Almost Graduationy Stuff.

There are so many rituals and traditions that go along with graduating from high school, especially from a high school that thinks a lot of itself. If my high school was a person, it might be Robert Downy Jr.

All these pre-graduationy things are taking up my time, but at least we can look cute while doing it sometimes. Like for the white dress photo, when the girls put on white dresses, the guys put on suits, and we take a group picture on the steps. Apparently us grads clean up pretty nicely to be a super suave crew.

Because we're pretty cute.

Allan tried to make posing with him while he was smoking a thing.
I have over 10 pictures of him smoking with different people.

Moriah and Victor have super human amounts of sass.

Obligatory picture of Alan Jones and Allan Jones.

(1) This looks surprisingly like a stock photo and (2) the background expressions.

Appreciate the chicken fight I completely unknowingly captured in the background.

The next few weeks are going to be busy with grad events, work and socializing myself. I've spent so many free periods in the past week playing Dutch Blitz while yelling obscene things at people. I'm not proud of who I am when I play Dutch Blitz but I need to stress myself out somehow. However, Allan, Moriah and I introduced it and the way it's catching on, it's practically an epidemic.

I also went to my friend's homeschool graduation today and felt a little guilty, purely because I'm not and never have been homeschooled. Whatevs lulz public school.

Hearts,

Julianne

A+ Prom Prep.

• A highly improbable series of events occurred last night. Earl "Tidbitz" the Gray, the stray cat my family has been feeding, snuck into the house through the cat door while we were sleeping and, upon seeing the assortment of clothes drying on the basement clothes line, urinated on both my graduation dress (which I need for Wednesday) and my prom dress. Somdays my life is a joke with really strange hoops to jump through sometimes, I washing cat pee out of formal wear. From this point on, when people ask me whether I'm a cat person, I can respond "I used to be, before 'The Incident.'" Cats and I are not on good terms right now. 
• I spent far more time than I cared to today convincing my parents that no, my prom date isn't gay and it wouldn't matter either way.
• So all in all, I'm not putting much effort towards prom prep but any that I might use to kill time with between now and then have potential to be any level of weird. 

Hearts,
Julianne

An overbearing hipster stereotype kind of day.

I have on and off days when it comes to being an inherently, overbearingly hipster stereotype.

Today was definitely an on day. It hit me as I was explaining to an Indigo employee, as I drank soy chai while listening to Kid A, that I'm recreationally reading the three classic novels I was holding (The Great Gatsby, The Picture of Dorian Gray and On the Road) because exams are over and I have time to. Then I told him that I'm going to King's next year and he said "OHHH" like it explained everything he was witnessing about me, the barista listening to Radiohead, drinking soy chai and discussing pretentious literature.

And in that moment, I swear I was the epitome of a subcultural stereotype.

I didn't chose this, it chose me.This isn't even the worst of it.
Hearts,
Julianne

Funny things happen to me sometimes.

I have another post I'm planning about last weekend because I have more to say than this, but I have a bit of an amusing story to share.

When I was at camp last weekend on Sunday night, there was a big shindig and afterward everyone in the camp had gone to bed except for a group of us who were still too wound up. So we hung out and talked for a while until we collapsed into a cuddle puddle on the floor of the slightly sketchy dining-hall-turned-recreation-room. Around 1am, this guy named Ethan casually got off the floor, left, and came back with a guitar. Upon his entrance with his guitar, he paused . . . and pulled some roses from behind his back. He proceeded to give one to each of the girls there, telling us that we were all beautiful. Then he then put one of the roses in his mouth and broke into playing stereotypical Spanish music on his guitar with an intense, stone faced smoulder. Rachel, Hannah and I laughed on the floor, Hannah occasionally commented "He's male me. He's male me!" and Jazmin was hysterically shouting "THIS ISN'T REAL LIFE." He was not shaken by the hysterics that were occurring; he continued his little serenading performance to the four of us women without once losing focus. It didn't feel like real life, especially considering that it was during during a 1am cuddle puddle on a floor at bible camp.

So I guess that's the story of how a 15 year old boy I'd just met gave me a rose in the middle of the night at bible camp, and the reason that said rose has faint teeth marks on it. Funny things happen to me sometimes.
Hearts,
Julianne

Nerdy break up feelings.

I'm going through a strange break up phase with IB, minus sadness, but rather the aimlessness. I suddenly have all this free time and I'm reacting in a few stereotypical break up ways:

• Eating a lot.
• Spontaneously picking up hobbies to fill the weird void (such as spending a free period making popsicle stick photo frames.)
• Considering other hobbies to pick up.
• Introducing voluntary dietary restrictions (I'm not drinking milk this week to see if I feel better.)
• Thinking of adventures to have. 
• Laughing unnecessarily hard at things that barely make sense.

The fact that ending IB feels like a break up gives you a general idea of (1) how much of a dork I am and (2) how perpetually single I have always been.*

What do people even do with free time? I don't really understand this concept as I haven't had free time since around August. I suppose I can plan my epic journey that I want to happen and read more classic literature so I can go into pretentious arts university with as much literature as possible under my belt to reference and sound smart and feel enlightened.

*I have been dubbed both a 'bro' and 'the most platonic person of all time.' I have a unique quality of being an extreme platonic bro about me, I guess. I don't know how this came about.
Hearts,
Julianne

How to Thursday:

• Go to school
• Write three essays in two hours about historical topics you may or may not know
• Dance in the hallway chanting "Done IB forever!"
• Eat celebratory crepes
• Get books from the library because IB exams are over and you have time to read again
• Attend afternoon classes for the second time in two weeks
• Go to a school coffee house
• See the 10pm showing of The Great Gatsby because screw it, IB exams are over and I deserve this. 

Hearts,
Julianne

I should actually go on a journey.

So, I figure to start this, I'll need some context;

When I was 10, I moved to Kenya. My parents decided a few years previously that they would follow in my grandparents' footsteps and become missionaries at this American Christian boarding school on the edge of the Rift Valley about an hour outside of Nairobi. I spent 5th and 6th grade there before moving back to Canada, in the same city in the same house I'd lived in before.

I really miss it today. I'm not totally sure why, I mean I've spent all of one month there in the past six years. I guess you can get homesick for a place where you've never really belonged. I've come to the conclusion that mostly what I miss is the atmosphere of there, especially when faced with the stark contrasts of my life here.

Here, everyone is always rushing. They can barely focus on one thing because soon they'll be running to the next. Most people go about their day as if everything is a tedious obligation. Everyone can't look beyond themselves to see that there's bigger concerns. When people stop rushing, they don't know what to do with themselves; they immediately turn to boredom.

In Kenya, I found everything to fall in a comfortable routine; people did one thing at a time, at a pace that seemed comfortable, and without pressure. Everything could always pause for a cup of tea in the middle of the morning and again in the afternoon. People relaxed and let things be uncomplicated. There was always time to go to read a book or go to bed early. Everything felt a hell of a lot less complicated. Occasionally I find person that has a similar gist to their life here but they are few and far between.

I think that largely I found this because I'm romanticizing my memories a bit, or I was mislead by age, but even when I was twelve, I noticed how discontent people seem with their lives all the time here. People wouldn't let little things go and prepubescent Julianne asked why it mattered to people that their hair be perfectly in place when they go out or that their parents pick them up at exactly 3pm, as opposed to 3:03 or 3:05. Why do people get so hung up on things that don't matter?

Mind you, I'm a huge hypocrite in pointing these things out. I'm one of these people who is always rushing. I get bored after two hours of nothing to do. I bicker about how little money I have. I stress about stupid things.

Basically, my job is stressing me out, school is stressing me out, and I want it all to stop so I can find some nirvana and reach some sort enlightenment where I can feel mostly content about things again.

I think I need to go on an adventure somewhere this summer. Maybe I should quit my job in late July/ early August so I can go on an epic journey. Any (relatively thrifty) ideas of where I should go?
Hearts,
Julianne

Fool proof, almost summer plans:

• Get a custom painted van and solve mysteries.
• Become a chain smoking alcoholic barista for the irony/ as my final act to deal with serving coffee before I quit to go to university.
• Try to get a summer job at the library so I can work real people hours, get full time cash money swag, and not have the worst shifts bequeathed upon me because I'm the lowest seniority. Also, working with people who aren't unreasonably intense about their job at Starbucks to overcompensate for the lack of achievement in other areas of their life.
• Become that person who is always casually wandering around. 
• Party Thursdays/ recovery Fridays.
• Read books not for school.
• Go on road trips with cool people to beaches and stuff.

 I actually just don't know what I'm going to do after IB exams. I've dedicated so much time and effort to IB since tenth grade and I don't know how I'm going to fill the void that it'll leave. To me, ending IB is like ending a long term relationship (with less emotions) because this is the sad state my life has been reduced to.

Hopefully I'll fill the void with something less masochistic. Like friends. Or running a meth lab out of my garage.

First exam tomorrow: English Paper 1. It's the beginning of the end, the hinge of fate. Just kidding, it's still a mystery as to what these exams actually count toward.
Hearts,
Julianne