I feel like I have this one really close friend who I would think of as a yellow. So I think of this person as a yellow ’cause their favorite color is yellow and they’re always so bubbly and bright and optimistic. They like to think of everything with like a half, like the cup is half-full type mentality and they’re just one of the sweetest person, one of the sweetest people I know. And that’s why I associate the color yellow with them. But yeah, I really like this question and I definitely have thought about it before. Sometimes I wonder like how others people perceive me, like what color they see me as, and it’s a really nice way of like seeing how other people’s minds work and how you showcase yourself to them and how they perceive it. So yeah, I see friends as like pinks and purples and blues. Sometimes, even like people can change colors. Like they don’t have to be one color all the time.

So yeah, does orange represent anything in my culture? So I’m an Indian-American. I have an Indian culture. Our flag. Our flag, had one of the stripes in our flag is orange. A lot of our foods, like, you know, our spices, our sweets, they’re orange, or like a shade of orange. I don’t why I didn’t think of that. We have a sweet called laddoo. That’s probably my favorite orange colored food. It’s a delicious sweet. You guys should go try it. Any Indian store, they’ll have it. Its laddoo, L A D D O O. Best Indian sweet. A lot of clothing in Indian culture is also orange. I know for weddings, we have a ritual where everyone wears yellow or like a shade of yellow or orange and it’s just part of the ritual.

Can you think of some words that rhyme with orange? Almost rhyme? Okay, okay. Orange, orange. Orange. Or… hinge. Door hinge. A door hinge! Is that even a word? Is that like a thing? I think that’s a thing, right? A door hinge. Yeah, orange, door hinge. That rhymes somehow. Door hinge. Yeah, isn’t that like the thing that like keeps the door attached to the wall? Is that even what that is? Am I thinking of the wrong thing? That’s what that is. Right? A door hinge. Yeah. Why am I forgetting what a door hinge is?

Yeah, going into that, I guess and then and then COVID hit. And that just changed everything. I lost like a year, sophomore year, just of like how to like properly be organized, manage school, how to like go with that. But it also taught me how to be adaptable, you know, adapt to everything like that, even though the curriculum for this thing was always just like vastly different. Thought it was gonna be so much harder than it was. And I just got out using the bare minimum. And of course, I was dealing with a mental strain of being in isolation. So, probably after about half a year, I probably just burnt out and did not care anymore. Plus there was a month in time, actually right around the one-year COVID anniversary woohoo! March was such a fun month, just a lot of just horrendous mental health issues happening in every aspect, you know. Friends, family. Just all of that just kinda happened. So, yeah. Actually funnily enough, got an email from my French teacher being like, “Hey, you disconnected in class. Are you ok?” And then I kinda spilled the beans to her and everything like that. Then I got an email from my counselor about two hours later. It was like, “I’m always here if you need to talk” and I’m like, “You know what, I’m doing ok. I’m keeping an open dialogue with my parents.” So yeah, we’re looking into whatever that is, I guess. But it definitely changed how I viewed school and just like, I wanted a break too the summer, you know. Truly take some time and like hang out with people, you know, just have a relaxing summer, you know, take a break. That didn’t happen because I had to take a government class due to scheduling issues, they could not work it into my schedule. So yeah, that was oh it was so, so much fun. So, I truly never did get a break. So yeah, that was definitely fun. Still not done with the class as of August 19, 2021.

In Thailand, there’s tons of street food. And like there’s these small restaurants. I guess that sort of act like street food. It’s not like the fat trucks—um—like food trucks we find in America. It’s like actual buildings and there’s tons of them close to each other and they’d sell like tons of soups and stuff. So we went to this one shop and the soup sold like in this certain soup was blood. Not human blood, but like I think pig blood? It’s like the texture isn’t like, you know, liquidy. It’s sort of solidified blood. I remember eating it without knowing what it was. And after I did find out, you know, I wasn’t too pleased but I wasn’t like too disgusted either, it was fine I guess. Another weird food. I don’t know the English name. We call it like, Hoy Kraeng. It’s like a blood mussels that we would order. I think that it’s probably blood clams. I don’t remember quite the right name. I think that might be like closer to what people in America might be more familiar with, like oysters and stuff.

I’ve never gotten a bloody nose before. Like I — I remember in like elementary school, I don’t know why I remember this specifically, but there’s like—there was like so many people just like getting bloody noses out of nowhere. Like, they didn’t hit their nose or their face or anything. They’re just like sitting in class and they’d just get bloody noses. I was like, “how is that even possible?” And for some reason, I really, really wanted to get a bloody nose just so I could go to the office and like skip class and stuff, but obviously, I don’t want to like get hurt, so I was just like wishing I had like a bloody nose when I was like younger, just like out of nowhere coming, so I can go to the office and like, do whatever. But I always thought that was weird. How do you just get a bloody nose from just sitting there? Like, I — I don’t know. I have absolutely no idea.

We also visited a few Great Lakes on the trip. So we visited Lake Superior, Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, and of the three I think I loved Lake Huron the best. We took a little day trip to Port Austin and the beaches were so beautiful. The sand was so warm, the water was clear, and we had a lot of fun. So, the first beach in Port Austin was a little rockier and the waters were a little more dangerous, but the second beach was picturesque. And I loved it. Lake Superior was definitely most, in my opinion, dangerous of the Great Lakes. The water was freezing cold and the waves just came at you, constantly. And there was a lot of — but it was –sorry–it was the cleanest Great Lake that we visited because there wasn’t many algae or plankton, it felt very clean and pure, but definitely very a force of nature. And then Lake Michigan was kind of a mix between the two, the waves weren’t too choppy, but it wasn’t the cleanest. But we need to protect our Great Lakes and that’s important.

I just started driving and it was the funniest thing because everyone in my family besides me knows how to drive. My sister’s working toward — my sibling is, working toward getting their license. I always forget they’re non-binary too but they’re like also not out so around parents and people, they’re my sister. By myself, they are my sibling. It’s kinda weird. But you do what you gotta do to keep your identity safe. What was it? Driving. Driving was fun. I got real scared though. Cause I didn’t know that when you take your foot off the brake, the car just moves. Like you don’t — I forgot that cars move without acceleration, right? So if you take your foot off the brake it just moves slowly, and the accelerator’s for what it is. It’s for making it go faster, but I forgot that it would go even if I didn’t have my foot on the accelerator. So my dad tells me to let my foot gently off the brake and I take it off the brake and the car starts moving and I get scared and I immediately slam my foot back down on the brake. It was so funny.

I didn’t want to have red hair. I didn’t want to have curly hair. I wanted to look like everyone else. So especially like seventh and eighth grade, I’d straighten my hair every day. I tried to like, pull it back in ponytails and just, I didn’t want it to be straight — I didn’t want to be curly. I wanted to be bone straight like everyone else. I used tanning stuff, sometimes to make my skin look tanner so I looked like other people. I tried to dress like other people, like I, no hate to anyone who wears this, obviously. But I’d wear Lululemon leggings every day and never wore jeans like ever and never really dressed up at all. And I think that was really bad for me. Like I’d wear baggy t-shirts, and I’d be really, I was really insecure about my body because for me like looking at other people, I felt like I was like overweight or fat. And now looking at myself I am neither of those things. I am healthy and like, everyone is healthy at their own weight, obviously. And I don’t know why I felt like I looked so disgusting, but COVID really like, me being alone by myself really made me realize like, “Why am I doing this to myself?” Like, I’m, I want to change how I dress, so I changed how I dress. I don’t think I’ve worn a pair of Lululemon leggings, like, I wear leggings, but they aren’t like straight leggings, like, sticking to your skin, they’re looser. But I don’t think I’ve worn those Lululemon leggings in a good year, maybe year-and-a-half. I think it’s a year though, and I’ve made it a point to not wear them. Like, I never really gravitate to them anymore and I don’t really want to wear them ever again.

I guess I'll talk about… Yes, a bug that stings next when I was around five or six years old, I think it was five. I was staying over at my grandma's house. And when I was playing on the little plastic slide we had. I accidentally hit a bee with my hand and because I was just playing around with my brother and it bit me and I was trying very hard not to cry because I wanted to be tough as a kid and my grandma and mom were comforting me and trying to make me feel better, as they cleaned the sting. And my mom, trying to reassure me said that bees basically died after they stung a person. So that bee was going to be dead after it stung me. I think she said this to make me feel better, but I just felt so, so guilty because I knew it had it had been my fault that the bee stung me cuz I was just waving my hands around very wildly. And after that, I was just hyper aware of bees. Anytime in first or second or even third grade classmates would shout because there was a bee in the room and everyone would freak out, I would just like yell at everyone to sit down and stay still so it wouldn't sting you cuz I was just so concerned about other bees dying because me and other dumb kids were getting in their way. And I think it's silly because now I do know, like a lot about the Save the Bees movement, and I still tell people to just, like, calm down around bees and that they won't hurt them. And I think it's silly how just getting stung by one bee in—when I was five years old, still affects my behavior today, I guess.