Graduation! 

The day has finally come when we all gather, dressed the same in our blue robes, move our tassels to the other side, and triumphantly throw our caps up in the air. Not to sound too high school clichey, as all my posts are sounding as of late, it was pretty epic. So I'll keep in short! Can you tell how excited (and in some cases, freaked haha) we are?!

 The speeches inspiring, the waiting agonizing, and the end result liberating. Naturally, I tripped in front of everyone. Thank you, thank you; I'll take my award for being Jennifer Lawrence any day now. Best part of the whole thing, Alyssa and I got this beaut of a picture ^^^ from the entire ordeal. Grad picture of the century? I think yes! 

Now, it is officially over. Like, really over. There's no going back. And, this also wraps up my 17 by 17 Project. I just wanted to thank all of you guys for listening to me ramble for an entire year. You are all troopers (and I should know, I'm just the one writing this stuff, you guys have to read it haha.) 

And just like that, diploma in hand, I'm ready to move on to the next exciting chapter of my life.

Scratch what I said last time about my college decision, and #throwbackthursday to Portland, because as luck may have it, as of today, this chick is officially going to attend Lewis and Clark College next year!! Pioneers Class of 2018!!! 

"A self-portrait, once a week, every week, in 2014." this week via Sky Diving! 

this week a double feature! 

Oh man, this has been something I've been *dying* to do for ages, and I finally got the courage to today! That and the fact that there's a sky diving place in Pigeon Forge and nowhere near Lexington! So while everybody else tackled the outlets for one last time, dad and I put on our brave faces and tackled our fears. Let's not focus on the ridiculously cheesy suits we wore that were straight out of the 70s, and instead let's talk about how freaking awesome indoor skydiving is! Our instructor was very chill and helped us get the hang of it. First of all, you enter this circular room whose floor is actually a spring with a huge fan underneath, and all of the walls are lined with soft material. So, we step in with our instructors help and first he teaches us how to jump, tuck, and roll. Once we have that down, we begin! We take turns stepping onto the spring while the fan is on and then one minute our instructor is holding onto us, the next we're flying! It was exhilarating!! I don't know how to describe -- it was such an exciting experience that I hate to use the cliche 'you had to be there' but that's really the only way to describe it. I'm sure it is nothing compared to actually sky diving out of a plane but for right now, and for the sake of the experiences, I can check sky diving off of my bucket list!

College Decisions

here's our entire academy class wearing our college tshirts!

After much deliberation, I will be attending University of Kentucky in the fall. Go Wildcats!

A Prom Story

You see, there's actually a funny story when it comes to prom. Actually, there's always a funny story when it comes to anything I do but thats not really what I'm getting at here haha. 

This was my first (and last I guess haha) prom. However I also had the opportunity to go last year. Technically all juniors can go to prom, but I could have gone in the sense that I was asked. 

Looong story short I didn't go last year. I'm not quite sure why I didn't go...although it is a very typical Lusi move haha. I don't know, I guess I just wasn't in the prom spirit. Whatever the reason, it doesn't really matter because I got my prom experience in this year! 

It helps to have a seamstress for a mother because when I ordered my dress from some random Chinese website, even though I gave them my exact measurements, it still came in incredibly long and the corset up at the top was too big. Because mom had so many other orders for prom, my dress was last priority (which is understandable since I'm her daughter, but ya know still) and we didn't end up finishing it up until an hour before I had to leave. Talk about a close call. 

Our group met up at Sophia's to get ready and then we went to take pictures with some greenery. We took pictures at this historic house a little ways down from Sophia's house and as we're posing in front, people start coming out of the door. Turns out there was a wedding going on! Oops! But they were all incredibly nice and even asked to take pictures with us. They complimented us on our dresses and even joked with Josh about how he managed to score not only one but 6 dates;) Honestly, you wouldn't believe the amount of times somebody made that comment to him that night haha. 

Sophia was so proud of herself -- she was going for Audrey Hepburn, and she totally nailed it if you ask me, and then when she put her sunglasses and trench coat on she insisted she was a spy. Like I said, she was so proud of herself she had us take separate pictures of her in which she was pretending to be a spy.

After we were done with pictures we start walking back towards Josh's van and we're walking, and we're walking then all of a sudden Alyssa (in the purple dress) suddenly veers off of the sidewalk and before we can say anything she's opened the door to some van with a lady inside and has one foot already in the car when she realizes what she's doing. And that the van isn't actually Josh's! I'll give her this though, that lady's car did look veeery similar to Josh's. But still, we will never let her live that down, especially because everybody from the wedding party saw too which made it even better.

For dinner we went to some fancy shmancy restaurant called Azure and ate ridiculously delicious food. We saw a couple other prom groups there, but if we're being honest and speaking without bias, we were the best looking ones;)

The actual prom itself was not at all what I expected. I guess in my head I was comparing it to a Bulgarian New Year's Party and it was definitely not like that. It was all strobe lights, loud rap music, and teenage dancing if you catch my dream. But we stuck with our group, found some more friends, and made a night out of it. And it was really fun! The best part in my opinion was getting to see everybody all dolled up and looking their best. I even saw some friends that moved to different schools and that I hadn't seen since probably sophomore year! Though, I really hope that this is not what our high school reunions resemble haha. 

the selfie in action...

the actual selfie!

All night long we kept joking that Sophia and Josh were like our parents. 1) We were riding in a van and Josh was driving and Sophia was next to him 2) They were both wearing black and white while the rest of us were colorful and 3) After dinner both of them announce that if they are to get through the rest of the night, they needed to find coffee. ASAP. So that is how for one night, we all became Sophia and Josh's adopted children (it's funny because they both hate kids.) 

from left to right: alyssa, me, josh, olivia, lauren, callie, urvi, sophia, jared, and mary austin

With the picture above, I've taken the liberty of making it black and white to spare us all the horribleness of it being in color. In our defense, it was crazy hot in the ballroom and we took that picture near the end so we had all gotten a good dose of heat by then. And that was very evident in the color version of this picture, so you're welcome -- I'm sure everyone will be very thankful haha. 

And then as prom wound down, and we had sufficiently danced and mingled with everybody, we made our way out and then decided that our next course of action was milkshakes. More specifically, milkshakes and fries. And that is how at midnight we ended up in a diner on Uk's campus, still dressed to the nines, chowing down on what were probably the most delicious milkshakes and fries I've ever tasted. Though, I can't really vouch for the milkshake since this was my first one, but as my first one it really hit the spot. The fries though, they were spot on. 

We ended up leaving the diner around 1am, maybe later? But not after running into a couple other prom groups, talking with this group of guys (clearly older, clearly hammered) about their proms, and snapping a quick photo for the waitress because when she saw us, she got super giddy and asked that we take a photo with her. We rounded out the night by going back to Sophia's and somehow, even though we'd planned on returning home (at some point in the night) we all just ended up falling asleep after staying up late talking and watching random tv. I blame it on a sugar crash from those milkshakes;) Not bad for my first prom, not bad at all. Makes me regret not having gone last year!

p.s. I really wish I'd taken a quick photo of my shoes because they were honestly my favorite part of my outfit - 5 1/2 inch heels, black with a platform - and I made it all night on those babies without taking them off. I was real proud of myself, I felt invincible (and a normal height for once in my life.)