Thanksgiving '11

For the first time, Thanksgiving was held at my house. Usually it's at my grandparents house with my entire intermediate family. However, it was decided that from now on it would just be my immediate family ( Mom, Dad, and my siblings) at our house. My mother made everything from scratch and it was all very delicious. Three days of cooking was definitely worth it!

Perfect Mommy. Thanks for a beautiful Thanksgiving.

Imma Nerd

Nerd /nərd/ 

noun: 

1   1. A foolish or contemptible person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious: "one of those nerds who never asked a girl to dance". 

2.    2. An intelligent, single-minded expert in a particular technical discipline or profession.

I love Doctor Who.
I love Star Wars.
I love The Big Bang Theory
I love Star Trek.
I love Harry Potter.
I love reading.
I am a nerdfighter (If you don't know what that is, click anywhere in this sentence.)

I absolutely love all those things but I would have to say that Doctor Who is my favorite. Or at least I have became the most obsessed with. It never gets boring and it is so much pretty popular.

The Tenth Doctor's sonic screwdriver

If you are also a fellow nerd this is a great site to take a look at all the awesome merchandise from your favorite shows!! CLICK. Some of this stuff if so cool!

How awesome is that!

They don't come much nerdier. Just to prove it to you. I have even made a video about it in the past.

John Green Week

Hi.
There's this thing called John Green week from January 3rd to January 10th, leading up to his new novel, The Fault in Our Stars, or "TFIOS" as it's known in nerdfighteria.
I have a lot of explaining to do.

"John Green is the New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns. He is also the coauthor, with David Levithan, of Will Grayson, Will Grayson. He was 2006 recipient of the Michael L. Printz Award, a 2009 Edgar Award winner, and has twice been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Green’s books have been published in more than a dozen languages.

In 2007, Green and his brother Hank ceased textual communication and began to talk primarily through videoblogs posted to youtube. The videos spawned a community of people called nerdfighters who fight for intellectualism and to decrease the overall worldwide level of suck. (Decreasing suck takes many forms: Nerdfighters have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight poverty in the developing world; they also planted thousands of trees around the world in May of 2010 to celebrate Hank’s 30th birthday.) Although they have long since resumed textual communication, John and Hank continue to upload three videos a week to their youtube channel, vlogbrothers. Their videos have been viewed more than 75 million times, and their channel is one of the most popular in the history of online video. He is also an active (if reluctant) Twitter user with more than 1.1 million followers."

There. That pretty much explained it all.

Also since I can't explain it better myself: Taken from "Vickiiatoria"

"BROTHERHOOD 2.0: A project undertaken by John and Hank Green, in which they were not allowed to communicate via text for a year. ‘Two Brothers, One Video Blog, 365 Days of Textless Communication, It’s a whole new kind of brotherhood.’

DFTBA: An acronym usually meaning Don’t Forget To Be Awesome, though it has an unimaginable number of meanings. Some of which can be found here. It is often used as a farewell by Nerdfighters. If said to you it should be seen as a compliment, as the person saying it has recognised that you are in fact made of AWESOME. It is also the name of a record company founded by Hank Green and Alan Lastufka that signs youtube artists whose talents may otherwise go unrecognised.

Hank Green

 

HANK GREEN: The younger brother of John Green, musician, co-founder of Nerdfighteria with John Green and co-founder of DFTBA Records with Alan Lastufka. His albums include: So Jokes, This Machine Pwns N00bs and his upcoming album Ellen Hardcastle.

John Green

JOHN GREEN: The older brother of Hank Green, award winning author and co-founder of Nerdfighteria. His works include: Looking For Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns and Will Grayson, Will Grayson. 

NERDFIGHTER: A person who his proud of being a nerd, has taken on the title, nerdfighters are known for watching the vlogbrothers on youtube and doing their best to decrease worldsuck.

NERDFIGHTERIA: Though Nerdfighteria is not a physical location, it is an island where the awesome of all the nerdfighters in the world is joined.  The two rules of Nerdfighteria, and really the world, are 1. Don’t be mean; and 2. DFTBA.

NERDFIGHTER-LIKE: Love between two nerdfighters. A song about nerdfighter like was written and sung by Lauren Fairweather and later covered by Hank and Katherine Green.

THE NERDFIGHTER ‘GANG SIGN’:

 

The Nerdfighter Salute/Gang Sign

VLOGBROTHERS: John and Hank Green’s youtube channel.

WORLDSUCK: All the sucky things in the world combined. Worldsuck has been known to include: malaria, murder and poverty. One of a nerdfighters main aims in life is to decrease worldsuck. Whether it be just being nice to everyone or dedicating their lives to charity."


Now I guess I should do some of my own writing because I have been stealing everyone else's. This girl called Liz publicized the who idea of John Green Week. Click the link on the bottom of this post to see what she said about it. I will definitely spread that whole week rereading his books. I will do my best to make book reviews for each once I finish. At the very least I want to reread An Abundance of Katherines, which was my favorite one.
-DFTBA

Liz's Post: Clicky hereth
John Green's website: http://johngreenbooks.com/
Hank's nerdfighter blog: CLICK
DFBTA: http://dftba.com/

Travels [End of 2011]

As I mentioned before I have traveled before. I love airports. I have gone to many places. Here's a map of all the places I have been to so far in my life:

Bolivia. Hawaii. Dominican republic (couple of times). Bahamas. Mexico.

England: Once in London, Bath, Stonehedge, and some other place. Twice to Manchester, as stops to and from Greece. Poland: 3 or 4 times I believe.

3 different trips. Once to Montreal and Quebec. Then a cruise to Nova Scotia. Then to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.

Minus Hawaii. I went there when I was not even a year old, so it still counts, sorta. I probably forgot a couple states. I don't remember all of them. I've been to so many because my family and I went on a two week road trip, back when gas was cheep and we had a big car. It's still my favorite vacation of all time.

I've gotten around ^_^ I just need to get farther. I still haven't been to Africa, Australia, Antarctica, or Asia. and I WANT TO GO TO THE ARCTIC CIRCLE.

I can't wait to see where life will take me

Over seas to foreign countries

Paris, Sydney, LA, Fiji, Asia

The idea of not knowing, scary but exhilarating

The world will not go unexplored, I'll make sure it that

A Journalist?

I think I want to be a journalist. I'm not sure. I love traveling. I love writing. I love blogging ;). I love photography. That's what journalists do, innit?
There is a journalism elective at my school but I love art too much to switch. I'll try it out in college to see if it's right for me. I feel like it would be so much fun. Maybe have a column in the paper or a page in a magazine. I could write whatever I want. The world at my hands. I could stay which places were my favorite. I could stay which foods were the best and where. I could be a food critic at the same time!
I took about 800 photos when I went to Bolivia for 2weeks. that's just two weeks. Ahh <--excitement. That was the first vacation that I had a camera of my own for to take pictures. In the summer, I am going to the Everglades in Florida and to the Magical World of Harry Potter. I AM SO EXCITED. It'll be so much fun. We are driving there.
In the spring I'm going here:

Flicker. by bonjour.quebec.
Chateau Frontenac. It's a hotel!
 Nous allons aller en voiture a Quebec. Je parle francaise un peu. 

-I've gone here before when I was very little, so I don't remember much of it. I just remember that I loved it. We're going as a sort of sweet 16 present. I'm extremely excited. I can't wait to talk all about on here and post my pictures.

-I'm not sure about Africa yet. I don't think I'm ready to go on a plane by myself halfway across the world! I've never even spent a weekend by myself alone. Maybe the year after I'm not sure. I love airports though so I will probably find someplace to go on a plane this year. I sort of want to go on a PeopletoPeople trip, but it's probably over priced. I'll figure out something. 

-Maybe I'll go to Australia next summer. Maybe I'll go to Africa. Or maybe I'll take a tour of Europe.  Personally, I like the last one the best I think. It would probably only be to France and Italy. Those are the most exciting out of the ones I haven't been to. I sort of want to go to the Netherlands and Denmark though. I'm not exactly sure why. They just sound fun. Well, I do know why I want to go to Denmark. A) I want to see the Mermaid Statue B) Number the Stars by Lois Lowry took place there. It was my first "big girl" book I guess you could say. I always think of that book as the first serious one that I read.

-My goal in life, as most, probably, is to see the world. I want to go to as many countries as humanly possible. I want to learn as many languages as possible without my head exploding. I can't wait for my "Life" to start. I will see the world. I will.

-Maybe I'll live in Fiji. Maybe I'll live in London. 

I don't know yet. I just don't want to be a failure in life. I want to be successful. I want to be known as a good person. I have a lot of ambitions in life. They will get done. I HAVE FAITH IN MYSELF. 

Speaking of faith. read this. It pretty much explains the way I view religion. I didn't write it, but I couldn't have written it better myself.

Maybe I will be a journalist. That way the only person I have to depend on would be myself and I could do whatever the heck I want.- Free spirited.

KAM (Kindness Above Malice)

http://kindness-iha.blogspot.com/

That would be the link to the KAM chapter at my school. Check it out :)

What is KAM?
"Kindness Above Malice ~ KAM is a foundation started amidst a great loss, the suicide of Kameron Jacobsen. It will serve as a tribute to the short life that Kam lived and the eternal legacy he leaves for us to share with you.
Kameron, a victim of bullying himself, also defended those without a voice, those left behind by their peers. He was humble and compassionate, and he never asked for the recognition he so greatly deserved. As a foundation, we hope to acknowledge that compassion in others.
It will be the mission of this foundation to affirm those individual students that have raised the self esteem of another person thereby preventing the injury that results from bullying. We recognize that protecting and nurturing a high self esteem is the key to unlocking the motivating factors behind bullying, for both the bully and the victim. We also acknowledge that bullying comes in many different forms and from many different sources.
We as a society are aware that bullying is not only a factor in having some students not reach their full academic and social potentials, but when left unchecked, it can ultimately lead to the abject pain and desperation of teen suicide."

If you want to find out more about it here's the website: http://www.kindnessabovemalice.org/

kindnessabovemalice.org

Yesterday, November 12th, My friends and I went to Uno's Chicago Grill for a KAM fundraiser. There, we met the parents of Kameron and had a beautiful conversation with them both. They are both wonderful people.

KAM will change the world one day. Anti-bullying will become a "second nature" to generations to come, as Kevin Jacobsen (Kameron's father) put it.

After all, anything is possible.