One Month

Hello all!

So I know it's only been a few days since I last posted, but this is something I really wanted to write about and you'll find out why soon.

If you've been reading this blog for any amount of time then you will know that I already graduated and I'm going to Turkey to study abroad for six weeks, you should also know I plan to attend college out of state.  Anyway, six weeks, that's half a summer, it's not a terribly long time to be away from friends and family in the U.S.  However, when I get back from Turkey I will have (approximately) a week before I leave for college.

My point: this one month I have left, here in Alaska, is all the time I have left to spend it with my friends and family, before my life changes for good.

This is such a weird concept for me to grasp.  I really want to go to Turkey, in fact that is an understatement, but I also want more time with my friends.  I am counting down to the days until I leave for Turkey and Turkey, in general, is on my mind 24/7, but when I spend time having fun with people I care about, this changes.  I had a friends graduation party on Friday and we went driving, we went to get frozen yogurt and we went to the mall.  During that time I was spending with my friends, I was thinking about things in that moment and doing things in that moment.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is, while most people don't see six weeks as being a long amount of time to be gone, leaving for Turkey signifies me leaving everything behind and  (almost) moving out.  When I come back I know things will be different.  I mean, everything changes with time, but it's not just that.  This Turkish experience will change me for the better, but people at home will have changed too.  When I come back two of my best will be at basic training for the Army Reserve and Air National Guard.  I will have had limited contact with everyone, and some of my friends I won't have talked to at all.

Indeed, it is weird going off into the complete unknown, coming back, only to go off into the unknown, again.  I only have thirty, wonderful, precious, beautiful days left in the normal and the known.  I am going to spend these thirty days working, spending as much time as possible with all my friends and family, and learning Turkish.

I have the rest of my life ahead of me, my future is unbelievably bright and my dream of travelling the world seems that much closer.  These next thirty days are going to be incredible.  I have nothing planned so anything could happen.  I don't know what I'm going to blog about, but I will update.  I am ready to enjoy myself, love life and take nothing for granted.  I'm not ready or prepared for the adventures ahead, but I am ready to live and make mistakes.

To anyone who reads this,
This will be an amazing month, I hope you will continue to follow me through the normality of life, before it absolutely and completely changes for me.

As always,
Till next time
-Sarah    

Tourism in Alaska and Flight Itinerary

Hello my lovely readers!

Here is another sporadic update!

First order of business, I got my flight itinerary today!  It looks like I will be flying from Anchorage to Chicago to D.C, and then as a group we fly to Paris and then Istanbul!  Also we have a seven hour layover in Paris, so I am hoping we will go out into the city, even if it's only for an hour.  Getting my itinerary today, is weird.  This adventure seem so far away, but these are thoughts for another post.

Onward!  So my grandparents came up for my graduation, they're from upstate New York.  Since they came up, we went fishing and yesterday we went downtown!  Looking at all of the tourist shops and everything.  It was really fun because I have great ideas for host family gifts!  Also the fishing was really great, we went Halibut fishing and, unfortunately we didn't catch that many fish because it was early in the season, but it was still fun!  So here are pictures from the fishing trip and from going downtown yesterday!

Warning:  This blog contains pictures of dead fish, if you do not believe in killing/eating animals and do not want to/look at pictures of dead ones, stop reading.  If this warning doesn't apply to you, then read on!

Mountains on the drive down to Seward!

First fish caught of the day!  This isn't a Halibut, we caught other fish on the boat, as well! 

The earnings from our trip!

In order of left to right: me, Haley, my dad, Hal, and my grandma. 

Then yesterday we went downtown.  It was super fun, we got Reindeer sausage (yes they are actual Reindeer) from this vendor who is famous in Anchorage for sauteing onions in Coke-Cola!  It was really good.  Here pictures from yesterday! 

This is a really historic sign.  It was one of the few things standing after the 1964 earthquake. 

Here is the famous Reindeer vendor.  On the left of the picture is my dad and sister, on the right is the vendor. 

My food!  It was so nice sitting downtown, eating this and the sun was shinning, it was fabulous! 

Spring has sprung!  Okay maybe not spring, but definitely summer!

So that's about it.  It was really nice to do touristy things and hang out down town.  In other news on Friday I have a graduation party for my friend, and I'll probably make a post about that.  After that I will write a post about studying abroad and my feelings and that sort of thing.  I have 34 days left until I leave! 

Till next time, 

-Sarah

Graduation

Hello everyone!

How's your week been?  Mine has been pretty fabulous because I had a wonderful graduation, on Wednesday and then a wonderful party yesterday evening!

The actual graduation was pretty fun.  Our ceremony started at 2:00 p.m and we had to be there at one.  Before the ceremony I was just hanging backstage talking with all of my friends!  The ceremony itself was just all right, the speeches weren't terribly inspiring, but it was still fun!  So now pictures of graduation.  I'm sorry I didn't get many pictures after or with my friends because it was so chaotic after the ceremony.

  My sister and I before graduation!

Class of 2013!  In case you can't tell our school colors are green and gold!

Yesterday was our graduation party!  My family took six of our friends to a restaurant in a town about 45 minutes away from Anchorage.   The restaurant is called The Double Musky Inn and it looks like a fishing bar, but do not be fooled because they have amazing food!  It was really good! 

This is a group picture (minus Mariah) before we left.  In the back (from left to right) there is Regina and Thea.  Then on the couch (from left to right) is Zach and Haley, Anna, Kendall and me. 

Unfortunately we didn't all get to sit together at the restaurant because there were twelve of us.  My grandparents from upstate New York are here.  They came for our graduations, but anyway the party was still super fun.

 Here is a small taste of the delicious!  It's a virgin pina colada that I had. 

At the restaurant my sister and I opened up are graduation gifts!  I got earrings from Anna, a computer lock, for my laptop from Kendall and I got a wonderful picture frame with a picture of Thea and I at prom, all the gifts were really sweet and amazing! I also got a one of a kind, handmade bracelet from my parents! 

This is the bracelet my parents got me!  This bracelet was made by Lisa Nortz.  She makes lots of pretty jewelry.  Here is her website, if you are interested:    http://www.silverbenchjewelry.com/

I would like to thank all of my friends and family and everyone at my high school for their love and support.  I have gone so far this past year and it's just the beginning, thank you so much, everyone!  

Tomorrow my family leaves for Seward, where on Sunday we will go Halibut fishing.  I will take lots of pictures and post about it and after that, I will try to make this blog more about Turkey and that sort of thing.  To anyone who reads this, thank you so much for reading and I will leave you with a picture of my graduation cards.  :)

Also appearing in this picture is the cactus Christiano Ronaldo! 

Till next time

-Sarah

School's Out

Hello everyone!
If you've noticed by my title and read the last post, you'll know that I am posting because I am done with school! No more finals or AP tests, I graduate on May 15th, until then I have nothing to do.  Now I can focus on learning Turkish, but it's not all fun and I'm not terribly happy to be graduating, it's really bittersweet.  In the past four years I have met incredible people (both students and teachers) and it'll be really hard to leave.  So I'm just going to go through the craziness of these past two weeks!

Monday, April 29th- I had my last orchestra concert this day.  It was really fun, I preformed a violin trio on my viola with two other lovely ladies, and of course I played in the group, watched my sister play her cello in her quartet.  Since we were seniors, we got to where whatever we wanted, instead of concert black, it was so much fun!  Also there is this girl who is a junior and she is a violin virtuoso.  I'm not kidding or exaggeration.  She's been in all state, all northwest and this summer is playing with a national youth orchestra in Carnegie Hall.  She is amazing, anyway I watched her preform a solo and needless to say, it was awesome! Here are some pictures from that night:

From left to right: Mariah, Haley, Jorge (pronounced like George), Kendall, me, and Gene.  These were all the seniors in orchestra this year!  It's been great, we've all become close over four years, you guys are awesome!

The lovely senior ladies who are all my friends and awesome!  In order from left to right: me, Kendall, Haley, Mariah.  I love you all so much!

Tuesday, April 30th- This day was honor graduation at my school!  My sister and I are both graduating with honors meaning we've kept a cumulative 3.5 GPA or above!  It was really fun because there are about seventy people graduating with honors out of our class. Our class consists of about 380 people.  The students got to talk and thank people, it was really neat to see everyone speak, especially considering I knew most people there!  We also got an honor cord, which is super cool!  It was really fun, unfortunately I didn't get any pictures from this event, but it was still awesome!

Wednesday, May 1st-  I had nothing going on this day, except normal school, it was probably fun, but I don't remember much about it.  It was my only not busy day out of the week!

Thursday, May 2nd- I had the annual awards ceremony for the organization I volunteer with.  It was great, not a lot of people showed up, though, except younger kids.  We're a youth organization and take volunteers from 7th-12th grade.  Anyway, but I did get a lot of awards, including a $500 scholarship, which they only gave to three other seniors.  So that was awesome, again I didn't take any pictures, oh well, I'll remember it!

Friday, May 3rd-  Since all of the music concerts are finished (except for graduation), we had a music department awards banquet.  It was fun, but really long with a lot of people.  However everyone got these dream catchers, which are hand made by a native organization, with beads representing the different things people have done in band, orchestra, and choir.  It was really nice and my sister won a national orchestra award, I was so happy for her, even though she didn't think she deserved it, she definitely did. 

Then there was the weekend, not much happened, just work and homework and music lessons, it was nice to have a bit of a break.  I'm also doing really well at work, so that is awesome!

Monday, May 6th- So again, not much happened that day, it was just school and homework.  I think it was pretty relaxing, except I was nervous about something. 

Tuesday, May 7th- The thing I was nervous about was the AP Spanish test.  I wanted to do really well on this test because I want to major in Spanish and international relations in college.  I think I got either a three or four.  I didn't have time to answer a lot of the multiple choice questions, but I did well enough not to get a one or two on the free response questions.  Also this day I went to the library to practice with my oral final group for our philosophy final (our final is a group oral final that lasts fifty minuets).  It was fun, but I was drained after.  At the library we decided to map out quick notes on all of the papers on the white board.  Here was the result:

Before Mapping out all the papers. 

After mapping.  There is also a lot of randomness on the board because the person we elected as writer went crazy and drew randomness on it (she had a Rockstar as we were working). 

Wednesday, May 8th- For AP Spanish we had a rest day ans my teacher (whom I've had for three years) brought in amazing food for all of us, including warm chai tea!  I am such a tea person and am so excited to try Turkish tea in Turkey!  Anyway I also had my oral final in philosophy that day.  It went pretty well, I had been nervous about this all year though, it was forty per-cent of our total grade.  I was expecting to get a B, but I checked my grades online and it turns out I got 50/50!  I was not expecting that at all.  This day was also the day when seniors had to clean out their lockers!  I have pictures of things:

The lovely food my Spanish teacher brought for us!

More food!

The outside of my locker before I cleaned it!  The signs are for swimming (top) and cross-country skiing (bottom). 

The inside of my locker before I cleaned it. 

The outside of my locker after I cleaned it. 

The inside of my locker after I cleaned it, it looks so different!

Thursday, May 9th- So in order to do this I need to explain something, first.  There is this program in my school called the seminar program or the seminar school.  It is based off of the Socratic method for English classes and they count as honors classes.  For an English class there are freshmen, sophomores  juniors, and seniors in the same English class, five teachers teach English for this program and there are about 200 students in it.  We have a lot of focus on community and I have a close relationship with all of the teachers in this program.  There are two senior philosophy classes that are part of this program.  Every year, the seniors of this program stand up on our school stage and do whatever they want to do, with everyone else watching.  We call them senior statements.  So on Thursday, I had mine and they were so emotional.  I was the last to go and (partially because of everyone else's) I broke down crying, thanking my sister (who is also part of the program) for everything.  It was really emotional and apparently I made a lot of people cried.  Even my philosophy teacher was teary-eyed at the end.  We also had seminar graduation that evening!  All of the teachers who are part of the program gave us awards and it was great.  I meant to bring my camera and yearbook, but unfortunately I forgot both.  Anyway it was fun and emotional.  I got the monkey award, the point of this award is that the monkey is irrepressible, like me, so that was super sweet!

Friday, May 10th- I had a math test first hour today and I did way better than I thought, considering I didn't study nor understand the concept.  We also had a half day and I went down to watch the other classes senior statements.  They were fun, but no where near as emotional as ours.  All the seniors had graduation practice and then we were dismissed.  They also locked us out of the school, but I got back in because I dropped a note a teacher gave me.  I then went and had other teacher sign my yearbook, quickly and left.  I walked home with my sister and her boyfriend and we ate lunch at Subway.  The walk was nice and I had a relaxing afternoon, watching T.V and reading everything on Facebook. 

So that's been my life these past two weeks!  I hope you can tell that I've been too busy to update, hopefully I'll find time to update in Turkey!  Anyway I will probably update next Friday, I might not be able to because my grandma is coming into town on this Monday for graduation!  I graduate on May 15th, which is really weird.  Anyways, I will definitely update about graduation and everything I do while my grandma is in town.  After that I promise this blog will be more Turkey related. 

Till next time, 

-Sarah