially that time of year that's brutally overused in movies and books.) We, the junior class, are attempting to win this year once and for all. As freshmen and sophomores we finished 2nd, almost (or as I still believe, we actually did) beating the seniors. I hope we can pull through with everything. But yesterday was hat day! It was tons of fun seeing everyone wear their special hats, etc. All the teachers looked different/informal with theirs. I don't know. But I'm really excited for this upcoming week, needless to say. Monday will be dress up day, Tuesday is Hawaiian day, Wednesday we have off from school, Thursday is pajama day, and Friday is class color day. Beware, I'll be posting tons of pictures next weekend. :)

Other than that, I've been shopping quite a bit lately. It scares me almost to see how much money I've spent. This weekend I bought 3 pairs of shoes. I was going to take pictures of them, but I didn't get the chance to, so maybe later! I bought a pair of brown (short top) boots, a pair of gray high top Converse, and a pair of black combat boots. Both pairs of boots can be worn two different ways (flipping over the top vs. not). I think before spring I'll buy another pair of Converse that aren't high tops. I like my non-high top Converse, but they're breaking, and I really wanted to have a pair of high tops. (Does this make any sense? Sorry, I'm rambling.)

Okay, I shall go now and study for the SATs/do my truck load of homework/study. Bye!

(P.S.- I really suggest you listen to Coldplay's songs. I wasn't too big of a fan up until now, but some of their songs are simply beautiful like the one featured in the title of this post.)

Fix You

It's this constant pain inside of me that makes me think twice about the people of this world. Who wants to hurt me? Who wants to help me? These days, I'm losing touch with everything--my family, my friends, my hobbies, my interests. I can't think straight, I can't see clearly. I'm so lost in this big, beautiful world with no one to guide me. I just want someone to lean on, someone to tell me that everything will be okay. Instead, I'm trekking this vast beauty with only hope by my side.

Rest in peace, Steve Jobs. <3 You will truly be missed. You show this world what it's like to be a beautiful, selfless person with an innovative and creative mind. I look up to you for all that you've been through and all that you've brought to society. You've managed to change this world while battling yourself, and if that doesn't exemplify a true hero, then what does?

I took that picture (quite obviously) a week ago. It's of my white iPhone 4, and I was just messing around with my dSLR and decided to take a picture of whatever I had in my hand. I kind of like the bokeh that came through in the background. But yes, it's a white phone, the lighting's just so bad that it looks black. I decided to put this picture in this post, even though I was going to scrap it, because of Steve Jobs' death. </3

Other than that, school's been a train-wreck. I find myself doing poorly on tests yet staying up until 2AM on a daily basis. I don't know what else to do other than sacrifice more of my time for work. I can't wait until this year is over, but it scares me to think about being a senior. I'm not ready to leave this place even though my mind is constantly wandering this earth.

On a different note, the title of this post is a song by Coldplay. I'm not a big fan of their music, to be honest. But of the whole X&Y album, this song caught my eye. It's the only Coldplay song, along with Viva La Vida, that's on my iPod, even though I have two of their albums. But I really enjoy "Clocks" as well, but I don't have my hands on it yet.

I apologize, but I'm out of pictures. So my blog will be somewhat inactive until I find the time to take more, sorry! But about the sweet sixteen I went to (as I promised I would blog about it), it ended up being formal, so I was glad that I dressed up at the very last second.

(These next few pictures were taken by Samantha. She's the person that hosted the party, along with her twin Stefani! I didn't bring my camera, so I just took some of her pictures to show you guys.)

The party was tons of fun, and I had a great time. We ate so, so much sushi, and I was stuffed by the end of the night! I also found out that there are these things called "Fun Chop" that you put on your chopsticks to help people use them better. I am still amused by them because I've just never seen them before.

With this note, I should go start homework as it's nearly 8PM. Tomorrow's Friday though which finally means a weekend full of relaxation and sleep studying for the PSATs/SATs and doing homework.