Beautiful.

The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.

It's a miracle!

So, I finally took the road test. Yay! I was so scared but I'm glad I finally got up the courage to just get it over with. I am now a licensed driver. Took me long enough! But hey, now I know I can do scary things. So that's great. Yep and in honor of this event I have two videos that have to do with driving.

Numero Uno (also, about one more month until Psych comes back!):


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TMVNrlBuFM

And then this is for Camille. I'm glad my test didn't go like this one:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJc-cHaz93M

So that's that. Also, school has started and it's going pretty well. It's my dad's birthday today (Happy Birthday Dad!). Aaaand that's about it.

Lovely Sundresses

I don't love this song, this band, or this music video (I'm not really a pop country kind of girl) but I loooove the flowered dress she wears in this video. I think I'd like to find one similar to that or make one myself.


View on Youtube

Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy

"The world turns and the world spins, the tide runs in and the tide runs out, and there is nothing in the world more beautiful and wonderful in all its evolved forms than two souls who look at each other straight on. And there is nothing more woeful and soul-saddening than when they are parted."
(Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, Gary Schmidt)

I'm pretty sure the last chapter of this book is one of the most brilliant and eloquent pieces of writing I've read in quite awhile. In fact, I liked it so much that after I finished the book I read the last few pages a couple times more. The ending is just so beautiful and sad and happy all at the same time.  I'd explain more about it but I think you should probably just read it.

So entertaining...

Click on the link and then click on the squares:

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

Haha.

 

Photo Credit

I'm the hero of this story. I don't need to be saved.

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I can't sleep. So I might as well blog I suppose.
Today Camille gave a talk. It was brilliant. She's so cool.
She talked about something she learned at Girls Camp from Writer's Cubed (a writing group). They talked about being the hero of your own story. Camille kind of recapped. She said: "We are all the heroes of our stories. Because of this we have to make important decisions and develop over time, while carrying a burden no matter how big or small." She emphasized that we need to be careful about the people we choose as secondary characters in our stories. Secondary characters are the people that we choose to be closest to. This kind of stood out to me because I've been pretty sad about a couple of friendships that didn't end up working out. I realized that I am really grateful for the secondary characters in my life who stick with me through the thick and thin. I guess friendships that last are pretty hard to come by so when they do last, it's definitely something to be thankful for and they are people that we shouldn't just take for granted.
It's been a little bit of a rough couple of weeks for me and I'm just so grateful for everyone who puts up with my emotional craziness haha.
So thanks to those secondary characters in my story. You know who you are. I really appreciate everything you do and seriously don't know where I'd be without you.

Brilliant.

In case the embedding doesn't work click here.

Emma Watson

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Well, tonight I'm going to the midnight showing of the very last Harry Potter. I'm pretty excited! It better be good though. Speaking of Harry Potter, I've decided Emma Watson is a pretty cool person and probably my favorite actress. As one of my facebook friends said: "What a girl, that Emma Watson. She's classy, smart, beautiful and seeks to make a positive difference in the world. Good to see growing up in fame hasn't demolished her, at least yet." I agree. Here's an article about how hard it was to go to school at Brown University and be an actress/model at the same time. She put her education first though and I think that's pretty admirable.

The Egyptian Revolution: Adel El-Daba's Personal Account

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I just got back from hearing Adel El-Daba (Chair, World Languages Department, Cairo American College) speak at the BYU Kennedy Center. He talked about his experience with the Egyptian Revolution. He said that he didn't want to talk about why it happened, the before, or the after he wanted to talk about what was happening in the moment of the revolution. I thought it was really interesting that he focused a lot of his talk on the unity that the revolution brought to the people in Tahrir Square. He said you could see Christians and Muslims praying together and women were seen as more of equals during this time, they were treated with more respect. So with their differences aside, they all stood together, in the cold, barely getting any sleep, people getting injured badly, but they were unified in their goal and this made them all stronger and willing to stand tall. The way he described it was really emotional and inspiring. He was a brilliant speaker. He also talked about the people who died for this cause. He saw a man, newly married, who was bleeding and about to die and this man told his friend not to leave Tahrir Square but to keep fighting (I don't remember the exact words) and then Adel El-Daba said that this really struck him and he knew that those people who died for this cause were one of the main reasons to keep fighting for it. Then he sang some verses from the koran for those people and it was really captivating. I think Arabic is actually a really beautiful language. I admire the Egyptian people for having the courage they did and still do to bring about a change for their country that will last forever. Pretty cool, I must say.