Hawaii Food Photos

So, like I said, here is a separate post for all the food I got to try in Hawaii! Granted, very little (if any) of it is "actual Hawaiian" food. But I did get to eat foods that I haven't been able to before. Feel free to skip this post if you're uninterested or don't feel like looking at food.

Hawaii Trip Photos

After my midterm exams, I had a five day break before I had to go back to school (which was extended to six thanks to some snow). So, we flew to Hawaii! I'm going to make a separate post for food, since there's enough photos and things to talk about to do that. The watermarks on the photos are all over the place -- most have this blog and bluemozaik (my photography tumblr) on them, but my selfies and haul photos have my personal tumblr's. ;; There are more pictures posted to both my personal tumblr and bluemozaik, and more will be up as I watermark them.

I also made a teaser video like I do for my convention vlogs, which can be found here. The videos themselves aren't as interesting, unfortunately;;

Things I want to do in the future

This isn't really a "new years" post, since I've made enough of those already. However, there are still a lot of things I want to do or accomplish, whether this year or in the more distant future.

• Revisit a lot of cities / states I've been to. Hawaii is the last state I haven't been to, and we're going there in less than two weeks. Crazy, right? I've actually gotten to the point where I use the trips we've taken as personal history markers -- like, "Oh, was (x event) before or after (y trip)?". I've gotta give Mom credit for actually reaching the goal she set however long ago, and with at least a year to spare. However, because of the school calendar (and probably money as well), we'd cram huge trips into a week or less, which meant we've hardly ever stayed in one place for more than one night. There are a ton of places I'd love to go back to, whether the Mall of America or Chicago or Yellowstone, and tons of others, too. 
• Travel abroad. I've had a dream of traveling to Japan since at least middle school, if not late elementary school. I'm not sure that dream is as strong as it used to be, but I would still love to visit Tokyo at some point! There are also a lot of other places I'd love to visit -- England, Spain, Italy, South Korea, etc. I'd probably start with traveling up to Canada. Mom says I've been there once, for like an hour, but of course I was pretty young and I don't remember it. I follow a couple Canadian bloggers (Sachie and the rest of moetron, among others, and EYK, though they live in South Korea) and I'd love to see the cities there. 
• Get my driver's license. I'm definitely old enough to get my provisional, and most of my friends have by now, but I haven't bothered getting it yet. I'm definitely going to get it by senior year -- I can't make my parents drive me around forever!;; However the area we live in is pretty chaotic (read: bad traffic and drivers) and also has a lot of public transport, and my parents have been willing to drive me where I need to go (when I actually leave the house). Dad's been asking about it more and more so I guess at some point I'm going to have to go take the test. 
• Get a job that I enjoy. I should probably start with getting a job in general. I've done some occasional babysitting since June, but I'm definitely not earning as much money as I was when I babysat almost every day after school. I would love to get a job where I can use talents I have, whether translating or computer-related things) and where I don't have to interact a ton with other people. I don't think I'd do well as a cashier or a waiter. Unfortunately, I think that's the majority of the open jobs for kids my age. 
• Open a storenvy. Another alternative to that would be opening my own online store where I could sell things I've made, whether it's hair bows or video game-related things made out of perler beads. I've been asking for the permission to start one, but as of right now my parents are still wary. 
• Learn more languages. While I definitely wouldn't consider myself fluent in Japanese, I definitely have learned a lot in the almost six years I've been trying to learn it. I've also been taking formal Spanish classes through school for six years, and if you suddenly dropped me off in a Spanish-speaking country, I think I'd do okay. I'd love to learn more languages, like Italian or Korean or German. I have no idea if I'll ever get around to it, but it is something I'd love to do with my free time. 

I think I'm going to stop there before I can make this post super super long. Again, these are all pretty long-term goals, and I definitely won't be able to achieve these just within the next year. 

Books of 2013

I've seen a couple other book bloggers make end of the year posts about their favorite books of the year, so I figured I'd do the same. I read 95 books during 2013!

Books I loved:

Books I still think about:

Books that made me want to cry:

Books that fell flat:

Fluffy romance-y books:

And, finally, my favorite book from this year:

I could probably list a whole bunch of reasons why I like The Lunar Chronicles series, but I think anyone I've talked to in the past two years has heard that before. I'll probably go back and re-read it in 2014.







I'd say this year has been pretty good in terms of books (even with the ones that fell flat), and I hope that 2014 will be just as good!