the start of summer '13

 the forestry above and around golden gardens beach for a huge end of year bbq

luiza at our friend mike's birthday party

  

the lovely willa

 nick

willa and mike

hiding out in one of the bedrooms

the morning after

pictures taken from the end of prefinals week to the end of finals week. hopefully i'll get to blog and perhaps document this summer more, it definitely helps being around so many friends who are fellow photographers. haha. i've spent the end of this week meeting people who i've only known by name online. it's so surreal to be able to meet so many incredible and talented people.

i'm leaving this sunday for san jose, and from there, i'm going to be at stanford university taking summer classes and doing an internship. this hasn't been the first time that a summer has just fallen into place naturally but i love it. i already have more photos that i plan to put up! talk soon. 

the pursuit of happiness

rokas while he was still an alive, breathing, sentient creature

i suck at blogging. you know, i'm pretty sure i'm one of the worst creative writers out there. not trying to fish for compliments- i mean it. there are people out there who can spin incredible tales with only a few words, placed in the right order (haikus, anyone?) but me... i just write whatever's on my mind.

the campus quad bathed in golden sun

today was a good day. i don't know why exactly, because it should have been the exact opposite; i barely got any sleep the night before and literally fell asleep in psych discussion. but sometimes i get these random flashes of pure contentedness. i don't know if i'm the only one. does anyone else get them too? where you can be doing the most random thing; nothing even slightly extraordinary; and suddenly feel like everything is going to be okay. like all your stress just melted away. it's kind of like a runner's high, except i was only hanging up my clothes when it happened. i just felt..happy, all of a sudden. haha. i sound so nutters. but whatever.

outside the living room window

but in other news, i'm currently taking a french and a philosophical psychology class amongst others. i like the latter, it really makes you think about things like human nature from a variety of perspectives. it's so nice to be able to listen to other peoples ideas in class. suddenly i don't feel like such an oddity for thinking about existentialism, the human soul, etc etc i won't bore you too much, haha. but i do enjoy that class a lot. even if the reading is like hieroglyphs 99% of the time.

rokas passed away after a few days of being sick. i wish i was a better pet owner so i could've healed him up in time. but i guess every experience is a learning experience. tu me manques, et je t'adore avec mon cœur tout, mon petite ami. this is how i last saw him.

the lovely eleanor petry

double rainbow. from my living room window.

sometimes it's so hard to achieve a balance in living. the right amount of time spent studying, hanging out with friends, exercising, photographing. i wish i could photograph all the time but i can't, i've hardly picked up my camera all quarter. and i wish i could go out and explore seattle like i did in freshman year with my friends but sometimes i can't do that either. school can be so restricting sometimes. but i think that's just because i'm terrible at time management..oh well. maybe i need siri (just kidding, i switched to android and only carry my old iphone around for instagram now.) anyways. until next time, whenever that may be.

not quite home

it's almost 2am here. i'm writing this in milan (a beautiful city, but one that's still so foreign). there's less than 4 hours until i'll have to pack my bags for cinque terre, a group of five beautiful italian towns along the mediterranean coast. it's one of those moments where you know you should sleep but can't, but that's alright. every day i'm somewhere new and the sound of trains has become so familiar and constant i almost never have a quiet moment- so i've grown accustomed to savoring them in the peace of night, even if it means i have to forgo sleep. the sound of lilting italian speech floats through the open window. to me the italian language sounds like song. the sound of indistinguishable chatter comes and goes. all is quiet again.

cityscape of london

i've been abroad for a week now. travelling through england and visiting the big cities of london, bath, and oxford. having never been in europe before it's hard to even tear my eyes away from all the sights. i remember being captivated by the sight of big ben and then westminster abbey- i don't even know what it is that makes old architecture so fascinating to me. but i love it.

the sky above the roman-built city of bath, england

being able to travel is my dream and now i'm living it. however despite all of this, i still find myself missing home. seattle. a few months i would've said home was hong kong, the city i lived the last two years of my high school in. but now- seattle. why? why do i miss a city that i don't have any family or relatives in? i barely knew a thing about seattle before i chose to go there for university, but somehow i've made my home there. even though i move dorms every year. it's a little disconcerting to me that i (so soon!) wish i can go back. especially since i'm supposed to be living it up here, on the other side of the world.

in kensington palace, there was a little room where we could write postcards to the queen. (corny, but) this is what i wrote.

i know it'll probably go away soon though. i think i'm just homesick because i'm not used to being away from seattle for so long. anyways, the best way to stop missing home is to stop thinking about home in the first place. right?

primavera

sunset light

rowdy yet creative singers, i think they sang something about me and a camera as i snapped this, haha!

girl at the zoo

coffee shop reflections

at the university district street fair

after hours 

 valerie and her boyfriend

 zoo visitors finding their way around

i've spent thirty hours over the last five weeks watching this guy's antlers grow..yeah, we're best friends. 

everyone meet goodwyn. 

 :)

flowers from my parents for my birthday. proof that your entire family can be across the world and still surprise you, haha

it's so unbelievable that school is ending now. my second year in college. i'm over halfway done, isn't that weird? in a few days i'll turn in my last paper of the quarter- it's for psychology of music- and it'll be summer. i want so badly to go camping and swimming in the lake again. it's easy to miss things like that when you're occupied with schoolwork, but when it's gone you realize what you've been missing. x

another candle

today i will turn twenty years old. it feels weird to say that i'm leaving my teenage years- there's no turning back. in a lot of ways i still feel like a child, but for me it's a good thing. growing older doesn't mean growing bored, and i've decided long ago that i'll never want that. always look at the world with fresh eyes, i tell myself, and age won't mean a thing. because things like that keep you youthful.

i had a conversation with a close friend a few days ago. we were talking about whether people 'change'. can someone really change their personality? it doesn't seem likely, does it, considering that personality is defined as an 'enduring characteristic'. he told me that people can't change. that who you are is determined by genes and perhaps a bit of environment. but even environment, he said, doesn't matter after puberty- so thirteen or fourteen. i don't think so though. perhaps there are some people who once set, stay that way. but i believe that there are also people who can change, through pure self motivation.

this is admittedly a view that i hold onto from personal experience. you see when i was younger, i wasn't the most aware of other people and how they felt. i didn't know it at the time but i was mean- i didn't say anything rude or insulting upfront, but it was just little things in the way i acted. i'd insist on doing things my way. it would bother me if i wasn't right, even for the smallest thing. i thought of a conversation as being a debate and i always had to have my say.

looking back i put part of it on my naivety (which to a degree, i still have), but most of it on simple ignorance. as bad as it may sound though, and as much as i regret not having been more considerate and giving other people more trust, i am happy that at least i'm truly aware of it now. everyday i aspire to be a better person. i have many people in my life who i look up to, and for that i am grateful.

on a brighter note though, here are some images i photographed at the woodland park zoo last week. the boy in the images is henry, a singer/pianist. i've yet to catch him singing or even humming a tune but i'm determined!

 the canopy above the aviary

 eager children

 resting in a sunlit patch

 a man sitting by the orangutan exhibit

 passerby

 a meerkat. quite possibly the cutest animal ever.

 pointing out a slumbering tiger

me and a jaguar

poison dart frogs 

 a swan amongst flamingos

 child backlit with a tank of fish in the brown bear exhibit

i am 20

weiiiiiirdddd

ps. these are all photographed on my iphone 4