The title is inspired by a song by the Carpenters. Ever heard of that band? It's made up of two people, two siblings. The brother is still alive, but sadly, the sister died.

Rain doesn't normally upset me, and though I dislike Mondays, usually that won't depress me too much either. But last Monday wasn't an easy day, and it was a rainy day, so I thought it would make sense to use this title.

This past week, I've been gone on a school trip to Yosemite National Park, so I haven't been able to write anything. On Sunday morning, I boarded a bus headed to Yosemite. It's a pretty long drive there, probably four hours or more. I took a carsick pill called Dramamine to help me out with the carsickness.

I wonder if medicine really does work or not. Sometimes it's just people believe something will help them, and because of the positive feeling, their health seems to improve. I'm not sure whether medicine does any good or if it's only the "placebo effect". Perhaps the world may never know (like that thing about "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie pop?).

Once I was at Yosemite, I had to adjust to a lot of things that I wasn't used to. For instance, dinner for me was at 5:05 pm, and breakfast at 7:05 am. I usually have breakfast not long from 8 am and I have dinner at around 7 pm. And I had to sleep with a sleeping bag, which I wasn't accustomed to, because I have never been camping. (Which is good - I don't think I could put up with going to the bathroom in the Great Outdoors for long XD) But the sleeping bag wasn't too bad, it was actually kind of cozy. It got too hot, though, when the heater was on in my cabin.

I kind of expected it to be like science camp. At science camp, you didn't need an alarm clock because someone would wake you up if you didn't get up on your own. There was a bathroom that was fairly clean and it was conveniently located, so you wouldn't have to get up in the night, wake someone up, and walk through the snow or melting puddles. You wouldn't hike so much that you'd be really tired and you'd always have your time managed well for you. And you didn't need to get a lot of gear, not even hiking boots were required.

Yosemite is sort of similar, but sort of not. The food is in buffet form (that's nice, since I can just a get a little to try something and see if I like it first). You're expected to meet up with people at a certain time (though there's almost always someone missing or late). You have to manage your own time to be able to complete a journal, take showers, and get enough sleep. And there is a lot of hiking and climbing and other physical activity.

Monday was a hard day for me. I am a special case since my cabin mates are in a different rotation than I am (meaning that they had different meal times and different evening programs). I was really stressed waiting for them in my cabin, and I kept thinking that something horrible must've happened to them (I didn't realize back then that their evening program was later than mine). I was also annoyed about the cold showers and stinky bathroom. And it was really noisy at nighttime, making it hard to sleep. I got really homesick, thinking of my parents and comfort and having a dependable routine. And this homesickness didn't really go away. During science camp I was having such a blast that I didn't think of my home much.

On Monday, there were many kinds of weather. We had rain, then hail, and then even snow. The snow is beautiful, that's for sure. But it was hard to appreciate when I was so worried and stressed. I wasn't able to relax until maybe about Wednesday or Thursday. By then I realized that I would be going home soon, and so I was in a much better mood. (Kind of funny how sometimes you have to be waiting for something to enjoy yourself.)

There were a lot of things I didn't like about the trip, but there were things that made it better, too. Things that made me dry my tears and smile and put my best foot forward. Being outdoors was great. I didn't really hike much or even go outside that much before. I thought I'd be tired easily from hiking. It's true that I was usually pretty worn out from lugging around a heavy backpack (too used to the roller backpack by now) but I wasn't lagging too horribly behind, either. And seeing the mountains and waterfalls and getting the occasionally opportunity to sit by myself and think was calming for me. I also got to try so many new things, like eating hummus (never tried it before, but it wasn't bad), eating celery (also wasn't as bad as I thought), eating sunbutter (yes, I'm eating lots of new things. Sunbutter is like peanut butter but made from sunflower seeds), and going cross-country skiing... I'm really starting to realize that I don't need to have limits, boundaries, things holding me back. I can do my best and achieve so much more. I just have to be openminded and live life to the fullest. After all, even if you have more than one life, you'll never remember the past ones, so of course you have to do everything that you can.

Oh, and going on the trip makes you appreciate home. Many of us longed for warm showers. I also heard some students saying they missed eating rice (they had rice at the buffet, but it was like fried rice and things like that. No sushi, dumplings, or miso soup, that's for sure). I believe that going to Yosemite was a good experience for me, even if I still feel there would've have been a lot of room for improvement. (I heard there was a bathroom with ants in it.) It's something you'll remember forever, after all.

Labels: backpack, effort, food, hiking, home, homesick, life, monday, new experience, placebo, problem, rain, rainy days and mondays, sleeping bag, song, the carpenters, tootsie, trip, weather, yosemite

Soon I'll be going on a school trip to Yosemite, where we will spend our days hiking and writing in our "journals". There's a lot of things that I needed to buy for this trip, because I'm not much of an outdoorsman. In fact, I've never really been camping out in a tent, seeing as my mom prefers civilization (and I guess I would really miss indoor plumbing, myself). But it'd still be nice to just try it, you know? For the sake of having that experience. It's not good to judge something you don't understand.

There's a whole lot of things that I needed to buy for Yosemite, including...
- A sleeping bag (I almost never sleep at other people's houses)
- Hiking boots
- Waterproof pants
- Waterproof jacket
- Snow gaiters (well, I guess I don't REALLY need them, but they're useful to have. They're like half pant legs that you can put on.)

There's probably a few more things that I have forgotten to mention. But anyways, I'll probably never use most of the things I bought for Yosemite after I come back. We don't really go hiking much in the first place (probably because I didn't like to do it...Too hot outside, I usually burned up my energy in the beginning through running, etc. Not that it isn't nice once in a while. In science camp back in fifth grade, we had the chance to hike alone, and it was really relaxing).

One of the things we needed to get was a bandana. Apparently, when we're out hiking, we'll stop to eat lunch, and we'll be using the bandanas as "plates" for our food. I set to thinking about bandanas.

Bandanas seem to have many uses. They can be used as hankerchiefs if you have allergies, you can wear them to look sort of like a cowboy (and you could also wear it if you're sick or people around you are sick as a kind of mask), you could put them on your head...I'm not sure if people usually do this, but somehow or other I got the notion that people who have gone through chemotherapy and thus lost their hair tend to wear bandanas to cover their heads.

To me, this gives the bandana a lot of meaning. The bandana is a sign of struggle, showing the battle between people and cancer and their fight to survive. It is a visible symbol of pain, fear, and desperation. At the same time, bandanas also show hope - a little hope that a person will pull through, fight off the cancer, and be able to resume living their life again. Maybe things will never be the same. Perhaps the scars, physical and mental, will always be there. But it's something precious, getting to have a second chance.

Bandanas are pretty cheap to get, but they're not necessarily useless. I hope you're paying attention things and what kind of purpose they really serve. I guess that's what teachers mean when they're saying, "You should ask under the surface questions!" You should still pay attention at school, even if you find it boring, because you never know, something important might be said.

My history teacher sometimes tells us stories, such as about having to transport a cake, being a valet, gambling in Las Vegas, and so on. He says we should pay attention since there is something to be learned from his stories; they're not just for entertainment. I think I might want to be a teacher sometime.

Here are some of my possible careers:
- Writer (well, that may have to be just something I do in my free time, what with the "starving artists" thing)
- Photographer (again, only if I can make a living off of it. Nowadays lots of people have huge Nikon or Canon black cameras)
- Interior designer or travel show host (too bad those jobs aren't that common)
- Ice cream shop owner (or some other kind of shop, with yummy food XD)
- Fashion designer (it'd be fun to come up with things, and I'd like to steer people away from those really low colors and tight clothing. x_x )

Labels: bandana, camping, cancer, career, chance, chemotherapy, future, hiking, hope, learn, outdoor, science camp, shopping, sign, significance, struggle, symbol, trip, useful, yosemite

It wasn't really thin, actually. It was pretty thick. The ice I'm talking about here is the ice in a local ice rink.

I haven't gone ice skating for a long time. I think that the last time was probably at least a few years ago, if not more. I'd been meaning to go, but I never got around to it. (I wanted to go in the summer because it would be a nice way to cool off. However, my parents are working, and I am not allowed to go far by myself, so unless there was a holiday like Independence Day, there was no chance. And if it was a holiday, it would probably be crowded)

I was surprised by how many people were at the rink. My dad says that it was less than average, which I think is even more startling. Most of the people there were young people (I mean people who are young enough not to be in college yet, and such). In fact, I saw a couple of people I recognized, such as a girl who is a friend of the person I walk home with, and some classmates of mine.

It was really awkward getting started. I could only stumble along, clinging to the side of the rink. This didn't work too well because there isn't much of a handhold. I've heard there are rinks out there that actually have a wooden bar running around the perimeter so you can hold on to it, but here all you can do is try to hold on to the half-wall (on top of it is some glass since the rink is sometimes used for playing hockey). It was especially hard considering that the gloves and mittens we had brought for ice skating did not allow my fingers much flexibility.

After a while I kind of got the hang of it, just keeping my feet parallel, and occasionally kicking the ice with my left foot to keep me moving. Sometimes I messed up my footing and I'd flail about wildly before managing to get my balance. My dad and I are afraid of falling, unlike the little kids (who dash about and all, and some of them cry when they hit the ground) and the other young people, so we can't go so fast.

Since it's the holidays, once in a while the rink's lights are turned off and the strobe lights (is that the right term? Don't know what to call them) went on, and it was sort of like a disco, in a way. The young people gave a cry of delight, but I said, "Noooooo!" When it's dark and there are colorful lights moving around, I get a little distracted from my skating. Besides, I heard people who have seizures don't react well to things like that. (But I guess it's pretty unlikely that someone with epilepsy would've been there anyhow)

Less than two hours after arriving, we left the rink and went home. I expected to be able to skate longer than that, but it is surprisingly tiring, particularly for people like me who haven't gone skating for a long time. My dad said it was good we left early, otherwise our legs would be really tired at nighttime. This turned out to be true, and I felt discomfort during the night from my aching legs...

My mother has lately been trying to get me to shop for my Yosemite trip. Most of the 8th grade goes on a trip to Yosemite each year. It's meant to be educational, since we'll be in the great outdoors, but really people are just excited to be away from home, in a place that snows (Yosemite does get snow, after all, but it doesn't snow where I live). I'm really not that excited about the trip, because...
1. I've never slept in a sleeping bag.
2. I don't know if I can handle the hiking. (I'm always paranoid, thinking I will fall to my death. And I hate going uphill.)
3. Apparently we don't get to use the new cabins, which upsets me. (Are they not ready yet? Or do they just not want to let us stay in the new cabins?)
4. I don't want to get attacked by a teacher. (One of my old teachers often goes on the Yosemite trip and he sometimes destroys kids. No joke.)
5. Carsickness! It's a several hour drive just to get to Yosemite, and it's uphill. I will probably be pale and half-dead by the time we arrive. (It is unlikely that I will upchuck because I have self control and try to avoid throwing up. Haha!) I'll probably have to take medicine for motion sickness, if that helps any.

However, it might be fun, because I'll have plenty of photo opportunities, and I did enjoy science camp. Science camp was what I went to in fifth grade, since everyone in the fifth grade went. We stayed in cabins (but we slept in beds) and we hiked around. It was a lot of fun, actually. The food wasn't too bad either. I guess you never know. I'll have to find out in March.

Labels: cabins, carsick, falling, hiking, holidays, ice skating, lights, people, rink, science camp, seizure, sleeping bag, sore, trip, trouble, yosemite

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