I am a staff editor for Pomona Perspective. My favorite thing about Journalism is the ambiance of the class. I am very sure I will be taking this class for the rest of my years at Pomona.

I love ramen, cup noodles to be exact. Especially when I am home alone and it is late at night. It is very comfortable to be on my couch and just slurp away the soup and ramen. My favorite thing is to use chopsticks but I do not own a pair. Whenever I go to panda express or a Chinese restaurant, I ask for an extra pair of chopsticks that I save to eat ramen with. However, as peaceful and comforting the situation sounds, i hate the way ramen makes me feel. My stomach feels heavy and I feel like its swiveling around in my stomach. I appreciate the comforting feeling of eating noodles but not the aftermath.

You are launched into the wilderness with a couple of high schoolers and over 50 sixth graders to take care of. While it sounds scary, I highly recommend going to outdoor lab as a high school leader. I had the best time ever! Obviously, it is not just high schoolers and sixth graders, it gives off the feeling of an actual school. There is a designated Outdoor Lab principal, there are interns who pose as teachers and secondary leaders for the sixth graders. High school leaders get to collaborate and share what they have seen in their sixth graders during a daily meeting. The first day we were paired with an intern who taught us how to teach a class. Then the next day, it was only the high school leaders teaching a class. The class I taught was called Leave No Trace. I had to take sixth graders on a two mile hike, a very steep hike. I was paired with another high school leader from Pomona. The students got to make fire and even a shelter. My favorite part of the whole experience was getting to know the other high school leaders. We all became a big group of friends and it was so much fun during our off times because it was only us. I even got to tag along on an archery lesson.

Overall, I am definitely going again and it was an amazing experience to have on the books!

I am very happy that pajamas are normalized in schools. If you look at the stereotypes classic 90's movies have influenced concerning a day in high school, you see that it is expected you don't repeat outfits or dress lousy. However, in today's high school world, wearing pajamas has been normalized and even seen as fashionable when paired with certain tops. I am very happy that this is not seen as irregular because it is so comfortable and I plan on wearing pajama pants to every day of finals week.

For Christmas, my friends got me a nail kit. Friend 1, E, got me the fake nails and glue and light lamp and friend 2, J, got me the gel polish. When I unwrapped it Christmas morning I was ecstatic because I had a family Christmas party to go to that day. I did my nails all on my own and it was fairly easy. There are definitely some cons to the process but overall, it was so much fun and I love the results.

I have continued to do my own nails since then, and it is so much more cost effective while providing great results.

Like I said in my October blog, I wanted to go back to outdoor lab as a high school leader again. And bam I did.

This time I went with Creighton and Free Horizon, two school combined!

A quick recap of the week

• VERY cold, lowest temperature was NEGATIVE 20 degrees

• made friends with such great people

• gave kids a saw and let them do what they pleased (kidding)

About the giving kids a saw, this time I taught a class called Site History, where you take the kids to secret locations at the Outdoor Lab campus and let them do fun activities, one of them being sawing wood with an actual saw.

A quick discourse for a story... I found my snow buried in the snow. I had to scrape the ice off. And what happened? My phone was completely fine which I was and still am shocked about. What happened was I walking up to the dining hall and my phone had slipped out of my pocket and into the snow. I did not realize this till I got to the dining hall and thought I had just left it behind. After an hour or so I came back to find my phone missing. I thought about it and realized I had my phone in my pocket when walking to the dining hall, so I dragged a fellow high school leader, Kyla (the one with the pink beanie), and we found it!

Back on track now, most of the other high school leaders were from Lakewood High but there were some other school thrown in the mix. I got to build such great friendships with everyone in my bunk and will treasure the memories.

With a high school leader, Abi, we were walking down to the bunkhouse alone at night for our off-time and we looked up and we saw the most beautiful starry night sky. It was like how they describe it in books. We quite literally lied down on the snow with our hoods on and looked at the stars. Now that I think back on it, it was like a scene out of one of those coming of age movies.

Now the cold, it was definitely something. I even managed to get frostbite (not dangerous at all, very mild). I had to wear 3 layers of bottoms everyday and 2 shirts with a hoodie over them and a winter jacket to top it all off.

That was a very brief outdoor lab part 2, can't wait to go up again!

<--- the starry night sky