ain't nothing gonna change

I had a really good weekend last weekend! I got to dress up for the first time in a LOOOONG TIME! I finally got to wear a dress. My friend had her 18th bday at a sushi restaurant and I gave her the idea to have a black and white theme and she would wear a different vibrant color. It was fun to see everyone dress up, especially the guys ;). I just wore a simple black bubble dress and accessorized with black heels and a black fedora. We had a lot of fun because the host, our other friend was able to hook us up with a private room with karaoke. After we ate sushi, we went to Red Berry for some fro-yo, walked around Safeway and just ended up chilling at someone's house for a while. It was a nice night out and I love seeing people who I haven't seen for awhile. Plus it feels good to look pretty in heels once in awhile.

Maggie, Me, & BDAY girl Chrissa

The next day, I went to Santa Cruz Boardwalk with my family, my mom's friend's family and Maggie. It was A LOT OF FUN! I haven't been to the ocean in years and I always go to SF beach is never warm enough to swim in. We had a blast playing in the water and trying to body surf. I know this is a stupid comment, but DAMN the OCEAN IS SALTY. It is disgusting but that did not stop us from body surfing and failing and twirling under the water. I got sand everywhere (especially in the most inappropriate areas). It was a fun relaxing day. I want to go back before I leave for SD. I am definetly going to get a boogie board when I go to San Diego. Sadly, I did not really improve my tan that much. I put extra sunblock because I didn't want to burn. But it was still fun :).

Maggie, my sister Bella, Me

Maggie + Christina = Magina (does not rhyme with vagina)

On Wednesday I threw a "goodbye" party with my friend Desiree at her house because of the UC Berk kids leaving soon. It was a very successful potluck and party. For once, we actually had REAL food for the potluck, not just chips and soda (because I specifically told them not too!). I made garlic buttered bread with bagels instead of bread because I have a month's supply of bagels from working at a cafe/bakery also. I hadn't seen some people since the beginning of summer but it felt like we saw each other just last week. It was high school all over again, not that I minded. I really enjoyed it--just talking, playing games and spending time with each other without any stresses, worries, or drama. It was just FUN. Though at one point when we were playing massive TABOO (20 people!), I look over at Desiree and had this overwhelming feeling of how much I will miss her. Even though not everyone was my closest friend or the person I could confide in, there were some people there whom I will truely missed as a classmate, as a party friend, as a hangout friend, or a friend to just exchange jokes and pick up lines. I just went over and hugged her and told her "I WILL MISS YOU SO MUCH". It is hard to believe some people are actually leaving. It is hard to believe I am leaving. With six weeks, I am starting to feel those little emotions, those little heart clenching moments. I am not trying to be dramatic or sentimental (I usually am not) but I feel it. It is a different change--moving on. But I just want to focus on the happy moments and not feel sad but happy to see everyone go and about to have the best times of their lives--even though we are not together to enjoy it.

Lissah, Lindsey, Me, Sheynie, Desiree

I just want to live for right now for the time being, just for a little awhile.

----ck

a little closer to the dream

Happy MLK JR day. Instead of reminiscing Martin Luther King Jr's words about his "I Have a Dream", I want to show another great work of MLK Jr that relates to me as I get older and I am graduating and I am getting closer to that step he calls, having a "life blueprint".
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Six months before he was assassinated, King spoke to a group of students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia on October 26, 1967.

I want to ask you a question, and that is: What is your life's blueprint?

Whenever a building is constructed, you usually have an architect who draws a blueprint, and that blueprint serves as the pattern, as the guide, and a building is not well erected without a good, solid blueprint.

Now each of you is in the process of building the structure of your lives, and the question is whether you have a proper, a solid and a sound blueprint.

I want to suggest some of the things that should begin your life's blueprint. Number one in your life's blueprint, should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your worth and your own somebodiness. Don't allow anybody to make you fell that you're nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.

Secondly, in your life's blueprint you must have as the basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor. You're going to be deciding as the days, as the years unfold what you will do in life — what your life's work will be. Set out to do it well.

And I say to you, my young friends, doors are opening to you--doors of opportunities that were not open to your mothers and your fathers — and the great challenge facing you is to be ready to face these doors as they open.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great essayist, said in a lecture in 1871, "If a man can write a better book or preach a better sermon or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, even if he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door."

This hasn't always been true — but it will become increasingly true, and so I would urge you to study hard, to burn the midnight oil; I would say to you, don't drop out of school. I understand all the sociological reasons, but I urge you that in spite of your economic plight, in spite of the situation that you're forced to live in — stay in school.

And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. don't just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn't do it any better.

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. If you can't be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.

Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, just be a trail. If you can't be a sun, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.

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Today on the eve of inaugration and concidentally, the day we celebrate MLK JR, we all compare how far we have gotten and how we have progressed and followed through with what MLK JR wanted. I think a good point is made by poplicks that MLK Jr did not mean specifically that we have achieved change when one day we are able to have a black president. Obama's election has not achieved the dream yet. Obama, solely achieve the change, we have to. The day when we can all accept each other for our minor flaws, or differences is the day we will have achieved the dream MLK Jr. wanted. Can we do it America? We are getting closer, maybe. But I am not entirely sure. But I can say we have progressed a lot farther than some countries out there, and that is something.

On a funny note, watch this cute little short. I read it off Wongfu blog. I cannot wait for their new short, released on Jan 31st!!! Watch the trailer too.

---christina