Last Day of School

Playing: Midnight City-M83
Reading: The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan

Left to Right: Me, Sarah, and Hilary

On the last day of school, I met up with Sarah and Rebecca, who both go to different schools than I, with Hilary. Our original plan was to walk to some place close to my school for lunch and then bum around, but then we decided we didn't want to see anybody from any of our schools, so then we decided we wanted to go far, far away. We ended up taking a public bus to go to the University Center by University of California, Irvine. For Rebecca and I, it was our first time using a public bus in the USA. I've only been on the European and Asian buses. Some guy got in a fight with the bus driver, telling him he was fat and needed to lose weight, so my first experience with the bus was interesting?

While walking around the parking lot, I had a mini nerd attack, when I saw this. First of all, holy cow, Darth Vader only had two kids and now he's making his wife and kids wear the same mask as him? Do you have any idea how hard it must be for him to tell his kids apart?

The long bus ride and walk after the ride were worth it, when we got our meals from Berkeley Dog. I ordered the Green Eggs and Ham, which was smoked ham served on a hot baguette with a fried egg, cheddar cheese, and pesto sauce. I liked how the yolk of the egg dripped out and covered the whole sandwich and how the pesto really served to brighten up the whole dish.

Left to Right: Me, Sarah, and Rebecca (Who Doesn't Want Her Face to Show. (She hates me!))

After lunch, we walked around the University Center, but then we headed over to UCI's campus to explore. Their school year ended before our year ended, so their weren't any students their to socialize with, but we had fun climbing trees, acting like hippies (shown above), and marching around, acting like we owned the world.

Photo courtesy of Sarah

Being the horrible child I am, I sat with my homie, Lao Zi, pretending to pick his nose. I know, how mature of me. Sarah and I helped the other statues of Magu, Li Bai, and Qu Yuan clean their noses too, which made Hilary and Rebecca laugh. I thought it was unusual how an American college's statue garden was home to four sculptures of Chinese people.

Left to Right: Hilary and Sarah

Before the hot California weather brought us back to the University Center for drinks at Cha For Tea, Hilary and Sarah had to climb another tree, while Rebecca and I sat on the grass, acting like children of the revolution. Just kidding, we were acting like lazy, little kids. Considering I live in California, I always imagine my summers filled with pools and beaches, but I always end up doing stuff like this. Exploring, you might call it. I never knew UCI had such a beautiful campus and that there was such a huge park in the back with gigantic trees, rocks, and statues to mess around with. If you're ever in the area, I suggest visiting UCI's campus just because it's so pretty.

If you're artsy, I suggest checking out Sarah and Rebecca's deviantArts, which I linked up above. Both of them are extremely talented!

"Out Here the Birds Don't Sing, Out Here the Fields Don't Grow"

Playing: How Many Words-Blake Lewis
Reading: One Direction People Magazine: Collector's Edition

As you may remember from my trip to the desert, I went on the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway to visit the Mount San Jacinto State Park. The tram takes you to en elevation over 8,000 feet and I believe it's the world's largest rotating tram out there. In the photo above, you can see me going up and leaving the ticket station. What I didn't like was how long we had to wait to get on the tram after buying the tickets. Since it was very crowded and there's a tram every 10 minutes, my family and I had to wait an hour and a half to get on one. I suggest buying tickets ahead of time!

Once you get up there, you'll be surprised by how different the environment is. For one thing, it was significantly colder up there and I was glad I wore my jeans. Also, look how forrest-y it is compared to the desert down below. Of course, this photo may lead you to think it's rural up there. It's actually very touristy with a restaurant up there and a store plus thank goodness, bathrooms.

We hiked around the area and just wondered along various paths.One of the pamphlets said you should expect to see tons of animals up there, but I only saw squirrels. Tons of furry squirrels...And tourists in athletic clothing. I felt out of place, hiking with my purse and skinny jeans with Converse, which aren't meant for anything hardcore.

While I was walking around, I saw these enormous boulders that look like humpback whales to me. I hope you see what I'm talking about otherwise I'm going to seem plain crazy to all of you right now. The higher the elevation, the lower the concentration of oxygen. We all know that, right? Well, I learned that I do not do well with low concentrations of oxygen. I started feeling lightheaded and a girl I ran into got a nosebleed, so you have been warned.

Look how steep it is! For some reason, the trip back down felt so much shorter! I was standing next to a scene girl on the ride down. I didn't know scene was still cool. Anyways, this story has a point. Her camera looked super professional and she smirked at my inexpensive digital camera and that's when I realized, it's time to get a new camera, since my camera has been acting up on me. Plus, it's all beaten up and changes settings on me randomly.

"Out Where the Dreams Are High, Out Where the Wind Don't Blow"

Playing: A Dustland Fairytale-The Killers (That's where the title is from.)
Reading: Ugly Guide to the Uglyverse by David Horvath and Sun-Min Kim

For this season, in terms of style, I'm really into this retro, desert vibe (that you can see in the music video I linked and in Rumi Neely's Coachella 2012 Photo Diary), so I took a day trip out to the desert to get inspired and to just have a day to look around with my family. We stopped off at a Kentucky Fried Chicken in the middle of our drive at some small town that had an all you can eat deal. I haven't seen a KFC buffet, since the 1990's, so of course we had to go. I tried the Kentucky Grilled Chicken for the first time, which actually wasn't all that bad.

We took the gondola to go up and explore the national park, but I'll talk about that later. What I wanted to show you was the beautiful view way up high. The desert sky is just such a clear blue and it seems to stretch on forever with the actual town of Palm Springs in grids down below.

I liked this cactus quite a bit and how it was all by itself in a patch of pinky-grey rocks. The pastel yellow needles look very nice with the pastel pink rocks and I just like the way it looks. It kind of irritates me that someone piled rocks on top of the cactus because it looks like the cactus has giant, pink dandruff...

The landscape is pretty sparse with only some green popping up, mostly around small creeks and wherever humans have planted them. And then the mountains are so odd, looking like a pile of gravel that could tumble down and fall apart at any moment. There's just something about these mountains that amazes me. Maybe it's how they never look that large in pictures or from far away, but when you get close to them, they're absolutely enormous.

My favorite part of the desert are the wind farms. I love the tall tooth pick-like structures that look like sleek pinwheels. I've always been fascinated by them. One time, I was driving by this huge white fin object that was probably as tall as my house and then I realized it was one of the spokes from one of the wind farms' giant pinwheels. It's just funny to see these dotting the landscape.

Oh, and today was my last day of school, but on a more important note, I want to wish a very happy birthday to one of my favorite musicians, Brandon Flowers! He's turning 31 today and I think the perfect gift for him would be to vote for "Mr. Brightside" for the 100 Greatest songs of NME's Lifetime, so click here to vote! Thanks for reading and look out for my next desert post!

School is Almost Over

Playing: Are You Gonna Be My Girl?-Jet (I was playing this loudly in chemistry and someone yelled, "Whoever's playing the crappy music, turn it off!")
Reading: Elle July 2012

Alright, I know I should be studying for finals, but I spent seven hours doing algebra and chemistry homework today, so I think I deserve a break, right? Friday was the last day of school for the seniors, so they pulled off a bunch of awesome pranks this year. For some reason, this was the first year I got to see senior pranks! Whoever saran wrapped the outdoor lockers is my hero. I love the person that came up with this idea so much right now. I don't know if YOLO is popular, where you live, so let me explain: YOLO means "You only live once" or "You obviously love One Direction." "You only live once" is more popular, since the latter is only used by One Direction fans.

Another person that deserves a high five is the senior (or seniors) that filled one of the buildings with balloons. A bunch of the students including me were kicking these around and kicking them up into the air until a teacher told us to clean them up, so we all ran away like good kids. A bunch of us stole a balloon as a celebratory sign that school was almost over.

By the time I saw this senior prank, a bunch of people had taken the post it's down already. The same people that wrapped the lockers, I'm guessing, put 2012 up on some windows and I actually thought it was a very cute idea. Not as funny as the other ones, but still it brightened up my day and it's perfectly harmless.

My French teacher, Madame Bonfiglio, is retiring after 39 years of teaching various languages including English, Italian, and French. I've had her for two years now and I was hoping to have her for the rest of my years taking French. She's really funny and likes to talk about hot guys like Joseph Gordon Levitt and Project Runway with me. We used to have arguments over who the better designer was and how Tim Gunn is the best dressed man ever. She's taught me so much about the French language and the culture. Everyone in my class decided that on one of the last days, we would all share our favorite memories and stories of her in class and we surprised her with a Starbuck's gift card, since her three loves in life are coffee, donuts, and Sylvester Stallone. Nous va manquer beaucoup Mme Bonfiglio. Even though my eyes aren't visible in this photo because I'm smiling so stupidly, I wanted to share this photo of us.

At lunch, Christine brought in some homemade blueberry cheesecakes to share with all of us. This was kind of like her birthday celebration and we sang "Happy Birthday" to her really loudly, which seemed to embarrass her, so mission accomplished. For birthdays, we've decided to stop wrapping each other's lockers, bringing in balloons, and buying presents. Instead we decided to start celebrating with treats.

Tiffany brought in Sprinkles cupcakes to celebrate Christine's birthday for all of us, which was so incredibly sweet of her. Jackie and I split a lemon cupcake and a coconut cupcake because both of us wanted to try each of them, while Christine and Tiffany got the limited edition key lime cupcake, which was so good. I feel guilty for stealing a bite of Tiffany's cupcake, when she refused to take a bite of mine. Vivian got the chocolate one, while Tina tried the banana one, which she said tasted more like a muffin. I hope Christine had a fabulous birthday!

After school got out, we waited around for other people that way we could sign each others' yearbooks. Here are my good friends, Tina and Tiffany, looking as beautiful as ever, while we waited for Sagiv, Shayan, and Devin to finish up writing messages in our yearbooks. They always have that Asian swag with their peace signs and charming smiles. Haha, but seriously, I hope we hang out tons over this summer. Tina said that Jackie, Christine, Vivian, Tiffany, and I can come over to her place to watch Totoro, which I haven't watched yet.

By the way, congratulations to the winner of my giveaway, bollykecks! Expect an email soon! Also, thank you to everyone that entered. I hope to host more giveaways because I want to share more of my life with all of you!