I'm Back! Part 1

Salut à tous! Donc, je sais que j'ai été parti pour trois semaines et, comme c'est parce que j'étais en Floride! Ouais ... Je n'ai pas eu le temps de poster avant que je parte avec tous les emballages fous qui se passait, mais je suis de retour maintenant et devrait être reprendre à mon horaire régulier. Nous allons voir. Je suis rentré il ya deux semaines, a dormi huit heures, se leva et conduit avec ma grand-mère de retour à sa maison dans l'Oregon. Je suis resté là pendant deux semaines et puis quand je suis rentré j'ai eu huit heures par jour de pratique garde de couleur toute cette semaine passée. J'ai peut-être faire un voyage DECA cette semaine suivante, alors je suis bénévole pour une semaine au musée des enfants en ville et à travers tout cela, j'ai plus de pratique garde de couleur. En Septembre, j'ai éd école, de conduire, et la bande plus marcher (la pratique de la Garde de couleur). Beurk! Je vais aussi tourner seize demain (En août yay 19!!) Et sera essentiellement de partir à la recherche d'un emploi le jour de.

Hi everyone! So, I know I've been gone for like three weeks and that's because I was in Florida! Yeah... I didn't have time to post before I left with all the crazy packing that was going on but I'm back now and should be getting back on to my regular schedule. We'll see. I got home about two weeks ago, slept for eight hours, got up and drove with my grandma back to her house in Oregon. I stayed there for two weeks and then when I got back I had eight hour days of color guard practice this entire past week. I may be going on a DECA trip this following week, then I'm volunteering for a week at the children's museum in town and throughout all this I have more color guard practice. In September I have school, driver's ed, and more marching band (color guard practice). Yuck! I'll also be turning sixteen tomorrow (On August 19th yay!!) and will basically be heading out to look for a job the day of.

The trip was fantastic!! The first week we spent  at the Royal Pacific Resort Hotel which was on Universal Studios grounds. We were attending a Leaky Con conference during that week which is a harry potter conference. Call me what you will, but I loved it. It was absolutely fantastic to be surrounded by people that love harry potter and understand what the series is about, beyond the books. Harry Potter has represented so much more than a world wide obsession. It's helped people get through hard times in their life, it's provided inspiration, it's started charities and saved lives. It's inadvertently created so many opportunities for it's readers, and is such a true phenomenon, I wish everyone could appreciate the enormity of it. We got to see the final movie early and if you have never been to a midnight premiere of a harry potter movie then you would be so unprepared for this experience. At most of the midnight premieres, it is filled with mass group applause at all the great parts, mass group crying at all the sad, and mass group outrage at all the frustrating parts. It's crazy to experience the same feelings with so many other people at the same time. Well, when you attend a harry potter conference, multiply those emotions by like fifty. I'm not big on crying when other people are around me, so, yes, I cried during the movie, but I was nothing compared to the heavy- breathing hysterics that surrounded me. I don't blame them, maybe they are just loud criers, but I'm excited to see it with friends with a slightly less packed theater, surrounded by people who are unaware of the slightly insane mentality of true harry potter fans.

I'm going to first list the negatives of those two weeks, so I can get them out of my system. To begin with, this trip began with me boarding my first ever plane. I really was not nervous at all getting on the plane, but all of a sudden, I was crammed into these tiny seats next to a lot of people in this cylindrical container that I was expected to believe was going to whiz around in the sky. I started giggling nervously (as I do when I'm excitedly nervous), and then I started crying, heaving sobs, and then I started laughing again, and then I felt sick. This continued in a vicious cycle until we were in the air. I guess I had a panic attack, and I had no idea where it had come from. It was very bizarre, but luckily, short-lived. The ride home, thank god, was not accompanied by such hysterics, much thanks to my little brother who was sitting next to me. He closed the window shade and told me to look at him. He made me laugh and calmed me way down. It also helped a little that I was pretty much floored off xanax. I was drowsy the rest of the six hour plane ride and kept falling asleep. I didn't like it very much since I felt very weak, and not in control, and will probably not take xanax again.

When we arrived my mom wanted to go straight to the harry potter park. We went there, me on two hours of sleep, shaky from the plane ride, and an empty stomach, got on the forbidden journey ride and nearly puked my guts up getting off. My mom, on the other hand, felt fantastic. She had lost 105 pounds to ensure she got on that ride, which had been criticized for having some serious weight restrictions. The harness fit without a hitch and we cried happy tears through the whole ride. It was fantastic and so is my mom. During the portions of the ride that I wasn't contemplating whether or not they would charge me for damage caused by barfing all over their virtual screens, I really enjoyed it. It's the most immersive ride I've ever been on, a whole new kind of ride. You begin strapped in to this little row of seats, sort of like those roller coasters that hold you from the top of the harness. You zoom around in and out of screens that move around similar to soarin (a ride in Disney world), and then out into real rooms that are decorated to continue the adventure. It was really amazing but, due to my shaky body and low tolerance for VR rides, I was not doing too hot, getting off. It floored me for about another day, but by the next, I was doing fine. The food there was fantastic and the conference was amazing. There were a lot of problems with registration in the beginning, which tarnished that portion of the trip a little bit, but every other part that was not spent waiting in lines was great! On this trip, I do believe, I developed macrophobia, the fear of prolonged waiting, due to these lines. We waited three hours to get our registration figured out (and missed our dinner reservations), then we waited two hours to get books signed by visiting authors and had the doors closed in our faces, then we waited for two hours to meet Evanna Lynch (the girl who plays Luna), Scarlett Byrne (the girl who plays Pansy Parkinson in the last movie), Chris Rankin (the guy who plays Percy Weasley), and the kids who played the children of harry and Ginny, and Hermione and Ron. At the end of this two hour wait, in which we missed our dinner reservations, we were told that we weren't going to meet them because they had decided to not continue to the rest of the rooms. That was a serious blow, and by that point I was so sick of waiting in lines, only to have nothing happen, that I really was numb to the information.

The conference, though, was fantastic. The content of the discussions and lectures and everything was just great. Everyone was really funny and all the sessions were organized really well. Some of the names of the programs I attended included: a discussion on what the 12 Fail Safe Ways to Charm Witches were (that was really funny and totally true), I attended a very exciting informational meeting about pottermore (which if you haven't heard of, you're probably not that big of a fan so don't worry about it and also I will be posting more on that very soon), some QA's with John Green, some other YA authors, and the actors that were attending.  There were a lot more but it all seems like one long blur. The ball was great. I got sooo many compliments. I had a lot of people say I looked like a princess and like belle, so that was a nice ego-boost for moi. My dad and my brother who wore their tuxes looked so handsome and my sister and mother also looked great. I'll be posting pictures as soon as I get access to the camera we took the pictures with. We ate a lot in the hotel's restaurants and Jake's had fantastic flat bread pizza. Probably some of the best pizza I've ever had. There were two Emeril restaurants in the area and we never had time to eat there so I was sad about that but there's always some other time.

The park was just, perfect. When we first walked into it our first night there I balled my eyes out. It is the most surreal feeling in the world. They constructed the castle so that it rises up in the back right out of the shops of Hogsmeade. I thought I was there for one blissful minute. I miss it already, but most of all I wish that it was truly real. It's hard to be so in love with a place that is merely an imitation of a fictional world. Adding to the surreal effect was the fake snow glistening off of all the rooftops. It seemed to be laughing at me as I stood in ninety degree heat with 85% humidity levels. I went on the dueling dragons roller coaster which was pretty crazy. The griffin ride I didn't get to go on because after waiting for an hour in line and having the ride break down twice, my sister and I decided to get the hell out of there. The three broomsticks didn't have the best food ever (although breakfast was good) but the butterbeer is to die for. Agh, I miss that stuff! Honeydukes was really cool and filled with candy. Zonko's was nice as far as decoration goes but the products weren't as great as I would have liked. Ollivanders, which extended into Dervish and Banges had wands and lots of general harry potter merchandise. I bought a gryffindor t-shirt at the gift shop that was located at the end of the forbidden journey ride and a wand.

We saw the movie before a lot of the country and I thought it was fantastic! I don't know if they did this at other theaters but we got 3-D glasses in the shape of harry potter's glasses. That was really funny and actually made wearing 3-D glasses enjoyable. Really the only point in the whole movie that just bugs the hell out of me was the part when Harry tells Ron and Hermione that he's going into the forest to die. Not only is this totally redundant to Harry's character but Ron and Hermione let him go. Harry is a selfless figure, hence the reason he doesn't tell anyone in the book about going to the forest because he knows they would stop him. Then with Ron and Hermione, they would never have allowed him to go into the forest to sacrifice himself. There have been similar instances in the previous movies done by David Yates that have irritated me because he just doesn't understand that relationship. Besides that one point of contention though, everything eles that bothered me I can get over. The conference concluded with lots of tears. There was such a wonderful connection between people at these conferences and I really hope to get the opportunity to attend the next one.

Universal was fun, but a lot, a lot, of walking. We ate at Margaritaville on the boardwalk by Universal Studios that had really good steak. The park was really fun and I especially liked the Rip Ride Rocket. Here is a video I found of it on youtube and also one of the dueling dragons ride at Harry Potter World.

The rest of Universal was a lot of fun, as well. There are a lot of ride/shows. The shows are really interactive. One of my favorite was the make your own movie one where you go in and they select a couple people from the crowd to "act" in the movie. Our host was really funny and we had an end of the world sort of movie. You watch them "shoot" the movie with the "actors" not really knowing what the scenes will be like since most of them are done in front of green screens. At the end they had the whole group go into a subway car and we were told to act scared as different effects happened. They had an oil rig almost hit us and fire, explosions, and at the end unleashed A LOT of water. That part actually scared me because I hate subways (claustrophobic) and drowning, so that was like my two worst fears. Seriously, it felt like being in one of those subway cars in the end of the world movies where they flood the stations. Anyways at the end of it you go out and watch your movie all put together. It was really, really, funny and that was probably my favorite show there.

Below are some pictures from the Universal portion. They are not the best pictures because I was half-delirious from the heat, but they are pictures nonetheless.

This is the Hogwarts Express that was stationed at the entrance of the park.

Not sure who this random person in the background is but this is the Owl Post,
which is actually only a store front. I've heard that the park may be
expanding and turning a lot of the store fronts into real stores.

These are the house point's containers which you could see while
standing in line inside the castle to get onto the Forbidden Journey ride.

This is the hippogriff that, in the books, is located outside Dumbledore's office and leads into it.  This was also in the castle and could be seen while waiting in line for the ride.

There were picture frames everywhere in the castle, just like in the books. Some of them
were animated so that they were moving and talking.

Also in the castle is Dumbledore's office.

This is a shot of the inside of Ollivander's shop.

This is the back of my brother who was chosen to be "picked" by his wand.  It was a really cool experience and  "Ollivander" was very funny.

From Universal we hired a driver to take us and our many, many, many, bags of luggage to the Grand Floridian Resort Hotel located in Disney World.

I will be posting about that part of our trip later. I've been writing this post  for like a week and just want to get it published.

Posting on the fall couture lines is coming, I promise!

French word of the day: Universelle which is the French word for universal.

Au Revoir!

"Anyone can get dressed up and glamorous but it is how people dress in their days off that are the most intriguing." - Alexander Wang.

Victoria, Canada

Hé les gars, désolé j'ai été MIA pour le passé comme deux semaines, mais maintenant je suis sur le point de tomber raide mort. Je suis si fatigué de cette fin de semaine dernière. Nous avons été à Victoria, Canada, du samedi au lundi et, honnêtement, il n'a pas été le meilleur voyage jamais. J'avais été à Victoria avant avec la bande de notre école quand nous sommes allés au collège, comme cela a été la tradition. Mais étant donné que c'était l'année dernière notre chef d'orchestre de l'école intermédiaire et l'école secondaire, ainsi, a voulu aller une fois de plus.

Hey guys, so sorry I've been MIA for the past like two weeks but right now I'm about ready to drop dead. I'm so tired from this past weekend. We were in Victoria, Canada from Saturday to Monday and, honestly, it was not the best trip ever. I'd been to Victoria before with our school's band when we went in middle school, as was tradition. But since this was our band director's last year the middle school and the high school, together, wanted to go one more time.

I used to play in the percussion section but switched to color guard this year, which was fun. The trip itself was fun but it was stressful. There were too many people and too much drama, so that got a little exhausting. If the trip had maybe been like a five day-long ordeal it probably would have been fine but with five people trying to all do what they wanted to do in a very short amount of time, things just got a little strained. Regardless, the city was still beautiful, the shops lovely, and the docks (my favorite part) wonderful. The people I was rooming with were all friends of mine, which made it fun, and the parades went really well. I think our color guard placed first in the Victoria Day Parade, and came in second, I think, in the other ones. The one part of the trip that was a little sour was right before we left to go perform at the Victoria Day Parade (the one that the high school was performing in on it's own (everyone in the high school learned two routines, songs, etc.) ) Our band director told us that our other band director (the one who was retiring) had decided that to celebrate his last year he wanted us to stay combined and perform the song that we had been performing all weekend in the big parade. So, of course we were going to do it (and if it was anyone else I probably would have been way more upset, but it was my old band director who is just really awesome, so I went along with it) but it was kind of like, so we learned a second routing for nothing? You know? We never got to perform that one, and it just all seemed kind of like a total waste of time to have learned that routine. Anyways, it all was fine, and it did feel right performing my old band director's last parade all together, so I guess maybe we'll find a different place to perform the other routine.

Last week was so stressful. I was throwing a surprise birthday party for a friend of mine who was turning sixteen, and we were all trying to cram in learning the routines for Victoria, my marketing class had it's last big project where I had to promote my company at a trade show, and I was also running for three offices at the same time (which I both got! I am now National Honor's Society president, DECA vice president, and Invisible Children vice president!). I was very, very happy for that week to be done. But now I've still got a research paper to finish, finals coming up, and all the other end of year crap going on before I get to finally relax for summer!

I hope the weather is fantastic wherever you are, it's definitely getting better here.

I have to go but I am happy to announce that I now have a whopping four votes on that food poll and will be making it as soon as the tie is broken.

French word of the day: Le soleil which is French for the sun.

Au Revoir!

"We must never confuse elegance with snobbery." - Yves Saint Laurent.

Sigh. . .

Aïe. Je suis enfin de retour de mes concurrents DECA, qui était tout à fait exhauasting! Je suis arrivé en 23e au total, qui peut sonner comme je l'ai sucé jusqu'à ce qui est encore fait assez bonne. Il est décevant de ne pas au moins faire monter sur scène, indépendamment du fait que je ne vous permet d'aller aux ressortissants, mais peut-être l'année prochaine. A tous ces événements DECA je trouve que je me fais vraiment malade des deux premiers jours, c'est tellement répétitif et je sens que je vais tout simplement par les mouvements, mais le dernier jour me fait toujours nostalgique. Nous allons donc voir comment se passe l'année prochaine.

Yikes. I'm finally back from my DECA competition, which was utterly exhausting! I came in 23rd overall which may sound like I sucked it up but that is still actually pretty good. It was disappointing not to at least make it up on stage, regardless of the fact that I wont get to go to Nationals, but maybe next year. At all of these DECA events I find that I'm getting really sick of the first two days, it's so repetitive and I feel like I'm just going through the motions but the last day always makes me nostalgic. So we'll see how next year goes.

Anyways, I know I promised to post my not-so favorites of the Oscar's but right now I kind of want to focus on positive things rather than my negative opinions of celebrities' fashion fails. Instead I will give a brief update on the going ons in my world and the fashion world and then go to bed. It's pretty late, but I feel like I really need to post today so. . . :

Not much has been going on with me. I have a lot of homework I need to be getting done and a lot of chores that have needed being done for weeks. I tweaked my neck the other day and now have trouble moving it to the left and as soon as I get off here have to go ice it for another twenty minutes. Besides those two riveting items I really have been bored out of my mind around here and have been spending my spare time on designer websites in the hope that money will fall out of the sky and I will actually be able to purchase something. Hasn't happened so far, but you can always hope.

The fall 2011 RTW shows are shaping up to be pretty impressive and I'll be putting up pictures within the next two weeks or so. And coming up this week I will be posting a MASSIVE collection of all my favorite pairs of shoes (there's a lot!) as well as shots of the ones I myself own. It won't be till the end of the week since I have state mandated tests (bleh!) but I will post them at the latest by Friday night in celebration of being done with this ridiculous testing the state actually believes is necessary.

Also starting this week (since I have no cash for the luna bar plan [LBP] it will have to wait) I will be posting about a variety of Irish related items, leading up to st. patty's day. Yay!

French word of the day: Erreur which means mistake.

Au Revoir!

"The idea of seeing everybody clad the same is not really my cup of tea."- Christian Lacroix.

Marketing, Monday Favorites, and Monotony

L'année dernière, je me suis joint au club de mon école DECA (DECA est un national de commercialisation et d'association d'affaires conçu pour aider les jeunes entrepreneurs en herbe apprennent à devenir plus expérimentés dans les affaires). Quoi qu'il en soit, l'année dernière, j'ai participé à la compétition où j'ai participé à l'épreuve de simple de commercialisation de la mode. J'ai créé un plan de promotion pour un magasin et a dû le créer dans pas moins de onze pages, puis il a présenté à une rangée de juges pour une quinzaine de minutes. Après que je devais passer un test de marketing de niveau collégial (100 questions en une heure) et puis juste attendre de voir comment j'ai fait. J'ai reçu la première place régionale et a 100 solide sur ma présentation (quelque chose que mon professeur avait jamais arrivé avant). Je suis allé à l'état où j'ai placé 7e de plus d'une centaine de personnes également en compétition dans ma catégorie.

Last year I joined my school's DECA club (DECA is a national marketing and business association designed to help young aspiring entrepreneurs learn to become more experienced in business). Anyways, last year I participated in competition where I competed in the singles event for Fashion Merchandising. I created a promotional plan for a local store and had to create it in no less than eleven pages and then present it to a row of judges for about fifteen minutes. After that I had to take a college level marketing exam (100 questions in an hour) and then just wait to see how I did. I received first place regionally and got a solid 100 on my presentation (something my teacher had never have happened before). I then went to state where I placed 7th out of over a hundred people also competing in my category.

This year I will be competing in the individual series for automotive services marketing. This year instead of doing a written event I will be doing a role play which consists of going in, reading a business scenario, and presenting it to a judge (after getting ten minutes to read it and come up with a plan) who is pretending to be your boss, manager, etc.. You have about five minutes to present and then you leave. The problem with role plays, is they are very unpredictable, and there are a LOT of people competing in them. With the written event you have about two months to prepare and you know what you're talking about. You have time to research, double check things, etc.. With the role play you just kind of have to do it by the seat of your pants. Hopefully I'll do well this year, I've never done a role play before so I'm a little nervous! If you want to read more about it, here is the website: DECA

This weekend has been pretty boring. I'm trying to decide on a new haircut. If you have any suggestions please feel free to comment!

In class we've begun reading Lord of the Flies, which I'll admit, I thought was a joke book, written after Lord of the Rings. Surprise, surprise! It isn't. It's an odd book about a group of boys who are stranded on an island after a plane crash. I don't really dislike it or like it at this point, since I'm only two chapters in, but so far it's been . . . odd and it actually reminds me of the TV show Lost. I'm also reading a book called: The Year We Disappeared. It's really good, and surprisingly, non-fiction. This is perhaps the first non-fiction book I have ever found that I actually enjoy.

Monday favorites this week were my favorite quotes:

1. "Life isn't about how many breaths you take but about the moments that take your breath away." - Hilary Cooper.

2. "All is fair in love and war." - Francis Edward Smedley.

3. "Curiosity is a willing, a proud, an eager confession of ignorance." - S. Leonard Rubinsteing, quoted from; Writing: A Habit of Mind.

4. "Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today."- James Dean.

5. "You put high heels on and you change." - Manolo Blahnik.

6. “Desserts are like mistresses. They are bad for you. So if you are having one, you might as well have two.”- Chef Alain Ducasse

I hope everyone had a great day today! We had a two hour late start due to the snow (yay!) and I took advantage of that by sleeping! I had a pretty bad nightmare, unfortunately, so the extra two hours only prolonged that but, oh well, my personal opinion is it's better to have some nightmares than to never dream at all.

French word of the day: livre which means book.

Au Revoir!

"Happy, happy fashion- there is not much more to it than that."- Marc Jacobs.