Colorado.

Listen. Do you hear the sweet melody of the crimson cardinal? Can you smell the crisp mountain air clearing your head? Look. Do you see the dark silhouettes of craggy mountain peaks? Can you taste the sweet melted s'mores disintegrating on your tongue? Smile. Do you feel the warm breeze filling you with happiness?

Yes?

Then you are here, heaven on earth-Leadville, Colorado. Lift your arms up and rejoice! Watch the extraordinary scarlet sky tinged with cerulean and lavender fade into an ebony darkness. Only a glowing silver orb, along with thousands of twinkling stars illuminate your path as you walk around the pine-needle covered campground. Shadows of miniature groundhogs dance their ways into underground shelters.

Don't try taking refuge in the stark white RV, no! Envelope the warm beams of sunlight with loving arms. Leap in the dusty gravel road while pelting rain refreshes your soul. Halt at the mountainside and look up to the snowy white powder that rests upon the peak. Dare to climb the rocky structure. Twirl at the top, for you are one with nature and no other.

(this is an old writing piece from freshman year that I'm particularly proud of.)

Take off.

an·glo·phile/ˈaNGgləˌfīl/

Noun:	A person who is fond of or greatly admires England or Britain.
Adjective:	Fond or admiring of England or Britain.

This is, most simply, me.

I've always wanted to go to Europe. To Edinburgh, Scotland, where Hogwarts is. (To pick up my late letter, but of course.) To Amsterdam, Holland, where Hazel and Augustus (from The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, I highly recommend it) escaped from their harsh realities. To Kensington Gardens where Peter Pan is. To King's Cross station, to greet Harry and the others coming back from Hogwarts.

I am so strongly influenced by fiction literature, and I thrive on novels I can dive into and enter a whole new world filled with new surprises, new people to grow to love, new adventures to experience. All throughout my imagination. But recently, I've developed a sense that just reading about these travels isn't enough. I want to live them.

In the book Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson, the story follows Ginny, a girl whose aunt has given her, you guessed it, thirteen blue envelopes to travel Europe, reading the envelopes step by step and following only the rules set in the letters. I want an adventure like that, being able to just take off with my goodbye being, "I got sent on a solo adventure and I'm taking the challenge. Don't know when I'll be back, bye I love you!" And then off I would go by myself to the airport, flying across the sea to an unknown kingdom far, far away.

Sometimes, when I contemplate this, I have to slightly doubt myself, for the sake of reality. Would I be able to do it? I'd like to think that I could. Yet the longest I've been away from home was a week at my church camp, a place I could almost regard as another home, now that it's so familiar to me-the people included. Of course, I think I'd have to have something to document the experience-a video camera, a still camera, a never-ending travel journal filled with vast scrawls of my adventures. I think I'd be fine without a phone, as long as I had the ability to send letters home to the ones I love.

I suppose I could do it. Wouldn't it be nice, to get away? To have just the right amount of money to take off on a silver bullet, to land in an unknown destination where they would force you to get off the plane and step out into a new realm. Is it odd, though, unrealistic, for me to love a pure idea, hardly thought out and formed in my brain?

Could I do it?

Nellie.

Meet Nellie!

Nellie is my brand new ukulele. And I love her very much.

It was hard to decide on what I wanted to name it. My mom suggested Gertrude. (In Seussical the Musical, a bird named Gertrude plays the ukulele in a love song to Horton the Elephant. Gertrude's ukulele looks exactly like mine except with green feathers on the neck.) I contemplated Ellie, but my cousins recently got a dog they named Ellie and that would end up to be confusing. I was close to naming it Buddy, after Buddy the Elf.

Then I decided on Nellie. How? I don't know. It just fits. (I'd like to take more pictures later, I just took camera phone photos now.)

What was your favorite Christmas gift?

Happy December!

Open your advent calendars, everyone. Its the holiday season and you'd better be in the spirit. I want to hear you caroling out in the streets, see you making snowmen and snowangels, taste the decorated cookie that you made, fresh out of the oven.

Christmas only comes once a year, so you  better enjoy it.

11.11.11. @ 11:11

(I'm writing this post in advance but I plan to post it at 11:11.)

What a lucky day. Well, not really. Nothing mometous happened. In English class at 11:11 everyone simutaneously dropped their pencils and looked up at the clock and started whispering wishes to themselves. My teacher didn't know what was going on.

Think about this: next year will be 12.12.12. But the next time that will ever happen will be in about 11 years from now. I'll be in my 20s. Out of college. And you know how recently we reached a population of 7 billion? According to my science teacher, we'll reach 8 billion in 2035, around there. I'll be in my late 40s. I'm only a teenager now! Its weird to think so far in the future.

What do I want to do in 11 years? I might be in grad college, maybe not. I'd like to be a writer or a teacher. Maybe a major in English and a minor in education. My mom got to teach abroad in Britain when she went to KU, and I think that'd be really fun.

What about in 24 years? I want to have a family, hopefully. Two kids, boy and girl maybe? I'd want to live in a cottage-like style house but with modern twists on the inside. I want it to show my values through art and design.

That's so odd to think about.

Think.

The high school bus is an interesting place.

A place for fun, laughter, insults, dumb remarks, and...tears.

No.

It shouldn't be a place for that.

Today something happened that changed my perspective on what I do. Some kids were ganging up against one kid, tossing insults and expletives back and forth across the bus. Then we pulled up to their stop and a lot of kids began to clap and cheer, taunting the kid with their heads out the window. After that the noise faded to idle chatter between people.

Then one boy spoke up. "Think about what you just did." He said in a strong voice and it was almost like he cast a spell over the kids on the bus. Everyone fell silent to hear what he said. "Sure, he looked like he didn't care, about what you said, about what you did. But did you ever think about what he feels?" His voice began to quiver and a solitary tear streamed down his face.

"You guys taunt me constantly, behind my back, over and over. And I'm sick of it."

Then apologies started flowing. One boy asked, "Why're you looking at me?" The other boy replied, "Because you're the one that makes fun of me the most." And then the boy that asked him got up and shook his hand and apologized.

So I guess the moral of the story is to think about what you're doing before you speak, okay?