Deck Those Halls

Christmas is a holiday that is most looked forward to in our household.  It is our favorite season because we have so many beautiful decorations to put for it.  

The weekend after Thanksgivings finds us packing away all of our Fall decorations---including our Fall music---and dragging box after box of Christmas ornaments and decorations up from our basement.  The first day of December was heralded with us blasting Christmas music defiantly to the 80 degree weather outside.  It has been my sister and my fervent wish that one day we would have snow Christmas morning.  We had a sprinkling of snow last year and are supposed to have some next week.  Oh, what bliss!  To awaken to snow falling lightly through the trees and frosting over our yard.  We are ready for it.  We have an ample supply of firewood, cider, and our tree is lit and decorated.

Yes, it is only December 5th and we already have our tree up in our living room and festooned with lights and ornaments.  The weekend after Thanksgiving saw us in the parking lot of Home Depot with our Nana and Abuelito, ready to pick out a tree.  It usually takes us a good forty-five minutes to an hour to choose the "one" and undoubtedly, it will be the one that we first laid eyes one.  

Last year, the helpers of Home Depot threw themselves into our Christmas choosing whole-heartedly.  They held the trees, spun them, lifted them, carried them thither and fro, and offered general comments and opinions.  This year, the big elves of the Christmas lot were not as helpful as they had been in past years.  We were left to do much of the lifting, carrying, and spinning to ourselves.  We searched and searched through the bins of trees, yet we could find none to our satisfaction.  Suddenly, mom inched towards me, hissing, "Hannah!  Look at those people over there!  I think they just pulled out our tree."

I glanced over at the customers examining the tree.  It was tall, with well-placed branches, and was the perfect shape.  The word of the "perfect tree" passed through the Andrade ranks like wildfire.  Quickly and quietly, we began to edge forward, pressing in and about them.  I think we must have overwhelmed them, for they began to ever so slowly, slip away.  The tree was ours!  Victory was ours.

Can You Scratch That Off Your Flow?

Debate season is here.  Oh joy.  Debate season.  Not only that, but I have my first debate "tournament" on Monday.  Be still my beating heart.

     

Well, I have had just over five weeks of "debate intensive".  The coach of our club has gone through with the newbies and broken everything down into understandable sections.  We have created a case, formed teams, and are going to go against each other in two rounds of in-club debating.  One round is an hour and a half long.  That is three hours of debating.  As our coach says, "The best way to learn to swim is to jump in the water feet first."  I always hear this saying, but everyone neglects to mention that there are those who drown before they figure it out.  

Although we have had five weeks to be quite literally submersed in the lingo and happenings of debate, I still find myself confused by all the terminology.  Our coach calls it "debate speak" and some of the debaters in the club are better at speaking in the debate language than in regular English.  It seems like I'm always hearing, "I'd like to address their third Inherency point in our Solvency, after I've provided a link-turn to show that their Advantages are actually DA's."  Or "Judge, the Affirmative team has dropped our arguments regarding the significance and topicality arguments---which are major voting issues---so you can just carry that through the flow."  Now, I'm sure many of you are thinking what I'm thinking when I hear this, which is: WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT???

I still am a bit confused, but hopefully everything will turn out all right in the end.  Again, as they say, the best way to learn is to jump right in.  We all have permission to fail, so that is alright.  I don't think anybody really expects anything mind-bogglingly amazing from us, so we should be safe.  I will update on Monday to let you know how I survived the lion's den.

As British As Afternoon Tea And Biscuits

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me."~C.S. Lewis

A sure sign of fall and the approaching of winter is when you can see an Andrade bent over a cup of tea and immersed in a good book.  Sure, this happens often during the summer but it happens almost constantly as the chill months set in.  There is nothing better than sitting by a fire, wrapped in a blanket with rain pouring outside, reading a good book, and drinking tea.  Nothing better.

I am convinced that my family was supplanted from a sweet cottage in the UK and brought here to America where we had our memory erased and were led to believe that we were native Americans.  But I think that is lies.  All lies.  We are as British as afternoon tea and biscuits.  If souls have a language I know that mine speaks Gaelic and that my family's at least speak with a British accent.  

We have a deep-rooted love in Jane Austen, tea and scones, and good books set in England.  Currently, there is one book that my mother is in love with.  It is one that she has laughed and cried over.  I have only got so far as the laughing part, but she says there is still time.  I may yet cry over it.  Whether I shed tears or not, I cannot disagree with the fact that it is an incredibly well-written book.  If you are in need of a good read, allow me to recommend this one to you.  It is "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.  It is a collection of letters during the 1940s in London and that is all I will say about it.  Except that it is amazing.  And that you should read it.  The characters grew into my mother's best friends in the week she took to read it.  

Ah, winter.  The time when Jane Austen quotes fly thick and fast off the tongue and the house smells perpetually of fresh-baked scones.  Some sort of old movie (such as "Pride and Prejudice", "Sense and Sensibility", "The Secret Garden", "Little Women", or "Beauty and the Beast") is playing or music from "Little Women".  These are common signs of the chill seasons in the Andrade household.

College Credit

This morning we received the news.  I had gotten an A on my first college essay.  The teacher's standards were rigorous and I had worked diligently on my paper.  At best I assumed that I would get a B, a high-scoring B but a B nonetheless.  Usually a straight-A student, for my first semester taking a college credit class I was content with that.

The purpose of the essay was to analyze the movie "Smoke Signals" (directed by Chris Eyre, Miramax, 1998) which was based upon the journey of two Native American men.  While the film presented some compelling arguments regarding the cause and effect of alcoholism on a family, it was not particularly well-done.  

There is nothing harden than writing an essay regarding something you do not even entirely like.  However it was a growing process for me, and I wrote and wrote and crossed out and erased and wrote some more.  Mom helped me, which I was grateful for.  Doubtless a good part of my A can be attributed to her.

With our joint effort, I managed to scrape up an A which I am excessively pleased about.  Hard work certainly pays off!

A Goodbye to Summer, Hello to Fall

"Delicious autumn!  My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns... It is the second spring when every leaf is in flower."~George Eliot.

Fall is undoubtedly the favorite season in the Andrade household.  When the leaves turn colors and the air turns crisp and chill caused great excitement in our household.  On the very first day of fall we go out to buy small pumpkins to place them on the posts of our picket fence.  This year, it was over a hundred degrees out when we did it; but we did set them out anyway, valiantly combatting the heat by our fall symbols.  

Much to our delight, the heat did not persist long.  The mornings have been chill and foggy and the breeze nippy.  Our maples have begun to slowly turn from green to light yellow and orange.  Our Fall Box has even made it's appearance, a true sign that the season for thanks has begun.  What?  You have not yet heard of our Fall Box?  This must be remedied; allow me to enlighten you.

We are very serious about decorating for each season; eggs for spring and Easter, bright flowers for summer, pumpkins and garlands of leaves for fall, and a tree and ornaments for Christmas.  Undoubtedly, our favorite seasons to decorate for are fall and winter.  (We love the chilly months.)  In our Fall Box are our thanksgiving themed napkins and plates, our wreaths and garlands (some are fake, some are very well-preserved), fall-ish paintings done by my sister and I when we were small, and our fall music.  Our fall music is a big part of us getting ready for the season; most of it consists of Celtic music (such as the Chieftains and Irish guitar and the like) but certainly our most fall-ish CD would have to be "Little Women".  That soundtrack sends shivers of pleasure up and down my sister and my spines.  In the early morning when the cold fog is wrapped all about the house and there's a fire blazing and hot cider on the stove, nothing is better than listening to "Little Women" while wrapped up in a blanket and reading a good novel.  Bliss.

Yes, October has come.  Fall is on it's way if it isn't already here.  What a lovely season.

Rascal Queen

"My unfulfilled ambition is to write a great novel in three parts about my adventures," Wendy exclaimed, eyes shining.

"What adventures?" her aunt demanded.  The girl shrugged, "I have yet to have them, but I'm sure they'll be perfectly thrilling!"~Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie

Ah yes.  Creating a novel, what a lovely ambition.  To be an author is an occupation that I dream about and long for.  I like to joke with my family that I have an affinity for the "poor professions".  The things that do not provide a steady monetary income are the things I naturally gravitate towards: everything from music to writing to film has captured my interest.  However, creative writing has always held a special place with me; perhaps because it has been something that I could do even at a young age.

When I was eleven, I created a story.  It was based upon a recurring dream that I had had, and I was convinced that I must put it to paper.  "Ragamuffin Queen" was the first story that I ever finished, and I was immensely proud of it.  Being 153 pages long on paper twice as big as that from the novels I usually read, I thought it my greatest work.  My goal was to send it to a publisher and finally see my name in print.

Yet life was busy and my story was pushed to the far back of my mind.  Only recently have I dug it up again, re-reading what I wrote those years ago.  While my plot and characters were developed enough for an eleven-year-old eager to get to the action, there were glaring errors to my sixteen-year-old eyes.  So it has become my project.  "Ragamuffin Queen" is being rewritten; the plan is to be finished with it by summer.  

My book has been on my mind quite often, almost all my spare time is taken up with the re-writing of it.  As such, my blogs here might be rather dull for some will almost certainly be speaking of the story.  Yet I will not neglect telling of my life completely.  There are many things that I will love to share.

Museless

Writing is a way of expressing myself.  When words do not suffice, very often I turn to pen and paper (or keys) to write of my feelings.  Thoughts somehow seem to flow more smoothly when they're coming from my fingertips instead of my mouth.  Besides, I love writing.  Particularly writings of my own creation.  But to me, they are not purely my own creation.  The story is merely there, all I need to do is record what I see unfolding.  I love losing myself deep within the world I create, meeting the characters and getting to know them.  Some people "create" their characters.  I say that I "discover" them.  My characters are already there, I merely have to find them.  It is quite an exciting process, but a long and sometimes arduous one.  For that reason, I look forward to and also dread the time when I need to create a new character.

Currently, I am in the process of redoing a story that I wrote several years ago.  It has a good concept, yet it is simple.  It is written the way an eleven-year-old wrote, uncomplicated and predictable.  The characters have not been fully discovered.  So I have taken up the burden of author yet again.  My goal is to complete the refinished story by next summer.

But right now I am in the lurch.  I am museless.*  My creative genius has vanished.  The story has continued but it has left me behind.  I have been trying to jumpstart my creative thought process by reading several RPGs** that I'm currently involved in in the hopes of becoming inspired again.  Instead of the mighty ROAR of my imagination leaping back to life, it has began coming to life with a slow put-put-put.

I hope my muse comes back.  Now.

*Muse: poetic inspiration (Webster's Online Dictionary)

**RPG: role-playing game---one player writes as one character and another player writes as another character. (Webster's Online Dictionary)

Being 16 Is Sweet Indeed

My birthday has come and gone, and with it a whole array of feelings.

The day was relatively uneventful for me.  I will not deny that for the first three-quarters of my special day I was downright blue.  Sure, I had had my special breakfast (crepes with jam and cream cheese) and I got to relax and read, but it didn't feel right.  It was my birthday.  Moreover, it was my 16th birthday.  Something was supposed to happen.  My grandparents were coming, but that wasn't it.  Wasn't this called "sweet 16"?  Shouldn't something happen?

I was caught between different sides of thought.  Part of me didn't want anything to happen.  I didn't really want the day to be notable.  I wanted to putter around, do my own thing, stay at home, relax and enjoy myself.  The other part was in agonized anticipation.  I wanted something to happen but I didn't know what.  I wanted to go someplace but I didn't know where.  I wanted people over but I didn't know who.  It was a dilemma.

I went to the pool, as always, still gloomy.  I'm afraid I wasn't very good company to all my friends.  I wasn't able to focus on what they were saying, and I found myself being slightly irritated when all of them seemed so happy.  

I had only been swimming twenty minutes when my mom came to get me out early.  

"Why?" I asked, pulling myself out of the pool.  I really was too melancholy to care about her answer anyway.  My 16th birthday was here and it was dud.

She drove me to the nearby Lake.  She parked and turned to me.  Taking out a letter that had been hidden underneath the console, she read to me about how my walk of life was beginning and how today I would complete it (metaphorically).  With that, she kicked me out of the van and told me to start walking.

I had only gone a little way when I saw my dad standing, piece of paper in hand.  I started smiling.  He, too, read me a letter of the hopes he had in store for me, as long with bits of wisdom that he felt he could share.  After, he told me to keep walking.

As I made my way around the Lake, I met with eight adults who have been very influential in my life over the past few years.  I listened as they read me their letters and imparted the wisdom that they felt I would need in the coming years.  As I went on, I gathered many missives in one hand and many balloons in the other (each person gave me two balloons).

The last two were probably the hardest for me emotionally.  (Yes, I will admit to shedding a few tears.)  They were my two coaches, who I have known for the past four years.  The letters they gave me were full of encouragement, inspiration, and knowledge.  I felt so blessed and loved.

While I was still drying my eyes, I became aware of a surge of people swarming towards me with camera lenses flashing.  I barely had time to take refuge behind the balloons (before an embarrassment, now a blessing) as my friends piled around me.  There were friends from swimming, school, and even old friends who I haven't seen in years.  It was a fantastic surprise!  I never felt so surprised or loved.

It definitely was a sweet birthday.  

Here's Your Pencil, Welcome To Hell... Or Not

My first Cuesta class was today.  Math 127 in room 2408.  Algebra.  Math has never been my strong point, and it holds no place of affection in my heart.  The fact that I would be taking a semester-long college course of math with college students frankly unnerved me.

Mom drove me up to class (ordinarily I will take the bus, but as it was my first day Mom had to see me off.  The same old story: mothers sniff tearfully into their tissues while their kids waltz off into kindergarten without a glance behind) and we arrived fifteen minutes early.  Probably not the best thing to do.  I spent the next ten minutes watching the students drive by and making comments about the niceness of all of them.

"Oh, they look mean," I told mom, pointing out three girls all heavily tattooed and pierced.  "I hope they're not in my class."  Mom looked up from her book (The Wheel of Time: Book 1) just enough to glance at the girls and murmur, "I'm sure they're very nice."

My class started at 7, and at 6.50 I hopped out of the car.  The butterflies in my stomach has turned to snakes that slithered about inside.  I turned to wave goodbye to Mom 

(who, I later discovered, didn't even leave the parking lot for the two hours I was there) and headed to my class.

It was bigger than the average highschool classroom, but smaller than a lecture hall.  There were computers at every desk, which I pushed aside to make room for my books.

My teacher is a very nice woman (born in Canada, French is her first language) who gives bonus points if we catch a mistake that she writes on the board.  (Don't ALL teachers give extra credit for that?  And don't ALL teachers make mistakes on purpose to see if their students are paying attention?)  The entire class period was spent going over the syllabus and the expectations and when the final exam would be (we're speaking of this ALREADY??).

When we had thirty minutes left, she organized---in the loosest sense of the word---into groups.  I was with three other college girls.  One was a pretty, dark-haired young woman who looked to have some Indian blood in her.  Another looked like the daughter from Gilmore Girls, a very cute gal with glasses.  The other was a slightly larger girl who evidently had some self-esteem problems.  

We were handed a worksheet with 35 problems and given thirty minutes to get twenty done.  I ended up leading the group and helping these three college girls with their basic Algebra.  A fifteen year old sophomore helping college students.  Right on, right on.  By the end, Indie and Gilmore Girl were passing me their papers to see if they did the problems right and asking me questions.

College might not be so bad, after all.

Back to School

Margaret Laurence once said, "Holidays are enticing only for the first week or so.  After that, it is no longer such a novelty to rise late and have little to do."

The arrival of summer break is looked forward to as much as Christmas day to those of us still in school.  The days till freedom are counted down like we count down the days to our birthday.  Yet, when it arrives, it poses a problem.  What is there to do?

I freely admit that after the first couple days of summer and "doing nothing", it grows tiresome.  I could never laze my days away laying in bed and watching movies.  Although this is fun to do occasionally, doing it every day would be a bore.  Fortunately, I have many things to distract me.  I have music to play, two and a half hours of swim practice every day, lifeguarding and teaching swim lessons to occupy my days.  I find that I get so caught up in my activities that the summer flies by without my noticing.  Currently, I feel as if a bucket of cold water has been splashed over me.  The beginning of school has crept up without my seeing it.  Yesterday it tapped me on the shoulder and I turned to see it only three days away.  No, two.  My gosh.  

I will taking classes at a community college starting this Monday.  Math and English.  Unfortunately, since I'm a highschool student I don't get top priority in any classes.  Once the college kids have had their pick I sign up for whatever is left.  That means I have math from seven to nine-thirty at night.  In English I wasn't lucky enough to get a class, so I'm taking it online.  That won't be so bad.

I'm excited for this new stage in my life: going to school on a college campus.  I have several friends enrolled in the school, one is a highschooler like me.  I know that the classes will challenge me but I'm looking forward to it.  Last year I went to a private school (my first taste of non-homeschooled schooling) and I did not care for it.  I did not fit in there very well.  I was "too well-rounded" as my mom says.  I'm a very competitive and dedicated athlete, but I'm also a straight-A student in all my AP classes.  I play two instruments and I work.  Highschool just wasn't the environment for me.

This year I have my math and English classes through Cuesta, and then I'll be teaching myself everything else.  Right now I'm very excited for this year, we'll see how everything unfolds.

Meet the Teenager

It started out as my mom's idea.  I am always scribbling on pieces of paper, buying notebooks to write in, and filling my shelves with journals and diaries.  Instead of continually buying more books and journals, why not save money and blog?  I turned the idea over in my head awhile; I'd never done the blogging thing, I didn't even know what that entailed!  The prospect was a daunting one.

When I began to blog, it wasn't necessarily voluntary.  My sister and I went on a three-week trip to India this summer, without our parents.  My mother was desperate to have us record every detail of every day so that we shouldn't forget anything.  She had me set up a blog to record all our India adventures and bought my sister and I each a journal.

A couple days before we were about to leave, she called us out of our rooms.  She stood before us solemnly, a journal in each hand.  "Lay a hand on the journals," she directed.

Puzzled, we did so.  

"Do you solemnly swear to write faithfully in these journals every day?" Mom intoned.  There was surreptitious eye-rolling between me and my sister as we swallowed our giggles.

My sister is two years younger than me, and my twin.  People get us confused all the time---sometimes our parents even do, though they deny it---and I love it.  We are like two peas in a pod looks-wise, but we have completely different personalities.  Olivia has her little list in the morning that has everything she needs to do for that day, which she will check off.  I'm more laid back; I get it done when I get it done.  She also abhors clutter---there's a place for everything and everything has it's place.  I, however, am not opposed to a bit of a mess.  Since we share a room... this causes some arguments.  She loves her math and science, I love my reading and writing.  She loves being outside working, I love staying indoors.  We are complete opposites, but we love each other to death.

Then there's my mom and dad.  They are completely outgoing, fun-loving parents.  They will, on occasion, mortify us... but they're the parents of teenagers, that's their job.  

Last, but certainly not least, is the dog.  Hwin.  She is a Golden Retriever, but don't tell mom that.  She refers to Hwin as her "dogter".  It is a tradition in our family to name our dogs after characters in a favorite book.  (In our family, not only do we love our traditions but we love reading.)  Our favorite family series is the "Chronicles of Narnia" by C.S. Lewis.  Out of those books, our favorite has got to be "The Horse And His Boy".  In that story there is a horse named Hwin in it, who shows a steadfast faithfulness and trust to her friends and t

he great lion, Aslan.  So that is what we named our dog.

That is my family.  We're a fun, crazy bunch of people who love each other and love to laugh.  

I think I'll enjoy this blogging business.