Blog Every Day in July: Day 17, Playing Catch Up

So I don't usually do entries about day to day things, and I'm not really sure why....it's a great way to get posts in when I'm supposed to be blogging every day.  Anyways, here's what's been happening in my life:

-I've been taking advantage of my 21-year-old status.  My parents claim that I've been "going out a lot" but I've been out like maybe 4 times all summer, and it was mostly for peoples' birthdays.  It's pretty exciting to be able to go out and order drinks and get carded and all that good stuff!  I didn't think I would enjoy that, but I definitely am.  For my BFF Sarah's birthday we went out to a club and she rented an apartment in Philly for a bunch of us to stay in, and that was awesome.

I've been experimenting with the panoramic photo function on my phone.  I'm not very good at it.
But OMG this was the apartment and it was so cute and I love exposed brick and I want to live hereeeee.

I took the train into Philly by myself for the FIRST TIME which was monumental for me.  Don't laugh.  Sometimes it feels like I'm hitting milestones in my life like super late, but at the same time it feels like they are passing by really quickly.  Weirrrd.  On another note, I feel surprisingly comfortable in a city.  I've been spending a lot of time in Philly this summer, and I don't find it as scary as I thought it would be.  I never thought I would be the kind of person to consider city life (again, don't laugh) but I think it's definitely an option for me in the future.

-I'm getting real tired of living in my bedroom real fast.  Since we're doing all this work in the room that I am about to move into, I have literally no motivation to clean the one I currently use.  There's all this extra furniture hanging around and it's super cluttered and the surface of my desk is covered in crap.  And it's like all my fault, but I just don't want to tidy up.  I'm already dragging my feet with moving stuff from this room to the new one...I know it's going to be a pain in the ass trying to switch over for good.

-I briefly considered doing a juice diet or some kind of detox.  And then I remembered that I just had a dream about making brownies and it was SO REAL and those brownies were SO GOOD.  Soooo the juice/detox diet is clearly not a thing that's going to happen.  I dunno....the healthy living goal is kind of a sore subject at the moment.  More on that some other time.

-My friend Meredith came back from Italy!!  She's been studying abroad for 7 months, and we've all been anxiously awaiting her return.  Conveniently enough she managed to return home the day before her 21st birthday.  We went out to this awesome Mexican restaurant in the city to celebrate her arrival/watch her get her first drink in the U.S.  It was very exciting to see my friend, but even more exciting was the food at this restaurant.  The restaurant was called Cantina Los Caballitos, and O M G the food.

The iPhone flash is a little ridic. Clockwise from
the top left: Meredithwith her first drink, tres leches cake,
chorizo tacos.

I had these chorizo tacos that spoke to me on a spiritual level.  Ever since I went to Spain when I was fifteen, I've been slightly obsessed with chorizo.  When I saw they had chorizo tacos on the menu I knew it was meant to be.  But I did manage to save room for their tres leches cake, which was maybe the best tres leches cake I've ever had.  No exaggeration.  If the tacos were some kind of spiritual awakening, then the tres leches cake was like an encounter with God.  God spoke to me through cake.  I'm a cake prophet now.


-My town's library/the library my sister works at had an open mic night for teens and she asked me to perform a couple of songs to encourage people to get up and perform.  I used to do open mic nights in high school and a little bit of college, but I didn't do any last summer or this summer, and it was nice to perform for people again.  I've never written any original songs, but I like performing my favorites and singing for people and I kind of forgot about how much I enjoyed it.  I definitely get caught up in the education side of my major, but once in a while it's good to have a reminder of how important the performance aspect of it.  Performance is all about sharing with other people.

Still struggling with the panoramic photo function.

Also the open mic night itself was super fun!  Our library has a small patio outside of the cafe, and Melissa and her volunteers dressed it up with twinkling lights and paper stars which was fun and summer-y.  They also had a bake sale and a blank canvas to paint together, and bubbles to blow at the performers.  Some of the people there started joking about how the library was suddenly becoming a hipster library, which made me chuckle.  I was super impressed with how supportive the teens in attendance were of each other, and how insightful all of their poems were (since a lot of the performances were poetry readings).  I'm a little jealous that I didn't have a place where events like this were held when I was a teenager (SO LONG AGO, I KNOW), but I'm also really excited to maybe one day teach students who are enthusiastic about being members of an engaged and supportive community.  I've been skeptical about working with teenagers when I start student teaching because they aren't really that much younger than I am, and I'm afraid that I'll just want to roll my eyes at the things they do because I'm not far removed enough from memories of how ridiculous I was at that age.  But if I ever get the chance to work with teenagers that are like the ones I hung out with tonight, then I think it'd all be worth re-living the awkwardness of adolescence.

-I like hanging out with my sister's cat.

She took a selfie on my phone.