Bucket List: Parasailing

Hi everyone!

Instead of saying hello from my lovely Outer Banks beach house, I am now back at my own home in Pennsylvania. But not for very long.

I did promise to tell you all about my last day, though. And what a last day it was. The morning before we left I convinced my parents to let me do something that has been on my bucket list for a while: parasailing. And so we did. My mother and I went 1200 feet up in the air in the sound behind Duck, which is near Corolla. It was an amazing experience. I would highly recommend parasailing yourself sometime. Here is a picture of my mother and I on our adventure:

(I'm on the left)

What was also cool, on the way back to the docking area, our ship captain let me drive the boat. It was pretty straightforward, but also really cool at the same time. Afterwards, I went to fly a kite on the beach and say goodbye to the lovely ocean once more before having to head home. And then it was time to pack up and go.

We just arrived home today, Sunday, but only because last night we spent the night in Richmond with my mother’s friend. Her son is two, and absolutely adorable.

Short blog post, yes, but, at the same time, some pretty big news. It’s exciting to knock things off your bucket list. Mostly, though, it only makes me want to add more.

So start knocking them off!

Anyone else parasailed or want to go parasailing?

Have fun,

Sarah.

The Outer Banks

Hi everyone!

My life as of late has been the most hectic. I mean, that’s not unusual in the life of Sarah Taylor. I’ve been the busiest person I know even before I could walk. I guess that’s what I get coming from a family of people who love to travel. But, there have been some rather, well, I guess they would be significant changes in my life as of late.

For starters, I am now a high school graduate!

Happy days!

It has only hit me a couple of times that I’m going to be completely shifting my life around a lot in the next few months. So far after graduation life has continued on quite normally, if not less exciting than normal, with what I have to work every day and all that goodness. But I haven’t forgotten that I am going to die at the end of this year to what I’m still hoping is going to be a zombie apocalypse. So I have been cleaning the pool I work at thanking the divines for every single disgusting dead spider I have to sweep out of my pool cleaner.

Mostly so far I have decided I am going to greatly miss my few good friends that I have made over my years in high school. I probably couldn’t have maintained even small shreads of sanity without them.

In reference to college, I received my school schedule the other day. It looks pretty aligned with the kind of thing I would be expecting to be doing in my major (marine biology); chemistry and biology and that sort of thing. But I also got put into Precalculus, even when I’ve already taken a high school calculus course. Someone help me. It’s going to be a really unfortunate semester. But only that part. I’m hoping the rest will be something worth remembering. I’m honestly not very nervous about college, which many may find surprising. I just really want it to happen already.

So now, in the midst of my work and video game heavy summer, I am sitting currently on the couch in my family’s rented-for-a-week summer home in the Outer Banks, North Carolina. More specifically, we are staying on Corolla Beach ( which is apparently pronounced “cuh-rah-lah”). So far this has been exactly what I want in a vacation. I did aforemention that I am going into the field of marine biology, and living in landlocked Pennsylvania gives me a great depravity of the beautiful natural wonder we call the ocean. If I could stay all day and night down by the big blue I would.

My days have been the perfect combination of lazy-ness and moving around a bit. My family has been running around doing this and that, tourism things and such, but I’ve only joined in a couple ventures. Mostly just hanging around the beach boogie boarding, longboarding around the neighborhood, playing Frisbee, sleeping, that’s been my days thus far with a  few other things thrown in. Oh, and sitting in the hot tub. How can one forget that. On this particular day I did a more touristy thing: we went and visited the Kitty Hawk memorial, where the Wright brothers first invented and flew their airplane. I probably would’ve been more interested if I hadn’t been half asleep, as I’d gone boogie boarding for four hours the previous day and hadn’t slept well. It was pretty cool though. The best part of my day was driving along the beach looking for wild horses (which we didn’t get to see, sad face) and feeding very hungry and very friendly wild turtles. We fed them pancakes, right from our hands. They enjoyed it well enough. They didn’t let us pet them though.

I’ve been to better beaches, but Outer Banks is not so bad. It’s pretty around here. I’ve always liked beach scenery more than other views. Dunes and waves and muggy, salty air just appeals to me. I was surprised to find how small the beach was, though, with all the popularity is has. It took me a couple days to adjust to. I’m not a huge fan of overdeveloped, suburban looking areas, especially when they are more tourist-y looking places. I would much prefer something closer to Chincoteague beach, which is much less developed. Maybe that’s the ocean conservationist in me. Or just personal preference. I don’t know.

But it’s been fun.

How is your summer going? Any interesting adventures?

Sarah.

The 52 Projects

Hello all.

There is a website I want to share with you. It is a website that I could probably only describe as life changing, and in your last year on earth, of course you want everything to be life changing. This website is called http://52projects.com/, and it is basically for what is implied in the title. A guy sometime ago came up with 52 projects that would deepen the appreciation for what you have and expand your horizons. The projects can be as simple as underlining your favorite passages in a book to riding a train to a random place and taking pictures of your destination. All of them provide a somewhat different perspective on things, though. I know I'm definitely planning on trying some of them during the summer when I have more free time. I would challenge you to do the same and see what the projects can do for your life.

Love,

Sarah.

Concert Review: Lights

Hello everyone.

It has been a very busy week for me, both in good ways and bad ways. Yesterday, however, was the best way to end a month and celebrate a leap day that I could imagine. As an avid concert goer, I can never turn down the invitation to attend a concert, especially not one with an artist I enjoy. Yesterday, I had the privilege to go to a concert featuring an electronica artist named Lights. And I’d like to advise you to do the same.

Lights is a gorgeous, tiny Canadian girl, dubbed at birth Valerie Poxleitner, who traveled around the world as a child of missionary parents and has apparently been making music from a very early age. She didn’t show up on the radar until a few years ago, but she has quickly gained popularity and is a rising star. I had heard of Lights a while ago, through a friend’s suggestion to listen to her, but I must say, and I did like her music, listening to it occasionally. After her concert, however, I now consider myself to be a big fan.

I have been to quite a few concerts in my short time on earth, but Lights’ definitely ranks in the top five of the best shows that I’ve seen. The combination of the infectious, bass heavy electronica, her gorgeous voice, and the amazing lightshow was one of the best I’ve ever seen. It was impossible not to enjoy everything coming together in a way so perfect that I haven’t exactly seen in many other concerts. Plus, Lights’ energy is also more than infectious. You can’t help smile at her; she wore a constant grin and was always dancing on stage, and she gets very into her music, obviously enjoying herself. I was in love with the concert after the first few songs, but the one that really seized me personally was her song “Flux and Flow.” Everything fell perfectly in place on that song; not only is it pretty intense to begin with, but the heavy bass combined with strobe lights and laser pointers timed perfectly to the music and Lights just rocking out on stage made it amazing.

The night was wrapped up perfectly when my friend with whom I went and I got to meet her. After waiting nearly an hour after the show, she finally stepped out of her tour bus and my friend and I got her autograph and pictures with her. She was super nice, and her equally fantastic fiancé Beau Bokan of Blessthefall was there as well.

Lights and I.

All in all, it was a beyond fantastic night. If you have never heard of Lights or haven’t give her a listen, I encourage you to do so. And then I encourage all of you to try and get to her concert. You won’t be disappointed.

Have a good one, and make as many adventures as you can.

Sarah.

Something to NOT Do: Catch Your Car On Fire

Hi everyone.

I had a very interesting weekend. Actually, it was pretty normal until about 10 PM last night.

You see, this is what happened: My friend and I were off to another friend’s house with the goal of watching movies and making silly videos all night. It was dark and incredible snowy, and I had a car that was not very well suited to the weather conditions. Needless to say, the two of us got stuck on a hill and ended up overheating my engine. After getting off of said hill, I noticed we were low on gas, so, luckily, my friend new someone who lived nearby and thought they might have some gas we could borrow to make it to the next town. As soon as we got out of the car, I noticed the hood was billowing smoke. I also noticed something that made my stomach drop: what looked like an ember from a fire was on my car. When I went to pull it off, I noticed that the hood of my car was melting.

What subsequently followed was, naturally, calling 911. The woman whose drive way we pulled into was on it, while their neighbor brought over a fire extinguisher to try and control the flames burning from the hood of my car. I called my family, and my friend grabbed what he could from the car. The flames kept growing stronger and stronger though, and the man had to give up the fight against the fire with the extinguisher. For the next ten minutes until the fire department got there, I watched my car become engulfed in flames.

Luckily, we are both okay and there was nothing terribly valuable in the car. It was still a terrifying experience that I would never recommend for anyone. I’m still stressed about it, but I’m sure that will fade in time. What I did take out of this though, is that it’s a really good time to be thankful and to just tell everyone I love how much I do love them, because near death experiences tend to make you see the brighter side of things more often than not.

I know I’ve complained about my more frequent than not car troubles on here before, and I have to say I am officially done with cars for a while. They stress me out.

I’m glad to be here still.

I’m glad you’re here.

Uħibbak, all of you.

Sarah.

Volunteering & New York City

Hi again.

I’d just like to share with you a little bit about an amazing opportunity that came to me. A few weeks ago a friend of mine got me in touch with a guy who was leading a mission trip of sorts to New York City. Namely what we would be doing there would be helping the homeless. I love doing things like that, so I was all over it and ready to go, even if it did mean I was going with a bunch of people I’ve never met before. That’s the fun of it though, going out and trying new things in sometimes scary situations. I wasn’t intimidated really, but it was definitely an out of comfort zone experience.

Anyway, it was one of the most amazing weekends of my life. If you’ve never done any kind of volunteer work, I would highly recommend it. Even if it doesn’t seem like something you’d like, try it anyway. Almost always I’ve found people come out of volunteer experiences feeling good about themselves and with a happier attitude about life, which I think is something we all need. It definitely doesn’t have to be as out there as going to New York City to hand out blankets and sandwiches to homeless people in bus stations at one in the morning; it could just be going to your nearby Animal Shelter or even a retirement home. Just anything to get you out there helping somebody or something for the better good.

The people who I went with were amazing as well. I’m not sure I’ve ever been around a more welcoming, kind group of people in my life. I’ve decided that I like going places with random people that I’ve never met before; it presents a great opportunity to get to know people who you haven’t known for forever. Growing up in a small town it’s hard to find people within a fifty mile radius who I don’t at least know by word of mouth, so it was nice to get out there with some people who I’d never met or even heard of before.

So that’s my little you should volunteer schpiel. But honestly, it’s definitely an experience, and even if you don’t enjoy helping others (though I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t) at least you’d take something away from it. It’d be good for anyone, guaranteed. And it’s always nice to make our world a little bit of a better place.

So get out there and do something that will change your life and someone else’s!

Sarah.

What's Going On.

Hello all.

I honestly don’t have much to say today, just a few little tidbits about what I’ve been doing and what I’m going to be doing.

Over the weekend I went camping at a place up near Erie in Pennsylvania called Camp Judson. I’m always a fan of getaways, but Judson is a pretty special place. We had a small group of people with us, twenty or so, and it may be the first group of people I’ve ever been camping with where we all got along the whole time, which was pretty miraculous. Usually someone gets mad at each other when I go camping with lots of people. It was probably one of the most relaxing atmospheres I’ve been in in a really long time. It was so natural to be with the people there that it was like being around family. So, yeah. They were basically one of my many mini families. Which are very nice to have. It’s wonderful to be able to go somewhere else away from those who actually share your blood and have such a strong bond that’s unique in a way that your bond with other friends isn’t. I hope someone understands what I’m saying. It’s really fantastic actually. I love my families.

On other notes, there are a couple of things that I am going to be starting. The first is that I’m going to attempt to make a violin cover of Echelon by 30 Seconds to Mars (which my friend helped me in deciding, thank you), but it might take a while. Hopefully not too long, though. I’m somewhat of a perfectionist when it comes to these things so I won’t let it be anything but so, and that can take me a while. But I hope it comes out wonderful whenever I’m done with it. The second is that I have decided to learn to juggle, as to knock off one of my bucket list items that I can actually do during the winter. I will be documenting my struggle to juggle on here, so stay tuned. Hopefully that one doesn’t take me too long to learn either, but knowing my excellent coordination skills it could take a while.

That’s really all I have for you for now. I hope you’re having a great time living life.

Ti amo,

Sarah.

The Best Weird Hobby You Should Try

There are definitely strange hobbies out there. I mean, people do things like host national mooing contests and or unicycle for fun. Not that unicycling is weird, I’ve known many a unicycler. Personally, I obsessively collect pennies. I will throw away all other change and just keep the pennies. I harass friends to give me their pennies. I have so many I’ve had to start multiple jars for them. So that’s my weird hobby.

Sure, I’ve heard of a lot of weird hobbies before. Some time ago in my internet surfing, though, I stumbled across perhaps my favorite weird hobby ever, and one that I definitely want to try some day: extreme ironing. Yes, you heard me right. Extreme ironing.

So what is extreme ironing? Well, it’s pretty self explanatory. People take their ironing boards and a shirt and go iron in extreme conditions. I’ll show you some pictures, but perhaps my favorite one I’ve ever found of extreme ironing was a guy who was hanging suspended in the air by a rope at least a couple thousand feet off of a cliff, sitting there with his ironing board, ironing away. If that’s not amazing, I don’t know what is.

But enough talk. I’ll let you see a few pictures for yourself.

Skydiving ironing.

Scuba diving ironing.

Antarctic ironing.

Back of a taxi ironing.

In the middle of the highway ironing.

You get the gist. Luckily, extreme ironing can be as simple as riding an intertube while ironing or placing your ironing board on the back of a cow, so it shouldn’t be that difficult for me to try this year. I think whenever it gets warm out again, I’m going to grab my kayak, head to our river, and try some extreme ironing. Hold me to that.

Until I can do that, I hope you find some way to do it. Maybe on a ski slope. Or for those of you in warmer areas, the possibilities are endless.

Have fun,

Sarah.

Donkey Basketball: If You Never Get to Try It, At Least Watch It.

Sorry to everyone for my lack of blog posting recently. I have been being lazy and that is very bad of me. Again, apologies.

But I would like to jump right to the point. There is something I did last week that, up until that day, I swore that my teacher was making it up. It was a little something called Donkey Basketball. It is exactly what it sounds like: the players ride donkeys while attempting to play basketball.

Now, this all got started because I am in a club called Science Olympiad. I’m sure some people have heard of it, others not. Basically, it is a scientific competition where we compete against other schools in varying areas of science. For example, last year I won a medal in ornithology, which is the study of birds. There are scientific areas ranging from biological things such as that to physics and chemistry. Anyway, enough about that. That’s not what I’m trying to tell you about here.

Our club needed to do a fundraiser so we could go to the competition this year, and our advisor right off the bat said that we were going to do Donkey Basketball. I had never even dreamed of such a thing, let alone heard of it, and for months I was suspicious of whether or not he was being serious. That is, until I found myself selling tickets to the students and general population. Even then, it was hard to believe I was going to do something as ridiculous as ride a donkey and play basketball at the same time.

Well the night finally came, and I found myself standing in a room with the Donkey Basketball owner, having him explain the rules to us. Needless to say what followed was probably one of the most interesting things I might ever see, no matter where I go. I don’t remember my first donkey’s name, but it was white and tall and hard to get on. At first, I just pulled on it’s reins and led it around the gym attempting to get the ball so that I could pass it to someone on a donkey on my team. In order to score a basket the team member who was shooting had to be on the donkey. My donkey was pretty easy to drag around, so I figured I might as well try and climb on it and ride it around. I figured it couldn’t be much worse than riding a horse, which I have experience doing. How bad of me to assume things like that.

The donkey started going really fast, as the man that owned the company was chasing them around the court with some stick that make noises when he hit it against the ground. I must’ve gotten freaked out or the donkey must’ve bucked or something, I’m not entirely sure, but the next thing I knew, I had fallen off my donkey and was laying on the ground with a throbbing left leg. Poor me. I stood up, and naturally limped painfully after my donkey. I didn’t let them take me out for a while though; I guess the reason that they did end up taking me out of the game was because I continued to limp for several minutes afterwards, something I didn’t notice until later.

For the next few days (and even until today) the lower left area of my back is in pain, though it was the worst the day after. My whole leg just stopped hurting yesterday. Ouch.

When I did convince them to let me back in, I managed to snag a donkey that was very… easy to ride. You must understand, I stand very tall for a girl at six feet, and this donkey was only about three feet, at the tallest. So for the rest of the game, instead of riding my donkey, I sort of just walked while I was on its back. Yeah. People got a kick out of that.

The picture to your left would be me (in the tie dye and the blue helmet) riding (or more or less walking while on its back) that tiny little donkey.

It was an interesting experience. If you ever, ever get the chance to see or even participate in something like this, I would highly recommend it. The laughs are endless, guaranteed. That is, unless for some reason you view it as animal cruelty. Then the laughs are rather limited, I would say.

So get out there and try it. Or just try something as wacky and bizarre as it. There are some pretty awesomely bizarre things out there. Maybe I’ll make a blog post of all the weird hobbies people have that I want to try.

Until then, te amo.

Sarah.

A Lament Mostly About Cars and Gas Stations But Also Including Southern Cooking

Have you ever just had one of those nights where things don’t want to go right for you?

Yeah, that happened to me tonight, mostly with my car. Now, I’m a gigantic fan of cars and all; they’re nice for getting places and doing things. But when they don’t want to cooperate, they are just downright annoying useless pieces of machinery. Can I get an amen from the congregation?

Anyway, what brought me upon this topic was my car being a particularly annoying piece of machinery tonight. Actually, it was more or less the absent mindedness of the owner and also the stupid gas stations that the car was attempting to be filled up at. I have to make a weekly trek to a town nearby called Brookville to go to my violin lesson (more on that later) and every time I go my mom usually asks me to fill up gas for her. Today, she asked me to go to Country Fair to get a gas card and use that to pay, but I didn’t know how to do that and didn’t leave early enough to have time, so I thought I’d make it quick and just stop at Flying J. So I pull in there, pull up to the gas pump and put in all my information and that good stuff, but when I pull out the nozzle to fill up my tank, the pump nozzle does not want to fit into the hole! I kid you not, I sat there for five minutes looking like an idiot trying to shove that thing in there before finally giving up and driving to my lesson. I thought, what the heck, I’ll just go to Country Fair after the lesson and get the gas card. Feeling brave, was I.

So I go to my lesson and it’s all fine and dandy. Once I got out I went right on over to Country Fair to get that gas card. I go in, enter my mom’s pin number on her debit card, get the gas card, and I’m thinking things are going fine now. Boy was I wrong. The dumb lady didn’t put any of the money onto the gas card, and dumb me didn’t realize after fifteen minutes of attempting to use the gas card that I should just go back inside and ask her about it. Needless to say, I was very frustrated and just used normal money to pay, which was apparently not the brightest idea. Sigh.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, my highway drive home just added to my bad time. For starters, I pulled into the highway ramp for those getting off the highway, and only noticed when I saw a big truck pulling off and driving right my way. I nearly had a heart attack. Obviously I am still alive (I was not hit and did not have a full on heart attack) but I am still very flustered right now from that. Oh, and then when I actually get on the highway, this trucker nearly hits me a couple times and keeps trying to pass me while he’s in the right lane and I’m trying to get to my exit. I had to speed up to 90 mph and swerve around in front of him to barely make it to the exit I was going to.

Alright. I’m done now. I just feel like most people can empathize with car/highway/gas station troubles, even if a couple of them were my fault. I guess that’s my adventure for the day.

On a lighter note, my friend and I today were talking about how delicious southern cooking was, and it reminded me of a particular southern food that I am really in the mood for right now: jambalaya. Being born in Alabama to a very long lineage of southerners and raised in Mississippi, I would say that their cuisine is pretty much flowing in my blood. All I have to say is for once, I am happy that WalMart is a national chain and stocks not only food you’d eat anywhere else but also southern staples, such as grits or okra. Over the years I’ve made most of my friends try southern cuisine, and most haven’t liked it, but I guarantee that no matter who you are you would probably like jambalaya. Because I am too lazy to look up our family recipe for it, I am just going to link to Emeril Lagasse’s Cajun Jambalaya: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/cajun-jambalaya-recipe2/index.html. You cannot go wrong with Emeril, so I thought it was pretty fool proof. Sounds tasty to me.

I’m glad we got that off on a good note, and I really hope whoever reads this will put some thought into trying the jambalaya, or a similar recipe. And also, thank you for listening to my car/highway/gas station rant. It was appreciated, believe me.

So until next time, go out there and have a couple adventures.

Sarah.

A First Week's End

Hello all.

I’ve decided that the end of the week will just be a time for updating how things are going, letting everyone know what the plans for the future are, and probably sharing something cool depending on whether or not I have something cool to share. This particular week I will be doing all three, so everyone should be excited and show me their excitement.

First and foremost, I’ve got a little tale to tell. My “new year resolution” (it is put in quotation marks because I don’t exactly believe in making new year resolutions) this year was to start running every morning before school again, like I had been doing for the first couple months of the year. I would’ve continued my (very) early morning physical routine had it not been for an unfortunate event that sort of, quite literally, stopped me in my tracks.

Back then in the fall before Pennsylvania gets cold I would run outside on the streets around my house. The problem with this is that it was very, very dark, as I would usually run before six in the morning. Not only am I rather terrified of the dark (a little fact I forgot about when I started, but it didn’t stop me) but it being so pitch black outside made it rather difficult to see. One morning I decided I was going to lengthen my running time, so I took a different, longer path. As I was running on the side of the road, little did I know this new path had a drainage ditch about my height that went straight down right smack in the middle of it. Needless to say, one minute I was running and minding my own business, the next I was staring into a drainage pipe and wondering where the heck I was and why I was sitting in a puddle of water.

Woops.

Needless to say my new found fear of big holes sort of stopped me for a while, but I am fully intentional on starting to run again in the morning, though this time at a local gym. Hopefully no magical holes appear on the treadmill or I might give up running forever.

On a lighter note, the cool thing I would like to share with you this week happens to be one of my favorite websites of all time. It is called www.wanelo.com, and I think you should all go check it out because it is worth every second that you spend browsing it. It is a shopping site, but not exactly an average one. Instead of selling their own products, wanelo has its users post whatever they like that they’ve found on the internet, and every other user and the public can browse through. It’s sort of like polyvore or pinterest, I’d suppose, though I find wanelo’s set up much easier to use and navigate. Plus, most of the items are there are quirky and unusual, things you really wouldn’t find on any other site. I would recommend it to anybody, as they have everything from clothing to cooking utensils and books to furniture, but it is especially directed towards those with a flair for indie style.

Check it out, it’s pretty sweet.

Before I wrap up, I’d like to tell you one thing that’s on the bucket list that is going to take me all year to do. I saw it on a blog somewhere, though the name of said blog is now lost to me. From now on in my end of the week post, I’m going to be posting the phrase “I love you” in a different language. I think it’d be fun to learn to say such a common and wonderful phrase in 52 different languages; one for every week of the year. So this week, we’ll keep it simple and just start with plain old English.

I love you guys.

Have a great next week, and fill it with adventures beyond your imagination.

Sarah.