Category: love

What I’m into these days

graypenguinLeave a comment

My latest addiction is acai bowls. My image of them was that of stylish LA girls eating them for breakfast. Acai bowls are full of nutrients and are known as a superfood. Acai also contains three times more iron than liver and 30 times more polyphenols than red wine. Therefore, it is effective in preventing anemia, aging, and lifestyle-related diseases. I first ate it in Hawaii when I was in the fourth grade of elementary school. At that time, I did not realize the appeal of shallow bowls. When I studied abroad in the U.S. in high school, near my school, acai bowls struck a chord with me. They are the healthiest of snacks, cold and happy.
My favorite toppings are strawberries, bananas, blueberries, granola, and honey.
These days I stock up on acai bowls every time I go out for the weekend. The number one drawback to these is that everything gets all tickly and hard in the freezer. But more than that, I’m a sucker for acai bowls. My dream is to visit different acai bowl stores while I am in the US.

pc;https://www.darngoodveggies.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Acai-Smoothie-Bowl-7.jpg

Goodbyes

justthatonegirllLeave a comment

Goodbyes are tough. Goodbyes are vigorous. Goodbyes are sickening. To say goodbye or not have the chance to say goodbye is going to be heavy either way. Losing a family member and not having the chance to say what you wanted to them creates guilt. The guilt that is felt when not having the chance to say goodbye is difficult. Depending on situations goodbyes differ from person to person. Personally within less than one month I did not get to say what I wanted to my lost family member but I did not get to say goodbye to my still living best friend in the time she knew I needed her. So this is my formal goodbye to each of whom I loved with my whole heart. I am going to begin with my goodbye to my uncle right now. My goodbye to my uncle is not an eternal goodbye but a goodbye till we see eachother again. I have no answers for when the time will be when I finally see you in heaven again but I know it will be good. So for now this is a goodbye and a remembrance that you will always be in my heart. I will forever think about your opinion on any boy I bring into my life in a more than friend type of way. On christmas 2022 I finally got the LED lights I had been begging for at my moms house. My uncle being who he is, only caring to make the kids in his life happy and hung my LED lights up for me to perfection and when I say perfection I mean like extremely perfect. The night my uncle died when the paramedics pulled him into my room and broke the LED lights he was so happy to hang for me breaks my heart. I do not normally cry about heavy topics around anyone especially my family. Talking to my mom about the broken LED lights and breaking down seems so stupid but it is truly what I think of when I think of his kindness and love for the people around him. Now my second goodbye to someone who is still alive and did not move away… Her and I did everything together. Where I went she went. Well that’s how it was for a while. There had already been hurt before the fallout but what the fallout did bring was disheartening. During the long winding roads of this friendship there was connection, disagreements, and love. I never got to say goodbye to our friendship but I never wanted to nor thought I would ever have to. Now that it has officially ended it is almost as if I have connected the dots. My friend would never be content with the friendship we had. There would always be better friends and I would always be her second pick. I was always there for her but was she always there for me? Does she feel the same hurt as I do? Was throwing a whole friendship out really worth it to her? I am not really sure to be honest. I would rather keep that question unanswered if I have to feel and hear the hatred and the violent words splurged again. The goodbye she gave makes me genuinely question everything. If she really valued the friendship we had would she have ended it in such an aggressive approach? I am not sure if it was purposeful but the ending of our friendship made me replay every moment as a slideshow. She cut me down to step on me as if I was something she could simply regrow once she needed me again, this time I will not resprout. I will not run back to her as I did every time before. Her words cut deep but my wounds healed back thicker. I can not live with the constant control and judgement she gave to me. But I can live with the memories we had together. I think this might have been the best moment and time to move on, to heal, and to grow. For each of us. I am not sure if she is as hurt by the situation as I am and forever will be but I have found the clarity to forgive and forget. I will forever think of her as my sister and I will forever think highly of her. For now, I am not sure were the future leads to. I am not sure if we will ever reconnect in a positive light but I want her to know I will always care for her and be happy for her even if she can not do the same for me. So for as of now and there seems to be an end at my words of goodbye. I am not sure if we will ever agree on who was in the wrong in our situation. I feel as if us parting was almost for the best, for each of us. I have so much more to say but in ways that are unable to express in any form. So with that I will consider this a goodbye to each of whom I wrote about and love to the world’s end. Goodbye.

PC:me

Soccer

graypenguinLeave a comment

The thing I have been most passionate about is soccer. I started playing soccer in Junior high school with my friends, and it has helped me grow in many ways. One of them is to have a goal and never give up until the end. I was very clumsy in kicking, lifting, and everything else I did for the first year. However, I went out to the field and practiced from 8:00 in the morning with the goal of lifting more than 100 times during the year, and I was able to lift more than 700 times in a row. The other thing is leadership skills. I became the captain of the soccer team and took on the role of organizing everyone. At first, I was unfamiliar with many things and had a hard time talking to people, but now I can talk to people on my own. Soccer has given me not only a sense of fun and maintenance, but it has also helped me grow as a person.
I am not sure now if I will play soccer this winter season, but soccer is my youth and I would like to continue to play it.

pc:me

Egg tarts

poofypuffyLeave a comment

My favorite food is egg tarts.

I could do my capstone project on egg tarts. I could genuinely research different types of egg tarts for a year and then bake them. 

So far, Portuguese egg tarts (picture below) are my favorite because the puff pastry is flaky and crispy. Hong Kong egg tarts are good too, but I prefer the flaky western tart crust. Also, Hong Kong egg tarts don’t brown on top like Portuguese tarts.

Apparently, English egg tarts are also a thing, but they’re definitely less well-known, so I would guess they are not as good.

I’ve been craving egg tarts ever since I saw an Instagram reel with egg tarts in it, so I am going to Trader Joe’s today to see if they have frozen egg tarts. If they do I will buy a lot.

UPDATE: I spent the whole day looking for some today and didn’t find any. There was no egg tarts at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Westridge, or Seafood City, which is really sad. Apparently, Trader Joe’s sells Portuguese tartlets with COD though. fish. You can buy egg tarts in LA, but that’s far.

Picture Credit: Nick Fewings

Love

justthatonegirll1 Comment

To think about love terrifies me. The scary thing about love is that you never know when it is coming or when it is about to end. To my mind the scariest fragment of love is whether I get to have the experience of loving another or another loving me. For the majority of people this is not something that is in the line of thinking on a regular basis. The ongoing want and urge to have the ideal teenage love as if we were starring in our own movie with nothing to fright because we have each other to hold on too. Immaturity gets the best of us during these situations. At this age, in this generation, the little things are considerably left unnoticed. Where has all of the innocence gone? Now we have to worry whether the person we desire has opened our snap or text message rather than opened our hand written letters sent through mail. The meaningful moments within love have simply disappeared. Do I look good enough to snap him right now? Runs through my head like a bullet. Where have the simple walks through the park retired too? Now all the meaningfulness has taken a leave. The falling asleep on accident while admiring the world’s beauty has changed, to the falling asleep watching a rated R movie with no thoughts at all. No simple conversations, just silence. The silence that comes along with the “love” of this generation is not as peaceful or calm as it once was. What happened to the innocence of painting together with the one you like while the sunsets below the mountain tops? What happened to the stargazing on a picnic blanket in a large open field? Where has the love in the world gone? And then one day you wake up and suddenly realize real love is gone and life is not like the movies. Life is not like how it was decades ago. Life has changed and love has developed into a scary step into the long road of life.

Photo Credits:Me

Best friends

kittenqueen3Leave a comment

All my life, I’ve considered many different people to be my best friend, and these people have come and gone. During my freshman orientation, my eye caught a girl wearing the same outfit I was planning on wearing. After an hour of name games and icebreakers, I decided I was going to talk to her. The first thing I said, which we still joke about today, is “To be honest you look like the only normal person here.” She brought me to her room and then we went to lunch together, little did I know she was going to be my best friend. On the first day of classes, I realized she was in my history and we quickly got close. The next weekend I had an argument and fell out with my school friends from the previous year. I started only hanging out with her and I learned to love her so much, we found out we had so much more in common then we could’ve imagined. As the year continued we just grew closer and closer, we ended up going to a concert together and hanging out outside of school. In April i got very close with two other girls and subliminally pushed her away. I didn’t stop being friends with her, I just started hanging out with these other girls more. As summer neared I worried our friendship would fade as she lives in LA and we both were traveling a lot. The exact opposite happened, we talked every day and got way closer we only saw each other once which was sad but we enjoyed our day together. In the middle of the summer, I had a falling out with the two girls I mentioned earlier and I was crying in the car with my mom when we passed her mom’s house and saw her mom outside. As our moms talked she came out and hugged me and held me as I cried in her arms. At that moment I realized she was more than just another best friend she was like a sister. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love her I genuinely don’t know what I would do without her. Sometimes we make jokes about being platonic soulmates and that may or may not be true but one thing is for sure she’s my best friend. She isn’t like any other “best friend” I’ve had before and I know she’s going to read this. I was thinking about what I was gonna write my post about this week and someone said write about something you really love and other than Taylor Swift, I truly love her. This year we have almost every class together and nothing could make me more happy than spending my whole day with her.

Pc mododeolhar on Pexels.com

Summer Adventure

graypenguinLeave a comment

This summer was very fulfilling and gave me the opportunity to learn more about nature. I worked as a tour guide in the mangroves. Mangroves are a wonderful place. A mangrove is an entire tree that grows in brackish water where fresh water from the river and salt water from the ocean mix. I did not know that mangroves are good for the global environment until I worked there this summer. Mangroves can absorb about twice as much carbon dioxide as ordinary trees. However, in recent years, they have been dying due to global warming. Therefore, I decided to pick up seeds and plant them to regenerate mangroves. I also taught these activities to elementary school students as part of their education, creating an opportunity to connect the town with the environment. I also gave tours not only to Japanese but also to foreign tourists. These tours allowed me to see a world I had never seen before. I felt that being able to speak two languages would be a great weapon for me in the future. I also learned how wonderful it is to connect with people. By talking to nearly 20 new people every day, I was able to make many new discoveries. I believe that these will be great assets for me in my future life.Lastly, by canoeing every day, I was able to grow not only mentally but also in muscle.I hope that many people around the world will come to know about mangroves in the future.

pc: me

Fall in Love

justthatonegirllLeave a comment

When the leaves turn crisp, brown, and fall I know something is coming… My favorite season. The start of what seems like new beginnings. When the leaves crumble and resprout so do I. In the fall the air is fresh of cinnamon, pumpkins, and pie. The beginning of the holidays with family and friends resume once again. Pumpkin tea with a side of Gilmore Girls. Outfits become cuter as the layering begins for the fast coming winter. A cute scarf to go with the most perfect pair of ugg slippers is almost as fall as it gets. As much as I love winter(only because of christmas and my birthday) I do love fall a little extra. The thought of being cozied up in a warm delightful bed watching seasonal movies and special episodes of my favorite shows. Cooking and baking with my favorite soul, as we watch the rain pour down through the window we briskly pour the batter into the pan. Another anticipated rainy day. As the fireplace crackles and the rain patters I read the most enrapturing book. As I lay in bed thoughts flood through, thoughts of love, romanticizing, and adoration. The way a faultless fall finishes must intend falling in love.

PC: Both by me.

Clara Pt. 2

graceovsLeave a comment

Clara and I met on orientation day of our junior year – she, a tanned exchange student from Brazil, and I, a nervous transfer from a school thirty minutes away. We sat next to one another in the media lab, logging into our school emails, and began to chat. “When’s your birthday?” she asked randomly, in an attempt at small talk. I told her “today.” She looked at me incredulously, decided I was joking, realized I was not, and then burst into wonderful, elated laughter. It was at this moment that I knew we were going to be friends.

Over the school year, we started to spend classes, breaks, weekends and even an entire break together. Clara saw me at my best and at my worst and loved me through it all. She was my number one cheerleader, especially when I ran for school president.

But it’s not just me and her other friends that Clara extends her love to. It’s to the unlikely people, the not reciprocating people, and the probably undeserving people that she does also. She wrote the boy that bullied her a heartfelt letter at the end of term, for example.

Clara’s love knows no bounds because she sees the beauty in everyone and everything, and it’s this that makes her so beautiful herself.

PC: Me

Clara Pt. 1

graceovsLeave a comment

My mom has always said I have the most amazing talent for choosing friends. And I might have to agree. Because my friend Clara has got to be one of the most incredible people I have ever had the privilege of knowing.

PC: Me

Clara does everything to the extreme. When happy, embarking on a hike in the Santa Barbara wilderness, she grins and belts out songs off-key. When sad, saying goodbye to her roommate, she sobs as if they will never see each other again. When anxious, writing English paper at two AM, she twists her hair into knots over and over and over again. When excited, telling a story to friends at lunch, her voice climbs and she leaps up from her chair. When afraid, having spotted a spider inside the tent, she screams like nobody’s business. And when she loves, she loves endlessly.