Book Club: The Beginning

During my childhood, I loved to read. I would read whatever I could get my hands on! When I was really little I dug into Disney fairytales and Dr. Seuss books. As I got older Hogwarts became my dream school while Harry, Ron, Hermine, and I tried  to defeat the He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. In high school I read all the classics, The Great Gatsby, The Color Purple, and Of Mice and Men.

What happens when you get into college, is the magic of reading stops. It doesn't take you to far off places, or excited your imagination - it takes you to scientific studies, dry historical events, and journals written by professors from fifty years ago. Reading became more of a negative rather than a positive. I tried reading for fun in my time in college, but due to long meetings, lots of classes, and a busy social life I started reading books almost monthly knowing I wouldn't be able to finish it.

Now that I have graduated and I have more time on my hands reading once again has become an everyday thing for me to do. I am once agin divulging myself in wonderful books. Myself and two of my friends decided to start a book club in the beginning of the summer. Three books and one less member later - I think we are one a roll!

We first read An Unquiet Mind, the book was slow for me at first and then as I started to understand the characters more I throughly enjoyed it. I think that it was a book that I wouldn't have picked up myself, but one of my fellow book club readers choose it and I am very happy that she did. It has given my the drive to start picking out different types of books to read.

Out next book was my choice, The Time Travelers Wife. I love to read books that have movies attached to them that I can then watch and compare the two. I loved the love story between these two characters. One that was real and passionate that was a little controversial at times.

Right now I am reading, Is Everybody Hanging Out Without Me, by Mindy Kaling. She is one of my favorites actors on The Office, I think she is hilarious and I want to be her friend. I think that it will be a funny light read.



Along with book club books, I have been going though my bookshelves and trying to read through some of my old favorites. When we pick our next book I will put it up on the blog so we can read through it together

Girlfriend Getaway: Lake of the Pines, CA

I have a wonderful group of friends. We are all there for each other through thick and thin, good times and bad. I have friends from all walks of life, some I've known forever, some that I got close to during my time in college. However I have one group of friends that just blends and works together perfectly. Of course there are always little hiccups in any group of friends, but it seems as if we have gone through that and now we just work. Simple as that.

We got really close during our senior year of high school. Some of us knew each other individually before, but senior year was when we all came together as a cohesive group. We really started to do everything together, movies, dinners out, parties, trips, parking-lot ragers, shopping, and everything in between.

Here we are before going to Senior Ball in 2008.

Dressing up as the Spice Girls for Spirit Week

Soon we graduated from high school and went our separate ways; UC San Diego, UC Santa Cruz, Columbia University, Brown University, and University of Arizona. Although we were far apart we kept in touch, visited each other at school, and spent every moment together when we were home on school breaks. Now that we have all graduated and moved back home, we have been exploring the Bay Area and growing our friendships even more.

One thing that we all love to do is travel! We have gone on trips together, and separately we have traveled all over the world; Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Peru, Australia, Scotland, Italy, New Zealand, Ireland, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Chicago, New York, Panama, Costa Rica, and so many other places!  While we are under budget constrictions we do smaller low-key trips. But we have big plans to travel the country and the world together.

Our first trip together - Disneyland the summer after we graduated!

This past weekend we went up to my grandmother's cabin in Northern California. It is in a gated community called Lake of the Pines. We spent the weekend doing lovely things, watching movies, playing games, drinking, eating, reading, and spending time at the lake. We made goal lists for what we want to accomplish before we came up to the cabin again, some goals included; vote, learn how to play guitar, go on a trip out of California, and get a job.

The main point of out trips is to spend time together exploring and doing girly things together. Which is why I created a separate part of this blog called "Girlfriend Getaways". I am going to chronicle all of our trips together, as well as other trips that I take with my girlfriends. I hope it will inspire others to take these trips with their friends as well. I am personally really inspired by my Aunt Claudia. She and her friends from high school have been doing a yearly trip together for the past twenty five years. They spend time in different places and then spend time catching up.

Hopefully some of our future trips will include:

A road trip through Oregon and Washington

More trips to the cabin

Disneyland

Louisiana

New York

Brazil

and many more

Please come along!