Food, Fun, and Frostbite

School hosted a food drive early December that I helped organize/collect...fun to participate in community heartwarming events things like this. This is a pic from the last day from the winning teacher who brought like 1,000 food items on the last day alone. :)

A "Christmas tree" I made to decorate the display case with info regarding the Food Drive. Pretty decent for not having a clue about Christmas Trees, right? :p

Got accepted to my fav college :) :) :) They sent the acceptance letter sealed with a WAX SEAL. Obviously I'm a bit easily impressed but......it's soo cool! Now it's just a matter of getting scholarship money so I can *hopefully* go there!

PUPPY CHOW/MUDDY BUDDIES ARE SO GOOD. For those who don't know, it's Chex cereal covered in a chocolate/peanut butter mix and then rolled in powdered sugar. SO. GOOD. finally made some! :)

Birthday was in December...legal adult now! That's kindda crazy because the tagline of my blog for so long was "Pakistani American Teenager" and I'm not quite sure if I'm still a "teenager" now. Does that end at 18 or 20? Anyhow, i find it cute that Google "makes" a Google Doodle for you on your birthday if you're logged in

Part of the college process is scholarship apps! One of the scholarships I found was design a greeting card, so I thought of doing a henna-y Christmas Tree. Sister said one on left is better...gonna add some color and submit it soon :)

Sometimes you get bored and spell your nephew's name out of his kid lego things. :) (I've been trying to teach him to spell/recognize his name for like 2 weeks and it's...a slow process. haha)

My sad snowmen friend :p all my friends were busy so I went sledding ALONE (I know, sad life :p) and made myself a friend...hehe. The snow wasn't as packed this day so that's why it's so...oddly shaped. You can vaguely see the sledding pathways in the background

This is a google automatic GIF affect, but we did get 12+ inches of snow this week! School was cancelled for the whole week (roads just were not clean at all ALL week) so that was nice/made me appreciate school. :p It was so cold earlier this week that they said being outside for 10 minutes would get you Frostbite, so that was a little scary. 

:) Back to school after an extended winter break Monday! Last semester of grade school :'(

Thoughts

Living very far away from family, deaths in the family did not affect me greatly throughout my childhood. But recently, after my grandmother passed away (who still wasn't extremely close to me, considering I only saw her for weeks at a time several years apart), I started to think a lot about death and scope of human lives. Maybe it was just being older, but the idea of a human no longer being able to think, make decisions, and merely move was very mind-blowing for me. Of course, I've known what death is my whole life. But well...some background info. In Pakistan (and probably nearby countries) instead of having a "viewing" at church people almost always bring the deceased person back to home for a viewing. (This might be slightly off since I've never been to an American or Pakistani funeral, but this is what I'm conjecturing) So to imagine my grandma who was just recently walking around and talking to us on the phone at her home to come back as a lifeless individual is very...unsettling. There isn't a lot that separates me, you, or anyone else from her- our organs and skin and blood is basically identical. But in minutes we can go from this goal-aspiring, life-planning individual to a lifeless corpse. It gives a major perspective, especially for religious individuals, on the purpose of life and the fragility of humans my life and how sometimes we I get so caught up in future planning dreams (especially with university just around the corner) it's easy to overlook things that should be happening every day (on a religious aspect) that are a lot more important than materialistic aspirations.  

Just some thoughts.