End of an Era

Soon senior year started coming to a close. Senioritis was in full swing, but somehow we were still getting a lot of work. In Japanese we labored over the Japanese 4 movie (it's a tradition that every year the senior class makes a movie to show everyone) Since Mitchell was leaving, we made it into a more-or-less accurate representation of his life thus far, dubbing it "The Chronicles of Lightning Mike". Some how, the planning and direction of the movie got dumped on me, and the process of making it was very painful.  On most days I was not in a very good state of mind haha, but we all pulled through in the end. I'm especially thankful to my friends who stayed late with me to try and finish it on the last day. That in itself was a shitfest, with technology failing us every step of the way. In the process I lost my faith in macs (but I can't wait to get a MacBook for college lol) and said "I hate everything" a few times too many. However, the midnight madness editing team powered through, and I thought the movie actually turned out really well! Also I was working on this pain-in-the-ass clay sculpture for art that I still haven't finished haha. I told V I'd definitely go in during the summer to work on it, and it's already been almost a month haha. Maybe I will go in next week sometime. Maybe not.

The last day of school was weirdly surreal. I still don't think it's hit me yet that I am never going back to high school. Maybe it won't hit me until fall when I get ready for college. In any case, we received our caps and gowns and were soon walking up to the platform, shaking with our right, and receiving with our left (which I am told I messed up on). It was a furnace on the turf that day; by the end I was covered in a nice shiny layer of sweat. We took some nice sweaty pictures and went home to change. After dinner, we regrouped at the school to get on buses bound for project graduation! By 3 am we were caked in several more layers of sweat from all the running around. In the course of the night, we played basketball, soccer, volleyball, butts up, cards, and watched a hypnotism show. When I got home at 4 I was still somehow wide awake and took the best shower of my life. Then I played video games for an hour and went to sleep at 5 lol.

There were 30 burgers in that thing. Oh man.

From there on out I mostly just lazed around all day, getting a good 12 hours of sleep daily.  I went to a bunch of graduation parties and some birthday parties, hit the beach a couple of times, tubed down the delaware (which was kind of awesome but I got pretty impatient with the slow current. Also had a creepy encounter with a half chinese half thai man who latched onto my tube...), was slightly more productive with my art, took an essay test for MIT (in which I didn't sleep until I finished the essay 7 minutes before 1pm AKA the deadline),  learned how to make mochi, watched a video on sexual assault and had to take two tests on that (scored a 50% on my pre-test. whoops.), saw some amazing fireworks, ate a lot of junk food (whitecastle for the first time since I was 4!), watched the new Spiderman and Batman in theaters (both were great), actually went in to the school for two weeks and finished that goddamned sculpture (yeah... alot of time has elapsed since I first started this blog post), finally got off my lazy ass and went to the DMV to get my big-kid license, tutored twice a week, went to Cincinnati to see the World Choir Games, bummed around with kaykay (a little too much), and that brings up to the present, my graduation party which was yesterday.

The intense smoke from the intense fireworks.

Our delicious mucus-green mochi! 

My sculpture that I finally finished! It's me with hungry birds nesting in my head.  Don't ask me why. I don't know.

The world choir games were absolutely amazing! The drive all the way out to Ohio was a pain in the ass (I got to drive for part of it though) but it was worth it.  The opening ceremony took place in the US Bank arena and it was completely packed.  Choirs from all over the world were milling around wearing cultural clothing and speaking in languages completely foreign to me. It was AWESOME.  At one point the whole stadium was singing together which was pretty crazy, and then there was a wave that went all the way around...over and over and over and over again.  I don't think anyone knew how to stop a wave that big haha. Over the next few days I got to see some insanely talented groups perform in the Young Male Choirs, Popular Choral Music, Mixed Youth Choirs, and Folklore categories.  Some groups were so powerful and just filled the whole auditorium with their voices melted together to create this one full sound.  I got goosebumps listening to them perform.  My favorites were a group of Lithuanian girls, a mixed choir from the Netherlands, and a group of highschoolers (jr. highschoolers?) from China. Watching them made me wish I could sing and move people like that.  Oh right, I forgot to say why we went there in the first place! It was because my dad's chinese choir was participating in the folklore category, so we went to watch and cheer them on! I'm so happy I got to go and experience all of that amazing music :)

Anyway, yesterday we spent the whole day cooking, cleaning, cooking, setting up, cooking, and cooking.  I worked up a sweat peeling, chopping, stir-frying, and rolling spring rolls. Thank god courtney helped me make cupcakes and paper flowers the day before! Or else yesterday would've been even crazier trying to get ready! Eventually people started arriving, but before long the rain started to come down, so cursing the weather, we grabbed the food and ran for cover. It was a little hectic with my friends and more than 10 other families there, but we somehow made it work. People seemed to enjoy the food which made me really happy :) Although I actually fought against the party at first, I'm really glad my mom made me have one in the end.  And I'm also really grateful for all the crazy planning she had to do! She's legit been running around all week trying to make everything perfect down to the last detail. I was also really happy that Ed came; I hadn't seen him in ages, and I even got to meet his girlfriend who was really nice (and healthy! she's a vegan). There was a little clique-ing going on, which bothered me, but I guess it's unavoidable. Also my sister was so good! She was running around the whole time with all the other little asian children, and they were almost unbearably adorable. The presents that everyone picked for me and their cards made me really happy too - I love reading cards, is that weird? Anyway, I'll definitely be getting a lot of use out of all of my presents (except for some whitecastle coupons...), even the Buddhist meditation bowl that Sarah bought from a Nepalese woman at a flee market.  I love my friends :)

Warming Up

So I finally finished blogging about Japan! Now moving on to my post-Japan life, hopefully I can sum it all up in one post. Get ready for a lot of text and pictures, these two months have been mad busy.

Tim the beaver :)

Three days after I got home from Japan, I set off for Cambridge, MA for MIT's CPW (campus preview weekend) It was four days long (thurs-sun) and at first I was really nervous and socially awkward. By the end, I had met some pretty amazing people, and I look forward to seeing them in a few months :) I was really scared of MIT at first, and maybe I still am, but when I visited, I realized that even though the coursework is rumored to be mad intense, everyone there is really chill and there's a lot of community and support amongst the student body. Soon after I got back from CPW, it was time to raise money for Relay for Life! There was some can shaking and surprisingly the people going to the local Diner were a lot more generous than the church go-ers.  Actually, I don't know if it was surprising or not, but it was sure interesting. We also had a big bake sale at the high school, and even peddled some off to the elementary school kids.  The actual Relay for Life was amazing and really emotional; especially when we watched the slideshow of names and saw the track light up during the Luminaria ceremony. The night was surreal in a way.  The atmosphere was weird, I can't really describe it, or maybe it was from the lack of sleep, who knows.  But the whole time I kept telling people we were in a dream; I hope it didn't get on their nerves too much.  I'm glad I was able to go to Relay and witness something I've never seen before, thank you team captain of Awesome. Yes, our relay team's name was "Awesome".  How embarrassing is that?

Mr. V !!

Also in these past few months, I've been to two art shows.  One was the Congressional Show in which one of my classmates won! Her work got sent to D.C to be displayed.  It was a silkscreen of two gumball-machines (she's a crazy good photographer).  The second show was at a local framing company, and it featured my work since I had been chosen to receive one of their scholarships! It was kind of really awesome to see my work professionally framed and lit on a gallery wall. Their sandwiches were also really good. Thanks Emma and Mara for coming :) It meant a lot!

Shalom also performed twice. The first was the final round of Battle of the Bands which we didn't win, but I thought we played well :) I felt kind of nostalgic when it was over even though I knew we'd be playing again. Our second show was a chill one in the backyard of these kids who are also in a local band. Our set was about ten songs long and I was sweating by the end of it, mostly because it was so goddamn humid (and our guitars would not stay in tune for more than a few minutes). The yard was lit up with Christmas lights and filled with neighbors who dropped by to watch. Dan said he was going to hold a backyard show later in the summer and I hope he does because I definitely want to play more before summer is over.

I also went to my first real concert! Mara took me to see Death Cab for Cutie at the Beacon Theatre (which may I add, is beautiful).  First we hailed a cab (oho how relevant) and went to this cute little resteraunt called Lime Leaf to grab some dinner.  I got some delicious red curry and almost puked from trying to finish it all (I failed.) Afterwards we waddled over to the theater, bought shirts (ahh first concert shirt!) and found our seats. The opening act was kind of weird, not gonna lie.  They were mad loud, but I still almost fell asleep somehow.  Then Death Cab came on, and I could not tear my eyes away from the stage.  Holy jesus they were amazing; Their studio songs are really chill, but their live sound is so intense, and his voice is godly.  How is it possible that he sounds even better live? Mind-blowing. They were accompanied by the Magikmagik Orchestra who I immediately fell in love with as well. Thank you so much for taking me Mara!

The lovely Beacon Theatre 

May also meant AP tests; I took Japanese, Literature, and Art this year. Thank god my college doesn't accept chemistry or statistics cuz those would've been extremely painful to study for. Also I was too lazy to study for psychology, so I dropped it lol. Lit was a shitfest, and so was Japanese even though I actually studied pretty hard for it. Hmm maybe languages can't be crammed :/

Hi kaykay :)

June meant prom! There was some bullshit trying to find a date but it all ended up okay in the end. We took a shitload of pictures, hopped in the car, and made a grand entrance to the fancy country club full of fancy food. Prom was pretty fun, and it's kind of nice to be girly and get all dressed up, but whhhyy do we wear long dresses and heels and then dance all night? Can someone explain that to me? It was pouring when it was over, and we clickety-clacked our way to the car shielding ourselves with free XL advertising t-shirts the DJ gave us.  The next day we set off for prom weekend! The plan was to camp overnight saturday and sunday at a national park, and hit the beach during the day. The first day was chill, we relaxed on the beach, and got to the park in time to pitch tents, grill burgers and dogs, and (attempt to) start a fire.  By some miracle, the fire actually caught (2 hours later?) and we sat around roasting marshmallows and singing songs while thomas played guitar. Sitting in front of that fire with everyone there made me feel really warm. Soon it was time to retreat to the tent where we told awful pointless stories while making fun of Brian for having to pee so much.  (We think he may actually have some sort of health problem. Once every 15 minutes is not normal.) He used the same bush every time. Soon, the act became known as "punishing the bush".  It probably died from continually absorbing his pee for two days.

The fire that finally caught

The next morning's breakfast was pretty intense. Again we used the grill for bacon, french toast, and omelets. We spent the day at the beach again, got bullied by the waves, and eventually retreated when the clouds started rolling in.  After some dinner and walking around the boardwalk, we returned to camp to find everything flooded and soaked.  Our pillows and sleeping bags were just sitting there absorbing dirty water. We salvaged what we could and made for the cars.  Sleeping in a car might be one of the more uncomfortable places I've ever slept. Especially when you can't stretch out because there are four more people in the car with you. Regardless, it was still fun, and we were warm (also, Brian's peeing problem escalated) The next day as we started packing up, it started to pour again. By the time the tents were taken down, the chairs folded, and the luggage organized, we were all completely soaked through. Apparently beach umbrellas are not even close to being designed for rain.  It just passes right through the mesh material and hits you in the face. During the drive back we blasted glorious warm air and stopped for some BK lounge. So maybe prom weekend didn't turn out perfect and sunny, but it definitely is an unforgettable memory.

Shalom goes to prom