Last year in October, I randomly became completely obsessed with ladybugs. This obsession just came out of nowhere and surprised both me and my friends. I mean, I always thought ladybugs were cute. I would search for them on the school playground and I would let them crawl over my hands. They were the only bugs I would ever touch because I was scared of most bugs. Ladybugs were just comforting to me, rather than frightening.

So when Halloween came around and I finally finished my (ladybug) costume, ladybugs were the only thing on my mind. I would draw them, I would research them, and my hands cramped every time I thought about that costume that I hand-stitched.

Then, I made a friend that told me the spot where ladybugs hang out the most: the benches between JI and the Y-Hut. So I checked there almost every day and took pictures of every ladybug I saw. I would show my teachers, my friends, and I even posted them on Instagram.

Now imagine my horror when I realized every single picture I took was of an Asian lady beetle instead.

I was so embarrassed. Every single ladybug that I showed off was an Asian lady beetle. There were no real ladybugs on my phone.

But then I came to the conclusion that I don’t care. Ladybugs and Asian lady beetles are cute. And to me, they’re the same thing… Maybe.

Obviously Asian lady beetles and ladybugs are not the same thing. But they could be if I called everything a ladybug. Obviously I’m a ladybug, you can be too and we’ll all be ladybugs. Even Asian lady beetles.

So I’m going to rate some of the ladybugs I found. Don’t ask me which one is actually an Asian lady beetle because everything is a ladybug now.

This one used to be my favorite. I think the larger black spots are really unique, I swear I had another picture of a ladybug with bigger black spots but I can’t find it. This one’s pretty cool, though. It has a cute heart shape on it. 8/10 ladybug.

This one had a bent shell! I felt so bad for it, but I don’t think I could ever help it. Its spots are kind of fuzzy and tiny. 4/10 ladybug.

This one was just straight yellow. It’s really cute, though. And it’s super tiny. 7/10 ladybug.

I don’t know what happened to this one. I can’t tell if the shell is bent or not, but there is something going on. Its wing is sticking out a little bit. Poor thing. 7/10 ladybug.

This one’s pretty cool. It’s got a heart shape on its back that looks like the white line in between my dog’s eyes. It’s super round and shiny. 8/10 ladybug.

I don’t know what this ugly one is. I don’t even think this is a ladybug or an Asian lady beetle (whatever). Its legs are so freakishly long and it has no spots. And it’s sitting on a water drop. 2/10 … whatever it is.

This one is so cute. Like, yeah it’s got barely any spots, but it’s actually cute unlike the last one and it’s long legs. It’s really shiny, too. 9/10.

This one’s alright. It’s super orange. Like even the face that’s supposed to be white is orange. The spots are cute, and it looks pretty big. 7/10 ladybug.

I think this one might actually be a ladybug. That fleshy background is my hand, don’t mind how pale it is. Wait until summertime and I’ll be a healthy color again. I remember seeing this one on my way to my dorm and it was like destiny that I recognized it 5 feet away getting crushed by a crowd. That was just my ladybug senses. This one crawled around on my hand a little bit, then flew away. We bonded really nicely that day. 10/10 ladybug.

The Great Pyramid of Giza:

The Great Pyramid of Giza is the largest Egyptian pyramid. This pyramid goes back to 2600 BC, and it took over 26 years to build. Back then, it served as a tomb for a ruler during the fourth dynasty of the Old Kingdom. Surprisingly, this landmark has remained in top shape since then, making it the oldest landmark to remain intact. I’ve been wanting to visit this magnificent pyramid since I was a kid.  In fact, I’ve been obsessed with ancient Egypt since 2014. I would watch educational pbs kids specials that talk about landmarks, monuments or history and I would be so hyped to hear them talk about it. Me and my sister loved Egyptian pyramids, so we would build big dirt mounds in our backyard and pretend they were homes to great Egyptian leaders like Ramses and Cleopatra. I would love to visit an amazing place like this!

    Mount Rushmore:

This landmark is probably the most famous in American history. Mount Rushmore was created by an American sculptor named Gutzon Borglum. It’s well known for being an extreme and patriotic monument dedicated to 4 American leaders: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. Gutzon chose these people because they were the most influential people in American history, and of course they passed helpful laws that shaped the society we are today. Mount Rushmore is really a jarring sight, and I’ve always wanted to see it in person. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to put this together.

The Iconic Hollywood sign:

                I’ve been wanting to visit the Hollywood sign ever since I saw it on tv, in magazines, in newspapers and on flyers. I’ve seen it so much that I shouldn’t want to see it anymore, but I still want to visit it because I feel like it’s my destiny now. But also, I think it’s interesting how the Hollywood sign came about. It started off as an advertisement for housing in an area called “Hollywoodland” but of course this advertisement became known for a certain industry and way of life instead. To me, that development is interesting and iconic.  I love learning about the backstory of this landmark, because no one would think that it started off as something so mundane.

The Colosseum:

                The last landmark I want to visit is the Colosseum. This landmark is in Rome, Italy and it’s known for its large structure and infamous past. This place was used for deadly knight battles, gladiator fights, and executions.  Most of these fights were between men and few of them were between an animal and a man.  It’s the oldest and largest standing amphitheater on earth and I think it’s stunning. There are so many pictures online of people visiting the Colosseum. You can really see the true beauty its blossomed into.

Inspired by the Urban Legend, “Baba Yaga”

Today, I walked past a cabin while I was on my morning walk. Normally, I wouldn’t care, but it wasn’t there yesterday. It looked normal from what I could tell. It had a door in the middle of the face, with two windows on either side, sort of like a face. It had two lawn chairs on the small deck. They practically took up everything but the doorway. A little table was off the side of the deck, sitting on top of a large wooden box so it could be level with the deck. It also had a stone chimney on the side that was being used. Not only did the cabin appear out of nowhere, but it already had residents or at least a cold realtor.

I went on my morning walk this morning. Admittedly, I was kind of looking forward to this walk. The cabin had me extremely curious. The only problem was that it wasn’t there. Just like it had appeared out of thin air, it had disappeared. There were no signs of it even being there. There wasn’t even any space cleaned out for a cabin. It was like it never existed.

It’s been about two months since the last time I saw the cabin. I have looked at every part of the trail. Not once did I see it. But today, it was just sitting there again. But it didn’t look the same. The door was on the right of the face of the cabin. The two windows had merged into one big one. The deck was a lot bigger, and it could fit both chairs and a new coffee table. The chimney was the same, and I was still in use. The cabin looked so different, yet it was the same. This time, I looked up my exact location and saved it. I’ll come back tomorrow to see if it’s still there.

I went to the exact location and it wasn’t there. I don’t know whether I should think I’m crazy or not. I proved that it disappeared, but now I don’t have proof that it ever existed. That’s why I’m writing these down. I want to tell somebody but no one will believe me. This is the next best thing. It’s the same as before. There is no indication of any cabin being here. 

It has been 5 months since I saw it last. This time, I’m looking at it while writing. The deck has been stripped of any furniture. It’s the same size as last time. The door is on the left now. The window is now split back into two and is to the right of the door. It now has a dormer on the roof. The chimney was now made of brick, and it was still smoking. I have been thinking about this mystery for way too long. This time, I’m going to see who lives here. The mailbox says Yaga. I’ve never heard of anyone with that name, but I’ve decided that I’m going to meet this “Yaga.”

^ (Can’t find a pic with everyone, but these are some of my goats. Except Winston, oh my god I dislike him so much, he’s so annoying to play against. Anyone who plays him is my worst enemy. Oh, and also Tracer, she will never be my goat, I will never play her by choice, I will always target her in every game I ever play)

For a little over a year, I’ve been playing Overwatch 2. It came out in 2016 and is on its 14th season. (15th in about a month) I started playing during season 8 and I quickly found myself actually liking this game. I’ve never been a gamer in my life. All I played was Roblox and Minecraft, but those games became boring, so I decided to give this one a try. I played with a friend who didn’t teach me how to play, just simply threw me into a game and told me who to play which led to my first main. D.va!

^This being the skin I have for her. D.va has two lives. She’s a tank and she’ll sit in this big Mech, Tokki, until it breaks, and she has to jump around in what people call her baby D.va form (which is just normal her, but she has 175 health?? I feel like a little roach whenever I get out of mech) and hopefully either get it back or die. (You always respawn it’s fine). One thing I love about Overwatch, though, is the variety of skins. People complain about the game being a cash grab, but if I get to collect these stupid character skins then I will! Anyways, after I realized I was terrible at D.va I stopped playing her. (I play her again now, I just had to actually get good at the game) The friend and me were no longer gaming together so I played with someone else and that’s when I discovered Moira! My second main. (who is level 24 for me, and I have like 27 hours on her)

Moira has become one of my favorite characters. She is a support who requires no aim whatsoever. She uses her purple to do damage and yellow to heal. She just throws around these orbs and does A LOT of damage. (At least she did until they nerfed her</3) but the characters are another thing I love about overwatch. Right now, there are 42(I think?) characters. All of them are diverse and somehow connected to each other. People complain and say they shouldn’t add so many, but like I love seeing new characters even if they suck sometimes (Which no one does except PHARAH.), because making a character is a hit or miss with most things and I feel like the more chacters they add the more lore we get and I would prefer to learn about character lore over the world lore because all I know is omnic war and only like six people fought in it. Anyway.

In overwatch there is a group called overwatch (duh), but not everyone on the cast list is IN overwatch, but they’re related to it in some way. Which is something I may talk about in another blog.

Anyways. Right now, I main Cassidy and Mercy.

These two have managed to become two of my favorite characters to play, and I love these skins so much omgee. They’re like the most fun for me and I find myself winning more when I play them (Send help, I’ve spent so much money on this game.)

Still, there are many things I love about overwatch even if the game makes me want to take a bite out of my controller. What I really enjoy about it is the unique set on abilities the characters have. Not all of them do the same thing. It made it so much easier for me, someone who never plays games, to get good at this game because everyone is so different. You don’t even need aim half the time! (It’s still humbling to have a 15% aim accuracy..)

In the past few weeks, I’ve been teaching my closest friends to play this game and even if they end up not liking it that’s fine because I’m able to share something I really like with them. Right now, I have a group of four people, and we all play together! (Just one more person and we’ll have a full team of friendship!) Still, I have been encouraging friends to try out this game with me or at least let me talk about it, because there’s so much to it and I am still learning many things about overwatch.

As terrible as the game is at times, it brings me peace even if I rage, because if nothing else is here for me I know Overwatch is. 

I feel like no one talks about the experience of coming back to school after a break! I mean I know students talk about it from one to another and parents always complain about how much time their kids get off, but no one really talks about how much it affects some people. I know coming back from this break was extremely hard for me. I treated break like we were going into summer, which is my fault, but I just didn’t (and still don’t) feel very prepared to continue out the year. I wake up every morning counting down the days till the weekend and feel stressed like nothing I’ve ever felt before with this semesters work. I think it may have to do with the fact that I have never been at a school that holds me to such high standards. Before I went to a school where just passing by was good enough and was all some teachers expected. So, I never really put myself out there or felt driven to do better. I of course never want to go back to that mindset, and I love MSA for taking me out of that environment/ Which is why I’m so thankful to be a part of the Mississippi School of the Arts, but it still has definitely put me through the ringer. I think and hope that this feeling will fade once I get into the groove of things. I have already done many things this year with the school that has made me go out of my comfort zone. Things such as staying a weekend to go skating with friends, putting myself out there in new classes so I can learn better, and even developing a maybe not so tiny crush on one of my new classmates. All of these things (except for the crush of course) are things I have done in hopes of getting back to my old mindset of wanting to go to class or even the school itself. I have never in my life felt homesickness until this year and now I do not know if it is even homesickness or simply that I miss my evil cat and angelic dogs. All I know is that I’m just going to keep trucking one day at a time until I feel back to my old self again. I also recommend anyone reading this to try something new if they are feeling like I am feeling currently I promise it can lift your spirits!

I’ve always had this weird hyperfixation on my family history. It might be what led to History becoming my favorite subject. There are so many different lines in a family tree, and these lines represent a history made by the connecting people. My family tree dates back to when Americans crossed the Atlantic to free themselves from British rule. 

This is just a small portion of my family, it links back to the Cherokee Nation in Kentucky. The last red box at the bottom is me and above that are my parents. They both have “trees” sprouting from each side. My father was Native American, German, and Swiss. This is interesting since I thought I was mostly Irish for the longest time there’s not much Irish in me at all. On my mom’s side, there is French and English. I am a mixture of all of these different nationalities. That’s crazy to think about. During my research, I met my 2nd cousin on my father’s side twice removed (I’m not sure what that means) but she messaged me on the Ancestry website and told me about my dad’s father’s history and where I come from. She was related to my grandfather, who I found out during my research had passed away a few weeks ago. This was bone chilling considering I had just seen him for the first time in years not too long ago. I messaged her back hoping for more information about my family since it has been a big mystery to my brother and me who just wanted to know more about the history of our family. This is going to be interesting, I’m excited. I’ll update you guys when she messages me back.

This blog took me a really long time to arrange because I kept forgetting and remembering the timeline of my relationship with Animal Crossing. This actually led me to dive into my childhood memories, but of course not really “childhood” more like… tweenhood? Pre-teenhood? I really don’t like those words. Actually, I don’t like anything that has to do with the ages 9-12.

It’s really unfortunate that I have to start this blog by telling you that I never played Animal Crossing as a little kid. Obviously it’s not a big deal to anyone but me, but I swear it’s important for the context of this blog.

The Animal Crossing franchise was a huge part of many people’s childhoods. I hear so many stories from adults about how they spent most of their childhood playing Wild World and City Folk. I wish I was a part of that, but I was born when Wild World was released so there’s not much I can do about it.

My first Animal Crossing game was actually Pocket Camp, which is a strange mobile version of Animal Crossing. It has most of the characters and some really cute decorations but it’s not really an Animal Crossing game. Of course, Pocket Camp was built around the whole idea of camping. You did all of the Animal Crossing stuff like fish, catch bugs, and I think that’s it… I spent my entire 11 to 12-year-old life on Pocket Camp. I don’t remember much about it, but I remember sitting in my (empty) church’s youth-group room playing Pocket Camp in the corner. I was in some sort of puppeteering club so I would get to Wednesday night service like 2 hours before it started and I would spend that entire time playing Pocket Camp. That also led me to discover my favorite villager, Goldie! She’s just a golden retriever who likes to read and eat apples and whatever else she does and I love her for it. 

The talk about Animal Crossing died down for years and I stopped playing Pocket Camp because it was taking up half of the storage on my little Motorola phone (I think).

 Then (many years later), Animal Crossing: New Horizons was released on the Nintendo Switch right as quarantine started in 2020. March 20, 2020. 4 days before my 12th birthday. Also, super crazy that I was 12 in 2020, like that is just so weird to me. Anyway, I couldn’t scrounge up enough money to buy a Nintendo Switch and New Horizons, but I was able to get Animal Crossing: New Leaf for my 3DS!

So I spent most of 2020 playing New Leaf, and it was a total blur. I know I really liked it, and I know I spent a lot of time on it, but I don’t remember anything else. Except my other favorite villager, Pashmina, who’s a goat with blue horns that likes to wear colorful sweaters and eat oranges. New Leaf is mostly known as the best Animal Crossing game. When you first start up a save, you wake up on a train and answer the questions of a cat named Rover to determine your appearance, name, and town name. It’s a great way of immersing players with something that would usually take them out of the game rather than pulling them in. When you arrive in your town, the villagers mistake you for their mayor and now you’ve got a bunch of mayor duties so get to work! It’s such a cute beginning and I had so much fun replaying it when I restarted my save for this new year.

It’s kind of hard to explain how I felt while playing New Leaf for the first time. It felt like I was reliving my childhood, or dwelling in déjà vu. I never played New Leaf before, yet it felt so familiar.

Anyway, Christmas of 2020 came around and I ended up getting a Nintendo Switch early! Of course, I got New Horizons along with it. It was just my luck that everyone on the internet started talking about how they thought New Horizons was boring and everyone (but me and my friends) stopped playing it.

There are so many memories that I have from playing New Horizons with my friends and it’s definitely a time that I look back on very fondly. I never got around to making my island cute or even making a 5-star island because the game did get boring. I hate to admit that, considering how much fun I had, but I am not hard to entertain. It’s not a hot take that New Horizons is boring. Lots of people think the same way.

So now I’m replaying New Leaf and it’s pretty nice. It’s a great feeling to hold a 3DS again after so many years. That little game console has found itself in my hands time after time and I think that’s really sweet. I should give my 3DS a name…

Anyway, I hoped everyone liked going back in time with me to my dreaded pre-teen years to look back on my relationship with Animal Crossing. I miss Pashmina and Goldie now.

One joy in life everyone can agree on is traveling/sightseeing. There are so many colorful, mystic and beautiful places among us. Anyone can tell you about the Grand Canyon or Taj mahal or the Great Wall of China. However, I’ve visited 0/a billion of these amazing monuments and areas. In my whole life, I’ve visited two states: Mississippi and Missouri. In Missouri I got to see army monuments and old machinery used in World War 2. The trip was quite fun, and I appreciated everything I got to see, but I wish I could see more amazing things around the world. So, in today’s blog I’ll be talking about interesting landmarks I want to visit one day.

               Alcatraz island: 

Alcatraz island is one of the most mysterious and beautiful places I’ve ever seen. It sits in the middle of an island in San Francisco, and it use to be home to America’s most wanted prisoners like Scarface and Machine Gun Kelly. However, Alcatraz closed in 1963 because it got too expensive to continue running. Today it looks more like a museum than a prison. I even heard that they offer an audio tour that tells you about the famous prisoners and guards that used to be there. Some people believe it’s haunted because it’s literally an abandoned prison in the middle of an island, but I still hope to see this gorgeous landmark one day.

Rainbow Mountains Peru (also known as Vinicunca):

This Landmark is in the Andes mountains of Peru, and it is breathtaking. It’s famous for its bright colors that mimic a rainbow painted over the tops of rolling mountains. The Rainbow mountains include more than 12 different color minerals! And what amazes me is how this occurs naturally. Like I would think this only existed in my imagination if I didn’t research it. I’ve seen videos of people visiting the rainbow mountains and I still can’t believe it actually exists. I heard the weather there changes incredibly fast, but other than that, visiting this place would be magical.

(What it looks like from the reflective angle)

(what it looks like originally)

Salar De Uyuni:

Salar De Uyuni is a salt flat located in Bolivia. It’s well known for its unbelievable reflective surface. This place is the world’s largest salt flat, and it was created by lakes that evaporated millions of years ago. This landmark is so beautiful and it’s also helpful to us. Now, Salar de Uyuni is responsible for at least 70% of earths lithium supply, which is one of the reasons were able to charge our phones. I love learning about this landmark and seeing the videos tourists make about it.