This week was a very slow week. One thing I had been looking forward to recently was going to eat acai bowl on the golf course. I have to say that the acai bowl there are the best I have ever had in my life. I also had my second driving school this week. This time we went out of the Town of ojai and up to the DMV in ventura. The last time we practiced was just going around the same roads so it was a lot of fun this time. I especially enjoyed driving on the highway for the first time. Driving at 100 km/h was fun, but changing lanes at that speed was very scary. I was especially scared of getting in between cars when the distance between them was very close. I am very nervous because I am going to take the test after the next practice session.
I could sit for hours and talk about everything I love. When someone sits with me and relates with me it makes me even happier. Finding people who appreciate the same things as me is so refreshing.
Organizing: I find it funny that I love to organize so much. I love coding my assignments and taking everything out of my drawers to put them right back in the same place just slightly neater. I think this is rooted in the feeling of everything being perfect after I am finished. Organizing helps me to focus and concentrate while finding a sense of calmness from the aftermath.
Pinterest: I love love love Pinterest. After a long school day, I can relax with a movie and scroll on Pinterest. There is something about the romanticizing and goal setting that just really connects with me as a person. I can see the aesthetics and blessings I have by posting my own photos and finding things that match my personality. Anyways I love Pinterest.
Music and Movies: Whether the weekend is just beginning or the weekend is ending I always can have music to listen to or a movie to watch. I can listen to music while falling asleep or as something to make me feel less lonely while driving around. I can listen to music with my friends and we can all be having the best time ever or I can listen to music and reconnecting with myself. Movies are just so entertaining. Nothing beats the feeling of watching an amazing movie for the first time. If I could there are so many movies I would watch again and get the same feeling I had the first time I ever watched it. Anyways my favorite movies are so calming to lay down in bed with a snack and watch. Some movies heal my inner child while some teach me things I can really use while growing up.
Matcha, Chai, and Water: There is literally nothing like waking up dehydrated and having a glass of ice-cold water. I really just love matcha and chai. There’s nothing matcha and chai really do for me except taste so good. I also love lemonade. But only if the lemonade is like really good. California has some of the best lemonade compared to other places in my opinion. Same with matcha and chai. Matcha and Chai are my pick me ups throughout my days. I am tried, I can get a matcha or chai. I want something to boost my energy, I can have a matcha or a chai. I really love making my own matchas when I have time. Its honestly therapeutic. And I havent found how to make chai yet but thats something I am really interested in learning.
My future: I am the biggest romanticizer I know. Something I definitely think about on a daily is my future. What college will I end up at? Will I be successful in the career I eventually pursue? Where will I live? I love asking myself these questions. Now tying my future to my obsession with Pinterest, can I make my goal of life on Pinterest a reality? Or will I be someone who has a highschool sweetheart that I can grow old with? I would like to say I will and I want to. So I just love picturing my future life. Something I will work for years on achieving.
Homes: I want to go to college for architecture, interior design, or both. I would really want these topics to relate to homes and houses. Being able to learn how to create something I love so much is my dream. I really want to be able to take what I have in my mind and apply it to something I love. I really love going on long car drives and just looking at homes that are truly someones art piece in a way. I want to be able to have the gift to create and area where people will live together, grow up in, and somewhere a family or a person can travel back to and call home.
Travel: I could probably talk all day about everywhere I want to travel and why. I have been grateful enough to get the chances and opportunities I have to travel. I love seeing different places and how different people live. The beauty of the world is in the most silent places. Listening to the birds sing and the wind blows against my skin or watching the blue waters sway back and forth. I get to go to Mexico in October and help a family build a house and immerse myself in the style they live in. Probably my top place to travel to is switzerland just for the natural beauty. But for the best experience I would want to travel somewhere I can volunteer and make connections to make people happy. I could do this by studying abroad or volunteering for a summer. Another traveling experience I want to emerge myself in is study abroad. Being able to make friends and meet people from other cultures is something I really love about the world.
Anyways that’s what I love and want for my life! PS: I love flowers, friendship, and family too!
As you lie there in bed in the midst of some of your deepest sleep, lying comfortable and in contempt, you let your body rest and recover when the alarm you set mere hours ago at 12pm goes off 5 hours later. As you lay there in your dream, being bombarded by the “by the seaside” alarm, when you find the strength to roll over and turn off your alarm, you lay there, your body begging you to go back to sleep and get a good night’s rest for the first time in months, you remember why you wake up in the first place. With barely enough energy how, you get out of your bed still in your pajamas. You go outside into your garage, grab your cold and wet wetsuit and your board, load up the car, head inside for a muffin and a Diet Coke, brush your teeth and finally head out at 5am. The car drive is quiet one. Trying your best to not fall asleep at the wheel, you pop the Diet Coke can open and make the drive to venture. Rolling into the parking lot, you start to feel the energy of the ocean. Stepping out of the car into the cold, opening the trunk to grad the coldest and wettest wetsuit known to man, and forcing yourself to put it on. Despite the cold, you hike out to the beach prepare your body with some light stretches and head out to the water. The first wave hits your feet as you tread amongst the slippery rocks, trying your best not to fall and ding your board. After walking the most painful and annoying walk of your life on the rocks, you manage to get to waist-deep water, where you can start the paddle. As you hear and barely see the first wave coming, you perform a duck dive; as the water submerges your entire body for the first time, the cold hits you like an avalanche, cold and almost breathtaking. As you emerge from the depth under the wave, still in shock, you continue the paddle as the next wave rolls towards you. After repeating the process of duck diving and paddling and getting pushed back you finally make it past the break. Sitting out there on your board, ready for a wave to appear from the darkness, is a feeling unlike another. After time passes and waves roll by, the first light appears, and with it, the waves truly emerge from the dark. As light comes to the sky, if the clouds are just right, some of the most amazing colors emerge, and the sky looks like a fake painting you see in a art gallery. Sitting there on the smooth water with the waves rolling is really the best feeling of your life.
This is my perspective on surfing in the morning. Also, I imagine this being said while talking to someone who has never gone surfing before and telling them about what surfing is like, but the speaker is too excited to really describe it exactly how they want to. Also after they would say something like “you just have to exspeince it to get it”
Miami was a surprise to me. It’s a city I hadn’t thought much about before, but it amazed me. I didn’t expect to see such clean and pleasant streets and city atmosphere. For some reason, I always thought of Miami as some kind of village or something similar. However, the city turned out to be very pleasant to me. Being there reminded me of the years when I lived in Cyprus. I think all resort cities have such a serene flair. I really liked the beach near which we stayed. The sand was clean, and the water had warmed up to a state where I could swim in it. The only thing that disappointed me was the condition of my skin in Miami. Usually, when I’m at home, I have a diet routine and all the skin care products. While traveling, I just ate everything, as if the rules set by my dermatologist didn’t exist at all. I ate sweets and fatty foods, drank sodas and juices which make my skin break out lol. Now, I need to quickly restore my skin, eating rhythm, and workouts. I wish myself luck.
I am changing and cannot understand the nature of my changes. At the beginning of the year, something happened to my consciousness, and I began to make decisions that I would have never made before. I gave up all my bad habits, which was not easy, but I managed to do it and continued to work on myself. I took up sports and started going to the pool again. But not only did my physical habits change, my consciousness began to undergo a kind of transformation.
I started to question again how I feel about myself in society and in my body. I realized that for a long time, I’ve been hiding a large part of my personality because it doesn’t fit into the society in which I currently find myself. I tried to assimilate and be part of society, but it just never worked for me. I am chasing something that doesn’t belong to me and just wasting energy on it. I shouldn’t chase; I should attract the people and events that I deserve.
Also, I once again questioned what I would like to do in the future. It’s a difficult question, but now I have something like a life plan for the next year. This pleases me, and my plans look intense, but I understand that it will not only be fun, I will have to work very hard again to achieve what I want. But I’m not afraid of hard work, so I’m ready to do everything I can to achieve my goals.
Also, I’m worried about my appearance. Living in California, I started dressing in hoodies and sports pants. This style doesn’t suit me, and I feel lazy and unattractive. Also, I stopped doing facial massages and taking care of my hair sufficiently for it to look the way I want. In short, I started taking care of my appearance again, I see the first results, and it cannot but please me.
In general, unexpectedly for myself, I am undergoing a kind of transformation, and everything is moving in a good direction.
I have been to many Broadway musicals, but until today, I had never seen Moulin Rouge. To be honest, I can confidently say that this performance is one of the most vivid memories of my life.
The softly dimming lights turned into complete darkness. When the lights go out in the auditorium, the audience’s hearts usually flutter in anticipation of the show. People in the audience cough or open their snacks. This time, there was a crushing silence in the room. The moment the lights went out, the world froze, and the dense walls of the theater cut off the audience from the ceaselessly noisy NYC, immersing them into a new world—a world of love, secret meetings, power struggles, and unrestrained and non-stop performance.
People have always strived to feel alive. In ancient times, in pursuit of this feeling, thrill-seekers resorted to death fights. Some found it thrilling to watch others die, for watching someone else’s death makes the observer’s blood run faster, adrenaline intoxicates, and sharpens the sense of life in vivid colors. A prime example of humanity’s love for bloody entertainment is the mega-popular gladiator fights. Both commoners and the elite always sought out such spectacles.
Like many, I chase the feeling of pure consciousness and the sharpness and reality of life. In search of this feeling, many resort to drugs, clubs, etc. These are destructive methods of experiencing the sensation of life, yet they work just as well as gladiator fights did.
I found myself in a feeling of absolute reality during the performance. Intense emotions, from tears to laughter, made me feel alive. I had not felt this sensation for a long time, and I was glad to experience it again.
Usually, I try to write about something worthwhile, about my thoughts, feelings, or events that happened to me, and which would be interesting to share. But today is not that day; today, I want to talk about all sorts of nonsense that has been on my mind lately.
47 days. After precise calculations, I realized that I have exactly 47 days left to go to school. It seems like this number should be much larger, but definitely not in my case. I am the most vivid case of senioritis you can find on planet Earth. Immediately after receiving the acceptance letter from the university I wanted, unexpectedly even to myself, I just stopped worrying about what happens at school. I am absolutely calm about not doing homework, and it doesn’t bother me much. I won’t lie, I never really liked the process of studying in an American school, and the only reason why I truly strived and learned subjects was my admission to the university; now that the goal is achieved, the motivation is completely gone. In my case, trying to find opportunities to reduce my days spent in school buildings, I discovered that some camps take away as much as 5 days! I signed up for many, which significantly reduced my time spent at school this semester. I am glad that I have very little time left until the end of school. I won’t lie, I will be the happiest person on graduation day, during the ceremony I will definitely be crying, but not out of sadness but from overwhelming happiness.
The second thing I wanted to talk about is my sleep. Lately, I’ve been having terrible problems with sleep. I wake up every hour at night, and if I’m unlucky enough to start thinking about something that bothers me, then I can’t sleep for a couple of hours simply because I can’t stop thinking. It bothers me, but I can’t do anything about it.
Golf is generally useful for many things. It is a great sport that you can continue to play even as you age for future business. I started playing golf when a family member of mine was a golfer and told me that if I couldn’t play golf during our summer vacations, he wouldn’t take me with him. I started playing golf because of that little thing, and now it is my favorite sport to play. Originally, my motivation for golf was to drive a golf cart. However, now my motivation to play golf is to score well. This year, for the first time in my life, I competed in a golf tournament. Although my score was not good, I was more honored to be able to experience it for the first time in the United States. My driver has been good lately, so I would like to improve my putter. I would like to practice more and be able to play all the holes under 100.
Honestly, I have been, or I’d like to believe I have. I think I have. At this point, I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince.
I feel like I have a lot on my plate a lot coming up, but I know I just have to take care of them one by one. Senior pages, scholarships, final auditions, songs a lot of cultural events. Most of those things I’ve put on myself but I don’t know I guess I’m just trying to prove something. Like I want to leave my mark, and hopefully be remembered. The best way to put this is a quote from one of my favorite movies.
“I think I have this thing where I need everybody to think I’m the greatest, the quote-unquote Fantastic Mr. Fox. And if people aren’t knocked out and dazzled and slightly intimidated by me, I don’t feel good about myself.” – Fantastic Mr. Fox by Wes Anderson.
Of course, I don’t need people to be knocked out, dazzled, or intimidated but I at least want to be memorable. Anyways I’ve been doing better in track. I ran pie without walking, and although my legs are in so much pain it feels good to work hard.
I’ve been standing up for myself more, even if it scares me. Ive been building boundaries and I’ve defended myself more. I’m learning to not take everything to heart because its a waste of time. Its harder with closer friends, and while on your period.
School is coming to an end, and summer is looking to be very fun. College desicisons are almost here, but its all coming at the same time which is a little nerve racking. I just hope I make it, I just want to graduate.
All this to say, even with troubles and bad parts i’ve been doing okay.
It has already been six weeks since the end of Christmas break. This year, I have been busy with many things and time seems to be passing faster than usual. This makes me feel that I need to plan things more systematically. I spent this winter vacation with my friend in LA. We made strawberry cheesecake for her father’s birthday celebration. The cake has two layers: a jelly and a cheesecake made with strawberry fruit and lemon juice. It was hard to get the strawberries to float when I laid them on top and poured the juice over them. However, after an hour of struggle, we managed to complete the cake. We were very happy that her father was so pleased. We had a great time with them by treating them to Japanese food. Then we went to see a university during the vacation. I was surprised at the scale of the place, which I usually only see in pictures, when I actually walked around. The school building was very big and it motivated me for future applications. I am looking forward to seeing what kind of path I will choose and which university I will go to next year, and at the same time I am filled with anxiety. After visiting the university, we went to Korea Town to eat our long-sought-after Ganjanggaejang. I was very happy because it was the thing I was looking forward to the most during this vacation. I am now less than a hundred days away from the end of this school year, so I want to spend my time in a meaningful way. I am looking forward to what I will do on my next vacation.
OVS Journalism Blog 
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