"Ooooo Yah... Just gonna send ettttttttt"
No idea why we spoke in funny accents all day, but we sure had a blast despite the lack of early season snow!

My senior capstone project for my major of ski resort management at Sierra Nevada College was to build a virtual ski resort on google earth that has at least a 10,000 person capacity (Think Northstar sized) and fits in a budget of 110 million dollars

In addition to chairlifts and trails, my partner and I had to plan out the base area, all the buildings, parking lots, machinery to buy, snowmaking, tree clearing, and all those other details an average guest might not think about.

It was a pretty fun but difficult project and I am proud to see it all come together, especially the fold-up brochure map I designed to look like a real ski resort's.
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Here is our executive summary that I wrote:

"We are a diverse ski area with great learning facilities and beginner runs, a killer terrain park, plenty of blue groomers, and chutes and cliffs for those who want it. Located 4.5 hours from the bay and almost due east of San Francisco, we are a weekend and destination resort. 2 miles off Alpine Highway 4, it is a perfect, remote getaway from the traffic and crowds. Fly into Reno and make an easy 1.5 hour zip down Highway 395, avoiding the buzz and touristy-ness of South Lake Tahoe or the traffic of North Lake Tahoe.

With 6 high speed lifts, 3 quad chairs, and a gnarly tow rope on the far side of the hill, Tryon Peak boasts a base elevation 1,500 feet higher than most in the Tahoe basin, a peak elevation 0f 10,825’, and a mid-mountain lodge 300 feet higher than the peak of Northstar. Averaging about 470 inches of annual snowfall and joining the 700” club in the 2016-17 season, Tryon Peak is up there with some of the snowiest places in the West. Even on the lean years you can expect our reservoir-backed snowmaking system to deliver 5 chairs, ranging from green circles to black diamonds.

From wide-open powder bowls, to tight trees, to steep chutes and hot laps through our endless park we are sure you will find something to love about Tryon Peak. We have five zones for a skier to choose from. You can cruise green runs or lap the park on Lower Mountain, or hop on the steeps chair for a challenge right from the get-go. If you want a quick getaway to some wide-open faces and steep chutes, go right from the base area to the 10,825-foot top of our Highland’s zone via Highland’s Access Express. For some awesome trees and backcountry-esque lines, check out the backside, which tops out at 10,101’. The west side, accessible via Tryon Peak Chair, is another great zone featuring Intermediate and Advanced groomed runs. Finally, sitting above Noble Lake, featuring everything from blue groomers to narrow chutes, the Upper Mountain is another great place to have the time of your life. Our groomed runs total 411 acres, which are groomed every night by our 12 cats. In addition, we have 77 acres of designated double black terrain, including chutes, cliffs, and steep alpine bowls.

When you get into the centralized base area you will be able to choose from one of four chairlifts to start your day on, five if you include the Magic Carpet. Within minutes you can be out of the shuttle and up in the midst of paradise. While you’re in the main base lodge, book a lesson with one of our PSIA-AASI certified instructors, drop off your kid in Ski School, rent some skis, or swing by our retail store to get that one thing you forgot (I’m sure we’ll have it).

We have three gourmet restaurants to choose from to enjoy a treat away from home. Trough Valley Restaurant is conveniently located at the main base area. 8,900’ Grille is our mid-mountain lodge located by Noble Lake, where you can take a break from ripping it through the upper mountain. Finally, stashed away at the bottom of the backside, featuring plenty of outdoor seating, check out hidden lodge at the bottom of Koney Express to truly feel you are in the midst of Mother Nature. Enjoy views of Bull Lake and the famous 10,101 foot Binary Peak.
So what are you waiting for? Come try us on, you might just stay."

Would you ski here?

Closing Day at Northstar was a blast. I try out freestyle rapping too! Check it out.

​It is an interesting concept to think about — the people you cross paths with and perhaps will never meet again. The people you wish you could have a second chance at meeting. The thought would come to mind sometimes that maybe, just maybe, the person I was supposed to fall in love with had already passed through my life without either of us noticing. What if, by some crazy fluke of divine intervention, the world would show two people just how small it is?

 A good looking, snowboarding, Jesus-loving man, and I’ll probably never see him again. Do you even know how rare that is? I thought, as I drove back home down Highway 80 towards Reno and back to the Tahoe area that cold January night. I guess it’s just one of those things. I didn’t dwell too much on it. I didn’t think too much about what could have been or even that I had “blown it.”
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Besides, no guy has ever shown interest in me in the past 19 years. Why would that suddenly change? I guess I had become numb to the relationship drama around me since my friends first started finding love in middle school. I didn’t want to hear any of it. I had just kind of accepted that it would never happen to me. Maybe my standards were too high or I just wasn’t “getting after it” enough.

That evening, I had participated in an entry-level snowboarding competition at Boreal, one of my local ski resorts. It was a rail jam event, so naturally, there were only two girls and about forty guys. The other girl was a professional snowboarder, so I wasn’t too bummed about receiving second place. Besides, I was still recovering from a dislocated shoulder, my first injury that season, and I was glad to be back on my board. I say first because two weeks after this event, I managed to injure myself a second time by dislocating the other shoulder trying to backflip on my snowboard. 

“Nice cross sticker! Jesus is awesome!”
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I looked to my right and there he was. He wore a black helmet and camouflage jacket. His face was shielded by ski goggles and a face mask.  I did, in fact have a cross sticker on my helmet I had cut out myself and stuck front and center. A few people would notice it now and then — usually other Christians. This was the last place I expected to hear that. These Friday night rail jams were quite the show. People drank beer, smoked weed, and swore like sailors. This young man was like the light that shone in the darkness. 

The competition went on and we saw each other each time we hiked up to the top of the drop-in of the competition venue. We would talk briefly about what trick we planned on doing or how our last run went. The rail jam format was a casual one where you had an hour or so to hike up as many times as you could and do tricks on rails, which you were given a score on. We watched people throw backflips, clear huge gaps, and jump onto three-foot-tall rails. It was a little intimidating, and I didn’t know anyone else there except this one guy I had just met.

I hoped to see him again and get to know him more after the competition during the awards ceremony, but when I left the hill and went into the lodge, he wasn’t there. I received my second-place-out-of-two prize bag and went on my way. I didn’t even get his name.
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Life went on for the next eight months and I didn’t think much of this interaction. Those eight months went on just like the rest of my life up to that point — devoid of any meaningful attention from the opposite gender. It was a fun time in my life though. Snowboarding season continued, I finished my sophomore year of college, and I worked a fun summer job at that same ski resort teaching kids to snowboard on a small patch of man-made snow.

Shortly after school started, I attended a get-together for college-aged people. There were about seven young adults total, some new faces and some familiar. I always liked talking to new people, so I sat next to a guy I had never met before. He had dark hair, thick eyebrows, and was wearing a silver cross necklace and a pink, flowery ring.

 “I was on my way here and I picked up a couple hitchhikers. They were all Chinese girls, and when I dropped them off they gave me this pink flowery ring and asked me if I had a girlfriend. When I said no, they told me to find someone to give it to,” he said, justifying his manly piece of jewelry. I kind of liked how it looked on him.
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I had never hit it up with a guy like that before. We talked about random things — whatever came to mind really. I remember talking about my summer job, my passion for cooking, and how my grandma was a princess in Burma. He told me about his time in Alaska over the summer — how he had lived on a glacier taking care of sled dogs and flying helicopters. Then he started talking about snowboarding. Loves Jesus? Check. Single? Check. Into snow sports? Check. That was a good segue into exchanging contact information so we could meet up in the winter and snowboard. 

This time, I wasn’t going to blow it. We exchanged numbers on Thursday, and since he hadn’t texted me first by Tuesday, I took the first step. I invited him to a beach party that was happening on Saturday. I felt more comfortable having a reason to text him rather than just starting with “hey ;)”.

I know the rules: Always let the guy text first; don’t make the first text an invitation; if he waits longer than three days he is not interested; make him jealous. I gave the finger to convention, since the last two decades of my life had shown me that waiting around and playing by the rules did not get me anywhere.
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He responded about two minutes later with not only a “Yes, I’d love to come”, but also some actual effort in keeping the conversation going. I flipped when I received the first “good night” text two days later. I screenshotted it and sent it to my two best friends to whom I told everything. Keep in mind, I had never even been as far with a guy as texting just for fun. This was uncharted territory. 

When Saturday rolled around and we both showed up to the beach party at Lake Tahoe, we seemed to connect just as well as we did the other night. Towards the end of the party, about thirty of us were in the lake in a big circle throwing around a beach ball.
“Let’s go and swim out!” he told me. I followed. The water was cold in spots and warm in other spots. We saw a ski-doo not too far away and swam towards it. When the two if us reached it, after looking around for the owner, we climbed up on top. We joked about how we should try to hijack it. When one of us would move, the whole thing would tip over. We almost capsized it a few times.

We sat there on the ski-doo so long just sharing our life stories that the party was almost over when we swam back to the shore. After everyone left, the two of us stayed there and continued talking. Since we were both snowboarders, the conversation drifted towards that.

“I’ve only ever been to one snowboarding competition,” he said, “and it was last winter in Boreal.”

“Ha, no way! Was it in January?” I asked, since I was at that one as well.

“Yeah, it was!”
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​“Remember there were like, two girls?” I said, “I was one of them. I was wearing a bright green jacket.”
​I think both our minds were blown when he said, “You had a cross on your helmet, didn’t you?” He was the man I thought I’d never meet again. This is the sort of crazy stuff that happens in fictional romance stories, not real life.

Now, when people ask us how we met or how we started dating, I say, “It’s kind of an interesting story.” He keeps telling me he is glad we have a storybook tale, rather than “I bought her a drink at a bar,” or one that could be summed up in two words like “in college.” Not only is the how-we-met story unconventional, but so is our relationship. Instead of expensive dates, we go on adventures such as hiking off-trail, rock climbing, or skateboarding in Santa Cruz. We both fix our cars and do the dishes, and he owns more shoes than I do. During the winter, we snowboard together every weekend, even returning to the spot where we originally met.
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Since starting our relationship, we’ve found other weird coincidences that made us laugh, like how his middle school Myspace account was sk8terboy and mine was sk8erchick, or how that pink, flowery ring given to him by those hitchhikers an hour before we met ended up on my finger. Through a combination of putting the rules aside and a crazy coincidence, we had found love. I’m not here to spark a conversation about predestination or fate, but it does provide food for thought. 

You can say we had some fun taking advantage of the 9 new feet of snow that fell last week! Check out this video we put together.

​The huge, steep cliff faces. The wide-open powder fields. Caples lake, which freezes over in the winter and turns royal, turquoise blue in the spring. The narrow chutes create a ski run so steep, you can be standing up straight on your snowboard facing the hill, reach up, and touch the mountain face. Although not the first place I ever set foot on a snowboard, Kirkwood Mountain, CA is where I spent most of my time snowboarding for about four years. It is where I tried my first backflip and where I spent my 15th through 18th birthdays.  The term ski “resort” doesn’t do the place justice; the people who go there go for the extreme terrain and the feeling of remoteness in nature. It’s both a Christmas wonderland and a place where Mother Winter can let out her wrath.

​Kirkwood is one of the more remote ski resorts in the Tahoe area, located off highway 88. You’re driving down this winding, narrow path with tall snow banks on both sides, the road often snow-dusted or icy, breezing past sandals-and-shorts-clad people from the Bay Area looking at tire chain manuals and scratching their heads. You might even pass an upside-down car in a ditch. Suddenly there’s the sign — Kirkwood Mountain Resort. As you turn into Kirkwood Meadows drive, the ten-thousand-foot sheer cliff peaks of the mountain stare down at you. Because of the location and altitude, Kirkwood receives more snow than most places in the area. For storms to get to Tahoe, they must first pass over Kirkwood and let out their glory on the mountains there.

It’s December 21st and I’m out in the Palisades bowl building a jump into a soft, open, powdery landing to learn backflips. Palisades is a place in Kirkwood only accessible by hiking. There is no chairlift that goes up to this place — it must be earned. You get off  Cornice Chair, the lift to the top, and traverse right for about half an hour. When you’re out there, you don’t feel like you’re at a resort. You can be out there all day and not see another soul. That’s what it was like for the four of us — my coach, teammate, brother, and I.
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 Riding or skiing alone in the backcountry is not an option. Tree wells, avalanches, cliffs, and rocks are only some of the dangers you may face. A tree well is where it snows a couple feet and the tree covers the ground around it, leaving a deathly sink hole waiting for people to fall into. It is one of the leading causes of death from skiing or snowboarding. 

​There was, in fact, a moment when riding with my friend at Kirkwood probably saved my life. It was the last run of the day and my friend and I decided we would head to a place called “Shamwah,” which is a chute just past the “caution cliff zone” sign. Because it was early in the season, we ended being “cliffed out,” which is when you reach a point in the run where there is no other option other than to fall down the sheer, rock face.  I remember taking my snowboard off, trying to climb down the rocks, and realizing I was completely screwed.  I felt like I couldn’t safely climb down or up, and I was stuck in the middle. My phone was dead and I didn’t have ski patrol’s number anyway, but luckily, my friend had her phone and she called for help. He came to where we were and helped us climb down the cliff. Crisis averted.

​In-bounds, avalanches are not a serious problem because of the bombing. I live for the days when I go to bed with snow falling outside and wake up to the sound of avalanche bombs. The dull thud off in the distance is a beautiful sound because you know it is going to be an epic day. On those days when Mother Winter feels like showing off, the resort operators need to be 100% sure their guests are safe, so they trigger avalanches in advance so the mountain is safe to ride on. That is somebody’s job — to be the first one out on the hill, play with guide dogs, make explosions, and ski fresh powder. That white, fluffy, stuff is a euphoria unique to Kirkwood. While all resorts have powder days, Kirkwood’s are the best. The perfect conditions can last for days in some hidden spots. The slopes are steep enough so you are less likely to get stuck in the deep snow. The crowds are much less and the back bowl stretches out forever.

​Lift Ten, otherwise known as The Wall, is the most iconic chairlift in Kirkwood. At both the top and bottom of the chair is a skull-and-cross-bones sign with the words “experts only.” Of course, some hot-heads who think they’re better than the sign and have only been snowboarding a few times decide to test the validity of this statement. However, once you’re about halfway up the chair, you begin to see just how treacherous Chair Ten is. Unlike most expert chairlifts in other resorts, there is no “easy way down”.  Ski resorts rate their ski runs from green squares to black diamonds, with green being the easiest, blue in the middle, and black as the most advanced. If one black diamond doesn’t do the run justice, more diamonds are added to the rating. There are only double black diamonds off Lift Ten. We call the people who decide to ride down the chairlift “downloaders.” Their shame and embarrassment while sitting on that downward facing chair is tangible sometimes.

​While still a dangerous, menacing mountain that deserves respect, there is a certain kind of peace that can be found in these places. Picture a blank white canvas as the sky. Huge, light flakes of snow whisper their way down from the heavens and drift slowly towards you. Picture the trees all around, caked with millions of these snowflakes. If you’re still, you hear nothing. If you’re moving on your skis or board, the sound is like when nylon rubs against nylon.  If you look close enough at your jacket or gloves, you can see the individual flakes. You wonder how nature could have possibly created each one, although I’ve heard it is just a myth that every single one is unique. You think about the amount of effort and intricacy it would take to make just one — so delicate and fragile. What is more beautiful — the individual flake, or the collection of flakes that blanket a vast mountain landscape? These are some of the moments when I see God.

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​“Let’s go on an adventure!” was my response. I was stoked that this tall, good-looking Portuguese-Italian I liked whom I had only known for about 2 weeks wanted to spend his 26th birthday with just me, and he was asking me where I wanted to go.
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All other traditional “date” options seemed boring. Too conventional, too expensive, not unique enough. I was a junior in college and had never once been on a “date” in my life. Not even prom, not even homecoming, not even one of the casual parties I had been to in college. I was always the one “single friend” through high school and the college I had been through so far.  Never kissed, never held hands, never been liked back, and I was nineteen years old.

​Hiking seemed like a good idea because it was free and we both shared the same sense of adventure and athleticism. I knew a place I had been before, but I wasn’t even sure exactly where it was or how long the hike would take. It was up by Donner, a small lake by Truckee, just north of Tahoe. We agreed to go there and wing it, or as I like to say, “send it.”

We drove up Old Highway 40 with the windows rolled down; it was a nice, bright-cherry-red Subaru Impreza with a roof rack and a manual transmission. Not saying I would ever like a guy just for his car — but damn. As we drove up the road, we began to see “road closure ahead” warning signs.
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“Why would the road even be closed now? I bet those signs are left there from the winter,” he said. Before we got to the trailhead however, there were police cars and cones across the road, so we drove back a little. When we saw another trailhead, we parked there and got out of the car. It was a simple trailhead — no bathroom or lodge, just a sign with a map and a few facts about the place. 

“Let’s just send it”, I said. We started down the trail. It was nearing sunset on fall equinox, the last day when the days are longer than the nights. The weather was at that point where you were kind of cold in a sweatshirt but you knew you’d warm up if you hiked a little. It was a dense forest with this trail carved out, and tall trees on either side of it. The ground was rocky and dusty, and was slightly uphill. You couldn’t really see the trail ahead or even how long it was because of the trees and winding nature of the path.  There weren’t many people out at the time, but we did see one old man.

“How far to the top?” we asked.
Hiking poles in hand, seeming tired and a little worn out, he wheezed, “About three hours.”

“Think you can run?” he asked. The elevation of the base of the trail was about 7000 feet, and we were only going uphill. Not wanting to seem like the weaker one, I agreed to run, and we started up the mountain.  We naturally took turns leading the way, like we were both trying to impress each other. My lungs were burning from the thin air, but I kept on running. There were some near-ankle-rolls and face plants, but we were having a great time.

Finally, after only about half an hour since setting off, we reached what looked like the end of the trail, but we were not on the top of a mountain. We looked up. There was an abandoned train tunnel that snaked through the mountain for miles. There was no trail up there but we were young, adventurous, and determined.
“Where now?” I asked.
“Up,” he said. 

​“Hiking” wasn’t the right word, but neither was “rock climbing.” It was a steep incline all the way up, and the ground was covered in loose rocks, ranging in size from boulders to pebbles. Sometimes, the only way forward was to walk right through a bush.

“You know,” he said, “There aren’t many girls who would do this.”
“Yeah, I agree,” I replied, “There aren’t.”

​Another half an hour or so passed since the end of the designated trail, and we reached the outside of the train tunnel. We couldn’t find a way inside, so the next best thing was to climb up on top of it. It was about 20 or 30 feet tall, but there was a part where the tunnel intersected with the mountain, and we could climb up the rocks to get to the top of the tunnel. It was a steep sheet of granite, with a few footholds and a thin, sketchy electrical cable attached to a metal rod at the top. I tugged on the cable.
“Seems stable enough,” I said, making him lead the way. 

​The view from the top was spectacular, and not only because of the pink hues of the sunset over the blue lake, surrounded by dense forest and the tall mountains in the background. What was also amazing was the graffiti. Yes, most of it was just lame vandalism and profanity, but a few pieces shone as works of art. One piece, about 15 feet long and 15 feet wide, looked like a sunset and featured every color of the rainbow. There were stripes of color separated by black lines of spray paint, starting with purple at the bottom, and transitioning to yellow, then red and orange, and back to purple. It was simple but beautiful.

Some featured deep, inspiring quotes. One piece was written in plain, black spray paint and simple handwriting, It is not the length of life but the depth. Another featured a colorful fish painted into the side of the wall and the words Just keep swimming.

“They’ve probably broken up by now,” I joked, looking at all the marks left behind by couples that had written their initials in a heart. Other pieces showed frustration with the system. Question everything was written multiple times along the tunnel in a simple, purple scrawl. Enjoy your fluoride ya F****** sheep, another wrote.

We walked along the top of tunnel until it intersected the mountain again. It was getting dark, and we had no flashlights and were in the middle of nowhere. In the distance, we could see Donner Pass, a scenic, winding road with many narrow, hairpin turns that meandered around the mountains by Donner Lake. We decided if we just made it there, we could follow it and make it back to the car. There was only one problem: between the road and us was an army of alder trees, which were really thick, dense bushes about 6 feet tall or more.
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Every step, the branches poked against us or whacked us. In the face, between the legs, you name it. I feared one would eventually poke me right in the eye. The ground beneath was not smooth either. At one point, we had to step over a 5-foot-wide crevasse, all while still going through the alder bushes. The sun had already set, and you could just see enough to get through.

​We whooped with joy when our feet finally met the road. There was no walking path, but we knew we would end up back at the car if we followed the road down the hill for about a mile. There were not many cars going down, which was kind of a good thing because it was a winding road with no bike lane or walk path, and there was a serious danger of being hit if someone were to speed down close to the edge. As we walked, we held up our thumbs at the three cars that passed by, trying to get a ride down the road. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, no one stopped for us.

On the way down we talked. We talked about our pasts and our lives and our shared love for Jesus. We talked about the winter — how excited we both were to snowboard together. We talked about our shared frustration with the system, and how we both didn’t like watching TV. We talked the Illuminati.  By the time we finally got back to his car at the trailhead, it was completely dark. We had made it, and it felt so good to be out of danger. He apologized for taking me through such a crazy, difficult trail. I said I had fun — probably more fun than if we had gone out to a movie and a nice restaurant.
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This wasn’t really a “date” when we originally planned, but in retrospect it was. I went and visited him again that week and hung out more. We finally kissed. He said he wished he had done that at the top of the train tunnel, but didn’t have the guts to. I said I was waiting for it that whole time. That’s the thing — you can be so scared to do something because you don’t know how it will turn out, but in the end, it would have been just fine. This was September 21st, and we decided we were “officially a couple” on October 1st. In those short 9 or so days, we went rock climbing, scrambling on the boulders by Lake Tahoe, and skateboarding and rollerblading at the local skate park. I think we’ll get along pretty well.

Having all your grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins half way across the world makes a different kind of family dynamic for a child. Thanksgiving dinners were often just my parents and brother and I — not just because of the geographical distance, but also the fact that British people don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. Although I saw my grandparents about once a year at most, and less often as flight ticket prices went up, they were still able to leave an impression. As I have grown older, I have learned some of the very interesting, and quite frankly, very cool and badass history. We seem to live in a society where old people are thought less of than they used to — that they aren’t “cool” or “hip” enough for the new generation. 

My Father’s mother, whom my brother and I have always called “Oms” or “Omi” was born in Java, Indonesia, and is of Dutch descent. She attended her first years of school there in Indonesia, which was actually the same school president Barack Obama went to. At the age of nine, in 1939, WWII broke out and the Japanese took over, putting everyone in prisoner of war camps. Between the ages of 9 and 14, she was in one of those camps, and many of her friends died from disease or conditions, or were raped.  In 1945, just days before all the prisoners were about to be killed, the British navy came in and saved them. “I’ll never forget the sound of their bagpipes,” she said, “It was the most beautiful sound because we knew life would finally be normal again.”

After the war, my grandmother was sent to boarding school in England when her parents went back to Indonesia, and after that went to a farm in Cornwall, England. She had to learn English as a second language in a short amount of time.  

​She then worked as a nurse, and then as a flight attendant, since back in that time, flight attendants had to meet that requirement. She met my grandfather, who also worked in the airline industry, and they were married and had three children, with my father as the middle child. I remember she would tell funny stories of my aunt, uncle, and father, such as when my uncle swallowed a coin, or when the detached head of one of my aunt’s dolls ended up in the apple basket, giving her a right old scare.

Whenever we go back to England, we stay at her home in Crawley, a small town about an hour drive south of London. It is the same house my father and his siblings were born and raised in. That town feels like home even though I never lived there. On street corners, there are those classic red phone booths and red mailboxes you see in movies. There is a park my brother and I would always walk to and play on the flying fox ­– a seat attached to a rope that slid down a cable about 100 feet long. That kind of unregulated park feature would never exist in the U.S. — too many lawsuits.
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Almost every memory I have with my grandmother is positive. With the advent of Facetime video calls, I was able to see her almost every day when my dad would talk to her. Last time I went to Europe, when I was eighteen and my brother fifteen, was one of the most memorable. We went to Holland and she was able to meet up with some of her high school friends, and we saw some of the places she grew up in, as she visited Holland for a few months a year before and after the war. For some reason, my brother and I decided we would act like turtles around her, and she became the queen of our turtle society. To this day, she is still “Queen Turtle”, and we act like a turtle whenever we see her.

I remember she would care about the things my brother and I cared about, such as out favorite TV show, Futurama. She would send me articles about snowboarding in the mail, and would hand-craft the most beautiful, personalized cards for birthdays, Christmases, and my parents’ anniversaries.  I remember I even found a snowboarding magazine at her house, although she didn’t seem to know how it got there.
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It was not until recently that I learned more about her past with the war camps. The prisoners were scared all the time because uncertainty loomed over their every day like the clouds that loom over England. The prisoners didn’t even have the luxury of knowing that they will see the next day. What amazes me is her ability to be still so light-hearted and able to pour into my life as a young girl. It’s almost as if she made sure I had a smooth time going through my formative age — the same ages she spent in war camp.

It took her a long time to forgive the Japanese for what they had done. They had robbed her of her childhood and killed her friends, even though she had done them no wrong. One time, she and her father watched a Japanese man be forced to shovel dirt from one side of a road to the other, shovel by shovel, only to have to do it all over again for humiliation. Her father thought it would be right for her to jeer at the man. After all, the Japanese had put them to work like that for years and she had every right to jeer. She couldn’t bring herself to do it.
It was only upon reading the book about the Hiroshima bombings that she realized how much pain the Japanese had gone through in the war as well. “I hope you never have to live through a big war like that,” she says. That’s thing with war – it sucks for everyone.

She learned not to take freedom for granted after the war. People don’t often think of the fact that they usually have control over their day-to-day life. She shut out her experience in war camp for many years, as in those days there weren’t many options for counseling. That’s what people did back then — they just had to “suck it up”.  Although this was a grim time of her life, she is still able to make light of some of the things that happened, such as when one of the Japanese guard’s shoes came off and was grabbed by a dog, or how they would peek out the windows and giggle at the soldiers standing to attention over and over again whenever the captain walked by.
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I am fortunate and grateful to have a good relationship with my grandparents. Through my grandma’s story, I have realized that there are a lot of things that can be taken for granted, such as daily freedoms and, you know, being pretty sure you’re not going to die the next day or not. I have learned that positive, light-hearted people can still have backstories that aren’t so positive, and I have learned that old people can be cool if the people of my generation would learn to take the time to find out their stories.
 

Last week I got to go to the Grand canyon for the first time on a family road trip. I got to do some cool stuff like hike Yosemite and the Bright Angel trail. I also got to take some cool pictures!
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Here are some of the pictures I took during sunrise over the canyon with my phone.

And here are some pictures I edited using the prisma app on my phone.