Travelling

When I was younger, my sister and I would always talk about travelling the world together. Sadly she is 5 years older than me, which gives her more freedom than I have now. Recently, she went on a trip to Africa in the Congo and she also went on a road trip to San Francisco and Seattle and had the time of her life. These are just a couple of things she's experienced.

Just two days my sister took a trip along the pacific west coast and visited Vance Creek bridge in Washington. She said taking those first steps along the bridge was frightening but extremely exhilarating, not to mention, illegal! She sat side by side with her best friend and just soaked in the peace and beauty that they don't normally get to see on a daily basis while going to college.

My sister on Vance Creek Bridge

Next on her road trip, she stopped by Big Sur in central to Northern California. It was her first time there and she says she will definitely make an effort to go again. She was specifically taken away while driving along the coast of Big Sur in silence with her best friend. She described it as a never ending beauty. 

                                                         My sister looking over Big Sur

And last but not least, her most life changing trip to Africa. When I picked up my sister from the airport after returning from the Dominican Republic of Congo, I noticed a dramatic change in her eyes and the way she acted. She seemed extremely grateful to be standing with her family, but also forlorn because she had to part from the family she made there. She said she left her heart in the heart of Africa and she will return to work there as a nurse for a portion of her lifetime. 

Teen Dating

Teen dating is ridiculously popular. You'd be surprised by how many high schoolers, or even middle schoolers are in relationships these days. 89% of teens are reported to be in a relationship today and 37% of 11-12 year olds. OMG!!!!

Teen relationships almost always come to an end, except for those few exceptions of the whole "high school sweetheart" type of stuff. When teens first enter a relationship, they try to pretend that they know it won't end possibly terribly. Most of them are basically fooling themselves! I understand that it's nice to have a cute companion when you're going through high school but that's what friends and dogs are for!

What's the point? What I don't understand is why someone would want to invest their time into someone else during a key time in their life. Teen-hood is the time to focus on yourself and truly find who you are. How can you do that when you're trying to understand someone else who gives confusing signs and mixed signals and weird sad feelings. It's a big time suck and distracts you from the more important things that they could be going through during their teens. There probably are perks to teen relationships, like having experience for the future, but it seems that in most cases, the good outweighs the bad. Props to the teens who have discovered who they are and are in a healthy teen relationship.

Music is power. Music has the power to make people feel things. I find it strange how some noises can cause people to cry or be joyful. What is it with music that has this effect on people?

For me, music is life changing. From sitting in the band room early in the morning and making music, to listening to music in my room at midnight while taking a break from homework, I have never not enjoyed it. Music makes me feel what's going on around me, and it also takes me away from my surroundings and leads me into my dream world. It's indescribable.

I try to delve into each note I hear, or each beat or pitch. I think about why the composer or artist chose that specific note in that order. Each sound in a song is picked for a certain reason and what's interesting to me is why they chose it to be there. Each note plucked, plucks a string in my heart(cheesy i know).

Death by Finals

The school system is beyond frustrating. Feeling the heat, especially during finals week, I find it ludicrous how our 20+ weeks of hard work depends so heavily on an assignment or test given to us at the end of the semester. It's hard to maintain straight A's throughout the semester, and having one large assignment at the end of it that can determine whether you get an A or B is difficult to cope with.

Another fact that scares me is how well we do in these few years of our teenage lives will reflect on what the rest of our lives could possibly be like. If we don't  perform top notch during high school in this day and age, it's nearly impossible to compete with those who do when college application time comes.

I wish school was about genuinely learning new things and discovering yourself. But of course, we don't live in a perfect world so that's not the case. School is so heavily depended on numbers, memorization, scores, and exams that we forget the true meaning of school. I'm not saying that all we do is pointless and a waste of time, but more of that is going on than it should be.