In Florida for Winter Break

One of my first reactions when we arrived in Tampa on the twenty-fifth of December was that it felt really, really weird to be wearing shorts on Christmas.

We flew to Tampa and stayed in Fort Myers for a total of eight days (that is, if you count waking up at five a.m. on New Year’s and driving to the airport as a day) this winter break, which consisted of deep sea fishing, boating (which seems like a word), shelling, fishing, more shelling, kayaking, more boating and fishing, even more shelling, museums, paddle boarding, parasailing, and McDonald’s free Wi-Fi.

 The first day of true vacationing was the twenty-sixth, where we went deep-sea fishing bright and early in the morning. Note that while Florida is dubbed “The Sunshine State,” the sun rises at 7 am. We woke up around 5: it was pitch black outside. That day (for me at least) was not extremely exciting. We spent around 8 hours on the boat: for 2 hours, I took pictures and asked when we were going to start fishing. When we did start fishing on a stopped boat in open sea, I spent the next 6 hours “sleeping” because I was too seasick to stand up. We made three stops: the first two were uneventful: only a few fish were caught, so the captain resorted to a third spot he likely knew of beforehand that had tons of small fish. The seven of us- in reality, five, because one was a six year old and the other barely moved (me!)- caught a total of thirty-seven fish. That night, we stopped by a Cantonese restaurant for dinner; you could bring in freshly caught fish and they’d clean and cook it for you.

(Before I do continue, I’d like to make a character introduction. There are seven (main) characters: a family of three and a family of four. There are two parents in each family, a mom and a dad, which leaves three kids: me, Jacquelyne, and her brother Lucas.)

On the second day of vacation, we went on Sanibel Island for the first time. It’s, as the name reveals, an island, connected by a bridge to Fort Myers. It’s also world-renowned for shelling. We were lucky enough that a few days before we arrived, shell piles appeared (and stayed) on Bowman’s Beach in time for Christmas, where we visited a day or two later. The early morning weather was surprisingly chilly (for Florida) at Gulfside City Park, our first stop, but it warmed up quickly. By the time we reached our next stop, Turner’s Beach, the temperature was in the low 80’s. After an hour there, we returned to our rented condo for lunch. My dad and I fished in the afternoon in the backyard for a couple of hours (note: I am not the kind of person who fishes: I put the fishing rod next to me and surf the web and wait for something to happen). We had one “catch”: a white bass, over a foot long, only the hook we used was too small so it escaped. For dinner, we had fried fish (caught the day before), tomato soup, and more.

We went shelling again the morning of the twenty-eighth, but this time at Bowman’s Beach. The first half an hour or so, we walked along close to the ocean, not very impressed by the thin shell line compared to what we’d seen the day before. A group of people had gathered at the right end of the beach, so my dad suggested that we walk over there to see what was going on. Lo and behold, there were the shell piles (literally- piles of shells). What we actually did in order to find shells was sit down and dig a “hole” in the pile in front of us, because there were layers upon layers of shells underneath each other, and surprisingly enough, many of them hadn’t shattered under the weight. A nice lady sitting next to me explained that the shell piles were made by high winds- and that they could be gone the very next day. She also gave me many of her shells, including a bright orange horse conch (the only one I have, might I add). My most exciting find? The banded tulip I’d been searching for forever. It’s the yellowish white shell in the picture, and I’d obsess over it the whole day. That afternoon, we went kayaking. The problem with kayaking was that, according to my parents, I was a kid so I had to share the boat with someone (the kayaks were either for one person or two people, so my mom went alone). The bigger problem was that my kayaking and my dad’s kayaking didn’t go very well together, so my dad ended up cracking the right side of my paddle with his own.

I was nervous for the next day, because we’d be on a boat (pontoon, specifically), and the last time I’d been on a boat that size, I sea-sickly “slept” for three fourths of the time.

Luckily, that wasn’t the case. Most of us had a chance to drive the pontoon (including me, and we did not crash). The boat even had couches. In the morning, we stopped near Lover’s Key, a white sand beach, and had lunch there as well. In the afternoon, we fished (no catches this time). The problem was, the water was 3 feet deep and it took us 30 minutes to correctly anchor the boat in order for it to stop drifting towards nearby land. When we did take out the anchor, it was covered in dirt and mud and grime.

(Before I do continue, I’d like to make a sidenote. In many articles, it’d look like a * or DISCLAIMER: …our condo doesn’t have Wi-Fi.)

For the previous days, I’d been living off my mom’s cell phone’s data, but my family decided to go to McDonald’s. We ordered a lemonade and strawberry pie. My mom caught up on her work stuff, my dad caught up on his work stuff, and I caught up on my social stuff. It was a pretty relaxing night.

On the thirtieth, we made another trip to Sanibel Island. The morning was full of shelling, and we decided to go to Bowman’s Beach again. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Some of the shell piles we’d seen days before had disappeared, but there was this other spread-out group of shells that went ignored by most. I’m guessing the reason for that was that most of the shells, though big, appeared broken- except I found most of the conchs shown below there and pretty much all of them were still completely intact. We had a picnic lunch, and visited the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum and Lighthouse Beach later. The museum was extremely interesting, the most memorable display being the flowers. The thing was that the flowers weren’t actually flowers, but flowers made out of shells (see pic above). Compared to Bowman’s Beach, Lighthouse Beach was relatively uneventful, though the reason for that might’ve been that we either didn’t look in the right places, or just didn’t stay for a long enough time.

New Year’s Eve was the last full day of our 2015 winter break vacation. It was also probably the most relaxing day, too. We woke up around 8, and my parents went paddle boarding. They did this twice: once before my dad and I went parasailing, and once after.

Parasailing is when you are tied to a parachute which is tied to a boat; the boat speeds up, and thus you are lifted up into the air until the boat becomes a tiny dot and its wake, a set of small, white, foamy lines. There is most definitely a more in depth description of what parasailing is online, if you are interested. I’m guessing a common misconception about parasailing is that it’s scary. The truth is, parasailing is actually very calm and serene (this is coming from a person who was reading about recent parasailing accidents right before she went on the boat; however, if you’re afraid of heights, please don’t just take my word for this). Fort Myers and Sanibel Island became thin tan strips of land, and to us, the buildings were less than an inch tall. I’ll admit that the first few seconds in the air were a bit frightening, but in the end the boat ride was actually more so than parasailing.

In the later afternoon, my parents and I went home to pack, but first stopped for some ice cream at Love Boat Homemade Ice Cream (it was very good). We had Thai for dinner.

At five in the morning on New Year’s Day, we left for Tampa’s airport, said goodbye to the condo, Fort Myers, then Florida, and returned home at three in the afternoon.

P.S. It might be a little late, but hope you all have a happy new year!

I <3 Typhoons

We were quieted one night by a supervisor on the way back to the dorms from a buffet. It had just suddenly started raining- and it’d been raining hard- outside, so traffic was slow and included a high dosage of honking and yelling. “There’s a typhoon warning tomorrow,” he announced. “So we’ll be staying inside the dorms.” Our original plans were to visit the zoo, and there wasn’t anything to do in the first place in campus other than talk and feed Mo the cat, so we were all pretty disappointed.

That, and there was a typhoon warning. Which was like telling us that tonight there was a good chance that the city we were staying in might be struck by this hurricane thing, so we couldn’t go to the zoo tomorrow- and oh, unfortunately, it’s the really big kind that only comes every fifty years, so, unfortunately, we can’t go to the zoo tomorrow.

Because we were all smart enough to bring umbrellas and wear flip flops, we ended up screaming at the wind and trudging through puddles which resulted in wet feet.

When we reached the eleventh floor, a girl from 11B suggested that my roommate and I and also another girl from the tenth floor stay over in their living area. It ended up being the sleeping space for all five of us. We took two mattresses from a room and lined pairs of couches up so that one person could sleep on two. Everything was really flimsy, what with the couches’ insides being foam and the mattresses being particularly stiff (one in my room had a wire sticking out of it). In all honesty, we didn’t get a lot of sleep. We talked for a few hours until one in the morning, the curtains kept on moving at random intervals, and at some point near midnight one of the windows slammed open because of the wind.

We screamed.

The next morning we found out that there wasn’t a typhoon after all. Still, we had to stay inside because a) our plans had already been cancelled and b) it was still too dangerous. The supervisor for the girls’ dorms passed by our room as she was waking us up for breakfast and eyed us (a bit judgmentally, I must say), then asked us what in the world were we doing.

I shrugged and suggested, deadpan, “Well, if we were to die, then we’d die together.”

. . .

Over and out,

Vivz

You Never Stop Learning- Sadly

For the two weeks that we were at the camp, we took about a week of classes.

Half of them were horrible, but the other half was great.

I think that our first class was about Shanghai- which I’d mentioned in one of my other blog posts. Classes that followed were calligraphy, paper cutting, drawing, painting masks on fans, Tea 101, tai chi, etc. etc- I only actually remembered the good and the terrible.

Calligraphy was great, mostly because it was decently easy and I already knew how to write Chinese. We were given a sheet of scrap paper and a sheet of final paper, a paint brush, and ink. I stained my skin a couple of times, which was okay- because no matter what everyone says, everything usually washes off of your skin.  That class was paired with drawing, where we again used ink- this time, also colored- and painted pictures of rocks with bamboo, the occasional background chicken, and flowers. When we were told to paint our final picture, I pulled one I took on my phone at the Shanghai Art Museum up . Our instructor walked by, eyed it, and said, “Too hard.”

I said, “I’m going to try it.”

He said again, “Too hard.”

I replied, “I’m just going to try it.”

He was right- and my drawing turned out a disaster, and it got even uglier as I desperately tried to fix it- but at least, on the bright side, there were other people who did do worse.

Paper cutting was my favorite. We learned how to cut popular characters like the one couples put on their door when they get married and the one that wishes the elderly good health. There was a different instructor every day, and that day he’d come by and taught me how to cut butterflies (the ones I’d originally cut looked somewhat demented). He showed me how to do this really epic cut, and at the end of the class, gave everyone paper-cut pictures of their Zodiac animals.

We also painted Peking Opera masks onto fans. They were white and sort of transparent so you’d only have to decorate one side. On the edges of the fan was this green traditional Chinese pattern, and it was very Asian overall. That class was more of an activity, because our instructor for that class essentially handed us a traceable picture of a Peking Opera mask, a fan, paintbrushes, and paint and let us do whatever. She also had a PowerPoint, but she was so quiet that we couldn’t hear even if we were listening.

I felt kind of bad for the instructors, because barely anyone at the camp actually tried to do anything.

Tea 101 was probably my least favorite, for two reasons. The first was that when they were pouring tea for us I might’ve knocked my cup over and spilled it on the ground, my friend, and myself. And the tea was hot. The second was that it was particularly boring, because the instructor would ask a question and nobody would answer.

She ended up talking to herself.

Tai chi was one of the only classes that didn’t take place at the school. It was more of a presentation than a class. I think that the man that gave it was pretty well-known, and was possibly featured on television before.

There was this one part, though, when he was demonstrating poses you could do if your stomach hurt-

-and he reared up on his legs, then roared.

Nearly everyone jumped, whether they were standing or not.

“It’s called ‘the Tiger’,” the man had said, a few seconds after the initial shock, matter-of-factly.

. . .

Over and out,

Vivz

“Budd-ay” Day 2

My “budd-ay” was fashionably late compared to the 8 o’ clock requested arrival time, but right on time compared to the others. We left with my “budd-ay”, her friend and her friend’s “budd-ay”, heading towards my first ever subway trip in Shanghai.

  
We arrived at the Oriental Pearl Tower, one of Shanghai’s most famous buildings, around 8:30 a.m., and lingered near the Subway next to it for a considerable amount of time (let’s just say that some Chinese ticket-selling websites online are not reliable). When we finally headed inside, it was around 9:30. The line for the three elevators were long, but because the people working there jam-packed a bunch of visitors into one, it moved quickly. We were lucky to be assigned to the middle elevator, which had clear walls so that we could see the outside view as we were heading up.

   
If you look at the Oriental Pearl Tower from the outside, you can see that there are three spherical shapes, the bottom one being the largest and the top on being the smallest. We went to the middle sphere first. The room actually wasn’t a box inside of a sphere, but a sphere itself; the walls were curved, so you’d have to lean over the railing when taking pictures.

Mine ended up very odd-looking.

The glass floor was my favorite. It was somewhat like the Skydeck in Chicago, but instead of box shape, it had the same spherical format I mentioned before (more like a hemisphere, though). Another difference was that the Oriental Pearl Tower’s glass floor circled around the entire floor; the inside being gift and souvenir shops, elevators, and popcorn stands.
We had lunch afterwards. It being a Sunday, the restaurant we went to was filled. It was lucky that we were able to actually get a 4-seat table- which was crammed next to the wall.

About an hour later, we roamed the street of Nanjing. Or, if I were to phrase it accurately, Nanjing Road. It’s wonderful, really. Colorful, shiny (it’d just rained). There were shops that I recognized- American brands like Forever 21. Only, like my “budd-ay” said, everything was overly overpriced. So it took about five minutes for us to walk there and back and decide that we’d head somewhere else.

  
ChengHuangMiao (or the City God Temple of Shanghai) was actually wonderful. First, to clarify some likely misunderstandings, the “City God Temple of Shanghai” is a collection of streets with souvenir shops and shops that sell fake, brand name purses and American places like KFC and Starbucks and Dairy Queen. The buildings look like temples, though. Secondly, you can bargain there- mostly. To begin with, nearly everything’s average-price. Some keychains sell for less than 1 USD- or 5 RMB, when 1 USD is around 6.5 RMB. I (HEART) SHANGHAI or I (HEART) SH T-shirts sell from 4 USD to 10 USD. Our tour guide had told us on the bus nearly two weeks later when we went together as a group on one of the last days, “Maybe try to aim for half price?”

  
Given my accented Chinese and the obvious I’m-a-tourist! sign on my forehead (either by the way I dress or by the shirts we’re usually forced to wear that probably scream “WE’RE FROM AN INTERNATIONAL CAMP!” though I’ve never actually attempted to read it), I’ll say, I really tried.

    
I think I did pretty good. My “budd-ay” did most of the bargaining for me. When we were about to leave, we stopped by this tent-like place. In the back, two vendors sold “pingfeng”s, or Chinese folding screens. The big ones with six pictures on each side were 90 RMB each. I was looking at them when my “budd-ay” came over and said, “Do you want one?”

I said, “No.”

She said, “I can buy it for you, if you want.”

I said, “No, thanks.”

The vendor said, “Well?”

My “budd-ay” told him, “It’s too expensive.”

And thus the bargaining began. I actually had less than 40 RMB on me, and I was tired and it was hot outside and I really did not feel like I was in the mood for hardcore bargaining. So I just watched.

“She came all the way from America,” my “budd-ay” argued.

“So?” retorted the vendor. “I give cheaper prices to people from Shanghai, not to people from America!”

I glared at him. It’s common sense that’s it’s unlikely any person from Shanghai would actually go souvenir shopping in Shanghai in the first place. I could’ve should’ve would’ve told the vendor that, only my sarcasm in Chinese was not as good as my sarcasm in English.

Plus, being sarcastic to a stranger is kind of rude, especially when you’re trying to lower the price of something they’re selling.

When the two of them got to 50 RMB, I said to my “budd-ay”, “I don’t really actually want it (which I really actually kind of did, but like I’d said earlier, I had less than 40 RMB; also, my feet hurt). Let’s go.”

The vendor was so surprised after we walked away (he apparently didn’t expect that after so much bargaining we’d leave), so as we were exiting the tent he called out, “40 RMB! Final price!”

I think I might have snorted.

We’d come with two other kids, a fourteen year old girl and her “budd-ay”, who was my “budd-ay’s” friend. When we stepped outside, I realized my “budd-ay” wasn’t with us, and was told that she’d come a little later. We waited, she came, and we took a taxi back to a shopping mall near a subway station.

I had dinner with my “budd-ay’s” family. They asked me many questions about my life in America, such as: Where do you live? What does your mom do? What does your dad do? Is school hard? Are there many Asians (specifically Chinese people) in your class? You move to your classes (in China, the teachers do the moving in between periods)? and so on.

In the midst of this all, I looked down at my leg and saw a puddle of sticky blood red liquid. I freaked out, thought I was bleeding, and then realized it was juice from a fruit I was eating- an Arbutus Unedo strawberry, I think (I’d never had it before).

Soon it was time to leave. We spent a long time exchanging emails (for some reason, I couldn’t receive texts from her) and seeing if we got the one the other sent. At around 8 p.m., we left her apartment for the school. Before we got into the car, she gave me a red box with fancy gold lettering on it.

Inside was the Chinese folding screen I was looking at before.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I’d told her, shocked and happy and confused and grateful and somewhat sort of sentimental at the same time.

“Well,” she replied, “I knew you wanted it.”

. . .

Over and out,

Vivz

“Budd-ays”

Our first real day in Shanghai started at 6:45 in the morning, which was, suffice to say, not a preferable wake up time. Breakfast was at 7:30, and my roommate and I had decided to spend a little less than half an hour in the WiFi room, which became our routine for the next several days.

To our utmost convenience, the WiFi room was the furthest building away.

The WiFi room was next to the “dean” of the camp’s office. She was a petite woman, with curled, dark hair, taught English, and was usually found a) lecturing, b) presenting, or c) next to or in her office. Her office was the room that actually held the signal, so kids were often found bringing chairs into the hallway and leaning against the outside wall of her office with hopes for stronger WiFi.

After our daily dose of technology and communication, we headed back to the cafeteria. At its front entrance sat a cat, of which I named “Mo”.

  
The name stuck.

He (or she) was limp and skinny, had a surprisingly intimidating presence and chance of rabies. So, although some of us would occasionally throw bits of steamed buns from breakfast to him (and he did eat them, if the pieces weren’t too big), none of us actually got too close.

Breakfast was usually congee, an assorted variety of steamed buns, Chinese milk (I say “Chinese” because it doesn’t taste like the kind of milk we have in America), yogurt, and at times pumpkin biscuits and fried rolls.

When we finished eating, we were told to meet at the library in half an hour. Half the seats had already been taken by teenagers a few years older than most of us. They weren’t from the camp, which was obvious because they weren’t wearing one of the bright yellow T-shirts we’d been given the day before.

They were spread out, in pairs throughout the desks, probably so that all six tables would have a mixed group. After an introduction, the 30 of us found out that they a) attended the school, which b) were from, or at least lived in, Shanghai and c) would be our “budd-ays”, as one of the school’s English teachers said, for that day and the next.

My particular “budd-ay” was a 16 year old girl turning 17. She was around my height, had pale skin, long hair, and a soft voice. Unless, of course, she was arguing with someone.

That day was filled with a bunch of activities, from figuring out a saying/motto for your group and performing it with a “signature action”, to having a very short dialogue with your “budd-ay” in Shanghainese- the Shanghai dialect- which was, by the way, nothing like Mandarin, so nobody got that far, to actually learning Shanghainese, to making a poster about Shanghai.

(below: hallway of school; we took a tour of it after lunch)

  

We’d spend the next day with our “budd-ays” too, although individually, touring Shanghai wherever we wanted, and eating lunch and/or dinner at our “budd-ay’s” house with their family.

Over and out,

Vivz

Welcome to Shanghai

As popular as the ideas of Shanghai being an overly polluted city are, they are not necessarily true. At least, the skies were blue half the time I was there.

When we arrived at the Pudong International Airport after a tiring 14 hour flight, we were picked up by the guy in charge of our specific 30-person group, and driven to the “No.1 High School Affiliated to East China Normal University”, which is a high school. The girl’s wing of the dorms- limited to the tenth and eleventh floor for us- was very neat. It leaned towards the plain side, with white walls, saggy blue couches with yellow foam cushions (covered by the blue fabric, of course), white tile floors and black sinks.

My roommate was, coincidentally, one of the three other girls that had ridden with me on the plane. We were all friends, and made up a little less than half of the Chicago group. The other 20- and we’d meet all of them that day- were from a variety of states, ranging from Ohio to Michigan to California to Texas, etc., etc.

A little background about the camp. It was targeted towards teenagers across the world, that had a Chinese heritage but didn’t live in China (e.g. ABCs), sponsored by the Chinese government. The camp was funded, too, by the way, so the fee was surprisingly on the cheap side.

Half the time we stayed at the school in the library for classes, whether it be tea, culture, paper cutting; the other half, we toured the cities, and did a lot of shopping.

  
(above: view from 2nd floor of school)

We arrived at the dorms in the afternoon, and after unpacking and receiving T-shirts, a lanyard, a pin, and a key, the sky had darkened to a grayish blue. We met outside- all 30 of us- and, to practically everyone who had “Chinese culture” in mind’s dismay, headed to KFC.

  
(above: view from outside of the dorms)

Our first day was pretty uneventful.  After dinner, we wandered around in a mall, confined to one store by the name of “e-mart”. It sold everything from facial masks to Snickers to giant, inflatable dolphins.

We returned to our dorms, only a 5-10 minute walk away, at around 8. By midnight, the inhabitants of room 1104 had already fallen into a mildly jetlagged sleep.

Over and out, 

Vivz

Why I Disappeared For A Month

I broke my promise.

At the beginning, when I made this blog (a few months ago?) I promised to post every other week, meaning that every two weeks a post would show up on my Google Plus account saying, Look, it’s my nth blog post! Check it out on baggyhoodiesrippedjeans.wordpress.com! And so they did, until this July, when this website stayed pretty much inactive for a month.

But then again, I was on the other side of the world.

China was extremely fun, suffice to say. It isn’t a “big pot of smog”, as one of my friends (who, ironically, had never been to China before) put it, but there are some sites and search engines like Google that are blocked, which, in return, requires a VPN, which requires downloading, which requires good WiFi, which is practically nonexistent where I stayed, which means that the VPN takes a long time to download, which means that those sites and search engines are almost unavailable to me for that month; it’s quite a complicated process. So when I finally figured out WordPress was on the App Store, and started crafting half a blog post in early July that’s remained half a blog post to now, I realized that sending pictures to myself would take quite a lot of work too.

So, of course, being the lazy person I am, I didn’t.

Anyways, this blog post is going to be somewhat of an introduction to my trip to China. In summary, I went to three places: a camp in Shanghai, then visits to relatives in Wuhan and Fuzhou. Of course, if I do manage to figure out how to (which is somewhat to very unlikely; my discoveries as of now regarding this site is how to post, how to comment, and how to view my own posts) collect the abundance of blog posts coming and organize them into a folder or tab, I will.

As of now, I’ll leave you all hanging and attempt to start on my first post about Shanghai. Although…

Over and out,

Vivz

Sea Glass Paradise

Hi everyone!

One of my beautiful obsessions is collecting sea glass. For those who don’t understand the magnificent concept of sea glass, this wonderful thing is the result of years of the sea- or the lake, for beach glass- washing over pieces of glass and giving them a rough, frosty look and feel.

So yes, I am not as thankful for no-littering A.K.A no-leaving-glass-around beaches as I should be.

On Saturday, June 6 my family, my friend, and of course me went to a beach a little outside of Chicago (uncomfortably incorrect grammar for the sake of alliteration). I’d done some research before; my goal this time was to bring home as much sea glass or beach glass I possibly could. (Side note: Of course, it’s a little less likely to find sea glass in Lake Michigan- and beach glass is a little less rounded and frosty, in case anyone was wondering). The pictures of this beach showed that the sand was a little gravelly: in other words, it had small rocks mixed into it. That satisfied me, because beach/sea glass is easier found in a pile of rocks than a pile of smooth sand. There’s just more of a, let’s say, likeliness to it.

The ride was long, with me being excited when we reached Chicago but then realizing we still had a ways to go, and then with me shrinking in the heat and humidity of the car. (Another side note: I don’t like humidity or air conditioning. Humidity stuffs my nose and air conditioning burns it. It’s complicated.) My friend, of course, not a particularly patient person but patient compared to me, ignored the relentless humidity, heat- then the lack of humidity and heat- in the car.

This is all exaggerated a bit, of course, but that’s how I roll.

I was really surprised by the sheer amount of sea glass on the beach. According to http://www.odysseyseaglass.com, 3-5 pieces of sea glass found per hour is considered “fair”. The beach glass- some of it frosty enough to be considered sea glass- I found filled up a creme brule cup (shown above) and more. Not to say that the quality of the beach glass found was exceptional. After all, this was a lake beach, not a sea beach, meaning that the waves running over it were tamer and that, as a result, the appearance was less frosty.

However, I was surprised by some of the colors we found. My friend found a red, debatably the rarest color of sea glass. I found a yellow piece, which is also rare, and two seafoam green pieces, most likely from a Coke bottle. Other notable finds were: two pieces of very frosted clear sea glass with wire meshed through them (my mom), a small purple piece and tons of tiny cobalt pieces (my friend), a lime green piece (me), a heart shaped clear one (me), and one that was a dark, kelly green.

We had a great two hours or so there, but didn’t stay longer since it was windy and a little cold for someone in a t shirt and shorts outside.

If anyone’s interested, do some research about sea glass. One warning, though: however cool and interesting sea glass may be, be careful of buying it online or anywhere else. Make sure that it’s real, by looking for that frosted appearance, because only time can do that.

Have fun!!!

Over and out,

Vivz

Sweet Summer

It feels so bittersweet, the beginning of summer. So many of my friends are supersupersuper excited for it- don’t get me wrong: I am, too- but it feels kind of weird, two months of empty days.

Not to say they are going to be empty. I’m going to get some writing done- that includes more frequent blogging- and reading and hanging out with friends and vacationing, of which I will blog about sooner or later. I’m planning already, what books to read and buy, what pictures to take and draw.

In this post, the word count isn’t going to be huge, and there’s going to be more pictures compared to words than usual. But for me, summer’s grass. Sunshine, of course. Ice cream. Friends. Bare feet. Bare feet anywhere (almost) I go.

So it gets more random as it goes. Just like my summers.

-Pendants and Handbells-

Hi everyone!

Today it’s Thursday- I realized my two week time frame for posting is coming up- and I’m still gushing over the pictures shown below (maybe a little bit obsessive?). Saturday was busy for me- May 16- I left home at 9 in the morning and came back at 11 pm. So what with school and all, I didn’t start a draft, even, of this post until today.

So here it goes.

May 16 was pretty exciting for me. It was the last day of all my Saturday extracurricular activities, which means free Saturdays from then on out. And I got to skip half of one of my morning classes to go to a glass pendant workshop (more on that later). In the afternoon, after the workshop, I spent 30 minutes at a 2 hour class, in which we watched a movie for the last day. Then I left for a handbell rehearsal, and stayed at the church for nearly nine hours until after our handbell concert.

First, the glass pendant workshop. Usually the posts’ topics are about interesting things in my life- not to say that my classes aren’t interesting, they just happen every single week. It was at Affinity Studios, which just opened up around here not too long ago. It’s a really nice place, actually- a little bit empty with a good kind of workshop-y smell- and it has a store section in the front and a workshop section in the back, where all of the classes take place. There, a man and his wife taught us how to cut glass, what types of glass there are, and how to actually make a glass pendant. None of us actually heated the glass- we designed the pendants and then glued them together at the end, after cleaning them with rubbing alcohol. Then the owners would heat them for us; we’d come and pick them up after a week or two.

That said, I still haven’t received my glass pendants, so I do not exactly know what they look like.

Anyways, me being me, I cut myself halfway into the class. It was more of a me-leaning-on-to-the-table-filled-with-glass kind of cut, but I didn’t bleed a lot. My first pendant was a white rectangle on a blue-green piece of glass (a larger rectangle that acted as a frame), with two smaller pieces of glass- a pink (sparkly) and a blue (bubbly)- on top. A small, flowery, cobalt bead was on the top right of the white opaque glass, with the blue on the bottom and the pink on the top left side. I discarded that after a moment of thought, because it looked kind of like a face, the bead being like an eye, which is kind of creepy.

My second and third are shown in the picture (I still can’t decide which one’s my favorite because they’re both mine… and because the second one looks like a teardrop and the third one is supposed to be a tree. My predicament: I like the third one’s design better, but it’s a pendant and looks really heavy to wear).

I made a place-to-go recommendation last time, but if you’re interested in anything artsy or designing, Affinity Studios is the place to go- especially if you wear jewelry. I swear, it’s super fun, they have so much glass, and it’s easy to understand and make. It doesn’t really matter if you’re clumsy- although I don’t know if that shard of glass it still stuck in my hand.

On to handbells! I rehearse with a group of adults and one other teen (a band, maybe?) every week. We have two concerts a year, one in November and another in May. So it’s like rush hour- or rush week- the week before a concert. For those who don’t exactly understand what handbells are, they’re gold bells of varying sizes (which means varying pitches) on black or white handles (depending on if it’s a black note, or a white note, like piano). Overall, the concert went really well, and the food we had for dinner was epic (especially the chocolate cheesecake and some kind of chili chicken soup?).

Today’s Saturday, and I think I’ve already passed the two week deadline. So, we picked up the pendants today. They looked different, especially the third: the dark green beads were more blackish than I expected. The only downside, though, was the cords they gave us to hang the pendants on we’re a little short, so when I tied two adjustable knots so I’d be able to adjust how tight the necklace would be, it wouldn’t fit over my head.

That’s all for now- happy Memorial Day weekend everyone!

Over and out,

Vivz