Savannah Smiles

It's been quite awhile since I posted! Most of this is because I haven't had much to see, another part is that I've realized this blog is going to be more of a collection of memories for Ksen and I, but that's alright.

Memorial Day weekend one of my close friends invited me to head to Savannah with her and her family.  With Tropical Storm Bonnie along the coast, it ended up being a very rainy weekend. Despite the fact the weather was less than perfect, we managed to make the most of our trip.

The first night we were supposed to go on a mini-cruise, but it was canceled due to weather. Instead, we went to a sushi place for dinner. It was pretty good and we had a fun time.

I ordered the spider rolls

We spent most of the weekend calling and FaceTiming some of our friends while we were stuck inside. One of my favorite parts of the trip was the evening we spent stalking people on Instagram, looking at dresses online, and buying ice cream in our pajamas. 

Though our rainy days were fun, on Monday we woke up to blue skies!

We only had a few hours left though, so we had to make them count. We ended up heading to one of her friend's houses for breakfast before heading out to search for places to take pictures. We were kicked off the golf course, but we did find a couple cute alternate places. 

Savannah's trees are some of my favorites

When we got back from pictures, we were allowed to take the golf cart out for a spin. It was a lot of fun, though it was way slower than I realized. 

Eunice in front of the golf car garage

That afternoon, we finally made it into Downtown. We got ice cream at Leopold's, a very popular ice cream parlor. Then we walked down to some shops, including Free People and Urban Outfitters. Both of these are stores that I often browse online, filling a cart with at least $1,000 worth of items. That day, I finally got my hands on some of their clothes (from the sale section of course). 

Overall, it was a fun trip, primarily because of who I got to take it with. Hopefully if I ever go again the weather will be better, but staycations are always fun too. 

Love always,

Brina

Roamin'? Roman?

Unlike many people in high school, I take Latin rather than a spoken language such as French or Spanish. I've been taking it since 8th grade and I can not express the happiness I feel for continuing it on through high school.  If you take Latin you automatically become part of this weird cult

we are the nerds, the geeks, the lovers, the romans, those who love latin and have such a passion for it that they created a convention just for us. This past weekend I went to my states latin convention hosted at a center that is beautiful. 

Last year when I went we had these amazing cabins, this year not so much. But what our cabin lacked on the inside made up for the view on the outside. We were situated right by this gorgeous lake and spent most of the day, besides doing latin stuff, lounging in our enos

The weekend was jammed pack from toga processions to dances to JCLove to tests to chariot races, convention truly has it all. The whole weekend I did not have service so I couldn't use my phone and I gained a new appreciation for nature and just enjoying quality time with my friends

Latin convention is a truly indescribable experience that I wish everyone could partake in

Being part of latin club and just being a latin lover in itself embodies the theme of this year, ubi concordia, ibi victoria ... where there is unity there is victory

I love latin and though I do not nearly mention it enough, JCL is my home, my family, and my favorite

Here are a few pictures from the weekend (just to make you jealous)

Pre Dance Shenanigans 

TIE DYE

Our Chariot HAHA

Our Tie Dye Latin Squad

Our view by the lake :))

With much love,

Ksen 

PS you can join/make a latin club and go to your states convention as well as nationals and get a real feel for the awesome that is latin !! :))

Life's a Beach!

So last week was my school's spring break and it was pretty great!
I went to the beach with one of my close friends for the entire week. While I'm not the partying type (or even remotely close to it) we found a bunch of other various things to entertain ourselves!

Here are a few snapshots from over the course of the week :)

My first ever BBQ

beach vibes

Day 1 Sunset

Day 2 Sunset

my gorgeous friend

I didn't make it, so I had to climb back

Last night :(

I would say that overall the trip was pretty fun and a success. Gulf Shores is such a cute little beach and definitely more calm than places like Destin, Seaside, and PCB which was awesome. However, I did learn that taking a whole week to travel somewhere in the middle of the school year was not for me, being the epitome of nerd made me anxious the whole week since I could not study as much as I wanted :|. 

Most of the trip was just hanging at the beach or doing various fun activities - zip lining, mini golf, walking 5 miles to the pier (bad idea tbh, my whole backside burned haha), and FOOD - I did not get tan, but summer is coming fast so maybe then! 

I already know what my next post is going to be - Latin Con - so stay tuned!

Much Love, 

Ksen

Don't Go (Spring) Breakin' My Heart

Breaks are always pretty boring for me. My family usually doesn't go anywhere interesting, and this week was no exception. Thankfully, I can usually count on my friends for a good time. It took us a solid week to plan our adventure, and in the end we didn't decide what to do until about half an hour before, but it was fun.

Two friends and I ended up going to a cute little area nearby us. It has historic homes, hiking trials, restaurants, and plenty of cute little shops. We got plenty of adorable pictures, each which will come to grace our Instagrams.

We started off by walking to this delicious sandwich shop in the area. My friend, Ajanta, is a pro food photographer. As soon as we got our food, she was snapping a picture of it. My attempt wasn't quite as good as hers.

Mine

Ajanta's

We stayed at the restaurant for what felt like forever, it turns out our other friend, Eunice, is a pretty slow eater. Once we were done, we began hunting for places to take pictures. We'd seen one wall on the way to lunch, so that's where we started.

Eunice ended up taking my picture in front of a bright pink door, and I loved the results.

Throwin' shade everywhere I go

We ended up doing a bunch of walking back and forth to different spots, but it was fun anyways. 

There was one wall that was such a pretty color we couldn't help but take pictures on it. The store inside had a bunch of great clothes I wish I could afford.

We stopped in this place that had a couple different businesses in it. Among them was a bakery that sold gelato and ice cream, so we had dessert there. 

I tried my first ever macaroon!

Courtesy of Eunice

Ajanta and I had Eunice take some "artsy" pictures of us lying in the grass (fine, it was mostly me). We got tons of stares, the sun in our eyes was unbearable, and a lot of the pictures didn't turn out. The one we got was worth it though.

And that's my adventure for the week. I didn't really do anything else, but I spent a lot of time outside in the gorgeous weather. Now school's starting back again and I have yet to do any homework, but that's alright.

Love,

Brina

(Sorry about some of the photo quality. I stole a couple of these from Ajanta and Eunice so they're just screenshots)

Holi Moli!

The number of Indians I'm friends with is ridiculous. There are so many that go to school with me that many of my non-Indian friends (myself included) have referred to ourselves as "honorary Indians." At any given time, I can have a brown person on each side, but I love them all. That's why I was more than happy to join in on our school's Holi!

For those of you that don't know, Holi is the celebration of color. I looked it up on Wikipedia (a very reliable source) before writing this post, so from what I gather it started as a religious festival, but it seems to primarily be a cultural thing now. It takes place in India each year, and my friends who have attended it their made sure we all knew it was better. Either way, I still had a great time. You can read more here.

Right after this was taken, I got a bunch of powder in my eye. NOT fun. 

I wish I had some before and after pictures, but them moment I stepped out of the car I was doused in colored water. I can, however, show my before-being-completely-trashed and after-being-completely-trashed looks.

Before-trashing

After-trashing

The powdered colors looked really cute at first, but it all added up quickly and soon we were a huge mess.

It was a lot of fun, and I was there with some of my favorite people in the world. What could be more fun than attacking your friends with color and water? It was a perfect way, and the perfect day, to kick off spring break!

Love,

Brina

P.S. Hopefully my next post won't take as long as this one, but we'll see when I do something worth talking about

Feelin' French

This past weekend has been such a blur for me. I've not been home (and awake) for more than two hour periods and I don't know how to feel.

I'm naturally a very introverted person, and it was a shock to have to so many plans lined up in a row. I love people, but so much interaction is tiring beyond compare. Anyways....

On friday I rode the bus home to my friend, Beth's, with another friend, Grace, who I have mentioned prior in a previous post. We came and spent about an hour ranting about all the problems of the world, typical of course. But then to lighten the mood we decided to bake MACAROONS!

While we've been planning to this since summer of last year, I was still beyond excited, because who doesn't love these french delicacies. We decided on making, chocolate macaroons with a Nutella ganache filling.

I never realized how long it actually takes to make these little cookies, its no wonder why they're so expensive everywhere, it took us about three hours if not more!

We had to actually measure out all the ingredients in grams prior. Once we had the cookie "mix" made, we all took a turn at piping! Here is what the cookies looked like pre-baking

Beth piping :)

All done!

We didn't do them outside hahaha

While we waited for the cookies to stop being sticky and put into the oven we prepared the ganache. Also ganache is way to fancy of a word for the melted chocolate mixture hahaha

Anyways the ganache was the easiest, and tastiest part, of the whole baking process, besides the actual cookies haha

After we baked the cookie part of the macaroon we were all set to begin assembling them, right?
NOPE, instead the ganache was not thick enough and we had to try SO many things to remedy this until we finally gave up and used the semi-thick ganache for the cookies, and guess what?
They still tasted just as good hahah

Later on we came back to finish one last batch and the ganache was prefect, turns out all we had to do was keep it out instead of cooling it hahaha

My first EVER homemade macaroon

Our babes 😛

Sorry for the crappy photography oops but yeah this is how I spent the first part of my whirlwind weekend!

With love,
Ksen

#instagramlessksen

This post was actually Sabrina's idea, but anyways...

I'm Christian and this year I decided that for Lent I would give up Instagram and Tumblr, and really any other distracting social media I had. So far its been about a month since I gave it up, and I've been doing pretty good so far!

I'll be honest I've peaked at my insta a few times, but not nearly as much as I would if I actually had the app haha. 

For those of you who don't really know what Lent is, check out this wiki article that sums it up pretty well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lent

Lent began on February 10 (Ash Wednesday) and will be ending on March 24th (Good Friday)...

So I have a couple more weeks left before I can download all my social media again and get back to the gram.

I'm an avid instagrammer, when I had it I would check it all the time, mostly out of sheer boredom, but a lot nonetheless. 

Being off instagram turned out to not be as great of a struggle as I thought it would be, I'm actually debating whether to even get it back or not again. 

The real reason I gave up all this social media is because I believed it would distract me less and help me focus more. Instead I found other things to fill the time and continue on the distraction, mainly Netflix 

But giving up Insta, Tumblr, etc. did actually get me closer to God, the point of Lent, because one of the things that I filled my time up with is reading the Bible, even if it was just the verse of the day. Or praying and just really becoming in tune with what it means to be Christian. I'm not trying to advertise that you should be Christian, but for me its been a great year for faith.

I don't want to bore you with my faith story, because first its extremely personal and second very weird hahah so moving on...

But I guess more than anything, my take from the last few weeks has been that social media is just a time waster and merely a way to feel connected into the lives of others. The first week that I didn't have insta I felt out of the loop, out of touch, and really weird, but in the weeks that followed I found out who my true friends are. Outside the deceiving realm of social media, I saw who texted me or made an effort, not just like this picture or tag me in a post every once in a while. SO in the past few weeks, I have really become grateful for the people in my life, and I hope these people will continue to stay beyond my high school years.

The other day I actually texted a few of those friends I'm truly happy to have and every response was different but all gave me a sense of belonging, which I've not had for a while....

ANYWAYS

To wrap up this very random post, I just wanted to make this point clear - Spend time with those who you love (in person) and don't let the deceit of social media fool you. Social media is a great way to stay connected, but make sure that connection continues in real life!!

On an ending note, its Sabrina's Birthday sooooo HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRINA BABE!!!

Much love, Ksen