| Where To?: California |

Being born and raised in Souther California {only a little ways out from Los Angeles}, and with parents who are absolutely obsessed with traveling, you would think that I've seen quite a bit of my home state, which is the third biggest state in the country, and therefore has quite a bit to see.

Oddly enough, when pulling up a myo map and trying to put down locations I've been to in the US by memory, I discovered that most of my experiences in CA have been centralized. Of course I've been to nearly every city within 100 miles of LA, but everything out of that area has been to national parks {we're total camping buffs, which got me accustomed to long road trips and made me a pro when it came to car sickness} and the one point way up north that is San Francisco. 

To me, this seemed like a direct challenge from my parents to go out and explore California myself, before I leave it forever. I've already made some tentative plans to road trip up our coast with some friends next summer {whether these turn into an actual plan or just turn out to be a sort of teenaged fever dream is yet to be seen} and I'd like to see some of the things I've missed out on. Having spent an entire lifetime itching to get out of my state without ever having really seen much of it seems unfair, doesn't it?

So, in the end, this is a glorified list of places in California I have seen, have yet to see, and would like to see. Let's enjoy the Golden State together, shall we?


1: San Francisco

Honestly, San Francisco is kind of a touchy topic for me, for a variety of reasons. However, despite past personal experiences I've had within the area, the city is undeniably one of the most beautiful and interesting places in the state, and it would be terrible of me to not give it another chance. {Besides, I haven't taken my cheesy Golden Gate Bridge selfie yet. I need that selfie in my arsenal.}



2: Big Sur

Hello, my inner outdoorsy buff! Big Sur is one of the few 'wild' places {aka national parks} that my family hasn't dragged me to yet, which is a shame, because it's lovely! And also huge. I'm more of a forest person than a beach/ocean person, and Big Sur has both, so yay !

3: Lake Tahoe

Anybody who's worth anything in suburban SoCal has been to Tahoe at some point in their lives. I haven't. Go figure. Anyway, Tahoe is beautiful, and has everything from boating to hiking to skiing. The lake itself is vast and has a small island in the middle {Fannette Island} which hosts the remains of the Tea House. 

4: Mammoth

YES there is a place with snow within reach in California. It's Mammoth mountain! Skiing and snowboarding are your go-to activities during the wintertime, when the mountainside is coated in gorgeous, powdery snow, but whenever you get tired of isolation and sweating inside of your parka, there's 

5. Yosemite {and similarly, Bishop}

Now, here's a place I know well. I've never done any of the really exciting things to do in Yosemite–like, for example, climb Half Dome with my dad, because I'm very mortal–but I've spent many weekends and summer nights camping, hiking, and horse-back riding around this area. Sometimes I wonder why my parents don't just buy a cabin here. {Sadly, we haven't been in a while! Need to nag family about that.}



6. Joshua Tree

In terms of camping, it doesn't get much more idyllic than the aptly-named Joshua Tree National Park. It basically never rains, and although you do have to watch out for rattlers, the serenity and isolation of the park is a welcome break from the modern world. Plus, it's alway fantastic for star-gazing–one of my family friends owned a telescope that he would bring out with him when we did group camps, and we'd have fun pretending that we could figure out which random clustering of stars was which constellation.

| French Study Masterlist |

Hello! As most of you know, I'm currently studying French. One of my greatest dreams is to study abroad in Paris, and I thought I might as well put together a little post organizing all of my main resources and some extra tips for those also studying French. Whether you're studying the language of love for recreational reasons or travel aspirations, you can make the process much easier and faster with hard work {and a few of these resources!} I hope it helps. ♥

General:

• About.com {Grammar & Vocab}

• Bonjour.com

• Duolingo

• Memrise

• Transparent French Blog {includes culture}

Vocabulary: 

• New French word daily

Grammar:

• French Tutorial Index

Entertainment:

• My French language playlist collection {8tracks} 

• Harry Potter et l'ecole des sorciers PDF {c'mon, it was necessary}

| 2015 |

Guess who literally forgot that she had a travel blog for a solid seven months?? This gal.

Since the new year rolled around, I've been incredibly stressed, but I've also been learning how to use my dad's really expensive and nice camera. It seems like the more I'm forced to stay in school, the more I want to get up and leave, ha ha.

In some more exciting news, I've signed on to take a trip to China in the spring of 2016 with EFTours and some of my closest friends! I'm already on the payment plan and it's totally draining me oh god ha ha. It's a trip around Xi'an, Beijing, and Shanghai for a week–and next year could honestly not come sooner. I'll be a senior then, so it'll be my sort of last hurrah as a high school student–and hopefully one of my last big events before I take my gap year of world travel before settling in to university life. 

A lot of people seem to get the impression that I have my entire life planned out and ready to go, but honestly, I have no idea what's going on. I'm petrified that I won't get into my college of choice, that I won't like living in the city, that I won't be able to afford tuition... And what's worse, I have no idea what I want to major in. So many of my friends struggle to find something they're passionate about, but I have the opposite problem. I'm flaky and easily distracted, always trying to decide between my many hobbies to settle on something that I could actually do for the rest of my life. For years, I wanted to be a novelist who didn't stay rooted to any single place and just traveled and submitted manuscripts as she pleased... But now I'm slowly starting to realize how unrealistic that is, and it's a draw between zoology, fashion design, graphic design, animation, business, international relations... My crippling indecisiveness just worsens under pressure, which is why I'm relying so heavily on this gap year of mine. I'll be doing 6 months of volunteer work and 6 months of just travel, and I'm at that point where I feel dangerously done with school and just want to do that, ha ha.

This year feels so much like a filler for me. I'm tired of everything related to my hometown and just want to up and leave, but I think I've been more or less trained to be submissive and obedient. It's frustrating! 

On another note, I'm going to try to make more consistent blog entries here, so that I have some material to fill in the blank spaces between my adventures. Have a lovely spring, everyone!

| New York City: Aftermath |

Alright, so Day Nine's post is facing some issues, but it's been a few days since our return from New York City, and I thought I might as well reminisce.

The entire reason I traveled the city was because of – well, my interest in attending university there. If you've been following this blog, you probably know that I visited two prospective universities – Columbia and NYU. I'm still primarily interested in NYU, mostly because I'm too terrible at basic brain functions like calculus to even consider applying to an Ivy League school. But during the campus tour and introduction to NYU, I decided that it was my dream school. {Was it the study abroad programs? It was probably the study abroad programs.}

Now, New York City as a whole is an incredible place – in some ways, I'd consider it to be a chameleon city. One moment you're in Times Square, surrounded by tourists and glowing billboards attached to hundred-story buildings, and the next you're in Central Park, jogging down a quiet path, alone, with trees on all sides and maybe like a bench dedicated to someone's cousin Stacy. 

The sheer amount of things to do in New York City is highly impressive. I mean, I'm from the suburbs, man. You get to choose one of five things to do for fun, and four of those five things are school-related.  In New York, you have the amazing art scene, various museums, thousands of restaurants – heck, if you just walk a block down the street you'll find about twenty bookstores, markets, and clothing stores. It's a city full of opportunity, and that doesn't just include jobs – it also includes the opportunity to meet people, try new things, and have an amazing adventure or two. I feel like I would never be able to properly make a list with the title of 'Things to Do in New York City.' There's just too much. In ten days, there's no way I even managed to get to half of what there is to experience in the city, but you know what? That's okay. I'm coming back.

Was New York City exactly how I imagined it to be? Of course not! {Actually, it was considerably less dangerous than I had expected.} Either way, I got to experience one of the greatest cities in the world firsthand. And it was awesome. 

♥ The Sweater Giraffe 

New York City: Day Nine

Alright, more college touring happened today! It's our last real day in New York City—we head over to JFK early in the morning tomorrow—and to sort of finish off the trip, we went on our tour of the campus of NYU, which is now officially my dream school. 

The campus is really amazing, and the tour guides were friendly and informative, and it really solidified my resolve to attend. {I was initially drawn in by the location, but now I'm interested in the study abroad programs offered}

Now I just have to figure out what I want to do with my life. Ha.

After the tour we spent some time shopping around. There wasn't really much left for us to do, to be honest, so I picked up some tacky souvenirs for my friends and I'm now sitting around waiting for pizza back in Jersey. Oh, yeah, we also bought macarons! Have I mentioned that I love macarons? I wish I had the skill to make them, and I'm really impressed with the people who can. 

Ah, so cute and colourful. 

Hopefully we'll have a safe flight tomorrow. I'll definitely have to spend some time editing these posts when I get back home and have access to an actual computer, but I think I'll also be writing a reflection post as well. After all, this was the first trip I ever really blogged about—and I sense the start of something new. 

Thank you for a great week and a half in New York City! And until next time,

Love, The Sweater Giraffe ♥

| New York City: Day Eight |

OKAY SO FIRST OFF ALL OF THE POSTS I'D BEEN WRITING ON THIS TRIP APPARENTLY WERE PENDING FOR ETERNITY AND THEN MASS POSTED YESTERDAY. SO. SORRY ABOUT THAT.

All right, today was really busy and fun! We spent the morning biking aroud Central Park, which was lovely and refreshing. 

Central Park is definitely one of the highlights of the city—a lovely place to take a break from some of the hustle and bustle, sans the gas money that it actually takes to get out of the city. ;)

There are also some great sights and monuments to see in the park—for example, various man made lakes and Strawberry Fields, the tribute garden built for John Lennon after his death. 

After Central Park, we rode the train down to Coney Island and spent the rest of the day in the area before heading back to Manhattan for dinner. :) Luna Park is quite charming, and it's one of those places that children and adults can enjoy equally. 

That was all! We're going back to Cali in two days, so this was a great sort of last run. Until tomorrow, lovelies!

♥ The Sweater Giraffe 

New York City: Day Seven

Well, we've officially been in NYC for a week! Today we went out fairly early and spent a few hours in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, fully intending to leave early to get tickets for a ship ride or something. In the end, we miscalculated the popularity of the tickets and didn't even get through a full floor of exhibits at the Met, but I still grabbed some great shots!

I feel so artistic. The tourist at the bottom really brings the composition together, y'know?

To kill time, we walked around a bit—first destination being the underside of the Brooklyn Bridge.

We also saw a good chunk of Chinatown and part of Little Italy. I grabbed a lovely, refreshing green tea milk boba drink, and we got a bag of 'Hong Kong cakes' from a street vendor, which were very cheap, very small, very delicious, and very not-pictured-below.

In the end, because of the boat's betrayal, we went home way early and ate food and I tumblr'd. Schedules and plans keep changing, but I feel like that's what's making the experience more unique and fun. {I was kind of adverse to having such a strict schedule at all to start with, but it was my mother's idea and my mother's money so.}

♥ The Sweater Giraffe