Green Gal

I've had a year full of learning, experience, memories, stress, growth, and excitement. I can only hope that next year is just as enlightening and full of adventure. I got this idea from Yes and Yes . Here is a brief list of the things I've accomplished this year: - Helped run four clubs at my school--Photography, Environmental, Drama, Human Rights. - Hiked to the top of Half Dome. - Became vegan. - Applied to college and was accepted to three --Prescott College, San Francisco State, Humboldt State (so far!). - Taught a native plant uses class for Halloween. - Hiked through a creek and wrote an article about a nature summer camp. - Experienced the Welcome Home for Sully Sullenberger . - Wrote my first published article for the California PTA on my school district's "green" efforts. - Became a member of a local cycling group and rode my bike a lot. - Directed a one act with my best friend and was a technician for the first time in my life. - Met some new people a...

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, and I wish you a Happy New Year full of surprises, new memories, great friends, and new wisdom! I said I would be posting my research paper as my next post, but it seems to be hidden in my mom's computer, so we'll just have to wait for that... Instead, I'll share something new with you. I'm fascinated by world cultures, which makes sense since I want to be an anthropologist. I am particularly interested in historic Native American culture. I love ethnobotany (plant uses in different cultures) and learning about traditions, spiritual beliefs, and language. A replica tipi in the Pinecrest interpretive Mi-Wuk village, across from the ranger station. (Photo taken by me) My best friend Alexys grew up around the Mi-Wuk tribe of Tuolumne City in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Though she is Cherokee and Choctaw, her family ended up living by the Mi-Wuk Reservation. Her grandparents had traveled to California sometime after being relocate...

To those of you who celebrate, Merry Christmas!! I'll be back next week with a post including my extinction research paper. See you then! -Green Gal

What's got acrobats, spider contortionists and trampoline-bouncing grasshoppers? OVO , of course! This Sunday, I attended Cirque du Soleil's OVO (meaning Egg) in San Francisco with my best friend, my dad, my step-mom, and a family friend. The show was fantastic--and all about insects! The performers' strength is practically superhuman and the artistic director is an utter genius. The costumes, too, were incredibly creative. Grasshoppers complete with hind legs, spiders with creepy-crawly prickly hair on their arms and lower legs, spiders on stilts, a fly with a cap made of bug-eye designs. But this is all expected at any Cirque du Soleil performance. It goes without saying that the show will be fabulous, over-the-top, and that the performing will be beyond normal human capacity. What I want to share with you is the appreciation I have for the theme they chose for OVO . A spider on his tight rope thread. The insect theme was a superb idea. The show takes you to a smaller ...

The Winter Solstice is here! The shortest day of the year is today, so from tomorrow until the Summer Solstice in June, days will lengthen. Some consider the Winter Solstice a rebirth, a celebration of mid-winter. Interestingly, Christians celebrate Christmas around the same time as the Winter Solstice, taking folk traditions and Pagan celebrations of Yule and other ancient rituals and combining them with the story of the birth of Christ to create a holiday that coincides with other festivities, perhaps to encourage more people to accept Christianity or to make Pagan celebrations more acceptable. The Pagans and other folk cultures celebrate the birth of the Sun . The Christians celebrate the birth of the Son . Christmas songs of today often find their roots in older folk traditions. German songs like "O Christmas Tree" (originally "O Tannenbaum" ), "Silent Night" ("Stille Nacht"), and "Ode to Joy" ("An die Freude") have b...

Today I spoke with a woman from the admissions department at Prescott College in Arizona. She informed me that I've been accepted to the school, and that I'm being given some scholarships! I would love to go to Prescott, but it is the first place I've heard from so for now I can't say whether or not I'll end up actually going there. It is an expensive school and it's far away, but I am so glad to know I got in! I'd like to share with you the essay I applied with: Before I could even speak, my dad read to me—poems, stories, T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare. After much practice, I had the “To be or not to be” soliloquy mostly memorized by age seven. In the community college English class my dad teaches, he shows a tape of seven-year-old me donning a black turtleneck, sitting in a rocking chair, and reciting Hamlet’s famous lines about contemplating “that sleep of death.” My dad says it’s his favorite film version of the scene. Years later, my dream job was to be an E...

My college applications are all in. Transcripts have been requested. Essays are tucked away in files that I will not look at until next April when I won't stress if I left out a comma. The college application process is sure a journey, but I know the destination will be worth it. I have at least three weeks until I find out from anyone--but most likely it will be months before I hear back. I have to file my FAFSA, and then I just wait by the door for that letter. And now, for a list of where I applied... UC Irvine San Francisco State University Sonoma State University Rocky Mountain College University of San Francisco My major of choice for most is anthropology, but for some schools that don't have anthropology or have a stronger environmental studies program, I applied to major in environmental studies. Prescott is one of those places where the environment is already part of the school's philosophy, and if I went there, I would want to study to become a naturalist because ...