summertime

it seems so surreal that i am actually on summer vacation, and have been for a week now. you could say i've been livin' it up, but i feel more like i've been livin' it down because i don't really do anything exciting. pretty much the last few days i've been waking up around 9 [which is wonderful], going to the gym, napping, and watching mindless television movies. i did go shopping with julia, but i had no money so i couldn't get anything. i picked up a few job applications. i really need to get a job badly. i spent thursday with stephen, but even then all we did was lay in bed and watch movies and sit out by the pool and chat. yesterday was pretty productive. i went to the gym and then cleaned my car outside and inside. it really needed it. i suppose once i get a job and once my city class starts i'll be a lot more busy, or at least i will seem more busy. i think i want the public school kids to get out of school but in the end it doesn't really make a difference. i do know that i want my friends to come back from europe. i'm actually ok with my summer being like this; informal and pointless. i could spend endless hours just sitting by the pool and laying in the sun.

birthday

in case you were unaware, yesterday was my 17th birthday. i have to say 17 just doesn't seem as special as 16. 16 is sort of a milestone, as is 18, and 17 is just kind of stuck in between the two. although, i'm glad to have surpassed 16. it was a bad year and i'm hoping this one will look better.

my birthday celebrations started on friday night. i had a sleepover with a few girls from my school. this was my first time being responsible for a legit event with people from my own school. christy, blair, sarah wong, geanna, stephanie, mina, katie j, and elsie all came over on friday night while my parents went to work on grad night. we did the typical girl sleepover activites. we watched Harry Potter 5, made friendship bracelets, asked truth questions, signed yearbooks, and had hannah montana birthday cake and ice cream. it all sounds so juvenile, but it was actually a lot of fun. this year i've really found my place among my classmates and i'm happy about it. we laughed a lot and talked a lot and just had a good time.

my actual birthday was on sunday. on sunday my mom took me to crepeville for breakfast. that was nice. interestingly enough i sometimes feel awkward with my mom. we are just so different that i feel she doesn't really understand me, but breakfast was good and she got all nostalgic. after breakfast i went to gina's graduation bbq. she was so excited and i was happy for her. i met some new people and we had fun building the grill, playing sorry and catch phrase, and laughing.
i went home and brian and emily picked me up for ice cream. we went to vic's which was great because i got to have my favorite thing in the world. yep, coffee ice cream on a plain cone. after that fantastic taste of heaven we got in the car and sat while the three of us were indecisive of where to go. naturally, we ended up at brian's house where his parent's greeted me each with a happy birthday. this all made me feel a lot better about certain situations because at one point i thought brian's parents didnt like me that much. at brian's we sat at the kitchen table and just chatted about all kinds of things. we played around with brian's new cell phone. it is the new envy, and he dubbed it turbo tran. of course emily and i had tons of fun with that and went on to elaborate about the personality of this gender-confused phone. at 10 brian's friend derek came and we had to leave. emily and i ended up going to her house and as soon as we arrived my parents called telling me to come home. i went home. the night was nice and in an overall sense i enjoyed myself. some of the time i felt uncomfortable because the whole situation just was weird in my head. i'm sure there was nothing to be worried about, but naturally i still was the entire time in the back of my head. luckily everything ended up fine and i had a satisfying time.

as far as gifts go, i'm satisfied. my parents bought me real wayfarers, diorshow mascara, and tom hanks dvds; all of which were on my wishlist. today my mother also took me to the rack where i bought some cheap true religions. i'll have to alter them but at least i got them for a good price. christy got me the twighlight book. i'll read it eventually i'm sure, even if i am against conforming to this madness. mina got me an incredible shia labeouf poster. it is him from indiana jones on a motorcycle. so hott. sarah wong was very thoughtful and got me a 20$ giftcard to utrecht. that is the art store i go to. only she would know that. katie j got me a cute tote bag filled with sidewalk chalk and bubbles. my grandma made me a silver necklace with a star of david pendant. i think that is all. if i missed anything i'll add it later maybe. geanna and stephanie told me that they have my presents coming.

so turning seventeen was no where near as great as the day i turned sixteen, but i'm glad. i hope the day to top my sixteenth birthday is something extremely worthy.

they say it's your birthday...

IT'S MY BIRTHDAY TOO!
ok so it isn't/wasn't my birthday today, but it was my dad's and mine is on sunday. it's always been cool to have them close together.
first things first: this morning i bleached part of my hair. haha. i promised myself that i would never self-color my hair ever again after emily and i did it the summer before sophomore year. well i did it anyway.

this picture doesn't really show what it looks like that well. you'll have to see it in person.

later in the day my dad came and picked me up. we went to berkely to have dinner with my grandma and my aunt was there. my grandma gave me a star of david necklace for my birthday. it's so pretty. i really wanted one. after dinner, which was quite entertaining, my dad and i left for the Academy of Art's annual spring art show. it was really interesting. all the work is so amazing and i learned a little bit more about the different types of programs. my dad finally sees that art college is real work and he is excited for me to be hopefully attending one. here is a painting from the illustration dept. it's pretty funny. it is fast food characters in a satirical version of the last supper.



and this is my dad being silly with all his harley stuff my mom bought him.

OH !!! btw, i finished the year with a 3.7 !!! i'm so stoked. my plan worked even better than expected. i got 4 A's.

Finals part 1

this week is finally finals week. haha. i laugh now, but it has been quite terrible. this weekend my brother decided to bring home some public school sickness. naturally i got really sick at 2am on monday morning, which technically was still the night. after studying all night, and then losing 4 hours of sleep due to the worst pressure headache and congestion i've ever experienced, i took my religion and physics finals. luckily i pulled off a B on both and an A in both classes. after school i went directly home to sleep. i woke up to find myself on fire, in bed, unable to breathe; i felt like i was dying. my body ached so bad that i was afraid to try and climb down the ladder, and instead broke down crying on the phone to my mother wondering when she'd be home. once we got all that taken care of, yo estudie para tres horas. yea. i decided to cut my losses and study strategically. the plan was to study for spanish a lot and just accept my C in math. so today i took my spanish final, and i feel like i didn't do to bad. i took my math final and that sucked a whole lot of ass. feeling a bit defeated, i was glad to be home. at home i was welcomed by a wonderful surprise. my religion, physics, and literature grades all went up to A's. now i just need my spanish grade to go to a B and i will be loving life.
i also got my Ap Art assignment today. 100 drawings, 50 from observation. FUN.

the band on the run

i didn't get picked for Ven A Ver New Orleans. i'm a bit upset, but honestly i don't feel like dwelling on it so i will just say it and be done with it.

this school year is literally coming to a close now. it's not like we have a few weeks left; we just have finals. yesterday was founders day. founders day is kind of interesting because it is technically supposed to celebrate St. John Baptiste de La Salle. none of the kids actually think about him once throughout the entire day. all we do is sign yearbooks amidst blow-up jump-house type activities, snow cones, cotton candy, and other sweaty people clad in their best gear for the one free dress day of our lives. i'm not complaining. i like having a day dedicated to commemorating our past year's memories. plus, i can wear flip flops. the whole ordeal sort of says "bring on the summer", but it tends to leave the illusion that we are done with school. sadly, we still have finals. this semester i need to do extremely well on all of my finals. i will be making study sheets and note cards until the day i die.

yesterday was also self against city at cesar chavez park. i've noticed that my blogs always center around SAC, probably because i am 100% in love with all of them. it deffinitly was not the best show and i hope there will be another one soon. i did get introduced to Justin's brother, who carries an uncanny resemblance, and his mother. kinda awkward, but still touching in my book. other than that, i'd like to erase that show and insert a better one to replace it. and that is all, for once.

A-PUSH-IT

alas i am done with AP US History for good now. the test was on friday. i can't say that my frist Ap experience was at all enjoyable. i felt less and less confident that i was passing as the test went on. i think i'll just copy and paste my lj entry in here.: yesterday i finally had my AP US history test. i'm sad to say that my frist AP experience was not a good one. i can't exactly specify as to why my experience was so bad, but it just was not pleasant. first you get in the class and there is not assigned seating so everyone just picks a seat. stephen immediately starts up a conversation but then decides he doesn't want me to sit with him because "my people" were all sitting on the other side of the room. i sat next to geanna instead. i feel this was actually a better choice than sitting near stephen because behind him was kayla neto and dealing with their little problems and trying to take an Ap test would be way too much for me. but anyways, so after everyone finally gets there mrs. hesser starts reading her little prompter booklet. of course she has already been doing this twice a day for an entire week so she sounds extremely impatient and pissed off. that was really comforting. after we filled out all the bullshit name bubbles and learned about AP number labels we finally got to the multiple choice part of the test. i'm not sure how i feel about the multiple choice sections. i know in some parts i nailed it and other ones i pulled the answers basically out of my ass. after the multiple choice (70 min or so) we got a break. break was ok. i just walked out in silence contemplating the fact that i probably just failed. i only hoped the essays would be better. they weren't. they were terrible. i know so much US History, and yet they decided to pick essays that were on the stupidest things that no one knows anything about. so i wrote 2 essays of pretty much pure BS. lots of the other kids told me that they did the same thing, so i'm not sure if that makes me feel better or worse. maybe we all passed. maybe we all failed. i won't know until june.

on a much happier note: after the AP test i went to Chico to see The Matches and Self Against City. pretty much my dream show happened. my two favorite bands, playing for free, at a college, outdoors on a beautiful day. it was so much fun and really amazing. being in the outdoors gives the show a whole new light....haha. there are so many vibrant colors and differences that make you feel differently about the music. of course i missed the SAC boys and it was great to see them. roadtripping with Lizzy, Gina, and the girls is never less than amazing. and another plus was i got to see a little bit of Chico and come to the conclusion that it's not really special. Lizzy, Gina, Sandra, Ami, and i wore these matching SAC shirts (that they all bought the night before) and some lady asked us if we were sorority sisters. it was pretty hilarious.

say what

my APUSH test is in 2 days. honestly, i'm scared. i know that i know it, but there's always the chance that the essay questions will be on the areas that i don't know enough about. i'm afraid i'll choke but i'm trying to be as positive as possible and not freak myself out. i try to focus on all the things that are going for me. these tests are standardized for all high school students, but i am blessed enough to attend a high school which is above average. these tests are ten times easier than mr. meagans. all i need is a 3, and i've never gotten lower than that on mr. meagans. i know how to efficiently do multiple choice and i never get lower than a 5 on my essays. i can do it. i can.

today i had my Ven A Ver New Orleans interview. i feel it went pretty well, but they got a lot of applicants. i don't want to be too hopeful because then i'll be really disappointed if i don't get chosen. i really want to go. the only thing i could sense that they were worried about were my AP classes. i know i can go and still do Ap classes. i'm willing to put in that extra effort.

at school a lot of people just bug me. once again i am sick of all the immaturity, up tightness, and ultra lack of common sense among high school students. not to sound like a snob, but it is hard being mature when you are surrounded by people who can't seem to grow up. i really hope that by senior year people can accept that they are entering adulthood and stupid things don't matter. i hope they can learn some correct behavior and stop being so adolescent. being conniving and manipulative is not cute/cool. it is stupid and in the end it will come bite you in the ass. if you have something to say to someone, say it to their face. don't start shit for the sake of stirring the pot. chances are the pot will get poured on you. accept the fact that you can't be friends with everyone and not everyone wants to be friends with you. we may still be in high school physically, but it is so time to get out of the high school mentality.

playing catch up

let's see, may has started. that is something to be excited about. may is the month. may is my birthday, school gets out, summer is on it's way. may is the month.

on friday i hungout with kevin, mike, colin, and joel. i've been anticipating this for awhile because kevin often tells me about the kinds of fun they have. it deffinitly was fun and i'd love to hangout with them again. but joel deffinitly bugs me. he thinks it is really fun to poke me and i had to be stern with him that i am not ok with that. of course that makes the rest of them get on his ass for being annoying and then he begins self-loathing. that bugs me so much.

i took the SAT for the first time on saturday. it is definitely not exciting, but it is definitely not extremely terrible. yes, i'd rather not have to take it, but it could be so worse. i'm not quite sure how i did. it did suck that mr. cardenas was my proctor, i was in mr. elberson's room, and i forgot my calculator. luckily i ran into mrs. coyner and she let me borrow a mathlete's calculator. i wrote my essay about how i think the SAT in unnecessary. i hope that won't inhibit my score. after the SAT, sarah and i went to the rugby game. rugby is really confusing, but interesting nonetheless. they lost though. i think i'm a jinx. teams always lose when i go watch.

i applied for 2 jobs today. i need one badly.

____________________________________________________
i've been pondering why people do the things they do. a lot of the time i can see their ulterior motives, and then a lot of the time i am just in awe at their actions. why do people do certain things? i'm not a fan of not understanding, so you can imagine why i even bother trying to figure this out. there are so many times where i just want to yell in someone's face "WHAT DO YOU THNK YOU ARE DOING?" or "WHY DO YOU DO THAT?". i know we are all different, but there are some universal human standards that i would think people would know to follow. i'm not the best person, but i know where the lines are most of the time. the sadder part is that a lot of people know what they are doing is terrible, and they just don't care. the questions in life are endless.

the whole truth, nothing but the truth

so help you god.

lately we've been reading the book The Things They Carried by tim O'Brien, which is war stories from the vietnam war. a lot of what we talk about is the truth and whether the things in the book are the actual truth, the partial truth, or completely fictional. i always feel that a lot of the stories are mostly true. other people in the class disagree. in the book, obrien speaks of the truth and how sometimes the truth someone tells differs from the physical truth, but is also often better. i'm not sure how i feel about this whole thing. in the last couple days i've found out some truths. some of them i'm accepting of. some of them i've known but just needed comfirmation, and now that i have it i dont like to believe it. i'm very skeptical of the truth, purely because people can tell their own version of the truth. i guarentee you can never hear the exact same story twice. i think my skepticism comes from my lack of trust in others. i'm a cynic. i'm a skeptic.