howdy. i arrived in my new living place of athens, ohio last night. today i am going to take all my bags to the recreation center and put them in a storage place. afterwards i am going to say goodbye to the family and meet up with everyone who is in my camping group. after staying the night in the rec center we are heading out for our 10 day camping extravaganza. i'm going be visiting at at least 3 or 4 states that i've never been to before. jesus! This is going to be a fun trip. We're camping the majority of the time in the BWCAW (boundary waters canoe area wilderness). It's in Northern Minnesota, almost Canada! I don't know how much contact I will have for the next week and a half. But I am sure it will be very very little. Love you all! Be good, travel safely back to school or wherever you may be headed.

goodbyes.

not my cup of tea.

1.5 days remain.

places I will be within the next few days. click it larger. 1 day and 1 hour is going to be spent in a car. ay! and then, back again to ohio! eeeek.

we like group photos.

but who doesn't!?

adventure

you can't stop me now!

Life is Fun in Flemington.

This is getting down to the nitty-gritty. Six days remain. Time flies.

My mom is going crazy with my packing stuff. I have so many things. WHY!?!

What I want is an internal frame backpack. Backpacking through Europe, Asia, South America?! Yes.

beach day

Random photos from the past week:

Lindsay and I woke up around 3 am and jumped into Mollie's car (who arrived just on time- we were late waking up). We headed to the sea for another beautiful sun rise. The odds ended up in our favor, there was a meteor shower happening at just the time we were leaving this morning. We didn't see too many, but seeing any number of shooting stars is always a fantastic site. While Mollie and Lindsay slept and complained about the cold I took a lot of long exposure photos. I'm still figuring out all the finer points of my camera. It's fun for sure. I was trying some new things and being a little creative. 

The sun rise was marvelous and gave way to a very hot day. My tan lines are pretty much incredible at this point. I am significantly tanned but the parts that don't see the sun are brilliantly white. Crazy! There were hardly any waves, but our peaceful beach soon became overrun with obnoxious life guards and horrifyingly loud middle aged women. Thus is life. We did our best to ignore them; Lindsay managed to ignore the world by sleeping for the entire day. She was and remains sickly and sleeping. Being sick is no fun. We did not stay at the beach as long as last time, we headed out around 1 pm and went to eat some lunch at Surf Taco. I got a taco salad and it was so tasty. We went to a vintage clothing store on main street Belmar and then headed home. Marcos came over and we began fixing my bike back together. My dad is going to help me do the rest of that work tomorrow and hopefully I'll be back riding in no time. Fixed though, eek. I want my bike to be able to flip flop but who knows where this is heading. Any how, after Marcos left I went for an hour walk. For half of my walk I was on the phone with Aram. He was wonderful company. My  sandals dug some nasty cuts into my feet for some reason. Eek.  I returned home to an even sicker 100.3 degree fever-ridden Lindsay (we will not be sleeping near each other tonight!) Jenni and Marc came over and we hung out for a little while watching television. Then we just chilled in my kitchen. I am going to edit some photos, maybe (I should since I haven't in forever). I am probably going to read some Harry Potter and try to avoid the plagued individual in the other room. I am pretty darn tired. My phone is dead and my sister is holding the charger hostage at the 4H fair. I need to make a list of the things to do in the remaining days. 

11 days.

I am extremely content where things are at. If only people were closer, ya know? If only I could get the amazing photography education and opportunities a little closer to home. Alas, things like this don't work out that easily. I know I've now come eye to eye with leaving. It's a tough thing. Tears are going to be shed. I should not be saying goodbye. A ton of my other friends have been going away to college for many years, but when they return to home, bam! Everything is back to normal again. I can't wait for that.

Last night Lindsay and I watched Amelie with Mark and after he left, the Darjeeling Limited. Two very quality movies. This morning after we woke up we watched the Family Stone (so, so sad) and the Reaping (corny/scary in some parts). After movie watching we headed to Cait's house and tie-dyed shirts and things! It was really fun. We played a charades type game and it was also very cool. My shirt came out pretty awesome and so did everyone else's items. Right after that we went over to Ilyssa's and hung out there with Ilyssa and Corey. We ate some vegan taco delights (taco tuesday!!). After stuffing ourselves full with that we watched Sweeney Todd. Blunder joined us. It was great. I'd never seen it before then. Good movie. So many movies in the past 2 days. Ay! Well, after hanging out and untangling Ilyssa's braid that has been tied forever Linds and I came home. She's singing in the shower right now and soon enough we are going to start preparing our things for the beach!! Mollie is sleeping over here with us and we're heading out at 3 am! Sun rise is the best time.

In other news...I got my bike! Marcos and I are going to start putting it back together tomorrow! The color looks pretty darn spectacular. Yay!

ohio adventure.

I keep going back and forth but, I think I am ready now. picked out my courses, exciting!

Pre College Orientation

Ohio here we come! Me and Poppa are going on a road trip!


Here's a photo for the road. Lens flare to the extreme.

20 days remain.

agh.

the 23 days of august count down has officially begun. it's ridiculously scary and equally as depressing.

the first day of august was the best and fullest day ever. it begun with going over marcos's house with lindsay and watching Memento. We made a nice dinner and went sleepy time around 12 am. Set our alarms for 3 am and hopped in my white lightning headed for the coast. we wanted to make the sun rise, and that we did. we took the long way there...a few wrong turns later we were speeding 90 mph down the highway towards Belmar with a hint of light in the sky. We finally arrived not in Belmar, but in Spring Lake and decided just to jump on out. As we climbed the rocks onto the jetty we noticed the very beginning of the sun peaking over the horizon. We made it. What a relieving feeling. The beauty. Ahhh. There's nothing in this world like a sunrise. Being awake while there are so many asleep. They missed out. Many hours and naps and walks and phone calls and body-surfs later, Aram arrived. He got lost like us. But he was driving for many hours and, I felt completely horrible. He brought a truck load of food to us and we chowed down on some delightful snacks. Hmm...after this we went back onto the beach, (no food allowed!!!) went swimming for a long time, then Aram and I went for a really nice walk far down the beach. all of us hung out for a long time, and decided to depart. Thankfully we didn't get lost going home. It was a smooth sailing ride. And we totally beat Aram (booya!). What more...we showered, hung out, went back to Marcos's, left after a few minutes, I went over Sam's house and said my goodbyes to Sam and Aga :( I went back home, went on the computer and uploaded some photographs, crawled into bed and had some wild dreams that I cant recall. Today I worked at the Amish, went to Hillary's for dinner with Grandpa, Shanna and Cameron. Came home, picked up Linds, made vegan chocolate chip cookies, stood on the dining room chairs and danced to Justin Timberlake and Brittany Spears songs (haha). Now it is late and I leave for Ohio tomorrow morning and I have not packed a single thing and I intend on not doing that until tomorrow in the am. haHA!