happy birthday, richelle. you are finally eighteen!

Hey you guys, just so you know, I haven't completely fell off the face of the Earth. I haven't given up on my blog yet! It's just that soooooooooooooooo (I never usually overuse a letter, but this was necessary) many things have been going on in the past month and a half. It's near the end of my senior year and I've just been trying to get as much time as possible in with my friends and getting ready for college to move from Thailand back to California. Things have been crazy, and my weekend have been filled with even crazier things that I can't really remember because so much goes on in the weekend (mental note: recollect the memories and write it down somewhere). I'll have a huge update about that later, since my friend, Dongjoo, brought to my attention that I have exactly 5 hours to write a blog post before I break my promise with him.

I mean, I'd rather write in my blog than answer the 200+ people writing "happy birthday!" or "HBD" on my wall. I swear like 70% of the people who wrote on my wall I either 1) Have spoke to them briefly once or twice 2) Haven't heard from them since elementary school or 3) Don't even know who the fuck they are. But then I realize, the people I'd expect to get to wish me happy birthday on my wall were with me at the time. However, it's also nice to know that people have the ability to check their facebook home page, see it's my birthday, and actually take 5 seconds out of their busy lives to wish me a happy birthday in short form. I do like the long messages I get. Some even hold inside jokes. There's actual genuine feelings behind some of them and some have brought a warm feeling to my heart reading some of the messages. I like those. They make me happy and I realize who really does care.

Since it's my birthday, I'm going to attempt to remember every single birthday party I've ever had.
April 30th, 1993: Born
April 30th, 1994: I have no idea
April 30th, 1995: ...

Okay, I don't think this will work out too well, but if I get any ideas, I will edit the unfinished list above. I'll just talk about what I did for my birthday. Friday night, Monica, Joanna, Namwan, Sam, Sarthak, Ben, and I hung around at T-kom's apartment for a little pre-party before going to KS, but we ended up not going anywhere since we were having fun where we were (and some people were already out of it). It was a good night filled with way too much laughing, talking, and me dissing on my friend's boyfriend's music tastes (RELAX!). Very chilled out, intimate hang out of some of my closest friends, which I personally really enjoyed. It was quality time spent with people who meant a lot to me and probably one of our last nights together as graduation is coming up so soon.

In the morning, the girls and I made cupcakes and listened to old school Avril Lavigne. I swear I felt like I was in 6th grade instead of just turning 18, but hey, I have to savor the rest of the childhood I have, right? After we baked, we headed back over to my place and met up with Micah, Mika, Katy, and Grace. It was so strange, because I felt like my eighteenth birthday would be this huge thing, like a huge change from transitioning from a kid to an adult, but I didn't feel anything at all. It felt like any other weekend- maybe even more laid back than the weekends we've been having lately. It was really nice though, just to sit back and relax amidst all the chaos that's been happening in the past few months. Every weekend something big was happening, some party, Prom, performing, and other things all packed up into such a small time slot, but this weekend, it felt like we had all the time in the world.  And I think I spent my birthday weekend really well.

We had a marathon of "The Office" and realized that we could match up a character from the show to a person we knew in real life (I am a female version of Andy Bernard, by the way). I think I'll make an entire post of that on it's own, just because it is completely irrelevant to this post. Namwan made me a cake, and my parents bought me one too. I had wayyyyyy too much cake today, I think I'm going to explode. Today, I realized how much my friends mean to me. I realized how much I'm going to miss hanging out with them and doing simple things like sitting around and watching TV with them. I'm going to miss how each and every one of them have a distinct unique laugh and how we can laugh at incredibly stupid things and lame jokes. Damnit, I'm getting all sentimental now. I have to save this for when the time has come to actually say goodbye.

Anyways, I had a really great time last night and today and I got a couple of really great birthday presents. I'll post pictures tomorrow, as lighting is terrible when there is no natural light. As for pictures from my birthday, Prom, and other weekend adventures, those are going to have to wait. But wait! Here are some presents that I got and am completely obsessed with now

1. Joy Division Unknown Pleasures tank top (from Mika)

2. Furry hat (from Monica & Namwan). This picture is currently my desktop background.

I will leave you with this song that someone posted on my wall today for my birthday. I think it's
fantastic and also very relevant for today.

I'm Eighteen by Alice Cooper
I'm eighteen
And I don't know what I want
Eighteen
I just don't know what I want
Eighteen
I gotta get away
I've gotta get out of this place
I'll go running in outer space