26 before 26

Some of you may remember that when I turned 23 I decided to make 24 goals before I turned 24. I only ever completed about half of them and never documented it. So... I decided to try again. I'm hoping that posting it on my blog will keep me more accountable. Since I turn 25 tomorrow I'm making 26 goals before I turn 26. Here they are:

1. Update my blog once a week

2. Take one picture every day

3. Go to a country I've never been to

4. No Chocolate for a year

5. Go skiing in Japan

6. Go to a Japanese Onsen (Bath House)

7. Hike Mount Fuji

8. No Carbonation for a year

9. Go to a Japanese Soccer Game

10. Take the GRE

11. Get into Grad School

12. Read the Bible in a year

13. Participate in the 21 day no Complaint Challenge http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?qid=2889

14. Go to a Sumo Match

15. Go to Kyoto

16. Go Vegan for a month

17. Adopt an accent for a weekend

18. Read 50 books in a year

19. 15-25 must be non fiction

20. Get a Japanese Massage

21. Hike Yamadera

22. Go to Hong Kong

23. Sing everything instead of speak for 7 non consecutive days

24. Lose 10 lbs

25. Save x amount of money

26. Go snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef - based on plane tickets there is a high possibility this won't happen so I'll put a bonus one on here just in case

Bonus: Get a library card in Japan

That's it! Wish me luck!

Long Overdue

Ok I know I haven't blogged in 2 months but that's all about to change very soon. I turn 25 next week and so I decided to make 26 goals to accomplish before I turn 26. One of them is to blog once a week but I won't give away the other 25 just yet...

A few funny things happened today and I thought I would share them as my kickoff post to a year of consistent blogging.

1) I should preface this story with letting you know that I never fall asleep facing the wall. I've always kept my bed in a position that if I sleep on a certain side I can see every aspect of the room when I open my eyes. I'm pretty paranoid especially when it's dark and so I like to open my eyes at random and make sure nothing scary is in my room. This might be why I've always had a hard time falling asleep. With that being said, every morning my alarm goes off around 5:40. Lately, I've been waking up earlier though because it is starting to get bright pretty early here and so I can't sleep. This morning I woke up around 5:25 and to my surprise I was facing the wall. I never wake up in this position. To my horror I truly truly thought I heard someone breathing heavily in my room. Naturally, I stayed very still for a few seconds then jerked my head around and to my surprise, but I'm sure no one else's, there was no one in my apartment. Of course I couldn't fall back asleep so I kept opening my eyes because I kept hearing it. I even thought, "could that possibly be my breathing?" So I held my breath but no it was still going. I would like to say at this time that it WAS early in the morning and I had only had about 5 1/2 hours of sleep so I was quite groggy. Finally I realized... it was my neighbor, Kelsey's, alarm. It was so muted through the wall that it seriously sounded like heavy breathing. When we were walking to work I asked her if her alarm goes off at 5:25 and sure enough it does.

2) Today Kelsey and I went to the store to pick up groceries and get pictures printed. While we were waiting for our pictures to develop we decided to get a drink at Starbucks. When we sat down these two girls starting whispering and laughing at us. This really isn't completely unusual... probably due to our beautiful looks and humorous vibe that we give off. Finally after we finished drinking we got up to leave and Kelsey hears, "sumi masen". That means excuse me in Japanese. So she turns towards them and they don't say anything. So I guess they said it again (I was throwing away my trash but came right back). This time, with much gesturing and hand motions, they asked us (in Japanese) to edit something in English. It looked like they were teaching some story and had probably used something like freetranslations.com to translate it to English. So we sat down and edited their story hahaha. Every time we made a correction they would nod and say "ooooohhh" or "the" which is what we kept adding. It was pretty entertaining. Then they bowed to us about 1,000 times and thanked us over and over again.

I'll leave you with this picture of me, Ally, and Kelsey at Disney Sea two weekends ago. Yes we went again! How could we not after the joy of our last trip. If you read my last post on Disney.... yes I bought a Duffy. Best/Worst decision I ever made? Of course! And do you spy three hair accessories in my hair? Yes you do! There was another one on the back. More to come about that later... I'll save it for a week when I have nothing else to write about :).