For the Mr. Kites

Okay, so I miss home. That may or may not be because I am pretty much the only one on campus right now and not at some welcome week boat cruise, but nonetheless! I procrastinated getting tickets and then made other plans to explore Boston that fell through because of a ridiculously long dorm meeting and then there were extra tickets but I didn't want to have to rush to get ready because of the aforementioned long meeting. So now I'm sitting at my computer, having watched every person I am possibly acquainted with here walk out to the buses to go on the cruise. OH WELL. I guess staying in for one night isn't like a terrible thing, although tomorrow looks to be kind of slow too...since classes START the next morning!


Something I was thinking about but forgot to blog about during orientation....my parents are WEIRD!! Like they are really absurd people haha. I think as my sister and I have grown up, my parents are allowed to show more personality now and it's kind of weird (my mom more than my dad), although that explains a lot about me and Yas. Case in point, my mom "allowed" my dad to buy a really nice car for his 50th birthday or something, and they came home from the dealership with this really nice 2 door BMW with red leather interior. Now, this thing is sexy, and my parents get in the door and my mom says, "Yeah, I'm driving that." Okay, so my dad is kind of a pushover when it comes to my mom, but yeah. She told us she hates gray and only picked it because of the red. WHAT? Some more examples...(imagine these in broken chinese and just chinese in general)

(while I was taking a survey for freshmen)
me: mom what did I get on the SATs
mom: i don't remember, why?
me: well i need it for this thing
mom: OO make it up and make yourself sound really smart!!

(after I got a flat tire on the way to school)
mom: HAHA the triple A guys' eyes bugged out when I drove up to meet him at your car in the BMW!!
me: ...omg mom.
mom: Yeah he was really impressed and I even flirted with him a little to get the tire change for free
me and my sister: OMG MOM
dad: (quietly eats dinner)

I know there was a moment here in Boston with my dad that when it happened I thought to myself OMG I AM TOTALLY BLOGGING ABOUT THAT IN MY WEIRD PARENTS BLOG but I forgot, so oh well. Maybe next time!


In other news, it's like drugs don't exist at Boston College. The general consensus is like OMG IF YOU DO DRUGS YOURE A TERRIBLE PERSON, and nobody even talks about weed, although I did smell it at like 2 AM last night. At the meeting earlier tonight they made charts on the powerpoint to show penalties for certain things and our 3 strikes rule, and we went over the alcohol chart in GREAT detail, questions afterwards and the whole shebang, and then we completely skipped the chart for the drugs. I guess drug culture is pretty much nonexistent here, which isn't bad but kind of a change, I'd say. I mean this is the weekend before school starts, pretty much the 3rd day and so far, many things have happened already: party busted in the other dorm, party busted on the main campus, girl drank way too much and got alcohol poisoning so the cops and ambulance came, guy arrested and kicked out of the dorms...Go class of 2012!!! HAHA.


Also, relationships are never really what they seem are they? Everything is so fragile and complex, why did we ever have to label them to begin with? Who made up the rules that we're all supposed to follow? Life is too short to be envious, even though it's hard to resist sometimes. I'm satisfied, if not happy, with the way my life is...and that's enough, I guess. How do people change so fast, so easily, so often?

So I've been at Boston College for about 4 days now...Orientation is done with, and I am finally allowed to sleep in. I'm not quite sure why, but I fail HARDCORE at college. (A bit of background information....I'm on Newton, which is the freshmen campus that is like 2 miles away from the main campus. I have to take the bus to get back to school everyday, which comes every 15 min or so) My alarm clock has failed me miserably so far, and I missed one bus by about 2 minutes, and the other decided to turn off at my bus stop and not move for 20 minutes. I have gotten destroyed by dodgeball (I am currently sporting a bruise the size of my thigh on my thigh and a strange rash on my chest/throat from getting the wind knocked out of me there). I missed a lot of mail that the advisors tell me is very important and I've left everything else I received at home.

I really hope this isn't symbolic of my next 4 years.


As of now though, I get to (kind of) relax, and not have to rush to make the bus for another 5 days. It's kind of lonely in my room since my roommate doesn't move in until Saturday, but I guess this is where my social skills (if any) are put to the test. Enough about me, more about Boston. This place is absolutely gorgeous. The architecture here is much more gothic, and everything seems kind of old (but not decrepit) and made of brick, but with multicolored brick, which creates a very light effect versus the I'm a hick on the farm effect. The campus is huge, but I am assuming that I will learn, eventually. My classes are satisfactory with nothing before 9 and nothing I despise, but starting everyday at 10 does sound quite appealing...hehe. My orientation was pleasantly surprisingly diverse, but that could just be because all the travelers came to this one (ie all the really intense kids from South Korea and every other international school kid). The guys here are built like trees, which is something I'll probably have to get used to (No offense, tree-like men). Everything is just, different, to sum it up in the easiest and most obvious way.

I do miss home. I don't have much time to think about it, but in the random moments where another priest is giving us another lecture on another service opportunity (not that I think they're stupid, just that we've heard it all 3 times already), I snap out of it and realize I was thinking about how one of my friends would react to all this, or what I would be doing if I was back in time 3 hours. By the time I'm back in my dorm, most of my friends are out and about, and when I wake up and am bored I have nobody to text lest they chew me out for waking them up. Like I've said before, it is hard to be away first and so far, but yeah. Life goes on!





Some people are lucky to get cute texts everyday and requests for songs, and basically a try-hard form of contact. I know, I shouldn't be bitter, this was after all my choice too, but it's hard when I like to make an effort while its easier for another to just put it out of their mind, and basically not think about it (or me?) at all. I have to remember that I don't have a say in anything anymore.

People are leaving. People have been leaving. I am leaving. One of my really good friends moved to San Francisco today...when he pulled up onto my driveway with all his stuff in tow, jumped out of his car and gave me a hug, I really wanted to cry. He has been a colossal component of my past 4 years, and the first person I interact with on a regular basis to leave this tiny town. It's really starting to hit me now, that I will be leaving in approximately 34 hours and also, that I am still helplessly unpacked. Okay, so I procrastinate. Whoops. I didn't get to see a lot of people I wanted to, but this summer I was strangely okay with that. Even from the beginning of senior year, everybody pretty much started drifting in their own random directions, and it's about time too. Life goes on.

(On a separate note, if anybody would like to see a copy of my packing list feel free to ask!)


So with life comes changes right..?

I know, all in all, that I like being in a relationship. Monogamy suits me, for some strange reason. I love having somebody to spoil, I love working hard to make things work, and even though obviously fights are miserable, I like working through it. I can't help it! I guess, despite the cliche or what not, i really love being in love. Maybe that's why it's so hard for me to let go? I am not the type that wants to play around and have drunken hookups...I like having somebody to come home to. However, I am also in an extremely transitional period of my life...I am after all only 17 (I know, being young blows.) and who knows what type of person I will be in 4 years, or even in 2 and a half months? Cross my fingers and hope for the best, but forcing something is a bad idea. Going with the flow, letting things go, taking things more lightly. Big picture! I try to remind myself.

If things go well, hopefully I'll come back a really trendy East Coaster that laughs in the face of these little California rains having the time of my life and doing the things I love with the people I love. This includes but is not limited to; joining/making an acapella group, dancing more, deciding on a major, a sweet schedule that means that I don't have class on Friday nor do I have to wake up before 7, new friends AND old friends, and basically just lots and lots of fun. I really hope I make an acapella group.

It's almost goodbye!

So as of today, I have 1 week and 3 days left here. People are already starting to leave, which is CRAZY, and my sister left last week to go backpacking for Europe for 3 weeks. Since she isn't getting back until the weekend before both of our schools start, that means I won't be seeing her again until after we're both at college...STRANGE. I really admire what she's doing though. Despite some initial problems, she is finally backpacking through Europe, something that she has wanted to do for who knows how long. And her backpack is relatively light too...she showed me yesterday and I can't believe that there are literally 3 weeks of stuff in there. So yeah, I hope she has fun with her new very straight teeth and partying it up in Amsterdam and pretty much every other European country.

I wish I knew what I was doing....hahah darn. It's time to start packing and buying things, and I feel like there's so much left to do before I leave. But then again, I think about whether or not I would rather have an entire extra MONTH of summer, and I wouldn't particularly enjoy that either...or would I? Hm...CURIOUS. Oh how those little decisions and words back in October made such a big difference. Although if I had to pick between leaving first and leaving last, in the end I would still want first. ALSO, I finished AlcoholEdu today, which was mostly ridiculous but I guess kind of interesting....not really.

On another topic...anger is so fickle. It's strange how little it takes to set me (or anybody for that matter) off, and despite the fact that even in the moment I know that I am overreacting or being unreasonable, I can't stop my face from burning or my throat from choking. Even much later on, when I have long since gotten over it, when I remember the situation I can still so clearly remember how furious I had been...or even in some cases relive it. I'm not sure which is better, to be honest. Would I rather have unwarranted crazes that when I look back on, I shake my head at myself, ashamed at how violently angry I had been? Or would i rather take what i have now, a constant understanding of how I had felt at any given moment...which while means that I have never gone absolutely batshit insane, I constantly carry those emotions and memories with me, ready at any time to rise up and take over my current mood. It's hard! While this empathy with myself obviously helps me to better understand myself, it's also hard to deal with things that I know no longer matter yet I can't get rid of.

On another note, with everybody leaving so soon, I feel like all the silly high school drama which gripped people's lives is so far behind me, or us. While there were obviously people that I avoided or disliked, in all honesty that itself was just something to do. My annoyance fades quickly with time, and just because I do not want to spend excess time with them does not mean that I need(ed) to be cruel. Oftentimes, it was and is gossip that creates rivalry. It's hard when people ridicule others and look at you as if you agree, and even when you don't they will tell others that you hate the topic of discussion. How hard is it to get along with people? It's so unfortunate that humans feed off negativity and therefore create it so they can satisfy their own inadequate lives, but that's something we are all prone too. Whatever though, I suppose. It doesn't matter anymore! And it's time to better ourselves and pick better friends from a bigger range of people, ha-ha.



Oh gosh, in a week and a half I will never have curfew again. I've been waiting so long for this...hahahhaa. Oh me.

In preparation for my trip to Taiwan, I went music-crazy and downloaded all these albums that my friends recommended...including Steve Aoki, Vampire Weekend, Girl Talk, Ok Go, Crystal Castles, and the Midnight Juggernauts, among others. The entire duration of my stay in Taiwan I had my Recently Added playlist on repeat, which was very pleasant and set a pretty sweet soundtrack to the the city. I tend to like really creepy songs...(please, at this point, look up Noah's Ark by Coco Rosie) and I don't know. Songs that make you feel something...even if I don't know what it is. But as I shuffle slowly through these songs whose singers' voices MEAN something to me and seem to be calling out for something more, it makes me appreciate music all over again.

Over the past year, substances (illegal and otherwise) seem to have crept into my life more than I ever thought possible. For me, everything in moderation seems to be okay...except very few people seem to know where that line is. Perhaps it's because it's summer and people just generally have a lot more money (sometimes) and time and in Cupertino, there really isn't that much to do if you don't try hard to keep yourself occupied. Oftentimes, everybody is too lazy to try, to poor, or just too unwilling. I don't know what to do about this. What can I do when everybody around me just sinks into the convenience of some substance that makes the hours fly by....everyday? It's weird, how this is a problem now. What happened to good, sober fun? However, I can't say that I am squeaky clean either, so who am I to pass judgment here?

Which brings me to my last point. I want something more out of my life than what I and apparently everybody else is settling for. I want to be satisfied with my life, and I don't want to waste any bit of it. There's so much out there, and I want to better myself and not accept anything less, from myself or others. How do you improve the quality of life? I'm not sure...we work hard, we play hard, and just...I don't even know anymore. Haha...I don't know. It's hard to get frustrated at a lifestyle that even I perpetuate...Is it possible to not be a hypocrite?





I want everything to work out amicably, if not the way planned, and for people to just be happy...substances unnecessary.

In 6 hours, I will be heading for the airport and therefore heading home. This is my last time visiting Taiwan in who knows how long, since growing up means having my own agenda (Actually, I could be lying...apparently we might be taking a Taiwan/Japan trip with the family next May..haha). When I get back, it will be August 2nd, which means I will be finding out my roommate and rooming (I hope I get good ones!), and that I will be leaving for Boston in 23 days. That's a scary thought, considering I still have no idea what the heck I am doing, or what I need to buy here or over there and what I need to be prepared and what specific classes I want or....yeah. I'm excited but nervous, and also not ready to go...There are definitely still things left in Cupertino that I need to accomplish, wrap up, or figure out.

With that said, as I slowly say goodbye to Taiwan, some interesting notes:
-My mom protected me from a lecherous (drunk?) old man on the bus the other day. Even though he was holding on to the pole on the other side of the bus, he was standing so ridiculously close to me (I was on the other side of the bus) that I couldn't turn around...ALSO, SORRY OLD MAN but it's kind of apparent that despite your midget height you are looking down...that is definitely NOT your eye level.
-Taiwan is really beautiful, in it's own tropical way. Typhoon or burning sunshine, the jungle and the mountains and even the nightlife and the city lights are beautiful, and I will miss it despite the extreme weather.
-I got on a bus yesterday and heard John Mayer :). Similarly, somewhat, I was at this asian version of Costco the other day and the CD section was blasting hyphy music.
-The McDonalds here is open 24/7 and delivers to your door at any hour. Now, if this was available in America, potheads across the nation would rejoice, having finally found the cure for their munchies at 2 AM as they cry against the just-closed drive-through of Jack-in-the-Box.
-George, my cousin, and all of their friends have been really nice to me and taking care of me here...since my mother treats me like a fussy toddler who needs to be taken everywhere hand-in-hand. But, regardless...THANKS :)

I am excited to go home. :)