the world just keeps turning...

first day of the new semester! although i no longer have an off campus for 7th period, i still like my schedule. here is the breakdown:
Yearbook-Flietstra- don't even ask why i did this to myself...again. there are only 3 people in the class, consisting of me, allison and lauren. i guess i felt bad for allison, being the editor, and all 6 or so people dropping out when the semester changed...shall be interesting; i'm trying to keep a positive attitude.
Economics-Rinks-that should be interesting as well...he seems like a different sort of guy. i might even start missing mr. rhodes...a little haha
T.A.-Admiraal-pretty relaxed, so that will probably be my favorite period of the day
A.P. Lit-Terhorst-same as last semester...i hope :)
Spanish 4- Langton-also should be similar to last semester
Christian Missions-Westrup-i'm really looking forward to this class; lots to learn
Anatomy-Tamminga-we get to dissect a sheep brain, cow eye, pig heart and a pig fetus...we'll see how that goes haha. but, i think that stuff is really interesting and i love having mr. t as a teacher

i'm excited for a change and i feel ready to start second semester, but at the same time, i don't. the start of second semester means the closer i get to college. but, like i've come to realize, life is a process. enjoy what part you are at and God will ensure that you are ready to move on when it is time. :)

to end, i have some rambling on the quite random subject of homeless people or people that just simply ask for money. i'm sure everyone has experienced someone walking up to them and either just asking for money and/or delivering a story to go with it. i never really though much about it, since i felt that my parents money wasn't my money to give away. then i got my job over the summer and after i stopped working because school and tennis started up, instead of going back to just asking my parents for money, which i hate doing, we have worked a deal where i have to work for money. i either do certain jobs for them or babysit katie and then what i do with that money is my choice, but i don't get anymore by just asking. anyways, since all of that, when homeless or needy people would ask me for money in a parking lot, i would usually just give them a couple of dollars either because i felt bad saying no, or because i simply wanted them to leave me alone. although the act seemed kind, my perspective was totally askew. i always felt guilty for doubting what they will do with that money or felt guilty for just wanting to get rid of them. a couple of conversations i had with people, really changed my perspective. first, one of my friends pointed out that it really does take a lot of courage to just walk up to someone like that and ask something of them. another really good point another one of my friends passed along to me was that are we truly going to use that 2 or 3 bucks towards something better. saying that they are going to go buy drugs with it, is really none of our business and i think is more of us just making an excuse. i mean, what would any of us fortunate people use a couple bucks towards? going out to lunch? going shopping with? entertainment? all such trivial things when there really are people living without knowing where they will get their next meal. i don't mean to be preachy and i'm definitely not saying to go out and give your money to some homeless guy walking down the street. i'm just saying think about why you are doing something and what your motivation is.
sorry for that little rant, but i just wanted to get some of my thoughts down.

finals are FINALLY over!!!

hopefully for the rest of my senior year?! :)
despite the stress and craziness of the week, it was also a lot of fun.
wednesday august and i got together to study for our government final, which was really helpful because we actually managed to study! for 5 flippin hours!!! and then when i got home i still had to write and study the essay outlines, which was another 1.5hrs-2hrs. but, thank goodness it's over now! haha and despite the fact that we were studying, we still managed to have fun. we kept coming up with stupid things, like pictures, neumonic devices and weird ways to remember all the different information. pretty funny.
thursday, amy and i hung out after our government finals and amused ourselves by leaving insane videos on everyones facebook. blow all the steam off, ya know? we also went to the pupuseria!!! why? to get pupusa's, what else? and no, pupusa's are not the things indian women wrap thier babies in. pupusa's are a native El Salvadorian food composed of a tortilla with some substance (like bean, cheese, chicken ect...) baked inside. delicious!!! and you don't have to go all the way to El Salvador to get one...just travel to your local Long Beach Pupuseria, located on the corner of Willow and Easy Ave. wow...i sound like an infomercial. haha! but, really, i highly recommend these things! getting there the first time for amy and i was a challenge. we knew relatively where the place was, so we were going down willow (amy was driving) and right after we go up over the 710 freeway, we decide that we went too far and decided to make a u-turn at the next available st....Easy Ave. amy turns and right and as she starts to accelerate out of the u-turn, i just happen to look at the buildings next to us and then i saw it. i pretty much scream "PUPUSERIA!!!" and point in the direction. amy jumped so bad and then swerved right into the parking lot. well, we managed to get there :) we went back to her house and sat outside with her mom and ate the delicious creations of El Salvadorian goodness! seriously though, this place is like authentic El Salvador status. they have many things that we ate in El Salvador on the menu...even the oh, so delectable plantains, cream and beans...i won't mind if i never eat another plantain in my life. lol. we also watched "The Dark Knight", because amy had never seen it and i had to expose her to it's amazingness. fun day!
today was our bible final, which wasn't bad. i am glad that finals are over though. after our final, our girls bible study met for lunch at the Red Robin in the Cerritos mall. what a blast! these girls are amazing and i feel very lucky to call them my friends! :) august and chantal weren't able to make it and we did miss them, but it was still fun.

our attempt at getting a group shot... ha. oh well, allison and i are that good looking that you only need half of our faces to complete the picture. kidding
how...attractive of her...she looks like a bloated puffer fish don't ask what cortes is doing, because i have no clue and i don't think i was even ready for this picture

talk about attractive...

yeah, we are starting a career in modling. and andrea looks possessed...

the rain today made my day even better!!! :)

when i came home i crahsed. i watched "the office" online (love the office!!! i'm pretty much obsessed with it :) and then moved to the couch, where i watched about 5-6 episodes of "the fresh prince of bel air" absolutely hilarious! i decided that after this week, i deserved a bit of lazy down time to relax my mind.

now i get to start an english paper. due next week...never ends. oh, well, my cousin, jamie, is coming out to visit this weekend, so i'm pretty excited for that. :)
have a fabulous weekend!

4'8, end of the semester and a weekend with justin...

what a week! i don't even remember half the stuff that went on last week...the weekend feels really long as well.
friday, august and i had another one of our adventures. we started the evening by hanging out at mi casa, playing ping pong and just talking. we had dinner with my family and then we went down to second street. on the way we stopped by mothers beach (still wanted that night beach visit), which is lighted and complete with play ground. we had fun taking pictures and playing on the tire swing haha :)
saturday, i was up bright and early to meet matt at Gahr for a track all comers meet. high jump didn't start until 10:00, but matt insisted on getting there at 8:45 to make sure we could check in, in case they had a 9:00 cut off. but, they didn't, so we ended up sitting there for an hour, which was fine. we both didn't do too badly for our first time jumping since summer. i got 4'8 and matt got 5'8, meeting his goal, which was to jump a foot higher than me, since our PR's are a foot apart.
after the track meet, justin (my cousin) came over in the afternoon and we just hung around the house. very relaxing. we had a will smith marathon, watching "the fresh prince of bel air" all afternoon and then "Independence day" that night. during which i fell asleep 20 mins in. it was good and all, but we had just gotten out of the jacuzzi and i was very relaxed haha. jus spent the night and managed to give me his cold :P (no fair).
sunday afternoon all of my family decided to leave, so it was just justin and i sitting around the house. we started talking about painting and then he was like "do we have painting stuff?"
"yes"
"oh, man! can we paint?!?!"
wow...he is a crazy boy! you wouldn't think he is 21, but pretty funny. we all went out to dinner and then justin and i went and saw Valkyrie (sp?), which was good.
he also ended up spending last night with us and after lunch i took him back to Whittier. it was fun to have him come down for the weekend. and next weekend he should be around again, cause jamie is going to be in town. love seeing the fam! haha
anyways...now, i am attempting to study for finals. i've got psychology and AP lit tomorrow. fun fun. but, it's almost over! i can do it!

i have some other things to post...mostly thoughts to contemplate, but i think i'll get back to ya'll on that...i still do need to study.

but, i promise i'll be back before another week goes by! :)
night!

lesson of the day

be a eucalyptus tree, not an ice plant

we are not meant to be the end recipients of God's gifts to us.

if you care to know what i'm talking about go pick a leaf of each plant and smell them, then see if you can make a connection. thats all i'm going to say :)

what have i been up to?

who knows...haha it all just starts to blend after a while.
last week saturday (not yesterday) i got to see rebekah for the first time in a long time! since summer! hannah, rebekah and i met up at golden spoon and then decided to amuse ourselves by going in Marshall's and trying on the most ridiculous things we could find in the store. fun stuff!
we are so odd...

hannah looks like she just stepped out of the medieval period or something...ha

oh, rebekah...i don't even have words for this picture... :D

we also tried on the highest high heels we could find...i thought i was going to break something, while rebekah and hannah were giants. rebekah goes "if i fall, its going to be a loooong way down" haha
monday, i also got to meet up with a friend i hadn't seen in a while. cristina was home for a bit, so i got to hang out with her, which was fun. we got to catch up and also watched Mama Mia...funny movie.

tuesday, was our government field trip to the courthouse. i actually found it very interesting. we watched three different pleas. one had to do with a robbery, another with the mishandling of a weapon and i can't remember the third, but it beat school, anyway.

friday after school i met up with julie before she went back to azusa and we went to see a movie.

all in all my first week back from break was a good one.

yesterday i got to see cathy, whom i also haven't seen in a while. it was her birthday friday, so grace, terisha and i took her out to lunch.

today was fun as well. i played tennis with alicia and then it got really hot so we went and got ice cream. later i went to my cousin's baby shower.
and yeah...that is my update on my oh so interesting life.

last week of 1st semester before finals! crazy! this week also marks the start of the high jumpers starting track conditioning. i told everyone we were going to start this week, so we will see how this goes. i must say that i am ready to have something to do after school other than homework. i have loved having some more down time, but at the same time have really missed some physical and social activity to complete my day.

hope all is well for now!

caio! :)

don't let standards stand in your way

this week has proved to be the toughest week of the school year. i'm still not on my regular sleeping schedule (whatever my regular sleeping schedule is haha) and every morning it is so difficult to pull myself out of bed. anyways, enough of my whining...
other than the getting up in the morning, my week has been going great. i have things to post about, but just no time to post. so, i'll do catch up later and for now i'll put up a picture of what i did over break, when i was just relaxing at home.

the thing is i really like to paint, but i'm just not very good at it. oh well, i won't worry about standards and i'll just do it because i like to do it. that is a good lesson to learn no matter the situation because the only standards in life that matter are God's.
oh, and did anyone feel the earthquake a little while ago? my parents were downstairs and didn't feel a thing, but my whole room shook...cool.

Park City...wish i could have skied!

okay, these are the last of my utah pics. on tuesday we went into Park City and walked around a while before going to the J's house in the evening. Park City has some of the yummiest little fudge shops...pretty neat little place. i would really like to back and ski there sometime.
love this sign! so funny! my mom insisted we get a picture with this giant plastic cow...randomafter 4 pictures or so, i was quite done with the cow, as you may have guessed from my expression

a moose...or is it?
Franz the bear...no kidding the plaque next to the sculpture said the sculptures name is "Franz the Bear"
shoe treei tried snapping some artistic looking pictures, but didn't get much...

i was bored waiting for my family

after Park City we headed to the J's house, where we left for downtown Salt Lake to visit Jamie at the restaurant she works at. we are so bad...we each asked her a question, while ordering (she was our waitress, obviously) and after about 7 or 8 questions she was like just shut up and order. haha, no she was a good sport. love her! i decided to ride with justin and seppi on the way back (justin, gary and uncle jeff all drove, since we were such a large group). as we were next to gary, justin decides to try a faster route in order to beat him and gets in the left turn lane. gary flipped! it was hilarious! if you know any of my family (especially gary), you'll know that we are such a competitive bunch! he was on the cell asking for a faster way to get there. but, as it turned out, we kept missing all the lights, so justin and seppi decided to show me some sights. we drove by the U (university of Utah), i got to see seppi's house and then we took a road up the mountain, looking out over all of Salt Lake...pretty cool. as soon as we arrived back at the house, family game night was on! have you all every played "loaded questions"? it's a riot! one person will draw a card and read a question, like "what is one thing men should never do" or "if you were invisible, where would you go?" and then everyone, except the drawer of the card, writes down an answer and hands it to the person on the right of the person drawing the card. that person reads them and then the drawer must match each response with a player. its hilarious, some of the answers you get! we played until like one or two in the morning. i don't think i have ever seen my uncle laugh that hard. he actually got up, left the room and we could still hear him laughing...all alone. it wasn't even that funny. the question was something like "if you were on the cover of a magazine, which one would it be?" and besty puts "maxim", which i guess is a branch of playboy. next to it she wrote "jk", but my uncle didn't know that stood for "just kidding" and thought it said "jr.". when he told us this, betsy goes "like what "just for kids". you had to be there, but he thought it was the funniest thing ever. crazy stuff! it was a blast to see all of them again...it's always fun.

well, school tomorrow. can't believe first semester is almost over! lets take this next semester slow, shall we?

"Snow, SNow, SNOw, SNOW!"

i thought these icicles looked pretty cool

katie absolutly LOVED playing in the snow and kept asking me to take her outside

the sun was in my eyes :(

gary tried to take a picture of all three of us, but unfortuantley we can just never get a good picture

see what i mean...

i decided to walk around and found this nice little spring running through the snowbanks...pretty neat

snow mobiling adventures!

after tubing on monday some of the group decided to go snow mobiling. it was so stinkin' cold! but still fun. the pairs on the snow mobile's were besty and jamie, gary and my mom, justin and seppi and then me and jenna, since we both like to speed we always seem to be paired up on machine type things.


here we are looking good in our helmets...betsy's helmet is in the right corner, then jamie, jenna and then part of my helmet. haha we kind of cut us out there...

me not knowing what to do for a picture. the wind was blowing so hard i couldn't hear anything gary was saying (he was taking the picture).
me and jenna

me, jenna and jamie

jenna and i ambushing gary with snow balls haha

ambushing justin as they drove by. we tried not to hit seppi...she is too nice to hit. justin on the other hand is more deserving. haha

happiness is being a step sis-danielle and betsy. haha inside joke reference. but picture of me putting snow on betsy's head, if you couldn't tell

jen jen got tired

justin and seppi ridin' byfunny story: while we were cruzin' around in a big open area, my mom decided to take a trail while gary was throwing snow at all of us. she was on the trail for a while, but stated getting nervous when she coudn't find a place to turn around. so, she tries to turn around in the middle of the little path (those things are hard to turn) and then hits a tree and digs the snow mobile into the powder. finally gary went after her to get her, taking jenna and my snow mobile, leaving us in the middle of the open field so that justin had to come get us. then the guide goes after gary and all of the rest of us were just sitting in the middle of the forest, freezing and waiting for them. oh, dear. my mom...pretty funny though.

the view coming back down the mountains was absolutely beautiful!

Happy New Year and my journey to the beehive state

happy new year, everybody! can you all believe it is 2009?! i sure can't! 2009 has always sounded so far into the future, being the year i graduate and all. crazy! 2008 was one of the best years, by far! so many things happened. traveling to so many different places was definitely a bit highlight that i am very thankful for. i feel as if i have learned so much this past year; about life, people, God and many other things. i am both nervous and excited for 2009. i know it is going to be a year filled with many exciting and new things. the best i can do is go into it knowing God is in control and with a positive attitude to take these new experiences as they come.

moving right along to my trip, then...
it was a blast to see my family and hang out with them! we did get delayed in the airport because they had to change a tire on our plane...ridiculous, but we eventually made it.

katie looking very cute and bundled :)
in the car when we arrived in Salt Lake...gross picture of all of us, but what can i say? haha

sleeping in the care...cutie!

looks mighty cold, and mighty cold it was

when we finally met up with the J's at the "Homestead" (a cute little resort place in the mountians) the fun really began (as it usually does with us). we had dinner, hung out for a bit and then decided to go in the hot tub. as we were all relaxing in the wonderfully warm water, safe from the freezing temperatures outside of the water, justin decides it would be fun to go roll in the snow. jenna, jamie and i all got out just so we could watch him. i should know better by now, but alas, no. justin thought i would be hilarious to throw me in the snow. actually, he did not only throw me in it, but picked me up and carried me out to where the powder was deepest, with me kicking and protesting all the way, of course. he threw me in and then proceeded to not let me up and as i tried to run out of the snow as fast as i could, wanting to make it back to the hot tub, he continued throwing snow balls at me. he is so mean to me, but it is fun sometimes, i guess. i wish i had that on video though...i must have looked ridiculous.

the next day we got up early to all go tubing! so much fun! katie also enjoyed it.

she hates smiling for pictures and most of the time refuses to look at the camera.

katie going up...

unfortunately i didn't get any pictures of us all going down, but i'm sure my aunt julie did, so i'll maybe get those from her later. most of the time we all held on to each other's tubes and went down in one big mass, which was great fun and then, beign the competitive family we are had races, in which i was on a team with jamie and gary. i should never be on a team with gary...the first time he let go of my tube, leaving me to spin out of control and the second time he pushed me off my tube entirely, causing me to slid down most of the mountain on my stomach because he wouldn't let go of my arm. i got so much snow down my shirt! not fun, but still funny.