Last weekend of summer!

I slept over Kailani and Katrina's Friday night, woke up on Saturday, got stuff ready for Sunday (which was Eid) and spent Sunday with family.

Though I didn't get to have a wildly crazy summer, I was pretty productive, I left the house a lot and had some good experiences. I got to intern at a place where I could experience some of what my possible career would be, I realized how much I've grown since 9th grade and how much more willing I am to step up. I met with my KC officers and Journalism peeps. I truly realized how much I grew during this summer--if someone told me at any point in middle school I'd be president of a club or editor-in-chief of an entire publication, I would have laughed in their faces and told them they didn't know me.

I am determined to make senior year the best year in high school, both academically and socially. I am excited to expand and improve my clubs. I am not ready to have started with colleges, but I'm taking baby steps. This summer was a pretty good one. I traveled a little, I stayed productive and I got some R&R after the chaos that was junior year.

A really nice quote I got from the president of Questbridge to end off my summer and to the beginning of senior year (as well as the rest of my life!):
"If you don't trip a few times, you're not running hard enough." -Michael McCullough

Goodbye summer 2012, hello senior year! (D:)

Henna!

Cake we baked at Katrina's birthday :)

Sunday morning :)

How it turned out x)

They took a picture with me x)

Freshmen hallway!

I hope they appreciate it ._.

Before it got demolished! All 426 

Cutting out the faulty jaguars

Working the "panini cutter" which has the most terrible blade known to man and took twenty presses to get visible jaguars that we didn't have to hand cut the rest out

Late nights...or early mornings?

Because staying up late is what summer is about. This was actually a very hectic few days. Tuesday, I went to school at 9, helped out a kajillion teachers, went to the dentist immediately after then drove straight to Alyssa's for a late birthday celebration with all the girls reunited, stayed up till 7 AM, got up at 8, went back to school at 9, helped till 1:30. (Then came home and passed out). But it was all worth it.

Romantically watching the sunrise x)

Suzanne has her eyes closed...

I hate the dentist >:(

It's been two hours! (This was posted straight from the chair because THAT'S HOW MUCH TIME I HAD WHILE I WAS WAITING)

Dentist tools scare me

Easy being green?

I had to... :D (also this is from Jason Mraz's site, so if he can do it, so can we!)

Last week of summer?

Also known as the first unofficial week of school!

Teachers to help!

Teachers that were moving

Less fancy list of teachers to help

Visitors

This little guy landed on our fence the other day and my mom went and caught him with a sheet. He doesn't really know how to fly, or climb in the cage so for a few days we kept him on the floor with easy access to food and water. But he does a mean wolf whistle x)

What my day yesterday and today have consisted of:

Death threats from VS teachers = lots of work submitted

AP lit summer work and the Olympics!

So I took a break from all the work, and went to the beach in the evening. We have a tradition of going to the beach near sunset, waiting till it gets pretty dark, then we leave and go eat at IHOP or Panera because both are on the way back from the beach. I've never actually seen a sea turtle nest at a beach in Miami so this was really exciting for me. Last summer, I wanted to do a program called Sea Turtle Oversight Protection which basically makes sure that when the turtles hatch at night, they get to the beach but my mom said no because it was from 8 to midnight and she didn't want me going alone. .-. Regardless, this was a really cool thing for me to see, but seeing the hotels and apartments not even 20 feet away made me hope desperately that the babies would make it to water and not the roads.

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This is George Clooney's yearbook picture.

A summer of delicious food!

Because summer isn't summer without plenty of good meals and desserts so I made a giant post about all of the delicious things I got to eat x)

(Also I realize that this makes me look like a total fatty but I exercised and walked ten millions miles around FIU's campus! And some of it's homemade so I had to brag a LITTLE)

Apparently movie theaters have curly fries now...

Hummus?

Because my family has always gotten the Hershey's Pies from Burger King and now we could buy an ENTIRE freaking pie for ourselves

Legitimate hummus from our Jordan-ese neighbors!

IHOP at odd times of the night :)

Free slurpies on 7/11!

Jordan-ese rice, chicken and beef during Ramadan!

The most delicious potato soup known to man

AMAZING homemade chocolate chip cheesecake!

Homemade fruit tart!

Delicious Panera mac and cheese :)

Ramune soda!

Pancakes at odd times of the day...

Lots of cheesy pasta x)

I felt very American

Our demolished breakfast that I probably should have taken a before picture of...but it was homemade "jam", pancakes and eggs. We were teaching Suzanne how to cook!

Ice cream :D

Tower of caps

I know I shouldn't post all of this on the same day, but you have to understand how excited I got when I found out there was a Blogger app and I wouldn't have to email myself all the pictures from my phone, then download them, then make a post on blogger THEN upload them and wait 20 hours for my Internet to do the only thing in the world it's supposed to do.

SO, my last post for tonight, dedicated to the sophomores (now juniors, but whatever) that brought in a kajillion caps for me to count. So far, I've counted every box but the biggest and gotten 1500+ caps. So I thank you guys!

*UPDATE: 3500 caps!

Suzanne's farewell

In the first week of summer, my best friends and I parted ways. It sounds really dramatic and it kind of was. For the first time in 5/6 years, we wouldn't be able to spend summer together or hang out or be weird together or stay up till 5 talking on the phone. It felt very Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants-y.

Right after our last AICE exam on June 11th, Suzanne left to Virginia for her NASA program on Wednesday for the ENTIRE summer (she comes back August 11th, only 6 days to go!!).

I left for NJ/NY on Thursday so I was a little too excited to be properly realize. When Kailani left towards the end of June and Alyssa and I became pretty busy with actually being productive, I realized how much it sucked and also how much I'll miss them for college.

2 out of 4 at a racing track for Alyssa's birthday

The 5 of us! (and a new boyfriend)

Just like old times (also this is Suzanne's super fancy neighborhood)

She's probably the weirdest

The official last time all of us were together (featuring very sleepy and very sad teenage girls)

Internship!

So this is what has taken up all of my summer. From 9-5, everyday, I go to FIU south campus for an internship with the USDA and the agroecology department at FIU.
It's a wonderful experience and I've met some really wonderful people (and a not so wonderful scary ecoterrorist) but I have to say, it has been worth it. My inner (or maybe not so inner) tree hugger really squealed at the opportunities and everything we learned. It really confirmed that this is something I can imagine myself doing for the rest of my life. It was a 6 week program in campus and during the last two weeks, we worked on our research paper on a topic we learned, created a PowerPoint and went back August 6th to make a giant presentation to a room full of people about our internship. In addition to that, we also made a video about the internship and a giant poster about the six weeks

Here are some pictures of my FIU experiences (not a lot, sadly and including pictures from my long rides there and back). The last two days were definitely the most fun, as we not only got a mini party but a field trip to Fairchild Gardens.

They thought the coffee would be like fruit punch, "because you always see people drinking it and laughing!"

The scenic route home

$1 venti iced tea!

We visited Fairchild Gardens on the last day

A really old tree

My walk from the bus stop everyday

Not the best picture of us, but these are the people I spent my summer with. The background was really funny because at the moment, we were making biofuels from waste vegetable oil (with lots of chemistry stuff like titrations that I understood! THAT'S WHY YOU STAY IN SCHOOL!)

About half of us hiding in the shade. Every Friday we went to the garden and worked there--not pansy stuff like planting flowers, but uplifting old gardens beds, pickaxing grass away (I also realized I am NOT good with a pickax), transporting barrels of dirt and laying down new garden beds. It was at the FIU organic garden which is really cool because they compost everything themselves, collaborate with the FIU cafeteria and get coffee beans for use in compost, and have biofuel plants.

Not the funnest lab ever. It was picking nodules off plant roots.

Waiting to get picked up

The wedding area at Fairchild

A really pretty but really funky smelling flower

The advantages of being in the engineering building: lots of nerds

Long bus rides home .-.

Collecting water from the greenhouse pond to test for pH, nitrogen and phosphate