just shouldn't go into this.

I'm about to be so unspecific and annoying.  You should probably stop reading this post right now.

I think that sometimes people's love for comfort gets ahead of their love for life or humanity.  I think it's wrong to let anything get in the way of loving your family, even if you believe you shouldn't.  Even if you're so comfortable with what your book tells you, it shouldn't get ahead of what is actually important.  It's just a book.   It won't mean anything, it's only a book.

this is a jumbled mess.

I just had such a Holden Caulfield-ish night.  I feels like it was three nights actually.

The First Night

I left my house to go to a formal party that my friend was having.  I was driving my mother's red ford flex that pretty much screams "we're white folk!"  and then I realized that I honestly had not an idea where my friend lives.  I knew which neighborhood, but I knew not which house.  So I just drove.  I drove all through the neighborhood- trying to find a house that looked suspicious for having a party, but there were none.  So I drove some more.

At first I thought about how far Bradley Road went on for.  Maybe I could just drive on this street until I ran out of  gas, and then what would I do?  I could not call anyone, seeing as I didn't have a phone.  I could, however, pay for some gas but if I bought more gas, I think that I would not turn around and drive home.  I think I would keep driving.  I wanted to be that far away, I did.  But I decided that tonight wasn't the night for a road trip that would take me as far as the gas in my car could.  So I turned into the Bradley Woods Nature Park.

And I drove.  

I drove until the road ran out, and I came across a small parking lot and a field.  I turned into the parking lot, put on Sirius Radio channel 30, and I turned off my car.  

I sat in that parking lot for around half an hour and watched some deer graze.  There were four of them, and they were eating the grass underneath the snow.  

Grass.  That reminds me of when I lived in Tennessee.  In the fall, all of the grass would die and turn tan instead of green.  It became sort of pokey, and dry.  I like that a lot.

But the deer were grazing, and I just sat in my car and watched them.  I didn't really want to leave, to stop watching them, but I felt the need to do something so I drove some more.

The Second Night

I didn't know exactly what to do.  I had NO intentions of going to Winter Formal.  I couldn't find Derek's house, I had no cell phone to use to call anyone to ask where Derek lived, and I absolutely could not go home and have my parents asking me what I had been doing for the past hour.  

So I went to the dance.  

I got there, and the parking lot wasn't even a third full.  Not even close really.  But I walked in.  It felt strange, walking into a dance completely alone.  I didn't even know if my friends were going to be there, I didn't know if I would find anyone I knew or wanted to dance with.  

I caught up with a few of my friends, and we went and danced and did whatever one would do at a dance, but it didn't feel normal, not by any means.  It felt bizarre.  I wasn't really in a dancing mood, I hadn't prepared myself for being around so many people, and along with all that, I'm pretty sick right now too.  I've been coughing relentlessly for almost a week, sometimes I can barely get a few words in between each hack.  

I danced with a guy who I had wanted to dance with for awhile, and although I suspect he might read this, it wasn't exactly magic.  Partially my fault because I didn't particularly try to make it matter or whatever but it just didn't really make any sort of impact on me.  I dunno. 

I ended up leaving a little early.  It was a disappointment on various levels, I know that if I had really wanted it to be fun though, I would have made it fun for myself.  But I didn't  

The Third Night

I left early from the dance, and I now had information on where Derek lived, so I decided to go to his house for the remainder of the evening.  

We just sat around and had a classy time, and I talked to Laura about my Friday night and we watched Zoolander.  There isn't much to report about the third night, I was with good friends of mine and we had a nice time in nicer company.  

I don't really have anything to comment on them I guess.  It just wasn't quite what i was expecting.  To witness deer being deer, to be disappointed by lots of things, to have good friends.

my best friend.

Laura has been my best friend since 7th grade, and I figure that I'll first give a quick run-down of the Hayley-Laura history before I get into why I'm talking about it at all tonight.  

So, like I said, it all started in 7th grade.  I don't know what exactly it was that got us to be friends at all, because we weren't in 6th grade and in 7th we didn't have any classes together.  But I do remember that we both made Burneson Brigade- Lee Burneson Middle School's show choir.  Normally not that many 7th graders made it into the show choir, so when the list went up and we were both on it, we could not have been more excited.  I didn't even know that Laura could sing until she made it into Brigade, but damn, she can SING. 

We started hanging out and writing each other cute little notes with more frequency all the time, and by the end of 7th grade we were full blown bffs.  I remember a funny instance that she told me about.  One time a friend of Laura's asked her "You and Hayley Hartman are friends?"  and Laura of course said "Yeah, what about it?"  the girl replied "Isn't she weird?" and Laura just said "Yup."  And that's why I love her.

In eighth grade we had every single fricken class together and it was awesome.  Eighth grade is still my favorite year of school, not just because of Laura, but because I had excellent companionship in every single one of my classes.  I also had wonderful teachers and stuff, and I wish I could just skip back four years and be in eighth grade again.

Laura and I were different than most friends- we literally never got mad at each other.  Well, she may have gotten mad at me but I'm pretty sure I can safely say that she didn't.  That's why when high school ruled around and both freshman and sophomore years when we had almost no classes together at all, we remained tight.  We still hung out all the time, being goofy and lazy and happy.  

We both continued with choir and singing and we both take voice lessons from Kevin Foster, which brings me to why I'm writing an entire post about her.  

So tonight I had a gymnastics meet which Laura and another friend of ours, Sarah attended.  After that, at 8pm, Laura had her voice lesson and mine was right after hers at 8:30.  I got to my voice lesson at Kevin's around 8:10 because my meet finished early and I knew that neither Laura nor Kevin would care if I sat in on Laura's lesson and also I knew that Sarah would be there too.  

Like normal, when I walked in we chatted about stuff for a few seconds and then Kevin started playing warm-ups for Laura.  She sang through them, and Sarah, unfamiliar with Laura's extreme vocal talent, was in awe.  I however was more conditioned to Laura's talent and was able to keep myself under control, it was just warm-ups.  And then Laura sang through a song and of course, it sounded really nice.  Then she got out a song called "Send Me a Song" which she has been working on with Kevin for probably a few weeks.

"Send Me a Song" is about two lovers and one of them moves away, so the singer is asking the lover to sing to her whenever he misses her and she tells him that she will sing to him to, send him a song.  However, it can pretty much be applied to any situation where people that love each other are separated, be they actual lovers or best friends.

She starts in on the first verse and I just felt myself relax because it was so good.

"Take the wave now and know that you're free
Turn your back the land, face the sea
Face the wind now, so wild and so strong
When you think of me, wave to me and send me a song"

And then she starts in on the next few phrases, and I started to tear up.  Not just because of her singing, but because of the meaning of the words.  

"Don't look back when you reach the new shore
Don't forget what you're leaving me for
Don't forget when you're missing me so
Love must never hold, never hold tight, but let go"

So she starts in on the second part, and I had already texted Sarah something along the lines of "dude I'm like tearing up right now" because I'm eloquent like that, and Sarah looks up at me.  And then the words

"Calm your sadness and loneliness
And then start to sing to me
I will sing to you 
If you promise to send me a song"

came out of Laura's mouth I was just full on crying on Kevin's couch and Sarah's in awe of both Laura and the fact that I'm sitting there crying.  And then Kevin stops Laura because she messed some notes up or something, and Sarah and I just started laughing because Laura had no idea at that point that she was making me cry.  Laura turns around and looks at me and goes "Why are you laughing?!"  and I couldn't even speak and she was like "Are you crying? Is this a JOKE?"  and I was like "No, it's just so good!"  and Kevin's just sitting there probably thinking "Holy shit there are too many teenage girls in my living room right now."  

The full lyrics to "Send Me a Song" are here.

This isn't even an original story though- I'm pretty sure that I am the second girl to cry while their best friend sings "Send Me a Song."  I've deduced it down to that the song really does mean a lot to me because there will be a time when I'll hug her goodbye and not see her for a few months at least, maybe more.  And that it's about singing to someone you love even if they won't hear you.  It's about sending the simplest gift and they don't even know that they're receiving it.  

And I know that it's ridiculous that now I'm crying again at the prospect of having to leave my best friend and be with people who don't understand me, but it took me a really long time to get to the point I'm at with Laura.  I can tell her anything, I can trust her with anything.  And although I know that she will always be my best friend, there will be a time in about a year and a half where I will either have to stop needing someone to tell all my shit to and rely on or I will have to find someone close-by who I can do that with.   And I can't picture me being like that with anyone but her.

But unless we go to the same school, it's not going to be the same.  It's not going to be going on walks a few times a week and it's not going to be us driving around scream-singing Ke$ha and N'Sync Christmas.  

I can promise you, Laura, that when I'm in college or wherever I end up being, I'll send you a song.  I know that it's cheesy but I will.  I hope you'll send me one too.

30 day blog challenge...nah.

Okay so I have decided not to do the thirty day blog challenge.  Because uh, it's boring.  My post from yesterday was boring, the thing I was going to put up today was boring.  I mean, I might still talk about some of those things but doing ones that I don't have much to say about is kind of taking a toll on my blog and my writing.  But I'm gonna leave the post up because it is full of good posting ideas.  The whole thirty day challenge thing though is so unoriginal. 
I think that I will do blog every day in April though.  Wheeee!

Re: Remembrances of Warmth

This is a blog response to this.
So go read that, and marvel at how lovely her words are and how she has a beautiful vocabulary and way of writing and just say "Damn Hayley, why am I reading your blog and not Iz's?"
This post was written by my girl Zazz/Iz.  Zazz has the most beautiful (bold, underline & italics- shit's legit) way of expressing her ideas through her writing.  Her words just roll of my tongue as I read them in my head- that doesn't make any sense but I feel like if you've been reading my blog long enough then you know what I mean.  Maybe not. 

Back to Zazz- her words are awesome and they remind me of what summer feels like and I want her to know that I miss it and get all nostalgic about it too- all the time. 

I miss how sunscreen smells.  I miss guarding at chair 7 at Peterson Pool, where you can't even hear the radio but at least you're outside.  I miss being told by Rami to turn my music down every night at FLA.  I miss enjoying the music I listened to, rather than just listening to it to cover up the vacuum of the silence that is the entire season of winter.  I miss taking a nap on my sidewalk one sunny day and a kid stepping over me.  I miss driving around with Laura listening to Rascal Flatts and Ke$ha and yelling at stoplights.  I miss being a pleasant person instead of the crank that winter turns me into without fail every time it rolls around.  And most of all, I miss caring about things. 

I remember the middle of August last year.  As soon as I realized that there were a handful of days left of Summer, I started having panic attacks almost every day.  I remembered the sadness that is winter, the depression.  I'm apathetic, I'm lazy, I'm tired, and I'm not always nice.  In the summer though, I'm happy to be alive and I'm passionate about things worth being passionate about.  I miss that feeling like I was doing what I was supposed to do. 

I wish I could say that I'll try to be happy like I am in summer, but I'm not going to be until Peterson Pool opens again and school lets out.  I wish there was something I could do to feel the fire that is me in the summer, but that's what makes summer so special.  I am the me-est me I could be in the summer.  So look forward to that (:

Day 1:Your favorite song; a photo of yourself and a description of how your day was

When I am asked what my favorite song is, my go-to answer is always "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz, but that's a very shallow answer for a pretty complicated question.  There are so many songs to pick from; and it's really hard to choose.  I love Dance Anthem of the 80's by Regina Spektor but I don't know if I still will in a year.  I guess that's why it's hard to pick a favorite; because favorites just seem so permanent.  I usually like high energy, happy songs better than slow, sad ones but a slow song I love is Always Attract by You Me at Six.  I just love that band though, so much.  Also The Cab is really good too.  Anyways short version:  I don't have a favorite song because favorites are too precise for me.

Me. 
My day today was insane.  I woke up at 6:45 despite the fact that I didn't have school and then my dad and I drove to southern New York and snowboarded for four hours and then we drove home, which meant I was back in my living room around 5:30.  I watched Gilmore Girls, like usual because I'm an incurable addict, and then I got ready and went to gymnastics practice.  I didn't really do much except the dance in my floor routine though because as soon as I did tumbling, I landed on my ankle badly.  Last Thursday I was landing a whip and I bent my right ankle too far forward, twice, and I did that again today.  Twice again. 
And now I'm home and I have a B in English which is a miracle in itself and I earned a 94% on the research paper I had been stressing about for about two months so HOLLA ATCHO GURL.
And now I'm writing this piece of shit post! Yay!

30 day challenge... really Hayley?

So, seeing as lately I haven't had much to talk about and also I keep forgetting the things I actually do want to talk about; I'm gonna do a thirty day blog challenge.  Actually I'm going to do two, simultaneously.  But I'm going to try my best to keep it interesting by using my camera as much as possible.    Also I'll still make normal posts whenever I feel like it too!  And this is the list:
The 30 day blog challenge. 
Day 01 — Your favorite song; a photo of yourself and a description of how your day  was
Day 02 — Your favorite movie; a photo of something you ate today
Day 03 — Your favorite television program; your idea of a perfect first date
Day 04 — Your favorite book ; a photo of yourself two years ago
Day 05 — Your favorite quote; your favorite photograph of your best friend 
Day 06 — Whatever tickles your fancy; a photo of an animal you'd love to keep as a pet
Day 07 — A photo that makes you happy; your dream wedding
Day 08 — A photo that makes you angry/sad; a song to match your mood
Day 09 — A photo you took; a photo of the item you last purchased
Day 10 — A photo of you taken over ten years ago; a photo of your favorite place to eat
Day 11 — A photo of you taken recently; what's in your makeup bag?
Day 12 — Whatever tickles your fancy; a photograph of the town you live in
Day 13 — A fictional book; your favorite musician and why
Day 14 — A non-fictional book; a tv show you're currently addicted to
Day 15 — A fanfic; something you don't leave the house without
Day 16 — A song that makes you cry (or nearly); your celebrity crush
Day 17 — An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.); a photo of you and your family
Day 18 — Whatever tickles your fancy; something you crave a lot
Day 19 — A talent of yours; another picture of yourself
Day 20 — A hobby of yours; the meaning behind your blog name
Day 21 — A recipe; a photo of something that makes you happy
Day 22 — A website; a letter to someone who has hurt you recently
Day 23 — A YouTube video; 15 facts about you
Day 24 — Whatever tickles your fancy; a photo of something that means a lot to you
Day 25 — Your day, in great detail; what's in your purse?
Day 26 — Your week, in great detail; a photo of somewhere you've been to
Day 27 — This month, in great detail; a picture of you last year and how you have changed since
Day 28 — This year, in great detail; your favorite movie
Day 29 — Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days; something you never get tired of doing 
Day 30 — Whatever tickles your fancy; a photograph of yourself today + three good things that have happened in the past 30 days

fla

Summer of 2010 I did a program at Kent State University called the Startalk Regents Foreign Language Academy.  Most people around me have already heard about it because I brag about how multilingual I am far too much, but for those of you that I haven't yet told about it, this is for you.

I first heard about it from my mom when I was in eighth grade because she had a student going there to learn Chinese.  At the time, if you did the program you received a laptop and some money, but it isn't that way anymore.  Anyway, I didn't really think I would ever end up actually applying and getting in and crap, but last spring I just went for it and I was accepted into the Arabic program.

This meant that I would spend almost half of my summer living in a dorm at Kent State, which before I got there I didn't know what to make of.  The program was totally free: food, dorm room, the 10 credit hours, everything.  I heavily considered not going because I wanted to have a happy, carefree summer, but it was a good thing I did accept. It was the best summer of my life and the best experience of my life.

I had about 4 days off of school before I left to go to Kent, meaning that school got out for summer break on a Tuesday, so I had Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday to get in all of the summer activities I could.  When I arrived, I was given a key and I went up to my dorm room.  We were in Stopher which was the honors dormitory, so our room was pretty tricked out.  For being a college dorm it was anyways.  We had out own bathroom, shower, sink, mirror, thermostat, the like.  

So once I got there, I just waited with my dad for about 15 minutes for my roommate arrive.  Her name was Kaitlyn and she was awesome.  We got along really well, we had everything in common.  We went down to the student center and got out IDs and then we went to the first night dinner.  At that point I had no idea what was in store and I was kind of nervous to find out.  My dad left after the dinner and then we had a small meeting with our class and a culture activity, and after that we were left to ourselves.  The Arabic class ended up playing cards and hanging out for awhile, getting to know each other.  

We weren't the only language group there though- the 12 Arabic language students were joined by 12 Chinese language students and I think 10 Hindi language students.  Each language had it's own lounge, but all three lounges were in a row with one hallway between them.  To get to the Arabic lounge, you had to pass through both the Chinese and the Hindi lounges, which was how we ended up getting to know the other kids, by seeing them on our way through.  

My daily schedule was like this, every day.

8am- Wake up, walk to the hub and get some coffee.

9am- Class until 12

Noon- Lunch until 1

1pm- More class until 3

3pm- Free time, aka nap time or watch the world cup time until 5pm

5pm- Dinner in the lounge

6pm- Cultural Activity (movie, documentary, Arabic games, field trip, dancing)

9pm- Study Time

11pm- Curfew.  Most people would get back to their rooms at around 11 on the dot, I would regularly get out of study time around 10:30 and listen to music or something by myself instead.

Somewhere between 11:30 and 12:30ish- Night check-in thing.  Our RA would come and give us our score for the day of participation in cultural activities and language use.  I almost always got 10/10 "The Republic of Ashra" and my roommate normally got an 8/10 "The Island of  Thamanya"

On Saturdays and Sundays we had projects and skits to do instead of class, but we were in the classroom around maximum 10 hours a day, minimum 7.  The Hindi and Chinese students called it the bat cave.  

After about 3 days I realized that I wasn't going to make it through the program without some people outside of Arabic to talk to, so I made friends with some of the Chinese kids and some of the Hindi kids.  One of the best things about the program was the people.  Every single person there had applied because they wanted to learn a language- and every single person there was working hard to do so.  Every single person there was worth getting to know, and I made a lot of friends I'll never forget.  

I particularly enjoyed the culture time- especially the documentaries we watched.  I didn't really like the dancing because I really don't like to dance, but that's another post for another time.  The field trips we went on were to a mosque, to an eastern orthodox church, and to the Arab-American museum in Dearborn, Michigan.  We ate some awesome food along the way as well.  

I had a minor breakdown after one night when I tried to sacrifice sleep in order to finish all of my homework.  The schedule was far too rigid to skip sleeping because there was no extra time to catch up on sleep- no true weekends.

I wouldn't encourage every one I know to do this.  If you do well in language class without finding much need to study, if you're willing to open your mind to another culture (really think about whether or not that's you- everyone wants to believe that they're open minded but consider it heavily.) and if you are willing to put in the work you should apply.  There are always a million reasons not to do something (yes, I'm pretty sure that's an office quote) but there are millions more reasons of why you should.  

You will get everything out of the foreign language academy that you want to get out of it. That's my guarantee.  

OH and if anyone from fla is reading this, I'm going to make a separate post for Daoud because this is already a super long post and I could write about him for a really long time.  

"it's not called gymnicetics."

(I'm about to be specific to the floor event of gymnastics instead of talking about all four events, but my theory does apply to not only floor but also beam, bars, and vault.  Just keep that in mind plz.)

Fact I'm establishing:  Gymnastics is pretty much entirely based on body position.  The same idea of keeping your head in, staying tight, and hollow body position are carried throughout every aspect of it, and exceptions are few and are noted.

So given that gymnastics is entirely based on body position, it can be said that gymnastics is also a language.  Every individual body position you use in order to complete a tumbling pass is like a part of speech in English.  You can use different parts of speech, you can change where they are in the sentence, you can vary your sentence structure.  Either way though, you have a subject, a verb, and maybe a conjunction or two, some articles, and some adjectives.  In the same way, you can use different body positions to do different skills but essentially those same body positions can be used to make completely different skills.

Once you have your basic body positions down, you can get a lot of other skills based off of those same body positions, just connected.  Which is why when your coach tells you to try something new, if you've seen it before and know how it works, you should be able to get it within 3 tries.  It seems so alien to a person who has never tried it, but gymnastics gets easier the longer you do it because of  how familiar you are with how you do it.  

Now, given that gymnastics is all about body position and it's like a language:  Gymnastics is a language I do not speak.  It's like a first year language class to me.  In French I last year we learned how to say 

In the room, there are... 

                            and the way to say it is 

Dans la salle, il y a...

I knew that phrase, I knew the whole thing when it was together.  But when you deconstruct the phrase, I really didn't know how to use parts of it in other phrases to make different sentences.  I didn't know what "y" meant, I just knew that it had to be there in order to say "In the room, there are..."  

Now, for gymnastics, I feel the same way.  I can do lots of abnormal things that most of the world can't do, but I'm not any fantastic gymnast because although I understand the entire idea of body position, I don't apply it to myself.  I know that I should, so shut up, don't be sassy.  I can take out larger chunks of my skills and use them in other things, like for example I can take my round-off 2 back-hand-springs and turn it into round-off 1 back-hand-spring, but I can't take the same back-hand-spring and do it out of a rebound from anything but a round-off or another back-hand-spring.  

This idea is, I believe, also applicable in figure skating.  You learn small skills so that you can make connections into bigger ones later down the road when you're more advanced.  I don't really think I'll ever get to the point where I'm forming my own gymnastics sentences.  I only have about a year and a half left to do it in my life, and I'm probably just going to focus on doing the best I can improving skills I already have or learning skills that are very similar to ones I already have.  

A few sidenotes:

1.  I think that whenever I'm talking directly to the reader, I'm going to put it in italics to emphasize that I am physically trying to say something to the reader.  

2.  Another big issue with gymnastics is that someone in the gym is going to be judging you for you skill or your lack of skill whether you're in a meet or not.  There are always going to be moms and other gymnasts and coaches watching you fail and thinking you're stupid for it.  You have to get over that though and have some tough skin- because if you don't, you're not going to get through it.  It really does teach you to not care what other people think, because you know that haters are gonna hate.  

NSJFHSGHSLAGJ

I NEED SLEEP.  

maybe if I stopped getting such good compliments on this then I would maybe stop writing this and get some sleep once in awhile.  someone tell me I suck?

(jklol thanks everybody who reads this and tells me that they like it or hate it or whatever- I appreciate that you took the time to check it out!)

reasons to like language class

(as opposed to despising them as most do)

1- sometimes they make the technology chapter the same chapter that you learn to express frustration.  coincidence? I think not.
2- they give you better job opportunities
3- you get to see into other cultures
4- If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. - Nelson Mandela.  People appreciate multilingualism.
5- it's a pretty social thing- you're learning to speak.  And if you have a teacher who just wants you to be able to speak it, once you have the language part down you'll just be able to chit chat with friends the whole period.

While trying to find that quote, I went through all the documents that I have saved to this computer, and I came across a few other quotes that are certainly gems as well, though from less renowned people.

This is me- 

Eating lunch at Westlake High School is a game, and nobody quite knows how to play.

This too is me, these are answers to questions I had for homework about the movie district 9.  These are answers that I actually turned in:

3.  I legitimately have no idea how to find a metaphor within a metaphor, because I honestly can't even begin to figure out what that means, but I think it has something to do with 

7.  No.   That's a terrible question.

10.  I think this film was valuable in discussing segregation and racism.  I don't think these questions are, they literally make no sense at all.  But the movie is very thought provoking and definitely successfully shows racism and segregation and prejudice.

Those are the full answers.  No, I didn't copy and paste #3 incorrectly, I'm pretty sure I just never finished that sentence.

This is my best friend:

welcome to the future. now that all my books are online and i do my homework on the computer, i am even more distracted than usual. (believe it or not) i log onto facebook just so that i don't have to do my math homework. i check my email 8 times a day to avoid history.

Ahhhh I love that so much.  It's so perfectly eloquent to describe the inefficiency of the internet.  

The one about eating lunch at WHS was so true last year.  Our second semester, people sat on the floor because there weren't enough chairs and everything was just so messed up.  A successful video game could have been created in which you had to buy your food in under 15 minutes, successfully get a seat at a table with a comfortable amount of people, and then make it to your next class on time.  

SOMEONE PLEASE GIVE ME A TOPIC TO WRITE ABOUT.  I'm bored with these random, sporadic, stupid blogs.  alalalalaalalaa