| Long live the king, long live the queen. |
[Sep. 9th, 2009|11:19 pm] |
So, I got a tumblr yesterday. I figured, new year of school, new blog. I've had this one for about three years, and I am kind of tired of it. I think, with my tumblr, I'm going to try to post every day with something that happened, something I thought about, listened to, looked at, whatever. I'm excited! It should be fun.
I guess I'm kind of retiring this blog, then. But I'll still be around.
If you didn't get that there was a link up there ::points:: here's the actual address:
projectsara.tumblr.com
Enjoy! Or not, I suppose. But I do hope it's enjoyable even though it's very meager right now. It'll get better, I promise!
Anyway, I'm rambling. Fare thee well, LiveJournal! |
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| Everybody wants their shoes in the sunshine. |
[Sep. 7th, 2009|10:17 pm] |
My computer has become incapacitated with viruses. Again. I hope that's not a bad omen.
Though my stomach is distinctly knotty and butterfly-filled, because I always get nervous for things even when I tell myself it's pointless, the excitement that I felt a few days ago is still there, weaving around the knots and the butterflies and making them bearable. I'm not looking forward to waking up early, but that's nothing new. I'm not particularly looking forward to AP Gov, but hopefully Ms. Finkle will make it less awful. And I'm definitely not looking forward to taking SEPTA every day, but that is also not a new addition to my "Things I Hate" schema.
I am looking forward to reading Hamlet in English, having two awesome electives, being a senior and feeling superior to everyone else, applying to college (though that terrifies me at the same time), Mirror and Drama Society (of course), and hopefully getting to eat lunch outside.
This summer was a good one, though there are plenty of things I wish I had done. I wish I had written things besides LiveJournal entries, for example. I haven't written anything in way too long. And that sucks, because I love writing. Sometimes it's just difficult to make myself sit down and pull something out of the air and start typing. Blank Microsoft Word documents are really intimidating.
Ah, well. I have to go read The Soloist now. My plan was to finish it tonight, but I have 92 pages left and I don't think I can finish and also get an adequate amount of sleep.
Speaking of sleep, last night I couldn't fall asleep until about 6:30 in the morning. It was ridiculous. I tried watching YouTube videos, reading, and watching television, and none of them succeeded at making me tired. But finally my brain decided to stop being an idiot and I fell asleep. I didn't hear my alarm that was still set to go off three hours later (surprise, surprise) and woke up around 2:20 in the afternoon. I really hope that was only a weird one-night thing, because if that happened again, by the time I got to sleep, I would have to wake up. And that would not set a good precedent for the day at all. |
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| All shall know the wonder of purple summer. |
[Sep. 5th, 2009|12:25 am] |
The night before we left Australia, my dad and I walked across the Harbor Bridge. It was like, 11:30 at night and cold, but it was really cool. And slightly terrifying, because bridges always make me a bit nervous.
Wednesday lasted forever. We left our hotel at noon and our plane left at 2:45 PM. We got to San Francisco, a little over twelve hours later, at 10:30 AM (on Wednesday). Our flight to Newark left around 1:30 PM, lasted a bit over five hours, I think, and we landed around 9:45 PM. Then we had to be driven to my Grandma's house so we could get my mom's car, and drive home. By the time we got here, it was around 1:00 in the morning, and our entire journey lasted over 24 hours. All of the time differences screwed with my brain. I didn't sleep at all on the first flight, but somehow managed to sleep a good deal on the second one, which was really nice. I don't know how my head managed to not constantly loll on my shoulders and cause me neck pain.
So, I'm home. I kind of wish I wasn't, but I missed it here a little more than I expected to. My room is a complete mess that I don't feel like cleaning and I will probably get yelled at because of that.
Today I went to school, which was weird, but kind of fun, since no learning was involved. We tried to recruit freshmen to Mirror and Drama, and got a lot of blank stares, but a few seemed mildly interested. I talked to some of my old teachers, which was fun. It's always better to talk to teachers when they're not your teachers anymore. Mr. Burns hugged me like, six times (he is too awesome). I got my roster, courtesy of Mr. Walsh, and IT IS SO GOOD. I'm putting it here, because I am so happy:
1st - Gym (I'm getting contract with Ms. Toliver, so I can do more Mirror stuff, THANK GOD)
2nd - MG English (Ms. Haskins)
3rd - AP Gov (Ms. Finkle)
4th - Lunch (WITH AMANDA!)
5th - African American History (Mr. Quinn)
6th - Drama (Ms. MacArthur)
7th - Photography (Mr. Saleet)
I AM PUMPED. Especially because I didn't get Dr. Kesilman for African American History and especially especially because I HAVE NO MATH OR SCIENCE. I haven't been this excited for school since... since a while. A long, long while. It kind of makes me want to yell "YES!" over and over, really enthusiastically, like Ben in Paper Towns. Now I just need a beer sword. |
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| Whatever can you mean? |
[Aug. 31st, 2009|10:40 pm] |
Yesterday, we went on a train, wandered around a little town called Kuranda and spent a really long time in its butterfly sanctuary, rode a gondola (the ones like ski lifts, not the boats in Venice), and saw more rain forest. I went on the beach in the evening to collect shells, but it got dark too quickly and I was bombarded by a swarm of mosquitoes that feasted on my legs and feet, leaving me with about 40 mosquito bites. It is awful and gross and itchy and I have three on one toe. My parents and I took a bus into Cairns, where there was a guy dressed like a mime playing the musical saw to an instrumental version of "If I Were A Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof. (The first time, I typed "food" instead of "roof," which was mildly amusing.) We ate at this really good Mediterranean restaurant. I got falafel and hummus (so many chickpeas!), which made me exceedingly happy.
Today we didn't have anything planned, so I got to sleep, which was nice. I stayed inside for most of the day, watching YouTube videos. I kind of needed a day of minimal activity after all of the stuff we've been doing. I went to the beach earlier than I had gone yesterday in order to avoid the onslaught of mosquitoes. I found a lot of cool shells and took some pictures, finishing the roll of film in my Diana F+. We went to eat at this really good restaurant near us that claims to serve "alpha-morphic-fusion cuisine," whatever that's supposed to mean.
We're flying back to Sydney (on plane five of our trip) tomorrow for one more day. Then, on Tuesday, we'll be on planes six and seven, and the day is going to last FOREVER thanks to changing time zones. When we came here, we left on the 17th and got to Sydney on the 19th, but we will be leaving on Tuesday and getting home on Tuesday and Tuesday is going to feel about a week long. I can't believe I'm going to be home in two days. I really miss my friends and my bed, but I love it here. Though I don't think I'd want to experience Australia in the summer.
One random reason (among many) why Australia is great: they use actual sugar in things, instead of corn syrup. Soda, candy, whatever. THEY USE SUGAR AND IT'S GREAT. Probably because they grow sugarcane here and not corn, but still. It's awesome.
Oh! I have another one: their money. The bills are so pretty, first of all. ( And they're made out of plastic! ) Second, they have no dollar bills, just dollar and two dollar coins. Third, THEY HAVE NO PENNIES.
I can't believe I didn't say this yet, but I guess I've been too preoccupied with Australia, but you must all read Paper Towns by John Green. I know I've recommended his other two books already, but this one is by far my favourite. I read the whole thing on our journey to Australia, and I wished it could have been longer, so much longer. It made me feel so many different emotions, and that's what a good book needs to do. I laughed out loud on the plane to San Francisco reading about the beer sword, though I think a lot of the people around me were too busy sleeping to notice. Sometimes it feels like John Green has taken my soul and put in in word form. It was a library book, so I couldn't do any page folding or underlining of quotes, which was unfortunate. There are so many good quotes. SO MANY. Hilarious ones and thoughtful ones and sad ones. Example: "The last time I was this scared, I had to actually fight a Dark Lord in order to make the world safe for wizards." I need to buy my own copy ASAP, so I can do that. Plus, I just really want to read it again. Ahhhh.
Speaking of books, I'm reading The Kite Runner, which I really need to finish so that I can read The Soloist and Siddhartha. Summer reading, you stress me out so. However, it's not as stressful as usual, because the books actually all seem good this year. And The Kite Runner is good. Really good. Sad and graphic and crazy, but good.
I keep forgetting to ask my dad if I can learn how to play his guitar. I want to so badly.
Also, I love rice. |
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| There are such colours. |
[Aug. 29th, 2009|10:06 pm] |
Okay, let's recap. With minimal flowery descriptions and whatever, because I am too tired to do much more than simply list the things we've done.
Wednesday: We took a private Four Wheel Drive tour on the Great Ocean Road. We stopped at this one spot where there were all of these really beautiful birds and fed them! They perched all over our arms and heads and it was hilarious. We went to a lighthouse and nearly got blown off of the top of it because of the gale force winds. Then we walked through a rain forest and saw lots of foliage. After that, we went to the Twelve (but really eight) Apostles, which look like this:
in good weather, but when we were there, it was extremely windy, rainy, and foggy, so it didn't look quite as good. But it was pretty epic nonetheless.
Thursday: We had to be in our hotel lobby at 5:30 AM (so awful) to go to the airport to fly to Cairns, which is in Tropical North Queensland. We're staying at Trinity Beach, which is right outside of Cairns, and it's so warm and lovely. Especially in comparison to how chilly it was in Melbourne. The high temperature has been around 85 and it's WINTER here. Can you imagine what it's like in the summer? I would die. Anyway, we're super close to the beach, and the water is such a pretty blue everywhere around here. We trekked up a path beside the beach that consisted of a lot of solidified lava, which was awesome. Though I wasn't wearing shoes, which wasn't the most intelligent thing, and scalded the bottoms of my feet.
Friday (yesterday): We went to the Great Barrier Reef on a large boat! A place called Agincourt Reef. The company that runs the boats have a platform thing out by the reef that the boat gets attached to and then there're lots of activities and tables to eat lunch. And we snorkeled! And it was definitely one of the coolest things that I have ever done.
Today: We had a Four Wheel Drive tour (we have a lot of tours on this trip) of Daintree and Cape Tribulation. We walked in more rain forests and saw species of trees that were 300 million years old! We went across the Daintree River in a boat and saw baby crocodiles by the river and snakes in the mangrove trees, which have the craziest looking roots. Observe:
Annnd we walked on the beach at Stingray Bay where there were more mangrove trees and tiny soldier crabs
that buried themselves under the sand as soon as we got close to them.
The water there and at Cape Tribulation felt like bath water. At the end of our tour, we went to the Daintree Ice Cream Company and got cups with four tropical flavours: wattle seed (which tasted like coffee), soursop (which was kind of like lemon but not), raspberry, and mango.
I would have put up pictures that I've taken instead of random ones from Google, but I don't want to bombard this tiny computer with all of my photos. I'll put some up when I get home.
Now, I really need to go to sleep. We have to be outside at 7:35 tomorrow. |
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| After the rockets calm. |
[Aug. 25th, 2009|10:10 am] |
We've done a good deal of things since I last posted, but I don't really feel like describing all of them in detail. We went to the zoo in Sydney and had a "behind the scenes" tour where we got to go in cages and feed animals such as kangaroos, possums, and bandicoots. There was this prehistoric-looking bird called a cassowary that have these huge toes with huge nails and some guy got killed by one before when it slashed his chest open. We went to an outdoor market in Paddington, which was really neat. And I swear, at one of the stands selling second-hand clothes, there was a jacked that looked EXACTLY like the ones we wore in Much Ado About Nothing. It was the craziest thing. Even the buttons looked the same!
The day before yesterday, we flew to Melbourne (which only took a merciful hour-and-a-half) and had a tour of the city. Yesterday we went to Phillip Island and sat on a beach at night getting pummeled by Antarctic winds to watch little penguins cross the beach. It was really cool, both literally and figuratively, and I was wearing four sweaters plus the gear that we were given.
Today is the only day where we have absolutely nothing pre-planned. The high today is only 58 and I WANT A COAT, DAMMIT. |
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| Amidst the plants so overgrown. |
[Aug. 21st, 2009|04:59 pm] |
Today we explored the Blue Mountains and saw a family of kangaroos! Then we went to an Australian wildlife park and saw more kangaroos! AND WE GOT TO PET THEM! It was amazing. And they are so adorable. We also saw koalas, wombats, dingos (which are also adorable), and lots and lots of really cool birds.
Yesterday we were taken on a tour of Sydney by this guy called Trevor (who also took us to the mountains today). We went to the most famous beach in Sydney, Bondi Beach, and went to a couple of high-up points where you ccould get a really good view of the city. After that, we went on a tour of the Opera House and to say that that is an impressive building would be an understatement. My mom and I saw an opera, which wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be, but I like that I can say that I've seen an opera at the famous Sydney Opera House.
In other news, I really need to start my summer reading. |
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| Leave me nothing I don't need at all. |
[Aug. 19th, 2009|05:55 pm] |
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I'm in Sydney! I am jet-lagged and regretting not bringing a coat and in need of a shower, but I'm happy. Especially after our unbearably long (13 and a half hours) flight to Sydney after already flying 5 and a half hours to San Francisco. I think it's funny that it's 5:55 PM here, while it's 3:55 AM at home. I would say more, but I am too tired. |
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| The summer swells. |
[Aug. 17th, 2009|12:01 am] |
On Friday, Caileigh, Amanda, Mike H., and I went to Qdoba, which was delicious, as usual. That sentence had way too many commas. After that, we walked back to my house and played Scattergories and Apples to Apples. We played Apples to Apples until all of the green cards were gone and the best combination was when Amanda put down Abraham Lincoln for Sensual. Hahaha.
Yesterday, my dad and I went to Folk Fest! The "parking lot" was like a huge marshland with knee-high weeds and mud from the rain earlier in the week. While we waited for the school bus shuttle, we watched a good number of vans get stuck. Being at Folk Fest, while it was wonderful, reminded me of why I stay inside a lot during the summer. I don't even remember the last time I was as hot as I was yesterday. Oh my God, it was absolutely ridiculous. And there is not a whole lot of shade around there. Once the sun went down, it got a lot better, but then everything got really damp.
I saw a bunch of kids that I knew, which was cool. I hung out with Steve for a while and he watched The Decemberists with me and my dad. They were amazing as usual and they played a new song called "Down by the Water," which was catchy and great and I love them so, so much. When they were finished, Steve decided to be awesome and he got his mom's volunteer pass and let me borrow it and we both went "backstage" and I got Colin Meloy, Chris Funk, Shara Worden, and Becky Stark to sign my bag and I almost fainted out of happiness. Steve and I actually had a small conversation with Chris Funk, which was really cool.
Caravan of Thieves performed earlier in the afternoon and they were really good as well. Alela Diane was before The Decemberists, and I was walking around with Steve for the majority of her set, but I could still hear her and I really love her voice.
I saw Robin for the first time in over a year! He came up to my dad and I and said hello soon after we got there. His family's tarp was close to ours so during the evening concert I went over to sit with him and catch up after not seeing each other for so long. We had so much to talk about (school, college, Harry Potter, how he hadn't taken a shower since Tuesday, etc.) and it made me sad that we had stopped talking and hanging out. His family brought home made pies and offered me a slice, which I accepted eagerly. We got orange glow stick things and listened to/watched four or five acts, complaining about how awful this one called Fraction Theory was. Iron & Wine was the last performer of the night and I will forever love Sam Beam and his giant beard. Steve, Lucas, and Gabe Spiller came over to sit with us and I told Steve what the songs were called so he could write the setlist (his volunteering task). Louis joined us after a while, which I was thrilled about (he had come over to Robin and I earlier and asked Robin if he wanted any shrooms ::shakes head exasperatedly::), but he sat far enough away. Hah.
So, it was a really good day, in spite of the unbelievable heat.
Today I finished reading An Abundance of Katherines, which I recommend that you read as well. I also packed, which I dislike, but not as much as I dislike unpacking. My mom picked up my Grandpa and we all went out to eat at Dmitri's, where I was in a sullen mood in spite of the delicious Mediterranean fare. I'm pretty much finished packing and am now putting more things on my iPod. I'm glad we don't have some crazily early flight tomorrow, so I don't have to wake up super early. Our plane to San Francisco leaves Newark Airport at 6:30 tomorrow night, then we have a hour and eleven minutes (providing it's on time) to get to our next plane to Sydney. We get to Sydney sometime in the early morning on the nineteenth. WEIRD. There's a fourteen hour time difference there, which will take some getting used to. Also, our first flight is about six hours and the second is about fifteen. That is going to be awful, awful, awful. But worth it! I AM SO EXCITED! |
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| Grasping at pearls with my fingertips. |
[Aug. 12th, 2009|11:27 pm] |
On Monday, all of the sleep I've been getting kind of caught up with me and I couldn't fall asleep for so long. When you're trying to fall asleep whilst genuinely not tired, it just gets irritating. So I read for a while, and when that didn't work, I brought my pillow and sheet downstairs to watch television. After I watched some quality Disney Channel shows and still wasn't any more tired than when I first tried to sleep, I watched Atonement until about 3:30, read some more, and finally fell asleep.
Yesterday, I went to the dentist, which is never fun. My teeth are perfectly fine and I hope they stay that way forever. I left the dentist in more pain that I had ever been in after the dentist. I think he was more vigorous with that awful toothbrush thing than usual and consequently, my entire mouth was throbbing for about an hour afterwards. Lame.
Other things:
1. The Spring Awakening Broadway Cast Album is so, so good.
2. I want a video camera. I've been inspired by all of the YouTube vlogs I've been watching lately.
3. Go read Looking for Alaska.
4. I saw Harry Potter in the IMAX theatre last night with Zoey and my mom. It was pretty awesome.
5. I want to learn how to play my dad's guitar really, really badly (especially because he never uses it anymore), but he's been in a perpetual bad mood lately, so I think I'll wait until we're in Australia and he's happy to ask.
6. I'm so tired of the heat. I can't wait until I am enveloped in the cool Australian winter (which consists of weather in the 60-70 degree range most of the time during the day).
7. I'm wearing my Camp Walnut shirt and being sad that I can't go with other camp people to see the show that David is directing (Henry IV, Part I) because I'll be halfway around the world. And it's FREE, too! Ah, well.
8.SCHOOL IS IN LESS THAN A MONTH, WHAAAT?! |
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