Happy New Years! I'm celebrating today with some 2014 Planet Jingmai puerh from Crimson Lotus Tea and Clover & Sealife's debut album, a sentimental cry.
First off, let's talk about what I've done over break. I did the tea reviews, not as much biking as I'd hoped to, finished most of my work and studied– just stuff like that. I also bought a bunch of textbooks and study materials for chemistry (since I have to learn that before senior year begins, because AP Chem), AP US history, physics, and programming, and I've been studying from those. I also watched a lot of movies (I think my favorite was Oldboy, but I also watched Ip Man 1 & 2, Kung Fu Hustle, and a few others) and hung out with friends, which was pretty fun. One thing I did that I'm proud of though was get through a few of my essays for applications; for example, I talked about how tea defined who I am and has taught me about science, and in another essay, I wrote about Japan's formal apology for comfort women during the '30s and 40s and how it can be used to talk about human and civil rights in both Japan and America, regarding Koreans and African Americans.
What are my plans for the next year? Well, I'm not sure, honestly. For the most part, it's simple stuff like write more tea reviews, eat better, and get good grades, because it looks like I might get my first Bs this semester and I'm also having pretty bad digestive issues. I really want to win county journalist for Mock Trial, get some kind of work in science (hopefully my internship applications get accepted), and have a successful science fair project (not really planning on winning because, honestly, my project isn't that groundbreaking and I'm in a very competitive category; I'm going to fix that for next year's project with work on an early-detection system for Parkinson's, if I can get the equipment for that). As I said previously, my senior year might suck a bit because I'm taking some hard classes (AP Chemistry, AP Government/Macroeconomics, Competition Civics, Video Production 1, Science Research, and possibly World Literature), but I guess I enjoy a good challenge. Another thing I'm going to do is start a tea class at my town's public library, since administration at my school is very against having a tea club at my school. I think I'll just need to fill out an application for a room, find a day for meetings, get materials such as tea, cups, and water heaters, and advertise (which doesn't seem too hard, but let's see; I'll give updates on that).
As for tea related stuffs, my sister came back from studying abroad in Japan, so she brought me back a few teas and an owl kyusu (in fact, I brewed the Planet Jingmai in the kyusu today). I'm thinking of doing the reviews on those teas once weekly as a new set, and then finally getting to those other teas I've been procrastinating on for the past few months. I don't know the names of teas since I'm still working on my kanji and I don't want to open the packages now, but I'll be reviewing a soy/black bean tea, a corn tea, a sencha, and a black tea.
Here's to a great new year. Here's one of the things I wrote for a prompt on an application, that I think would be a good way to end this (adapted from the song June by Kara's Walk Home). The prompt was "If you only had a single tweet to tell us about yourself, what would it be?
If nothing changes, at least I know I did my part. I don't care if this could last forever. I'm gonna try 'cause that's what I was born for.
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