Forgot to mention two weeks ago (because I'm a butt) that I got this in a fortune cookie when my family ate at our favorite restaurant after Comic Con:
That's... actually very deep. For once.
If I had done a post last week, I would've started with talking about 9/11, but it's a little late to do that now... Well, I probably should still.
How weird is it that I am part of the last generation in K-12 that had been born before that happened? I was seriously just a month old when it happened, so of course I don't remember it. But to know that kids from this point on will only consider it as a historical event, not as an event that we were all in the middle of... I don't know, that just seems a little weird and almost heart-breaking. My sister is more upset about it than I am, since she's older and is teaching the kids that were born after that.
Also... There's surely kids out there who were born right as 9/11 was happening. They must feel really conflicted about their birthday.
There was also a multi-stake conference last Sunday, and some of what they said I want to remember. So, here's my short list of what they said for future reference (this is to hoping that Future Me will understand fully what this stuff even means!):
Waddell: Scripture study is very important.
Oscarson: "Oh, I am very Mormon! I follow all the rules, and I find it very fun!"
Ballard: What even is this Pokémon Go?
What I love is that Ballard kept mispronouncing "Pokémon".
Um, I think I'll just mention now that my mom and I have started doing stuff on FamilySearch since last Sunday- but for realsies this time. Like, we're actually finding things to do. And I reserved some names today, which I'm hoping we'll get to use next month. (I also went on a temple trip last Thursday, but few Young Women showed up.)
I already had a huge list of stuff I'd planned to write about last week, so I'm gonna have to skip quite a bit, I think.
I'll just start with that we watched When A Stranger Calls a few weeks ago, but I'd forgotten to put it in the previous post. And since I'm already on the topic of movies~ My sis and I watched Labyrinth in the movie theater! As in, the David Bowie movie that came out in the 80's, which is basically one of my sister's absolute favorite movies ever. It was the 30th anniversary on Wednesday, so they were doing a screening of it at the theater, so of course we had to go. It was pretty cool, even though I barely remembered any of it from my childhood.
Last Friday, I finally officially began filling out my Stanford application. I'm really hoping to put it in for Early Action, since I'm a little more likely to make it in then, but we were presented with a problem: the ACT with Writing is required to apply. And it says on the website it's preferred if you don't do the ACT in October because it's very likely they won't receive it in time by the time they look at your application. But, well, it's too late to do the September ACT, so I'm gonna do the one in October and pray they receive it in time and give me a fair shot at getting into the school.
I'm also signing up for random scholarships in my free time- mainly during school hours- that don't require tons of effort, but once I'm done with the Stanford app, I'm hoping to get into doing the scholarships that do require effort
Among the scholarships (all of which require creating an account in a certain website, often one that has to do with finding colleges and scholarships) I have mindlessly signed up for, there was one for DoSomething.org. Once I took the time to properly see what the website was even for, I was pleasantly surprised. It is mainly about service and promoting social change. A few of the projects seemed like something I'm actually willing to participate in. One I signed up for was #RealPrincess (though I'm not a big fan of the title). Basically, it's just creating a strong female character that could easily be a new Disney princess. There were already a few entries, but I thought some of them didn't really look like princesses. Like, the character was probably quite cool, but I kinda wondered if people forgot there was supposed to be a "part of the royal family" at some point in most of the Disney princesses' stories, which was why they were called Disney princesses.
So, as I was going to bed, my mind went back to that, and I suddenly had an idea for a princess- one with a magical power of a sort that could actually be used to cause a lot of positive change in the world. (The facts that my sister likes languages and I like writing definitely had parts in this.) What I thought was: what if someone could writing something that could be understood by anyone, regardless of what language they speak and their level of literacy? Like, she could write in English, and it could be understood perfectly well by a 3-year-old in... um... Nigeria? No idea why I picked that country.
But yeah, I thought that would be crazy cool. I imagine that she would write a lot of articles and such and spread them throughout the kingdom, and she would be way into social activism and supporting those who want change within the government system and sharing stories of people she's met in order to get them the help they need. She would have to do it all under a secret pen-name, though, because I doubt her parents, the flippin' king and queen, would particularly like the idea that their daughter is always siding with the poor people and being part of why there's been a lot of protests and stuff like that.
She would want to learn lots of languages- just because foreigners can understand her doesn't mean she'll understand them, after all- and travel a lot in order to put those language skills to use and just meet new people. She'd be a very social person, outside of the times when she holes up in her room to write to the public, so she'd take the opportunities to get out of the castle whenever she can. This would be how she ends up meeting a prince or something while in his home country, and she'd probably have some adventures with him... Once she's become a little fluent in his native language, of course.
For some reason, I decided that she'd have two older brothers and one younger brother, and she'd always have her hair in a ponytail on normal days and half-ponytail styles when at special events. The closest I have to a name is Valencia Everline. (Everline came from hearing the detective's name in Black Butler... which I'm actually going to mention now.)
I finished reading the tenth book of Black Butler yesterday, which means I read the first 10 volumes in a little over a week. *pats my own back* Since I'd only seen the anime before, I'd expected the manga to be the exact same, but... it wasn't. For one thing, there's a lot more jokes (which I'm surprised to have forgotten happens in manga more than anime, which is part of what I like the FMA manga more than the animes, but it's just by a little bit that the magna wins out for me) and showing of emotions from Ciel and Sebastian. Everyone's favorite butler is always so calm and smiley in the anime, so I was surprised that he acted so dang human sometimes in the manga, but I also like it. I might like it more than the anime too! (Though I'll have to thank the anime for giving me the great voices for some of the characters, even at the cost of the really annoying voices. *coughMeyRinandGrellcough*)
There's also a different order of events. Or example, the Circus arc happens a whole lot sooner than I expected. (I'm pretty sure my mind had erased the memories of the horrifying parts of Book of Circus, cuz I just remembered a few things about the main characters- mostly Joker and Doll- and that there was some very disturbing things that happen. I didn't remember particularly what, and now that I've read it, I'm like "Oh yeah. No wonder my brain didn't want me to remember that, because it's quite traumatizing." So~ I think I might just not watch Book of Circus again once I get all the way through the first and second season of the anime again. There were some cool things (like the opening song!!!) and cute, funny things, but... I'd rather not have to see the horrible stuff all over again.
Since I already mentioned earlier one of my new story ideas, I guess I'll mention another: Set lives in my pocket. Basically, I had a conversation with my sister where she said something about something living in her pocket (can't remember what, but she'd said it sarcastically). For some reason, I'd misheard her and thought she said Set- as in, the Egyptian god that's all evil and stuff- lived in her pocket. So now I'm thinking a weird, but funny and interesting story could come out of the premise of Set or Hades or a similar god just... being shrunken and living in somebody's pocket. (Now that I think about it, I'd fancied the idea for a while in 10th grade of if I kept my Lego Batman and Zane in my pocket, and they ended up coming to life... and so I carried around mini living Legos and I'd have the time of my life. As long as they didn't require to breathe, eat, and poop, of course. If that was the case, it wouldn't be as fun.)
I'm beginning to do a lot more serious exercise lately. There's doing the dances (which are all exhausting as heck), and on Saturday I finally signed up for the Kung Fu classes! ...And, well, hopefully, I don't regret it. At the very least, I think already having an after-school schedule and something to aim my energy towards may be very useful. Exercise relieves stress, as I am told, and exercise is definitely something I need to improve on, but only can manage to have short bouts of managing successfully. The warmups and starting exercises in my first class were really tiring, and I felt so lost with the sparring. I'm hoping that, plus learning how to defend myself correctly, will motivate me to work my hardest on this.
The thing is, I also should be starting to do the volunteering I'd wanted to do since months ago, but I'm worried it might feel like too much on my plate if I put that too. We actually went looking for opportunities that I might like and are relatively close to the house- none have to do with refugees, but it's still good stuff. The two best-looking ones are volunteering at the animal shelter (hopefully, they'd let me take care of the cats, even though I'm not 18!) and being a math tutor at an after-school program at an elementary just a few blocks away. I feel pretty unconfident about my teaching skills since 10th grade, but my mom and sister apparently think I'd do perfectly fine. (Side-note: starting this week, my sis is now doing more work in the office than the math classroom, so I hope she feels better about her new position and doesn't get as stressed out as she did before. A lot of stuff was piled onto her when she was mainly a tutor, especially this year.)
Anyway, I'm thinking it'd be best to at least wait a week to see how things go with my Kung Fu classes before adding in volunteering. If I do, I'll need to do it soon, though, if I wanna have it on my college application. (I'm worrying that putting both Kung Fu and volunteering might make it seem like I'm trying too hard by putting a lot of activities? I already have down drums, dancing, writing, and will likely vaguely mention doing service at the temple... Or am I being too paranoid?)
On Saturday, we tried out a Filipino restaurant. The food was good (though not quite what I expected), but what absolutely blew me away was the dessert. It was banana fritters with magnolia ice cream. That's right, magnolia. And it was purple! Each were interesting on their own, but a little bit of fritter and ice cream in the same spoonful... Oh my gosh, I felt so mindblown that something could be so frickin' delicious. Amazing.
Since I should've ended this a long time ago (took waaay too long to finish the post this time), I'm just gonna mention that it was ¡¡¡Día de la Independencia de México!!! So, of course, we wore Mexican shirts and dresses and stuffed our faces with Mexican food and snacks. We did not get enough snacks. *tear*
Aand~ last Thursday, right as we finished putting the (Mexican-themed) groceries in the car, my mom got a call from my cousin. She announced that the doctors finally determined for sure what was my Abuelita's problem, and it definitely wasn't cancer!!! It hadn't been very likely in the first place, but just to have the official news was such a relief. I don't remember if I ever even mentioned this earlier, but it was a few months ago that we were told she might have cancer. So, getting on with everyday life with that possibility in the back of our heads... Not fun.
We still want to visit her as soon as possible- which may be during Winter Break- but at least she doesn't have such a scary disease.
Alrighty! Goodbai~
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