The Lighthearted Wanderer

Here's Part 1 if you missed it:  http://claudelaine26.blogspot.com/2016/04/extended-about-me-part-15.html My love for reading stemmed from both my desire to shut out the world around me, as well as learn about characters and places beyond my own experience. I am unsure whether my affinity for reading contributed to doing well in school, or the other way around, but I know that the more I read, the more I learned and the easier school became. Throughout elementary school, I became known as the “smart” girl, an identity that I wholeheartedly embraced because it focused on something positive with which I actually resonated. In addition, I found that one of the few things my parents could agree upon was that I was especially smart, so of course I did everything I could to provide them with examples of how this was true. This worked out well for me, because through my books, I learned about new worlds and experiences I wanted to have once I left California.  In third grade, m...

Hi Blog-world!  I found one of my first grad school papers in my google drive, simply titled "Story" (I'm guessing the prompt was to write a mini-autobiography?), and it provided some great Friday re-motivation, as well as some good material to kickstart the blog. Basically, it's a more in depth look at my story and how I came into student affairs, and for some reason I feel like it's a good time to review and acknowledge my history. Without further ado, here's part 1 of 5:  The beginning is always tough to read...but I'm a big believer in that our past and trials have significant impacts upon each person's development.  Next parts over the next few days :)  Many people are surprised to hear that I am an only child, and yet I feel that my status as an only child made a profound impact upon my life and how I developed into the person I am today. Perhaps due to being born on December 26, I always had to share my birthday with the excitement of the ...

So clearly I didn't finish the #BEDM (Blog Every Day in May) topics, I basically stopped the second I hopped a plane to the East Coast for Boston, Brown, and family shenanigans. I can't say I regret it though, since I really had one of the best weeks of 2013 with so many wonderful people: I went to  Harpoon  for their brewery tour with the boys almost immediately after I flew into Boston. The tour was alright, a little long and since it only took place in two spots inside the brewery, it felt like a long time of standing and listening. The tasting portion at the end was pretty great though, we each received a small glass and had about 10-15 min to drink as much beer of different kinds as we wanted! Campus Dance is one of my favorite events at Brown, and this was my first year as an alum attending :). The weather was horrible and it rained and was cold and could have been really miserable, but when you're with people you really care about, it all just seems...

So yeah...I'm getting more and more behind on the posts...but I WILL get to all of them in some way, shape, or form!! And now, traditions:  My family is super close, especially at Christmastime. The extended family always comes over to our house for Christmas Eve meal and we open presents!  The Christmas decorations are always pretty much the same, but I love them. It is a pain to put them up and take them down (especially during the years I was away at school and just came home right before the holidays), and I know that my parents put up with it because they know it makes me so happy every year.    Can you blame me? My birthday is  the day after Christmas, you know.  Yup, that's right! My birthday is the day after Christmas (Boxing Day), and every year (except last year when I was in Japan) I've been able to spend my birthday at home with my family with Christmas decorations in the background. I think that makes my birthday ...

"Are you a collector? Maybe a bit of a hoarder? Tell us about something you like to collect. Or if you favour minimalism, perhaps tell us why?" I never liked the idea of labeling my shopoholic preferences as being a "collector" of that certain thing. When I was younger, it was Beanie Babies...yes, I had a lot of them, but did I really collect them? Not really, I thought, because I never aspired to have all the Beanie Babies, just the cute ones! Then when I got a little older, I did some travelling with my family. We visited a lot of places in California and on the Eastern seaboard, going up and down the coast from New York to Orlando twice or three times. And I started noticing that I had accumulated a lot of snowglobes that were really similar in style, so I made a conscious effort to buy snow globes of that type. Unfortunately, they all evaporated sometime during college when I wasn't living at home, and my parents packed them away or threw...

Sighs, well with less than an hour left until May 10 is over in my time zone, I'm stuck looking at this screen on my computer...seriously? So this post will be Blogger-app written, which to tell you the truth it wouldn't be that noticeable if I just left it unsaid, but I'm pretty sure all the pictures I upload for this post will end up at the bottom or something just slightly off like that. Apologies in advance! And as if on cue, the System Restore told me I can restart my computer now! Back to computer typing :) So here are my answers to the question, "If you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?" 1) If I could go anywhere in the world right now, I say that I would go... (I always get this movie and Where the Heart Is confused with one another.) ...anywhere but here. I am in such a traveling rut this past year. That might be an over exaggeration though, because probably wherever I ended up after coming back from a year i...

Day 5:  "What do you do to stay fit or be a healthy individual?" I'm the "big" one ;) Ahhh...I didn't like the sound of this one when I saw it on the calendar. Well, I didn't like the idea of writing on this topic, but actually reading   posts from other bloggers has been really nice, and in a way has helped me feel better about just getting on the computer and writing this post. Ever since I was a kid, I've always felt self-conscious about being bigger than the kids around me. When I was younger, it was mostly due to the fact that I was many years older than the a lot of the kids my family hung out with, but I didn't connect that until much later. During a Christmas party, one of the younger kids described me as "She's big" and I remember feeling like I wanted to die in my seat. What I didn't realize is that "big" probably just meant "tall", and probably any 9-yr-old girl would seem big to a 5-yr-old b...

Ranting about my my long distance undefined "relationship" with a boy I met at summer camp... What’s worse is, I realized that he likes me so much because: a) I was a girl that was nice to him… b)I live X miles away so he doesn’t have to learn how to do anything physical… c) because I like making people feel good about themselves, he always gets a nice pep talk about how smart and such when he talks to me… and d) (and I hate myself for this) since I act SWEET and CUTE he thinks he’s SMARTER than me and more DOMINANT than I am in other ways----SO PATRIARCHAL!!!!! An Archi Strong Independent Filipina Woman in the making, a little crazy, but in need of expressing herself ;)  And now I feel stupid, oh so stupid for being such a silly girl…and you know what? I’m gonna let him have it, even I never talk to him again, he has just ASSumed too much, crossed the line, AND IS MAKING ME FEEL LIKE I AM STUPID AND AWFUL AND MEAN…geez so I don’t sign on to aim for a while…deal with ...

The past week has been kind of ridiculous with regards to travel, here's the overview: Fri, Oct 14: Straight from school to Maiko station to Sannomiya to Osaka Itami airport Sat, Oct 15: Gakuentoshi -> Maiko station -> Shirahama (fail because the Nada Fighting festival got rescheduled to a different day) -> Himeji -> Itayado -> Gakuentoshi Sun, Oct 16: Gak -> Sannomiya -> Arima -> a round on the Kobe Port Liner -> Harborland Mon, Oct 17: Gak -> Kyoto (I won't even go into the travel fails on my part from this day) Tues, Oct 18: All over Kyoto with mom, boyfriend, and his parents :) and then back to Gak Wed, Oct 19: Gak -> Sannomiya -> Shin-Kobe -> Hiroshima to see castle and Peace Park Thurs, Oct 20: Hiroshima -> Miyajima island -> back to Gak Fri, Oct 21: an anomaly! just to school and back and today? maybe Osaka? Here's a pic from each day! Himeji Castle (with main tower under construction) Another Kobe...

Quite possibly one of the coolest things I've done :) After a morning of titas and titos fighting it out from indecision and uncertainty of what to do, the cousins and I took some initiative and decided to go scuba diving.   I asked the front desk in my broken Tagalog-English if they knew of a good place, and the lady promptly handed me a pamphlet and called the place for me. Even though it was raining, we were in luck! Open for business :) My 4 cousins and I (ages 22, 22, 20, 14, and 14) were the only ones going on the actual adventure, which we were promptly reminded of by our parentals who were so worried for our safety that they were trying to decide between them who would have to face their fears of drowning and claustrophobia to join us. In the end, we were able to convince them that we would be totally okay. After a corny 20 minute video about diving safety, our lead instructor Ben, a short muscular man with an awesome gold hoop earring, talked us through our lesson and what...