Rest of Spring Break

 

So after the New York trip, came back home. David and Marissa were visiting, so I made sure to hang out with them over break. My dad and I picked David up from the Green Line and he slept in the back room for a few days. He gave me a KILLER massage (after begging the world for one since the first week of soccer season! lol)

Hung out with David, kept lifting, and then hung out with Jaz, Mar, Te, and David downtown. We went to the Kerasotes theatre to see Limitless – amazing movie, but had too many puke scenes for me to want to see it again. Hung out at a Baskin Robins/Dunkin Doughnuts for a few hours just talking. Really fun. Rachel F. visited Chicago for a day, but I didn’t end up hanging out with them and didn’t get to see her. My roommate Adele was also in town and was staying in a hotel downtown, but I didn’t see her either cause she was busy with her family and me with mine. But it’s alright – I would see them both in less than a week.

Went to a Lady Eagles soccer game in the middle of their losing streak with hopes of my presence being a good luck charm. Anali showed up too and we had a reunion (and they won the game. HA!) Got to see all my socca girls! it was great and FREEZING (what the hell Chicago?!)

Having some major family issues. In short, Karen’s being more stubborn than usual and not saying/doing the brightest things and spends all of her time on the computer. Grandma’s having a hard time on her  own and in moving into a nursing home. Over break, she slipped in her apartment and fell. But the problem is that she is so weak that she wasn’t able to get up at all, and basically laid in the same spot by the foot of her bed for 1 and a half days. Couldn’t reach a phone to call for help, wasn’t near any food, etc. For over a day. After my dad discovered her in the apartment 2 days later, we took her to the emergency room where they held her there for a few days and they recommended physical therapy. When we visited her, she could hardly talk and couldn’t move on her own. Poor Grandma.

ISo now its back to school, with all these unresolved matters back at home. How can I keep an eye on Grandma from over here and leave things with my sister and parents as they are?

Spring Break – New York

 

Okay, so it’s been a really long time since I’ve written something. Not because I’ve been busy (which I have), but because a lot of things have happened lately and I’m not sure of how to write about them on here without giving a way too much. but I’ll try.

Right now I’m at home during Spring Break. We got two weeks for break, and I took the school shuttle back with Jazmine and David. First I spent 4 days in New York visiting the family and such. We went to the movies to see Beastly (the book was much better, but the movie was decent), an Off-Broadway performance called Fuerzabruta. It was hella weird. First off, there were no seats for this performance; everyone was standing in this warehouse type room looking up at the stage. It started with this man in a suit running on a treadmill/walkway thing with rain and getting shot dead. Then they do the whole thing again (with him running and getting shot), but THEN they do this badass water sequence that was really cool. A bunch of women on a tank above our heads creating patterns and shapes in the water. Here’s some quick clips:

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Anyways, certain aspects of it were amazing (like the water stuff and the music), but the performance as a whole was quite repetitive (how many times do I have to see that man running and getting shot?). It was a cool idea tho. Im glad I experienced it.

Had some fun shopping and hanging out with the cousins. Also before Fuerzabruta  we went to Dylan’s Candy Bar and Wildwood BBQ (delicious!). Dylan’s Candy Bar was a really big deal – I’m a serious candy lover and it was a place I have wanted to go for years – and I finally made it there! It was amazing. 3 floors of candy everywhere. I was in heaven.

The rest of the trip was great – and the best part was chillin’ with my cousins. My sister and I’s presence automatically puts my cousin Melissa into a better mood (Melissa told us this). We watched some movies
(Secretariat), went shopping (Target at CityCenter), and ate dinner at the Melting Pot. Great trip!

2 Weeks of Winter Break Left!

Listening to: The whirr of my laptop

I go back to school in 2 weeks. and the weird thing is, I CANT WAIT. i miss my friends so much and working out daily. :P

i am trying to get an internship at an aquarium store for the summer, and im going to be going to a soccer camp. since i cant pay the soccer camp fee, im going to work the younger kids soccer camp and not get paid, so that i can attend the older kids camp for free. :D we'll see though!

and today i made a cake with my sister. looks-wise, it was an epic fail. but we'll see how it tastes! it is passionfuit cake with raspberry passionfruit mousse filling, passionfruit icing, and white fondant. im hoping we dont go into sugar shock.

A Little Bit

Listening to: Jack Black singing on Jay Leno's Late Night

sooo, i dont have much time, but this is an excerpt from an email I sent the team (and is reworded a bit). it will count as an entry. :P

so as hardly anyone knows, I looooooove Cake Boss. Its totally awesome. Buddy makes these amazing cakes that look so effing delicious its wrong...and you get to experience of his Italian family dramas! the ultimate, right? yes. so anyways, the other day, my sister and dad were glued to the tv, and what were the watching? A new Cake Boss reality competition called The Next Great Baker. Now this show is AWESOME. Ever seen Project Runway or Top Chef? Pretty much just like these shows. They design their cakes based on a theme for competition, and then a baker goes home every week. Its sweeeeeeeet (haha no punintended!). But im super excited cause watching the show inspired my sister to want to bake me a cake with an underwater theme! kuh-YEAH!!! We''ll see how it turns out. :)

So movies.....I saw TRON last week, which was really cool. (and even more awesome cause I saw it in 3D) but I also saw Tangled and loved it! Rapunzel has always been one of my favorite stories, so maybe I'm a bit biased...but still. i really liked it. Black Swan looks hella creepy. Im stayin away from that shit.

Er...books! It's kinda funny but I actually read that Hilary Duff book (Elixir)last week! got it from the local library, and read it with low expectations. but you know what? i liked it. I mean, she's no amazing or even great writer. She's average. But the story was cool and kept me interested. And when I finished it, it kinda left me wanting a sequel. Okay, maybe more than kinda. but you get the point. Books I recommend? they are all guilty pleasures. The House of Night series by P.C. Cast and Kristen Cast. These books are AWESOME. One of my most favorite series ever. (did I ever mention that I really love book series?) but yeah. the series is about vampires, but they are different from all of ther vampire novel (for starters, they spell vampires differently. -vampyres-). and the main character goes to a vampyre boarding school. Its so exciting and addicting. for realz. The Pretty Little Liars is great, and if you like murder mysteries and young adult books, read THE PRIVATE series. seriously. might be my favorite series ever.

so i would talk more, but I have to run. My family is driving up to Connecticut to go to one of my cousin's (and my) favorite stores: a store called House of Fins that sells live animals for aquaria. there was a manatee there last time I went that kept surfacing and was really friendly. hellz yeah.

alrighty. peace out!!!

In the Sky

Listening to: Ashin’ Kusher by Kid Cudi

Location: On a plane in the sky (on my way to LaGuardia Airport in New York)

So it’s been a really long time since I’ve written. I think I owe it to myself, and to my friends, to share a little bit of what has been happening in my life. Writing down how I’m feeling always seems to help a little bit.

Even more family stuff has happened. Karen is doing better, but is still struggling. She’s been in and out of the hospital a few more times. I’m still worried about her, as I have everyday. Last night, I woke up several times in the night to sound of her whimpering and becoming restless in her sleep. I considered waking her up a few times, because I thought I should save her from her nightmares (as we did for each other when we were younger), but left her alone. I asked her about it, and she told me that they weren’t nightmares and that it was her medication. Her medication makes her restless throughout the night and causes her to wake up crying and such. And I feel really bad that she’s going through these things, and I don’t know how to help her. I feel kind of helpless with my own sister.

Well my first semester of college is officially over. It’s weird because it seems like it went by really fast looking back on it now, but during, it lasted forever. But this is nothing new. That always happens with time consuming things. I think I did pretty well – I accepted early on in the semester that I wasn’t going to get straight A’s like I had hoped. I’m hoping that I got an A in tutorial, and probably got B- in Calculus and a B in Chem. Damn Calculus II. Thank goodness I’m done with Calculus. I liked Inorganic Chem tho…and Marzluff was one of the best teachers I’ve ever had. Speaking of that class, an upperclassmen friend is taking it next year. He needs to buy my book! He probably will though; unless one of his friends will lend it to him for free, he won’t be able to find it for less. I need a ton of book for my classes next semester. I’m taking Intro to Anthro, Intro to Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies, Intro to Bio (Genes, Drugs, and Toxins), Jazz Traditions in America, Writing Lab, and FLOOR HOCKEY! Very excited for floor hockey. Now that soccer is over, I need to feed my competitive nature.

Next semester I’m going to have two new jobs. I quit Phonathon to work for my soccer coach with a youth outreach program, and to work for Nancy in the Athletic Dept. dubbing sports film. Yay!

Made some awesome friends. Hanging out with the soccer team is really fun, but I wanted to make sure that I met other people and had other friends. So now I have a nice sized group of good friends that I hang out with on a regular basis and they are awesome people.

Winter waltz and SoccerBall were the best out of all the parties so far. tons of fun and dancing.

Next semester I plan to audition for Noteworthy! I miss singing too much to not try to join. Alright, I’m getting sleepy.

September Thoughts (written 9/25 morning)

My Microsoft Silverlight program isn’t working; maybe because I don’t have internet here on the road. We are on our way to Galesburg, to play Knox. I’m exhausted; I went to sleep early, but some girls on my floor decided to have a party that night. I fell asleep before it started, but woke up to the sound of them shrieking in the hallway around 12:30am. They didn’t quiet down, so I got up after not being able to go back to sleep for 45min, and asked them to quiet down. They did, and soon I was back asleep. But more about what the past few months have been like.

On Family:
So many things have been happening with my family, I would have never imagined. Being away from Karen for this long has really made me realize how much I miss her and how I need to keep an eye on her. And I am so sick of hearing about extremely important things that have happened with her, 3 days late. I mean, when she was in the god damn hospital, I didn’t find out until a few days later. What the hell?! I’ve been really worried about her, and it’s been taking a toll on me in ways it never has before. When crazy stuff started happening, it took a toll on me in soccer practice. The smallest things like scolding in practice made me break down several times because I was scared for her. Anyway, enough about this, its putting me in a sad state which is not a good idea before a game.

On My School:
It’s great. I love all of my teachers. Professor Marzluff who teaches Inorganic Chemistry is really excited about chemistry and is always in a good mood. She is always willing to help and loves talking to students. Professor Mileti is really funny. He is also really excited about what he teaches, and uses epic phrases in calculus that make it interesting. “Everyone knows that when the denominator is 0, the universe explodes.” And to him, variables and numbers don’t cancel each other out—they kill each other off. It’s great. My tutorial “Animals and Imagination”, is taught by Professor Reynolds. It’s an interesting tutorial; we’ve read some pretty cool things, and are currently reading Alex and Me, a really cool book about an African Grey Parrot. We are also watching a movie about birds (Awesome!) and I saw glimpses of Birds of Paradise in it. I had Intermediate Spanish, but had to drop after a few weeks. I was getting the homework done for the most part at like 2 in the morning the day it was due, but was doing a really poor job. I didn’t have time to study for the tests the way I should have either; being in that class was just a major fail. So I dropped it to take it next semester instead when I would have more time because soccer would be over. It was just too much having 3, 200-level classes and tutorial, doing soccer and Phonathon, and was causing me to not do well in my other classes.

On Work:
Phonathon is going pretty well. On my first call, I got $200! It was awesome. I got great feedback from the managers as well, and my credit card conversion rate is around 70 percent. And just this week, I got a guy who hated Grinnell and only stayed for 4 semesters to donate $50. It was a successful day. He knew CJ because he was on the football team, so we chatted about him for a while and I guess that helped him remember things that he actually liked and was thankful for.

On Friends:
I think my closest friend here is probably my roommate. We are so much alike, and seem to really trust each other with a lot of things. I’ve told her about pretty much all of the family things have come up, and she’s trusted me with a lot of information about her family and sister, more specifically. We like really similar music (Colbie Callait, Mika, Natasha Bedingfield, MUSICALS, Mika, etc) and both hate coffee, for example. I have also been entrusting Jordan with my family information, as she understands me from a soccer viewpoint and how things affect my state of mind and competitiveness. I’m not sure if that sentence really made sense, but I am so not going back to figure it out.

On Soccer:
This whole soccer journey has been so incredibly hard. Preseason was successful, but difficult. We had two a days for while, morning practice around 6:30 am, and night practice at 4:30 pm. The fitness tests didn’t go the way I had hoped for the most part, but my results weren’t as horrible as they would have been had I not been training with CJ. Everyday though, I am amazed at how good athletes have it, here. I have an actually field WITH GRASS to play on, full training laundry service, and equipment/gear galore. I’ve never had to so much free stuff thrown at me and on top of that, I throw it back after I’m done and they wash it for me?! Seriously. It’s so cool. But being here has made me realize how much I need to improve on my technical abilities. When defenders here get the ball in the back, they don’t just clear it and hope it goes to one of our players. We actually play the ball and pass IN THE BACK. That was like, forbidden in high school soccer. You were never supposed to kick it through the middle or pass in the back at all. Its cray-cray (favorite phrase). And now to the nagging part about this whole experience; not playing really, really sucks. Especially the moment you realize that you are the single person on the entire team that hasn’t gotten any playing. What does that say about your abilities? It has unfortunately, really made me feel disconnected from the team. It feels like no one cares and I feel really alone because no one else is in this position and few few have been in the past. The team tries to tell me I’ll be in soon and that it sucks, but they have no idea how much it sucks. Because they are all playing. I’m trying to remain positive here, but it is really difficult when you feel like you aren’t getting a chance to be great. I mean, I’ll hang in there, but I hope I play soon. And I feel like so many people like my teammates from Jones are looking up to me because I’m a college player, but that I’m letting them down. Nance was talking about coming to the Carroll game, and I feel like maybe I should tell her to not even bother coming because I probably won’t play. And then there is the matter of Family Weekend next weekend. My family is coming up and really want to see me play, and I don’t want to let them down by them having to watch me sit on the bench the entire time. Until I finally play though, I just have to be hopeful and work my hardest to prove to Coach that I deserve to be on the field, just as much as everyone else. I’m hoping to get the chance to prove that today. Yesterday at practice, Coach gave us journals to write in. I wrote in it last night, and I think I need to re read it now to get me mentally ready for this game again:

Tomorrow, If I play (and I must/WILL be ready to if I do), I will be aggressive. No one will be able to turn on me, beat me, or nudge me off the ball. I will be solid; I will be speedy, and I deny the other team’s opportunities.
I can be a leader in aggression and drive on defense, as well as a leader in staying positive from the bench.
My word: NOTHING. Nothing will get by me without an all-out fight.

25 Random Things About myself

I LIVE for competition. It's what makes me work hard and keeps me interested. Want to study for a test individually? No way. Want to play competitive Jeopardy on the topic with the class? HELL YES.

I'm allergic to everything. Pet Dander (even though I have a cat), trees, pollen, mold, everything. AND I'm lactose intolerant. So, I'm pretty much allergic to Life.

I am highly afraid of vomit. Not so much me vomiting, but being there when someone else is or them vomiting on me. And I feel bad because if my friend was sick, I would love to help her, but would likely be hiding in a corner instead.

I love to eat. I try not to eat without a purpose, but sometimes its hard. Food is just so good! My favorite places to eat are Panera Bread, Carbón, Big Bowl, etc. And I love fruit smoothies. My favorite fruit is Mango.

The best birthday I ever had was my 16th. I was in Costa Rica with my school and they threw me a surprise party. We had just hiked for hours and it was pouring rain, but when I walked (very slowly) back to the kitchen, everyone was sitting there and surprised me. and then they surprised me with a cake later at dinner. and a delicious whole mango with streamers and ribbons poking out of it. :)

I HATE dark chocolate. I think chocolate should not be good for you and should not be bitter. It should be sweet, delicious, creamy, and either milk chocolate or white chocolate.


I am scared of being scared. Even the idea of horror movies freaks me out.

I'm a lefty. And I still tie my shoes with bunny ears (most left handers do). But I do everything else (kick, throw, play tennis) with my right. I think this is because I was ambidextrous up until 4th grade. But then they made me choose a hand so I chose my left.

I'm half New Yorker. My mom was born and raised in New York, and because she's a flight attendant, we visit there all the time. As a result, I only say Soda. Not Pop like everyone else. And if im not paying attention, sometimes you might hear me say idear in stead of idea.

I'm really weird about overspending. I'm really bothered when people buy me expensive things or pay too much for something for me.

I love laughing. Having a great sense of humor is something i will always find attractive.

I hate leg stubble!!! When I'm stretching my legs or something, if I feel stubble, everyone else must be able to see the stubble, so i get irritated and paranoid.

I hate crowded refrigerators. Mine at home is stuffed to the brim, and has ridiculous bags of nail polish falling out of it. You just want bread? Too bad. You're gonna get milk, blueberries and nail polish first.

I forgive people, but I don't forget. This was something my mom taught me to do when I was younger and it stuck with me.

I donated blood in high school. I was a little scared at (mainly cause I didnt want to be next to anyone feeling dizzy), but it was awesome. When they took the needle out, it hurt like hell. But it was worth it.

19) I love sleepovers, but people hate me at sleepovers. I fall asleep early, and wake up early. I make myself go to sleep around 2 or 3 am because my body hates me. If I get less than 5 hours of sleep in a single night, I will get really sick the next day. Happens every single time. And I'm just naturally an early riser. I dont think I've ever slept past 10am in my life.

It's incredibly difficult for me to go to sleep without some form of darkness, blanket, and quiet.

I love Broadway musicals. I have always had dreams of singing and acting on Broadway, and I hang onto those dreams. Ive seen over 20 musicals, and I collect the playbills from all of them.

I like reality TV shows. Love the Real World and the after-show challenges like The Challenge (creative title, right?), the Gauntlet and the Island. Dating shows were only interesting when New York was crazy on Flavor of Love and A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila.

I learned to read when I was 3. And I still remember when my dad used to read the Harry Potter books to my sister and I chapter at a time as a bedtime story. Good times.

When I like someone, I never tell them. I've learned that it never works out. They almost always never talk to you ever again, or if they do, they're really weird about it.

I love speaking spanish! I'm not fluent, but there's something about being able to roll my r's and pronounce things correctly that makes me proud.