Category Archives: Family & Friends

A Lesson In Friendship

Have you ever had one of those moments where someone tells you something and you are so completely taken aback that you lose your breath? Or it felt like someone punched you in the face?

I had a close friend tell me yesterday that after high school, she doesn’t want to be friends with me. She wants to “move on” with her life. She said that she knew we were eventually going to stop talking so she “might as well do it now rather than later.”

A little bit of background: This girl, whom we shall call Jay, is part Vietnamese and part Chinese and I’ve known her for twelve years now. I invited her to my Thanksgiving last November. My group of friends and I surprised her at the airport when she went out of town for two months and we threw her a welcome back party. We threw her a surprise birthday party. She went to homecomings with us and was there at every group gathering. She’s valedictorian. I played tennis with her and she eats with us at lunch. We were pretty close friends.

Jay had been ignoring her best friend and being rather rude to her but wouldn’t tell her why, no matter how often her best friend asked. I’m pretty close with her best friend as well and she was extremely upset, so I called Jay and asked what was up. The day after this was prom, and I didn’t want all of this going on at prom. So she replied that she was trying to slowly pull away from us, because she didn’t want to talk to us after we graduated.

How do you say that to a friend? Even a best friend?

She went on to tell her best friend that she enjoyed her company and had fun, but she didn’t mean anything more to her than another acquaintance she had in class. But I think what really hurts: she said she was “completely okay” if we didn’t want to talk to her anymore.

Do you just give up your friends just like that? You simply say “go away” and move on? How do you just forget all those memories you had with someone that you really truly cared about? She came to my Thanksgiving; I’m pretty sure she has met more of my extended family than Andrew has in the two years we’ve been dating.

There’s a lot more that she said that really stung. It really did feel like a slap in the face, like someone took my breath away. She was one of my closest friends, and I feel like I don’t even know her anymore. And while I know it hurts to me, it must be terrible for her best friend, who is completely heartbroken.

I’m not crying. At first, I was just completely shocked. I think I’m more disappointed than anything. You think you know someone – someone I’ve known for twelve years – and then they do something like this. Someone who you were really close with, did everything with. It makes you wonder if you truly know people at all.

And of all times for her to do this? The last month of school, right before graduation and all the awesome senior events. It was like she’s just trying to be malicious.

Prom’s tonight, but this ain’t gonna rain on my parade!

May the Odds be Ever in Your Favor

I went in for my first day at the Holiday Inn for work, and it was overall an alright day. I didn’t do any training mainly because it’s a lot to take in at once. So I mainly just shadowed people, watching what they did and taking mental notes of little things about the hotel. The only thing that I really did was occasionally file a paper or two. It was a short shift, only three and a half hours, but there wasn’t anything I could do yet, so I was fine with that.

I’m scheduled to work again tonight from six to eleven, so what people would call a normal shift, haha. I’m pretty nervous because tonight they’ll start training me and it just all looks so confusing. The workers that I met the other night were nice though, so I think it will go alright. I usually can catch on to things pretty quickly, so I’m hoping that this will be one of those occasions too.

I woke up this morning at 9:30, thinking that it was Saturday and that I had to babysit. I have today off of school (marking the start of my spring break), so that threw me out of whack a bit. It wouldn’t be such a problem, but I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been having some trouble sleeping, so I’ve been really tired lately and just need a good day off to sleep in. Which would’ve been today.

Not to mention I saw the midnight premiere of The Hunger Games last night. :D

I wasn’t nearly excited for this movie as I was for the Harry Potter movies, but I was still pretty excited. I think it’s always a bit weird reading a book and imagining in your head what you think everything is like, and then watching what someone else viewed it as on the big screen.

Overall I really liked the movie, so I’m going to insert a mini-review here (no spoilers, I promise!). Most of the things that I really did not like were not plot or acting related, it was more with the filming of the movie itself and the camera angles. In the beginning, when the movie was showing the Seam, the camera was extremely shaky. I realize that this was intentional and that it helped set the mood, but it just annoyed me. I just wanted to somehow be able to stop the camera from shaking!

The way that the fighting between the tributes kind of annoyed me too. The camera was zoomed real close in so that you couldn’t really see what was happening. You could just see a glimpse of a punch, part of a knee in the stomach, and the rest very blurred – again with the shaking camera. :blink: I was talking to Andrew and my friends about it afterwards and we all agreed that if it would have showed everything in the fighting scenes, the movie probably would have been rated R for violence. But, I thought that they could have perhaps shown a little bit more – but I’m an action kind of girl, so I guess that’s just me. :P

Other than those two things, I really loved the movie. It stayed very true to the book and the things that they did omit I thought were minor and were necessary for the sake of time. I’m glad they didn’t split the movie into two parts. A lot of movies have been doing that which is a bit annoying and seems just another scheme to make more money.

A couple of people I know were complaining that it did not stay true to the book, but they also read the book within the last week, which is rather stupid. There are going to be differences between book and movie, and I learned my lesson after reading one of the Harry Potter books the day the movie came out. I just sat there and critically viewed it, noting every single thing that was different, and I didn’t enjoy the movie because of it.

The casting for the roles and the acting itself was done very well. All of the characters came very close to how I pictured them in my head and my favorite would have to be Haymitch – Woody Harrelson was spot on with his portrayal of his character. The Capitol people me and Becky joked all just looked like a bunch of Lady Gagas, but I thought they were excellent as well.

Overall, I thought the movie was fantastic and I really hope that they are going to make a movie for Catching Fire, too. If you hadn’t read the books or seen the movie, I would recommend both! The Hunger Games are right up there with my other two favorite book series, the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. 8)