Hey there....

this is just my blog for nothing inparticular. Maybe it'll develop its own definition in time, who knows? Hope ya like:)

Monday, January 16, 2012

Out With the Blah, In With the Blog.

I haven't really had much I've felt the need to say the past few months, but with a new year I feel a sense of rejuvenation. Yes, I know how cheesy that sounds. Nonetheless, a few of my best friends are studying abroad this semester, all having left within the past couple of days. Their excitement for an unfamiliar place and forthcoming adventures must be contagious because our other friends and I seem to have been filled with the same positive energy. It's invigorating. This past semester was really tough on everyone, mentally and emotionally. I swear, it's something in the stars.

Usually at the beginning of a new year I don't feel anything out of the ordinary. There's no cleansing period, no moment of clarity. Everything is just hum-drum and blah. However, this year is different. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's there.

It's just going to be a good great year and I can feel it. That is all.







:)

Thursday, September 1, 2011

You're My Blue Sky, You're My Sunny Day







Molli doing some crafting

the tools



Molli's finished product: a watch on a bracelet she made

gotta love Newport

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Random blah

I've been going through my pictures bit by bit from studying abroad for the photo contests I want to enter and these are just some that make me really happy.




these first 4 were from our second village homestay, atop of the mountain Doi Lang. These pictures were taken on Doi Chang (Elephant Mountain), when my brother from my family took a group of us to a coffee place, a little wat area in a bamboo forest, and a field of beautiful flowers with an amazing view of all the surrounding mountains.


this photogenic monkey was at the Chiang Mai Zoo. He was so funny and was a great model haha




these 4 pictures above are from a field trip we took for our Buddhism class to various temples in Chiang Mai and just outside of the city. The first 2 were taken at Doi Suthep, which is at the top of a mountain in the city. Since Chiang Mai is completely surrounded by mountains, it's the only light you can see in the sky (aside from the stars of course) and it looks so cool. The story of the temple is (and i don't have all the details 100% correct) there was an elephant carrying bone relics of the Buddha a long, long time ago. He dropped it by accident, and one small piece fell off in the city of Chiang Mai, where Wat Suan Dohk was built; the larger piece was then carried up to the top of the mountain by the elephant. Once he reached the top, he just fell over and died, and they built Doi Suthep in that spot. the other 2 pictures were taken at a wat in a forest (I forget the name of it). The broken statues were in the Buddha graveyard, where people bring their old and worn Buddha statues instead of throwing them away.




These 4 were taken in Cambodia, at Wat Pinom Chiso. It's an ancient temple that apparently only like 20 people have climbed in the past 15 years or so- well, climbed the ancient stairs, which is extremely hard because they're made of giant stones and it's really steep; most people tend to use another stairway that was built later on that is probably 10 times easier (we didn't see it). The monk in these pictures, Rainie, traveled with us for the day. Our resident director Chhunny used to be a monk and he knew him from when they lived in Thailand and stayed at the same temple.

this is from the same day as Pinom Chiso. We went to many different temples, going around Cambodia for 14+hours. It was exhausting but so interesting. We were in what is thought to be the most ancient city in Southeast Asia, which I'm pretty sure is called Angkor Borei (i know it begins with a B). Apparently in ancient Chinese scripts the hub of ancient Asia was described as an island, so originally it was thought to be in Vietnam, I believe, but then historians realized it was actually in Cambodia because during the flood season this area basically turns into an island.





these last pictures are from another excursion day in Cambodia. The first couple were taken when we stopped in some random village town outside of Phnom Penh to see the Mekong and see where all the veggies and other produce came from; the last couple of pictures were taken at a Lotus farm, which was also the site for an ancient Cambodian village. the kid in the last picture went and picked some lotus flowers for us to eat. Cambodians really like them, but unfortunately i wasn't really fond of it. it kind of just tasted like plants and dirt.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

i'm not sure what to title this, so this is the title.

isn't it weird how sometimes when we look back on certain moments in our lives we remember all the good times, yet when we look back at other times we only remember the bad? i was just thinking about Thailand & Cambodia and how that keeps happening with the memories. i feel like my last entry about cambodia and the girls i was with was so bitter, and i kind of regret posting it. i mean, at the time i was very passionate about what i was feeling, lol, but there were definitely more good times than bad. and it's to be expected that you'll have disagreements with people you're constantly around for 5 months, and then living with for 2 months straight in really tiny quarters. but it was a lot of fun. now i'm kind of stressing out (not that much though actually lol) about finding 2 good pictures to enter in photo contests for my university and for the education abroad network, the company i went through to go to southeast asia. that's gonna be a bit difficult. i have to go through 5 months of pictures to find the perfect 2, and i realized a few weeks ago when i was looking through my external hard drive for my pictures that a bunch of pictures magically got erased from it =/. oh well. i probably have them on facebook haha. thank god i'm always so cautious with my pictures and save them in at least 2 places. i'm a bit anal about that.

and now i'm babbling again. blaahhhh.

i meant to upload some of my pictures from Camp Bisco, but i haven't done it yet. blahh. maybe i'll do it now. it's a really lazy day, but not really. i think i'm just in a really fickle mood. i need to stop babbling. trains of thought are quite amusing, if you stop to think about it.

ha okay. blahh.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

It's a rainy day & I'm feeling like a homebody...

...so I took the liberty to practice my "photography" (I don't call it actual photography, since i haven't taken a class yet, so i'm still just a newborn.) but, yeah. i really want to try doing some really funky photoshoots with my friends, but i've never done posed shoots before (except a little for molli's blog, http://alamerri.blogspot.com/ , but that's different). So this is me just testing the waters, see what kind of eye I have and all that jazz. blahhh. so i guess let me know what you think?

color?

or b&w?