Sometimes it amazes me how fast life passes. Tomorrow begins my last year of high school, although I expect it to be quite easy. It's not the schoolwork that frightens me, it's the fact that this date crept up on me so quickly when I wasn't paying attention. I must continually remind myself that it's just another stage in life, another part of the ambitions and challenges that I love to handle so much. You win some beyond your hopes, and you lose others unexpectedly, but eventually it all works out for the better, or to the best of my experience anyway. After all I'm seventeen and my life is stupendously better than quite a few people's have been by this age already. So I'm blessed, I'm not afraid of the everyday challenges I face because I know I can overcome, and my favorite time to pull through is when it seems least likely. It's funny to see the strange changes that occur during a lifetime. Lately though, I have been very blessed in the things I have gotten to do. I've been to camp, I have retained a job most of the time, I have swam, I even got to go to Disneyland for the first time in my life. It was amazing; my favorite ride was Space Mountain and it was good to be in a place I had heard about so much. I went with my best friend Brenten and his family, who were very kind and seemed nearly as excited to be taking me for my first trip as I was to be there. We rode quite a few rides, and I got one soaking foot from Splash Mountain as well as a picture with a very feminine looking Mickey Mouse. After a week of working it was a nice break, although the work itself had been fun enough. Earlier in the week Brenten and I even got out for awhile to get in a game of bowling (much to both our surprise and his dismay I won). We found a wonderful and big book store where they had a great selection of books all for a dollar and came home that day with a large box of books which Brenten carried all the way back from town himself! Also in town we got pictures taken in a photobooth, stopped by a Cold Stone Creamery, stopped in a candy store and hit up the arcade together more than once. The arcade especially was very cool, and we had a great time. We went to Griffith Observatory late one night and enjoyed both the neat things to see there as well as a view of the Hollywood sign in the dark. We threw two afterparties, one for younger and one for older gymnasts. The parties were fun, loud and included a lot of dancing. Long Beach we only got home for a couple of days before heading off to the Redwoods for my favorite camp. One branch of my family goes there every year, and we clean the porta potties. Previously it has been only family working on them, even I started last year; but this year Brenten joined and became my partner. We worked hard and spent a lot of our time either working or eating if we weren't in a class. The camp is really beautiful though, weans we did get some fun in. I, as usual, indulged in my weakness for buying books whenever we went to town. We went to look for fossils with my family, which entailed taking two separate cars and hiking around among sawgrass and probably poison oak for a chance to dig out fossils, and in my case mostly to see the fantastic views. We also got to go swimming, at which point we took the chance to bury each other in the sand before going off to ride the shallow rapids nearby. Camp was as usual a great experience, but it was good to be back in Northern California; to see the orchards and fields, the productivity, the fertility, the cows. It felt like home. Oh yes, also the sweltering heat - that was different too. The heat hasn't let up really since we got back. Maybe once school starts, and that's a new adventure all in itself. My senior year, I can't wait ;)
.
No comments:
Post a Comment