I have this theory.

You know when you find out depressing news but really if you told anyone they would just tell you to get over it or look at you in a confused way? Yeah, that is the way I feel right now. It's not the type of news that will make me start cutting or anything but it just feels like reality punched me in the face. Why can't we all just continue to have the naivete of being ten or eight? I remember I really liked being those ages.

I went to the Museum of Tolerance today. I really want to go back. We only had the chance to go through one exhibit and hear a former skinhead talk. It was all very interesting and sad and intriguing ang now I just want to go back and go through more exhibits and learn more about race hatred. When ever I think about racism, like the civil rights movement or what happened in Europe during Hitler's reign, I always wonder what I would have been like if I had lived then. The speaker said that racism and that hatred you feel is a "learned behavior." So really, I think it depends a lot on what environment I grew up in and what issues I faced that would determine if I was a racist.

Yesterday I found out that I am going to be a high school camp counselor. I am thrilled beyond measure. Seriously, I looked forward to maybe being a counselor when I was a freshman in high school. How ridiculous is that? I am excited to meet the girls in my cabin and get to know them and see what God will do during the week. Camp is just always amazing. Sadly, it is not for another few weeks. So, let the count down begin.

So my theory is the following: this post is the most random thing ever. awesome.

Who are your best girl friends?

You know those annoying yet fun to fill out surveys on the myspace bulletin circuit? Annoying because everyone fills them out, even the people that you really don't care about but you are still friends with. And fun to fill out because they ask the most random questions that maybe you have never thought about before. Well, in the most recent one that I have seen the question is asked "who are your best girl friends?" (The two surveys that I read it in listed me in the list and I felt really happy about this but thats beside the point.) This question got me thinking like many random things do.

I think many people can relate to the fact that because of participation in a variety of activities I have many different groups of friends. I have school friends, soccer friends, church friends, and now that I have started college, college friends. Sometimes I feel like I have too many friends because I feel like I let some of them down when I don't hang out with them or call them or leave them facebook messages.

It is funny how friends become friends. You see right now, I have these amazing five girls who entered my life a little over a year ago. Emma, Rel, Rachel, Cor, Leesh. I kind have known them for quite a while but we did not all start hanging out together until last summer. Who knew kids from Poly and King could combine and become best friends?

Seriously they all make me so happy. Right now, ironically, they all go to RCC. But they all have so many amazing things that they want to do or are going to do. Cor is leaving for Chile for an entire year in the middle of September. She is my gypsy friend that loves talking about the awkward things in life. Alisha is going to transfer to another school in January and it will most likely be in Washington, way too far for a random disneyland trip. Last summer, we confided in each other some of the crappy things in our lives and we've been friends ever since. Emma is going to go off to a four year college soon and learn tons of more stuff that she can randomly tell us. Whenever we hang out, we find we revert to being 12 again. It's quite enjoyable actually. Rel is going to make the whole world fall in love with her because who doesn't love the person in your group that laughs at everything and argues with herself. She has full out conversations with herself and we don't have to say anything. Rachel is in training to be a firefighter right now. Currently she is paramedic trained, or something. But she currently has a plan to maybe go to a four year school for graphic art or intercultural studies. I really want her to choose APU for this but that's for my selfish reasons. These are my girls.

Our most recent photoshoot in the dairy queen parking lot with Kortney and Kevin.

But I am going to have to say that these aren't my only best girl friends. There are still the Victoria Girls and my new college friends.

My roommates for college next year are the asians on the left and the girl in the flower zip up. Kim, Kai and Ariel. I am so excited to live with these girlies.

The truth is how can I answer the question of who are your best girl friends when there are so many to choose from?

About two weeks later

So this summer I had the opportunity to go to Louisiana for six weeks. While we were there, me and four other college students worked at a summer camp for about three hundred kids in Covington, Louisiana. To read more about it go to louisianaexperiment.blogspot.com.

And now we have been home about two weeks. It was probably some of the hardest, yet most rewarding six weeks of my life. It was hard because I had so many expectations of what the trip would be like and it really was not what I had expected. It was hard because I wanted to do things my way but I had to learn to let go so that I could learn from the people that I was around. But it was so rewarding. The people there were so hospitable and really appreciated us being there even though it really did not feel like such a big deal what we were doing.

What was also rewarding was the people from Riverside that I went down with: Josiah, Alisha, Ben and Rachel. The entire time we were in Louisiana, these people were not far from me. We spent a lot of our free time together. But these past two weeks, I have had to learn to be myself again. We have all gone back to our lives. Ben is at navy training/camp/something. Josiah is hanging out with his friends and pretty soon he is moving to North Carolina, which I am so excited for him but I really am going to miss him. Alisha and Rachel help out with the jr. high at the Grove and this past week they were at camp for that. So they are living their own life. And pretty soon I will move back to APU for my sophmore year of college. I gained somewhat of a family through these people and they have no idea how happy they make me whenever I look at pictures from the trip.

One of the things that I miss the most about Louisiana is my group of kids. I worked with the 5-7 age group and truly they made me so happy even though they drove me crazy a lot of the time. I lost my voice for three days because of cheers and yelling (I sounded like a man). I had to apply first aid to many of the kids, many times because they would not stop getting hurt. One kid flipped me off because he was asking me what it meant. I had to take so many things from them that they had in their mouth. During Bible and Character, I had to repeat myself countless times. To get the kids to actually listen to me, I did everything from bribing them with popsicles to threatening them with punishment, which was going to the office.

But then other times they made me fall in love. So many times, the kids told me that I was pretty or that they liked my hair. Countless times, kids from other groups asked to be in my red group. After a challenge made by me to memorize Philippians 4:13, one kid actually was able to memorize it (he was 6). When they smiled, it melted away any evil thought I had about strangling them. It's because they smiled when they were having fun or they were happy or when they were getting their picture taken. Seriously, I miss these kids so much. Here are just a few of them.

Well I think that is it for now.

"Without music, life is a journey through a desert" Pat Conroy

Things are changing

My first post. How exciting.

Last night I hung out with the Victoria Girls. That is what we call our little group that have been friends since we all attended Victoria Elementary, oh so many years ago: Cindy, Nikol, Becca, Stacey, Alicia, Danielle, Natalie and me. We went to Color me Mine, ate at the Spaghetti Factory (I think we all ordered the Mzithra Cheese) and spent the night at Cindy's house.

But things have definitely changed since we were naive little elementary aged kids. We are growing up. We are now attending college all over the United States. From right here in Riverside to San Diego to Azusa to San Luis Obispo to San Francisco to Oregon to Boston to Florida. We are all pursuing the things that we love, finding who we are and trying to not let society define us. College is a time to find ourselves and I am so happy for what is in store for all of us. It will be interesting to see how we all change from reunion to reunion. Our plan is to keep meeting up every so often but how long will that last?

However, I think we all motivated to keep meeting because we have been friends for so long, why not keep being friends?

But what is going to happen when we are older and getting married and having kids and traveling the world and pursuing our bliss? What do we really mean to each other? Could it be that we only meet every so often so that we can feel like the young carefree kids that we were, and avoid the reality of growing up?

I'm not going to lie, I like growing up. I like giving my opinion to authority figures and them actually listening instead of them brushing it off as a whim of a child. I crave the responsibility of being put in charge of an 'adult' task. How ridiculous is that?

Don't get me wrong now, I am not power hungry. If I ruled the world, there would be a lot of problems because mainly I like to avoid problems. Brush them under the rug and deal with them only when they beome such a BIG problem that it starts to implode and take everything with it.

But back to growing up, I always feel like I have been mature. I think it comes with having two older sisters that I always wanted to impress. I think sometimes I tried to be so much like them that I would have the same likes and dislikes and opinions even though I may not have necessarily agreed with them.

So now it is my goal to find the real me and continue to be the real me around everyone. Too many times have I agreed with people about liking something but not really cared for it at all. I just did not want to give my real opinion. But no more. At least that is my humble goal until the next goal comes along.

"Wait for the LORD, be strong and take heart, and wait for the LORD" psalm 27:14