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.

To Write Love On Her Arms

Hi again!

Tonight I’d like to share with you another charity related tidbit; my personal favorite nonprofit, actually. To Write Love On Her Arms is its name, and it is dedicated to finding help and providing support for those who are suffering from depression, suicidal thoughts, self harm, and addiction. While these things may be rather foreign to some people, they are definitely very real and not very foreign to me. I have known many, many people and had many friends go through at least one- if not more- of the things To Write Love On Her Arms (abbreviated TWLOHA) fights against. Because it has affected me the most personally, it is probably the charity that I am most passionate about. But more about that later.

I would sit here and try to tell you all about what TWLOHA is about, but I would like them to tell you their vision in their own beautiful written words: http://www.twloha.com/vision/. I plead you visit that site and at least give it a look over.

I’ve known about them for a while, and I can’t even quite remember how I came to first hear about TWLOHA. I think it was either through one of their shirts that I saw someone wearing, or possibly from seeing others participate in To Write Love On Her Arms day, which is a fan created day in which everyone writes love on their arms for a day in support of the charity. However so, it has become a part of my life that I can’t help but brag about. Not only does the group have their own day, but they also have their own conferences, called MOVE conferences, in which anyone can attend to learn about their vision, how to help themselves, and how to help others. I can only imagine that To Write Love On Her Arms has saved hundreds of lives through these, and also the stands that they keep open at various concerts throughout the year by sponsoring bands.

To Write Love On Her Arms also has a fancorp community, a street team that they wouldn’t be able to do much without. This street team is there to not only support TWLOHA , promote it, and gain new supporters, but also to help complete TWLOHA’s vision by completing outreach projects. The street team can give support by doing everything from sharing TWLOHA on various social networking sites to wearing a TWLOHA shirt while volunteering somewhere. The team also gives support to the community in little ways: one of the orders that I have done recently involved writing something encouraging on a post it note and leaving it in a public place. Whatever the thing is, big or small, the biggest reward comes in the form of the feeling that you are helping others, and maybe even actually helping someone out by volunteering or referring them to the organization. They also hand out reward points which you can spend to get merchandise from their store, but nothing compares to how awesome it is to support the charity.

I would suggest you at least check their main page out, and if you’re interested, just keep exploring the site to find out more. If you’re really into it then I definitely suggest you join the street team and become active. Whatever you do, I’d also like you to share your personal favorite charities with me below. I’d be really interested to see what everyone is passionate about.

Until next time,

Sarah.