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.
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.
I had field studies today. I hadn’t been on one yet, so I thought I had eluded field studies, but I was wrong. Yesterday, I got an email telling me I had field studies today. I walked down the hill to the creek today, thinking about how silly it is that we replace real classes with field studies. However, we got there and I pulled weeds for the entire time, and I really appreciated it. It was mindless work, but I enjoyed it. I would have enjoyed it more if there were no ants and strange bugs, but I worked around them. I also saw a snail! It was green. So the “wildlife” canceled out I guess, because the ants and weird bugs made it worse, but the green snail and the worms made it better. I was happy to have weeded and gotten my hands dirty instead of having a long block of English, not that English is bad but weeding is better because I really like weeding.
Over the weekend I hosted a Galentines Day. It was supposed to be in my backyard but the weather was soooooo cold. With the weather being so cold I decided to switch the party to inside. It was a smaller group with about 11 or 12 girls. I decorated the table in hues of pink and white. I put together big and small bouquets of pink and white flowers. I am pretty happy with the outcome of the party too. I set up and practically put the party together myself. I am super proud. There would have been more stuff I would have liked to add but overall it was a success. The dinner was the definition of girl hood. Something I do wish might have happened differently is my chocolate fountain. I accidentally used the wrong type of chocolate so it hardened when it was supposed to fountain out. I love pink so much. And I love flowers so much. #PERF
I’m throwing a large bowl for my mom in the ceramics room. Rory tells me to look out the window, and it’s gorgeous. After focusing on the grey room in white light for so long, looking out the window feels unreal. The hills are awash in the golden light of a sunset. It has been raining, so everything outside is at the peak of vibrancy. The scene outside looks like a filtered photo, or a postcard. And then we see a rainbow. And then another. She goes out to take pictures, and I scrape a buildup of clay off my hands before following her, oohing and ahhing at the golden hills.
Back inside the ceramics room, I work on my bowl again. A few moments later, I look outside and the hills outside are suddenly black and blue with night. I hadn’t even noticed the change, because in the classroom the bright white lights shelter us from changes outside.
I remember walking along the edge of the pier, the sound of the sea drowning out my thoughts, and the warm breeze creeping under my T-shirt. It was 3 a.m., and I turned to my friends with the question, “Is anyone thinking of going home?” I could clearly see in their eyes the answer was “no.” I remember how soft music played from the speaker. I remember, as I gazed at the endless and clear sky, seeing a shooting star. That time, I made a wish to be happy, and to this day, every time I see a shooting star, I always wish for happiness. Although I had no plans to sleep, I still put in my night retainers (back then, I never knew where I’d end up at night, so I always carried the retainers in my purse). My lisping voice, due to the discomfort in my mouth, triggered a wave of laughter among us.
Dawn gradually claimed its rights, filling the quiet waterfront with sunlight. At exactly 5 a.m. I found myself in the warm Mediterranean Sea, watching the sunrise that ignited a new day with my best friends. I vividly remember the smell of the sea that day, it was bright and fresh. The wind blew in my face while I laughed as my friends tried to drag me under the water. At that moment, there was absolutely no one around us. We were the violators of silence in the early morning of a sleepy seaside town. Only the sun could judge us for our recklessness, as it became the sole witness to our mischief. At that moment, it seemed that all that existed in the world was us, the sea, the sun, and the music playing in the background.
We climbed out of the water as the song “Show Me The Way. by Vintage Culture” played for the tenth time. In a frenzy of laughter, happiness, and impunity, we began to dance, wet and slippery, stepping on each other’s feet.
I remember how my wet hair clung to my shoulders and face, how the mosquito bites on my legs hurt. I remember the look of happiness on my best friend’s face. I remember the smell of the sea mixed with a sense of carefreeness. I remember the dawn, the most beautiful dawn I had ever seen.
At that moment, wet and happy, I did not realize that it was my last evening with my friends, the people I loved so deeply. In the morning, when I returned home tired, wet, and salty, I received an email informing me that I had been accepted into a then-unknown small school in California.
To this day, I miss the fresh smell of the sea, the warm wind, and the music from the speaker. I miss the dawn terribly. I miss being happy.
Around where I live, supposedly there is a large storm coming. I don’t like the rain when forced to go to school. Rainy days are meant to be spent in bed watching a movie and drinking hot cocoa. I shouldn’t need to freeze, running away from the rain and going to school. My clothes, backpack, and hair get soaked and I’m uncomfortable and upset the whole day. I think that whenever it is raining where I live, which is pretty rare, school should get cancelled. It is absolutely brutal. At my school, there is a high chance that school will be cancelled due to the rain on Monday. I board at school, but this weekend I went home, so if school gets cancelled on Monday, I will be able to stay inside warm at my own house. I only love the rain when I can admire it from inside but I hate it when I need to be outside with it.
The pink mountains gazed down at me from above as I walked among rows of flourishing orange trees. A silence I had never experienced enveloped me.
In the residential area of the city where I grew up, I lived next to a metallurgical plant, so even in the depths of night, I could hear the humming of motors. In the cities where I lived, the concept of silence became relative. Even in the night, I could always hear a passing car or an ambulance. But at that moment, amidst the oranges, I heard only silence, the kind you read about in books, a deafening silence.
In the last six months, my life seemed to have come to a standstill. I ran from country to country all my life, trying to escape my problems or family. I flew across oceans, hoping that my past thoughts would leave me alone, but they always sat with me on the plane. And now, my life suddenly froze in its tracks. I, a city rat accustomed to dirt and noise, found myself in a small, sunny grove where it’s clean and quiet.
But unfortunately, I cannot find peace in the calmest place in California. My brain tells me to run across the continent as far as possible. I need the dirt, the noise, the people, the movement. But now, I am frozen, stuck in time, unable to understand what I am doing here. Days merge into weeks, weeks into months, months into years, and I gradually go insane among rows of juicy and bright orange bushes.
Blogging is hard. I am now going to write about the rain because right in front of me is a large window with water droplets on it.
At one moment, I looked out the window and all I saw was white. A wooly white fog settled in the valley, blocking out the hills. It looks cold and damp, but sitting in the journalism room, typing this blog, I am neither.
Now, the fog has disappeared. I’m not sure of the science behind it. Perhaps it was tired of hanging in the air, and it fell deeper into the valley to sit on leaves and grass. Maybe the sun came, and the fog dispersed, thinning but leaving us in a perpetual but indetectable fog.
Nonetheless, the hills are a vibrant green in the absence of the fog. Whenever it rains here in the valley, the skies turn white, and the hills take up the role of vibrancy. The dusty chaparral becomes an unreal green garden, and the clay-like earth blooms into a bright brick red.
Once upon a time, there was a man named Bill. He sat at the bus stop, and it was raining. He held of bouquet. It was a bouquet of roses. They were very pretty at one point, but he had been sitting and waiting at the bus stop for a while, and they were wilting. It was wet and cold outside, but he knew that it would be better when he got on the bus. He wore a dress shirt and pants that were not warm enough to shield him from the cold, wet, weather. Bill shivered.
He stared out at the supermarket across the street. It would be dry and warm in the supermarket, but he was waiting for the bus.
Bill looked out at the damp scenery, doing and thinking nothing. He was simply waiting in a cold, trance-like stupor.
A woman walked along the sidewalk, holding an umbrella. She was walking her dog, and the dog was wearing a little raincoat. As she approached the bus stop, she could see a man sitting on the bench. She wondered if he was waiting for the bus, and she wondered if he knew that the bus had been decommissioned earlier that month. The woman hesitated. Should she tell him that the bus would not come? He looked quite still and content, waiting, and she did not want to intrude. And perhaps the bus was back in order. She was afraid to interrupt his day and afraid to be wrong, so she walked past the bus stop and said nothing.
Bill waited for the bus, but the bus never came. It continued to rain for years, and for years, the bus never came. Bill sat a the bus stop, waiting for the bus. Every year that passed watered the seedling of despair that Bill nurtured in him. His bouquet of roses died, and his clothes faded. With this despair, Bill clung to the hope that the bus was almost here and that when the bus came, it would restore the delicate life in his bouquet and the robust color of his clothes, and everything would be right again. Sometimes he thought he heard the hiss of an engine or the grumble of the wheels, but it was an illusion brought on by the rain.
Eventually, Bill grew old and died at the bus stop, waiting in the rain.
OVS Journalism Blog 
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