April Update: ten (mostly) important things of the past month.

1. Kishi Bashi released his new album, "Lighght", and it has my favorite song from his Charlottesville show, "Q&A". This romantic song is performed live in the video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeAUlx4Gea8

And like the uploader, I had no idea what the title was until the album was released. I can't hear if he says the title in my video of the performance, and since the chorus is in Japanese, it was hard for me to decide what to call it. Finally, my favorite song is here (with a name)!

Album cover...

2. As of this moment, I have finished 3 out of 5 classes with an 'A'! Here's to hoping my Communications exam tomorrow and Biology exam Wednesday go well. :)

3.  My friends and I went to see "The Wind Rises", Hayao Miyazaki's last film, at the Lyric in Blacksburg. It was a great movie and a wonderful night.

4. Jiro in the aforementioned movie was just adorable and totally stole my heart. He had classy suits, awesome hats, an amazing scarf, cute glasses, and flyaway hair. His quirky personality and interactions with people around him made me just want to hug him. Seriously. That scene when he wanted to give the kids a cake? When his boss said that they thought he would marry an airplane? Every singe time he got lost in daydreaming? Not to mention the scenes of him testing his airplane in the mountains with his girl. Uwaaaahhh~~~ Ahem. He was so cute.

5.  I need to photo spam you, of course-

One of my favorite outfits from the beginning scenes.

Feverishly working...

Dream sequences were a consistent theme throughout. Jiro would dream that he was speaking with and drawing inspiration from his role model, Italian plane designer Caproni.

6. We went to the street fair in Blacksburg-

7. We also brought home a haul from Oasis

The U-Gua, rice drink, and dried cuttlefish are heavenly. Sac Sac never disappoints. :)

8. I should have more to say in this post. I have a total of seven weeks of work left (blah...) and eight weeks until I leave for South Korea, which is actually a nice thought. I'm hoping time flies, but hoping it creeps at the same time. Augh. I feel so indecisive recently and very conflicted. I know I shouldn't dwell on those feelings and proceed with my life, but of course, doubt is determined to polute every good thing. I have so much academic/study burnout, as my parents called it. Or you could say it is senioritis, though I've felt it for my entire sophomore year, a pretty long time. I'm having to learn to take my B and live with it instead of glorifying the 4.0 to extremes. Of course, there is my tendency to be nostalgic and look back too much. I compare my current life to the happy high school years and get so discouraged trying to recreate that for myself, when really, I should be thankful for what I have. And who says it can't ever get any better than it was? :)


9. I'm looking forward to these things in May-
Cooking all kinds of foods
Excercising and getting out more
Reading to kids at Spiller when I'm NOT on the clock
Going out with friends
Warm weather
Redecorating my room  (and being otherwise creative)
Cleaning
Studying Korean as much as I can

10. Eventually, I will work up the courage to post some of my recent poems to this blog and the motivation to post pictures of some recipes I've tried, along with some pictures from my trip to Namsan tower that I never published on here.

So, here's to crawling out of the cavern that is academic burnout and sophomore year and trying to look at the world positively!

-Argentia