one through nine things.

Lots of things have been going through my mind.

This is mainly for my own personal recording purposes; no need to read the whole thing.

1- I'm super selfish, or cocky, or prideful, or something like that. Except the thing is, I was too prideful to realize that I'm prideful. But I get it now. You probably don't realize it because I pride myself on hiding my pride, and by saying this I'm only confirming my pride. You might be laughing (because I'm chuckling inside), but I'm serious. Pride's a terrible thing to have. Because the second I think I'm being genuine about something, a little voice in the back of my head's applauding me for being genuine, which only makes it not genuine. Mister voice, please go away.

2- Every time I want something, I'm afraid that God will take it away, because it's never good to put all of your efforts into one goal; that would be like worshipping it. I'm afraid that my desires are too worldly or selfish that God will begin closing doors. Which is something I fear about GHP- I'm afraid that I want it so much that God just won't give it to me. So I said a little prayer and tried my best to put my future in His hands. Big leap, let me tell you.

3- I'm awfully terrible at dealing with depressing people. I just make them more depressed. Probably because I tell them that they suck for being so depressing, which never helps.

4- I rock at making new friendships, but I suck at keeping old ones. It's really bad. I just don't know how to do it. Sometimes I wonder if it's really because I'm afraid. Or do I just not care?

5- I prioritize school way too heavily over all the other aspects of my life, including my social one. I have yet to find out if that's a good thing or not.

6- Everything's a competition for me, especially if you try to act superior to me. If you don't, then you'll be one of my favorite people.

7- GHP interview passed by so quickly that I'm not even sure what happened. First, we had to write an essay, and they gave us three topics, but I don't remember what they were. All I remember is that I wrote about an angry book yelling at make-up, because my prompt asked me to pretend I was an inanimate object. And then it transformed into this fiery letter about the dangers of conformity and the shallowness of society and the materialism of consumerist America. Gosh, I rambled, and I don't know how make-up and books even tied into it. That was fun. Then we marched into this little prison-like cell (with no clock in the room) and began reading passages and annotating them, and I smiled because they were awesome passages (I'll quote one later), but there was really no point in this part of the process because nobody ever asked me questions about the passages nor did I have to write an essay about them. So that was completely random. And then, here comes the interview. There wasn't even some sort of barrier (like a table or a desk) between me and the interviewers; it was just three chairs in a circle. Which means that they were able to see my shoes and my mismatched socks (that was awkward). The bad part about the interview is that it wasn't too much like a conversation; it was more like them drilling me while I laughed at myself and rambled for about three minutes about nonsense. Plus all they did was sit back in their chairs like hippies on weed, nodding their heads and smiling. I could almost see thought bubbles coming out of their heads that said "cool, duuuude." So that was lame. I hope I stuck out. When I walked out of the room, I said, "Have fun interviewing my competitors!" And they laughed.

The bad thing is, that was the first time they had lolled the whole interview. Oh well.

8- I went to a hand-in-hand chinese new year party today. Hand-in-hand is basically a big-sister-little-sister program, which pairs up girls like me to little asian girls from kindergarten to third grade. These girls were adopted by white parents though, so they have a difficult time trying to live with both a chinese and american background, and a lot of them are ashamed of being Chinese as well. I had a fantastic time hanging out with those children; I made a little Up house (complete with balloons!) with a little girl, then I acted crazily insane with an equally insane hyper girl (I literally stuffed an entire bao zi into my mouth because she swore that I couldn't do it), and then I did cartwheels with a kindergartener who was amazing at gymnastics. My gymnastics lessons finally paid off :) Then, it started snowing. I love children.

9- I still believe in good people.

First Grade

Eleanor Tsay had short, black hair that went to her shoulders, with a bold, adventurous glint ablaze in her eyes. We called each other best friends, or I called her mine at least, and I copied everything she did. If her favorite color was blue, so was mine; if she loved to swing, then I did too. I hated to displease.

One evening as we strolled through the halls of her house searching for something to do, she suddenly gestured at all the toys scattered around her spacious living room, elaborately swinging her arm from one corner to the other as she pointed at the stacks of board games and the bins of various trinkets lined up against her wall.

“Do you really believe that God made all of this?” she asked, turning to me with expectant eyes.

“No way,” I responded, incredulous.

I expected her to accept my answer and continue walking down the hall, but she stopped in her tracks and whipped around, with a caricature of a shocked face drawn in her features.

“What? You don’t? Because He did! He made all of this! He made you and me and everything that we ever knew!” She shook her head and disappointedly walked away, and I treaded closely behind, awe-struck by her words and embarrassed that I had stated the wrong answer. Her words were still ringing in my ears when I skipped back home, and her words have yet to stop echoing in my head.

I didn’t know how she had made any sense from the empty words of the preacher; all he could ever do was swing his hands from side to side and occasionally slam them down on the podium with a note of finality, as if he was sentencing us all to eternal doom, whatever that meant.

But what Eleanor said- I believed it. I believed everything she said, after all.

I'm on my way to becoming a musician.

I'm on my way to becoming a musician, I am.

I've got a dream, you see,

to play as if the piano were my soul,

to speak through the notes

and sing through the trills

and laugh through the 'peggios

and cry through the chords.

I want you to yearn with me

and dream with me

and see the paradise that I painted for me.

To escape with me,

you'll see it, you will,

you'll feel yourself get lost,

rise up,

fall down.

I'm on my way to becoming a musician, I am.

Screw the fact that my hands are too small to play anything.

i love giraffes. (: (ps- I actually am on my way to piano class, haha)

"However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is... Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul."

-Thoreau

today, i wore eyeliner.

The problem with make-up is that it feels so good. Not that it literally feels good, having all that cakey powdery black stuff on your face, but that it makes you feel so much prettier.

Today, I decided to put on some eyeliner and mascara and pull my "bangs" (it's too long to be bangs and too short to be regular hair... GROW!) back and look pretty for once, and throughout the entire day I got comments like, "wow, you look so different, so much prettier!" and "is that eyeliner? It looks so good!" And I'm thinking in my head, what the hell. I know they mean well, but it's really sad, you know, because they're only encouraging me to wear this fake artificial stuff.

Sometimes I wish I didn't need this kind of shallow support to keep me going.

Hey Soul Sister by Train

Freak, guys. This song is amazing, and will definitely be my jam for the next two weeks.

& would you look at that, all my posts ever since October are on ONE PAGE! Now you can see my first post, ever! Hahahaha. I thought it was pretty cool.

School tomorrow. Yuck. I feel like I'm running a marathon, with no pretty scenery on the side to look at.

Kindergarten

Mrs. Moss, my kindergarten teacher, with the innocent Shirley Temple face framed by short curly blonde locks. Her lips were full and a bright red; her eyes were striking green. She thought she had had a brilliant idea when she told us we’d be celebrating Father’s Day at school. We would show them all the drawings we drew and the writings we wrote and present to them some sort of I-Love-My-Dad card after a song of thanks. The classroom was in an uproar of excitement, a chaotic frenzy to perfect everything. Shannon shouted for me to pass the tape. Ryan demanded that I finish his worksheet that was due over a month ago.
My dad was out of town though. He was always out of town, working to support a family. He was, after all, an authentic, hard-working Chinese man, determined to succeed with the ten cents in his pocket. When I relayed the message to Mrs. Moss, she advised that I make a cardboard cut-out of him, darling.
On Father’s Day, my white friends proudly showed off their achievements to their dads. As I sat at my desk and stared at them with envy, I didn’t glance once at the cut-out cardboard figure of my dad that now leaned limply against the back of a plastic chair at the other end of the table. All my hard work was lined up neatly for him to see; I had drawn eyes on his face for exactly that purpose.

I didn’t get it; if he was allowed to show off the promotions he received from work, then I should’ve been able to show off the A+ on my April Showers poem too.

Bad = Cool ?

I don't understand, why we find it so necessary and so tempting and so enthralling to be bad. Don't get me wrong, I fall victim to it too. But when we take a step back and look at the big picture here, we just look like bumbling idiots grasping onto an absolute nothing. I mean, what is it? Is it cool to be bad? Like, where did that even come from? I've always wondered that- how did the "popular people" become "popular," and what does that even mean? Does it mean you party more? You sneak out at night? You drink? You smoke? You're not afraid to walk around with skimpy skirts and lie with boys you've never even met before? Call me extreme, but you've got to wonder- what's the point? Who are you trying to impress? And since when was "being bad" something that impressed someone?

People, we've got it all mixed up, and it's bothering me. Gosh I know it's the whole individualism hedonistic thing, but really, exploiting pleasure and squeezing it to its death honestly won't make you happy. If you're looking for happiness, the bad side isn't going to get it for you. There are things in this world (or should I say out of this world) that are much greater than you being cool.

Besides, I already know I'm cool. You don't got to tell me, foo'. :)

On another note, I watched Avatar today, and it was amazing. It exceeded my expectations, which, mind you, were already really high from all the hype going around about the movie. But holy crap, the graphics were so mesmerizing, and I almost forgot for a few seconds that I was sitting in a movie theater in Johns Creek, and not in the middle of action on the planet of Pandora. And let the tears flow too; I could not stop bawling when that tree fell down, because I just felt so helpless. And this is me getting emotional about moving pictures on a screen, because nothing exciting like this ever happens to me in my life. Oh, how I want a bird to fly on...

I also took the SATs today, which were alright. Not much to say about those until the scores come out. But seriously, I felt like I was bubbling in my death wish as I took that test, haha.

So, that's it! More webassign time, yay!
Aw, shoot. I forgot to practice piano today.

Btw- thanks guys for commenting!!! It took me long enough to embed that code in there, and I'm glad to see that it's being used. SUCCESS!!

Love Makes the World Go ‘Round

Okay, so you know that Laws of Life essay? I wrote one last year and forgot to enter it, and now it's a required assignment this year, so I was wondering if the one I wrote last year is good enough to turn in, or if I should write a new one. It's about Nashville; here it is:

A cooling sensation filled my body as I stretched out my fingertips and embraced the wind that so easily enveloped me, until at last I fell to the beckoning arms of gravity. My eyes fluttered shut; my feet lost connection to my brain as they freely galloped down the steep hill, jumping, dancing. A smile spread across my face and transformed into a laugh as I glanced behind and saw bundled figures attempting to roll down the hill, figures that were instead playing bumper cars while painting horizontal and zigzagged shadows across the landscape. These were, needless to say, the newly met friends who I had spent the past week in Nashville with. These were the people who I had cried with and laughed with through homeless stories and service projects during one short-term mission trip.

My feet hit hard cement, and with a body still filled with the light ecstasy of the night, I jumped in the air and cried joyfully into the sky. I was surprised to hear a reply.

“Are you drunk? Are you drunk?”

An odd question. My eyes wandered around until they locked on a dark figure, sitting alone on a bench. Walking toward him, I shouted out, “No! No, not at all! We’re just having fun!” He smiled and nodded; I could tell he was another tragic homeless story on the streets of the city. We dived into a conversation, so much easier than the past conversations I had tried to strike that week. The presence of the others started to fill the space around me, and we huddled into one captivated body and listened in awe to the man’s tale of faith- a faith that was starting to crumble. Fifty years he had spent on the dreary streets of Nashville; he asked us if another year would really make a difference. The man, Richard, then took off his shoe and revealed a deformed foot; one red toe bent around the other, and the big toe was half the size of a regular one yet equally swollen and huge; it bent this way and that way until the foot could not even resemble a body part anymore. The grotesque image stole the words out of our mouths, and a silence hung over our heads.

“Let’s pray…” a small voice whispered. Holding hands, we murmured our prayers in one voice, willing comfort and love into this life. Amen. Richard looked up with eyes anew, a bright twinkle of hope that had not existed before. A child’s smile shone on his aged face.

“Thank you… thank you…”

Then, I knew. I knew that we had saved a life, that we had completely altered the path of another human being, and that we had flown down a hill and played the roles of angels in Richard’s cold and lonely life. Our eyes sparkled with identical tears, and my hands clasped the hands of the girl beside me, holding it dear to my heart. For although we had re-colored Richard’s hope to a purer shade of white, he had planted seeds in our hearts that continue to grow- even to this day. He taught us that even a small conversation or a random act of kindness can calm the roar in another person’s life, and that so much more lies behind the fundamental needs of a human. Given, we need our food, our shelter, our health. But perhaps the most significant thing that a human needs is not something that teachers can train little kindergarteners to recite, but it is instead something abstract that can’t be stuffed in a bottle and brought to a desert island. For we realized that the beauty of love was what instead made the heart keep beating, and love was what my little church group vowed to bring back home to Atlanta.

---
So yeah, hopefully somebody will tell me yes or no?
I honestly don't have time to write another laws of life essay, but half of me wants to.

I'll post later on today about other things in general, but I have webassign to do.
Oh webassign... why dost thou hate me?

Friend Me?

So what exactly is it that differentiates a "friendable" girl from a "dateable" girl and if you want to go even further, a "sexable" girl? I've never realized how weird it actually is, how it seems like we were all intrinsically categorized into these three divisions from the beginning. As if it's in our genes, whether we'll be a friend or a girlfriend (which would mean we could blame our parents).

But when I started digging deeper and seriously wondering what the differences were, I found it so ironic. Think about it. A friendable girl can't be a dateable girl because she's too nice. She's too friendly, too fragile, too caring and kind and understanding and innocent. So, she can just be a friend because the guy doesn't want to have the responsibility of dealing with such perfection (plus, apparently, it's not as much fun dating a goody-goody). Either this, or she's too manly.

Now if you're the dateable type, then you're a bit more playful than the friendable one. This one likes to joke around with the guys, act cute and batter her eyelashes while giving playful pushes on the shoulder to initiate some kind of intimate touching and closeness. She's girly and unreserved and pretty. Screw the fact that she's not nice; she's cute and therefore dateable.

And if you keep moving to the extremely sensual side, you get the playboys and the Ke$has.

But isn't that sad though? It goes the same for the guys- the friendly ones just aren't the dateable ones, and I can't place my finger on why exactly they're not, because they're certainly the best kinds of guys. But then again, who said that a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship is better than a relationship with two regular friends? So maybe the friendable ones are getting their deserved places after all. But whatever, things always end up working out in the end.

I absolutely love this woman's photos (mainly of weddings & lovers)