Goodbye 16

Text reads: Sixteen favorite things from my sixteenth year of life.
[texture by roughseas]

1. Learning how to drive over the summer.
2. Knowing more about important things in life like rape culture, sexism, racism, equality, and how the patriarchy doesn't just affect the girls but the guys as well.  
3. The too many math parties that has happened during lunch.
4. Hanging out with friends and family and doing crazy stuff like staying after school on the last day of school even though we weren’t technically supposed to be there or the many trips around the city for various reasons.
5. Finding out more about myself, like how I like guys with great hair.
6. The beautiful, albeit late, fall season in the canyon. 
7. Reading great books in general and not having to worry about anything at the moment.
8. Getting inspiration from the most randomest things, like a picture of an unknown planet or plot bunnies invading writers everywhere.
9. [Surprisingly], moving to a new place.
10. Jumping into the cold water at the water park.
11. Joining a writing club at my new school.
12. Meeting my relatives on my mom's side via Skype, when my older sister was visiting them for two and a half months.
13. Failing horribly while attempting to speak French when my friend and I went to a French fair a few months ago.
14. Getting a 100% on a math test that dealt with trig, and feeling very smug about it.
15. My AVID class at my old school.
16. Joining a cookie fandom that all started out as a casual post on my tumblr dashboard.

Honorable mentions:

French fries

The last week of school in general.

Playing apples to apples at a friend's birthday party.

Eating too many Oreos at another friend's birthday party.

Having one of my friends drive me home from somewhere, and knowing that we won’t get into a crash anytime soon.

Seeing deer in the backyard

Bake cookies for fun.

~ Stacy N. 

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A bucket list

It’s been roughly nineteen months since I first posted on this blog. And it’s still going, by now I’m on my three hundredth post. While two hundred and ninety-nine posts ago, I would have just posted about my writing and not really talk about other topics. By now, I’ve written about bullying to netiquette rules with everything else in between. There has been sadness, happiness, anger, apologies and the typical human emotions you find anywhere else. And through all of that, there has been me posting all this and you reading most of it.

And I got to say thank you. It’s really nice of you to stick by me even if my posts occasionally suck or when I don’t post.

Now onto the post.

Bucket list – a list of things you want to do before you die.

What’s on my bucket list.

• Have a typewriter.
• Write at least 40 K on said typewriter.

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• Learn how to drive
• Get my driver’s license

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• Explore France (not just Paris).
• Live in France for a couple of months. 

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• Travel to Europe (England, Italy)
• Travel to New York

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• Learn how to speak more Vietnamese
• Learn how to speak more French.
• Learn Italian

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• Publish my book (not self-publishing)
• Become a paid author.

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• Hang out with someone under the stars.
• Get married under the stars (silly, I know, but it’s romantic.)

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• Learn how to play One Thing by One Direction on the piano. 

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• Read every Dr. Seuss Book there is. 

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• Be a kid again for one day.

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• Have a long-term pen pal

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• Have a glass turret built against the side of my house.

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So what’s on your bucket list? Is it to travel the world, become a bestselling author, meet your favorite band, etc? Comment below because I am curious about what’s on your bucket list. Now, I should get going. Please have an amazing day/night.

Love, 

 P.S. Enter the contest my friend eshy is hosting, it ends on July 2. And opinions are needed here. 

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A [field] trip to a french restaurant

On this rainy mostly cloudy day, today, I had to wear a white dress (with pink flowers) with black wedge heels. It was of course kind of cold, as you might expect on a day that just rained. The day was also a bit dark yet light in a way that made you hope that everything might turn out to be okay in the end.

I was glad that I had my jacket with me, for without it my teeth would be chattering and I would have gotten sick twice in one month. I was also glad that the yellow school bus was warm, and not a freezer, because that would have been bad, very, very bad. 

It was a squished, forty-five minute bus ride. The bus completely full, filled with more French deux kids than last year. While most of the kids from French trois (including moi) were around the bus somewhere. The ride was boring, filled with looking out the window, making up stories in my head, hearing some of the still obnoxious eight grade kids, talking, messing with my camera, etc.

It was why I was excited when the bus finally reached the property of the French restaurant. After passing through a gate, up a slightly long driveway, passing through another gate, and finally reaching the parking lot, we were here. We were finally here ^.^

And this time, we were fortunate enough to eat first. Unlike where last where, we had to wait a long time, walk around in the gardens while it was slightly raining (what is it with going to the French restaurant in the rain?), and generally just freeze our *derrières off. All the while we were waiting to be let inside the fortunately warm (not very animal friendly in terms of art) lobby. Before going up the stairs to one of the dining areas. 

After looking for a spot to sit with anyone, my friend **Johanna and I finally found a spot by the windowed doors, with a person from the French deux class joining us.

There was a bit of waiting and ordering, and then came the five course meal. This was a lot considering that I had to pay $28 to go.

First course: appetizer, escargot

Not that bad, trust me, I had about two this year, two last year. 

Second course: Raspberry sorbet to wash it down.

Very berry-ish, and light

Third course: salad with no meat, and a roll

Too much green, slightly strong crust, but still good

Fourth course: main course, vegetarian ravioli

It was either that or the chicken, and since I had chicken last year...
And no, I’m not a vegetarian… I think.

Fifth course: Dessert, a chocolate crepe with vanilla ice cream

This one was definitely my favorite. ^.^

Simply because of the ice cream, and no strange cooking alcohol after taste. 

And I think that’s it for today, so come back around tomorrow for what I saw in the gardens of the French restaurant, if you want.

***Au revoir ya voir plus tard

 * Butt/back

** I changed her name, for privacy reasons. 

*** Good bye and see ya later. 

 Quick french vocab: Deux - two
Trois - three

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Some writing tips

I can give you a million websites, that has a bunch of writing tips. All going to say the same thing in their own weird little way. But I found this is pretty good, it's from SparkLife, and I find it helpful. Well  here are some of the tips.
The rest of the tips are right here if you were wondering.

1. Do not follow any rules. 
There is no correct way to enter the writing world. Ask ten different writers how they got started, and you’ll get ten different responses. Some may have gone to journalism school, but most have not. I took only two or three writing courses at school, including Business Writing and the mandatory and utterly horrible Composition 101. And yet, without any experience or even a writing degree, at the end of my senior year I was offered a freelance gig at a national magazine with a circulation of 1.2 million. A year later, I was hired as an associate editor. No one told me how to do it. I just sent out silly writing samples that took me a few days to write. Meanwhile, my friends who all slaved away at writing workshops and literature camp hated me because I was getting paid to write despite the fact that I had never used a semicolon correctly. (I use them to replace the letter O. Is that wr;ng?)

2. Go to college.
Contrary to my last statement, college is important. Few, if any, media outlets will even look at writing clips from someone who has only a high school degree. Go to college. But…

3. Major in anything you dang well want to.
I never studied creative writing. You can major in anything and still become a writer. I majored in broadcasting. A writing degree may help, but I wouldn’t recommend it. And my reasons are three.

A. A good editor will identify talent regardless of your education background.
B. Some (not all) writing courses are detrimental to young writers because they are taught by angry, out-of-touch, lifelong losers. No one taught me how to write funny articles. If I handed my stories to an English professor, she would rip them to shreds and shout, “The semicolon is not an O!” And yet, here I am getting paid for my words. Weird, right? [Waves to all angry English teachers in the world.]
C. A book of poetry written by an English major? Yawn. A book of poetry written by a physical education major? Well, now I’m interested.

4. Read everything.
This is a no-brainer, but let me stress the importance of reading a wide variety of books. Sticking with one genre or one author is not allowed! You must branch out. Read the weirdest, stupidest, and worst books you can find. Much can be learned by reading ridiculous literature. To help find dumb books, play Dan’s Used Book Game.

Step One: Visit a used book store with your friends.
Step Two: Each person finds a bizarre and goofy book on the shelves. Use pre-set rules, such as, “The book cover must be green and feature a wolf.”
Step Three: Buy the books.
Step Four: Stand in a circle outside the store. Make everyone trades books by handing the book to the person on their left. That person MUST read the book handed to him, or else he loses.
Step Five: Laugh and eat cheese fries.
Step Six: Write up hilarious book reports to prove that you’ve read the book. You can also set up point values for things you find in the books. (Like murmurs.)

This is a fun game, and I guarantee you will learn more about writing by reading awful books than you will by reading War and Peace eight times.

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