To those who have graduated in the class of 2009: Salutations, fellow graduates.

To those who have not: Hello to you, too.

I turned 18 in May. Now I can legally smoke and be tried as an adult in court. How wonderful.
But for my 18th birthday, my dad and I went to a Vietnamese restaurant (since my brother and mom hate Vietnamese food, and they were on the East Coast at a family reunion that weekend, it was one of the few opportunities we had to go). Then we went to a high school comedy play about Moliere, a 17th century French playwright. The play was brilliant.

So I graduated the first week of June and had finals for both my college and high school classes during the same week. The list of finals for college consisted of:

-U.S. History (post-WWII through the 1960s)
-Animation 101 (I had to create a fight scene between a pirate and a ninja—the pirate won, naturally)
-Art History from the 1880s-early 1900s (everything from Munch’s The Scream to Van Gogh’s Night Café)

My high school finals were easier than I expected. This was simply because I studied harder for them than I did for my college classes, since the high school finals were cumulative, and the college finals (except for animation) were not. My HS finals:

-Honors American Government (EVERYTHING about it.)
-Honors English (For Example, What’s an appositive? What social ills are defined in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?)
-Human Rights (We did a simulation in which we solved—or tried to solve—a genocide outbreak in Turkey.)

So I got straight As in all my classes, and a few weeks ago I went to the Senior Awards Ceremony for my school. I got six awards: for perfect attendance, for recognition of a $500 scholarship I got at my college and a Presidential scholarship I got from NY’s Kings College, for a $300 scholarship I got for writing an essay about the significance of my 8th grade English teacher, for having a 4.0 GPA, and for getting a high score on at least six subjects during state testing in high school.

My friends joked that it was an awards night just for me. I did probably get more awards than most seniors there.

On the day I graduated, I went to parties all day. At 8:30 A.M. I went to IHOP with my friends, then, because my mom and brother were at a homeschooling field trip to Whole Foods, I had to hang out at the house of my friend Rachel while I was waiting to go to the house of my friend T.J. at noon. In the meantime, Rachel and I watched the Colbert Report, Mythbusters, and The John Stewart Show. She has three cats: Cotton, an old, white cat; and Midnight and Lucky, two younger black cats that are sister and brother. I brushed Midnight and Lucky, and Rachel attempted to brush Cotton.

The problem is that older cats at one point stop grooming themselves, so their fur gets matted and almost impossible to brush. So when she brushed out Cotton’s neck, the same amount of fur came out as the amount of fur that was groomed out of Midnight’s entire body. The poor thing. <.>

Then we played Mad Libs at T.J.’s house because it was raining outside, and we were originally going to play an abbreviated form of Humans vs. Zombies, which is an outdoors game (look it up on Google, if you wish).

After that, we went to graduation. The few hours during which we prepared to and actually graduated were the only hours that day that were sunny. When we were driving home, it started to rain again. (Sounds like God had some perfect timing up his sleeve, ne?)

So right now I’m on vacation with my mom and brother, and I’m supposed to be in Yellowstone right now. But I am currently stuck in Rexburg, a little college town in Idaho. It’s where Brigham Young University, Idaho is located.

Last night, a deer hit our car as we were driving from a crater national park back to our motel in West Yellowstone. My mom swerved around a deer running across the road and avoided it. But another deer was following the buck in its shadow, and my mom didn’t see it till it was too late. So the front left side of out car is smashed in, including the headlight. None of us were hurt, luckily, but there was some deer blood smeared on the side of our car. The deer scrammed as soon as it was hit, but a few miles away we heard some loud cries of an injured deer. I know that our plans have been ruined by that deer, but I still feel sorry for it. It was just following its friend.

So here’s the moral of the story: If your friends do something stupid, don’t follow ‘em. You might just get killed.

The car will probably take 4-5 days to be repaired. We were supposed to leave tomorrow and get back to CA on Thursday, but that’s certainly not going to happen.

I was supposed to go to my former youth pastor’s wedding this Saturday, but now I won’t be able to get home in time. T_T I’ve known him for six years now, and he’s been divorced ever since I met him. So to see him marrying someone he loves is wonderful. I’m just sad I can’t go to the wedding.

Ah well. Such is life.

~Owari.~