Happy New Year!!!!!!!

Happy 2015!!!!

Hello, my loves! As I'm sure everyone who doesn't live under a rock without a calendar or internet access knows (the category of which I assume no one who is reading this falls into) it is the new year!!!! Woohoo! And as such I'm gonna do the stereotypical blogger thing and do a look-back on the past year and brief thoughts on the coming one.

First things first, though, today is a GORGEOUS day and I just wanted to mention that, and say how happy that makes me.

Anyway, without further ado:

I know I didn't mention them here, but those of you who know me knows that 2014 has been one struggle after another for my family. I won't go into detail, but it was hard.  Death and sickness, and just stressing how to deal with that and other issues, personal and financial, that have surrounded everything, have been far too frequent. I would never ever be okay that these things happened, but the resulting support from people around us, and the way that it is brought my family closer has been one of the biggest blessings I've ever experienced. Relationships I wasn't sure I'd ever get to have with certain people have blossomed and now I don't know how I didn't have them in my life before; relationships I've had for a while have just grown and proven to me how true and good those friendships and people are. If any of you- and there are quite a few- are reading this, you know who you are, and I could never express to you how much you mean to me, and how important your presence in my life has been, and I'm sorry if I haven't told you that enough.

As for stress factors that I have mentioned- Grad School plans are underway, though applications have yet to be completed. I have been lucky enough to have a solid team of incredibly supportive professors who are doing so much to help me out with all of this. It's still stressing me to the point of exhaustion, but at least I have some solid goals that I just have to suck it up and finish.

The flip side of this is that I HAVE ONE MORE SEMESTER OF UNDERGRAD LEFT AND I JUST HAD A 4.0 SEMESTER!!!!!! I'm pretty stoked.

What else... oh yeah I SPENT 4 MONTHS IN THE MOST BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY EVER and I don't know if I'll ever be completely okay with not being there. In all seriousness, it was four of the most incredible months of my life; I grew so much personally and learned so much, met some wonderful people, and got to have just so many, so many amazing experiences. When I see Ireland/ N. Ireland on tv now, or London/England, or Scotland or Wales I'm all like "I WAS THERE GUYS," and everyone around me is all "We know, Amber, we know. You've told us like 900 times. We got it." Drinking English breakfast tea makes me a little sad, but it gives me happy memories, too.

I wanna go baaaahhaaahhaaackkkk

Ummm.... because of my adventuring in Ireland and the rest of the British Isles, I've gotten more into hiking and adventuring at home. Over the summer my legs were pretty consistently speckled with bruises that I felt were like badges of honor. I can mostly thank my sister Chrissy and my brother Tony for that.

Those, I think are the main things... well, some individual highlights:

-Well, all of Ireland is a highlight so we're gonna skip the first 4 months. There's a bunch of other posts about it, too, so feel free to revisit those. :)

- Worked at not-Turkey Hill (Boscov's) so got to dress up for work, which was actually kind of fun

-Surprisingly, this was the first actual year I was involved in tumblr, which was both full of delight and probably a really bad thing for my sleep and social life. but still, loads of fun.

-Roomed with my long-term roomie, Alyssa, but also got a new, fabulous roommate, too, named Nikki. We have many good times together.

-Though for unfortunate reasons, had my sister Chrissy visiting for a little over a month in the summer, which was nice.

-SWING DANCING of both east and west variety, making my life sweeter and more wonderful, providing me with some of my favorite times, and giving me my best and most effective version of stress relief. My life is never complete if I don't have dancing, and this year was no exception.

My WCS instructors remain awesome. 

-turned 21 (ba-BAM. If you have any Bailey's you care to get rid of, give me a call.)

-Aced my poetry class that I whined about all semester, then burned my homework (symbolically. I have digital copies). It was incredibly satisfying.

Buurrrrrrrrrnnnnnnn

-Otakon 2014

-drew some stuff. crocheted some stuff. watched some really good movies/shows (for real don't get me started. Arrow. Emma Approved. Now You See Me. Sherlock. Doctor Who. Many, many more, cuz I watch way to much television.)

-First read my favorite novel of all time, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

-learned some really cool stories about Renaissance/Reformation stuff (So many Medicis. So many badass reformers. And apparently St. Nicholas was a Catholic Bishop who punched a guy in the face for being a heretic.)

-Had a super weird, but actually really interesting English project about The Picture of Dorian Gray. My last blog post before this one was actually all about that.

The Sass-master himself, Mr. Oscar Wilde. 

-Been kind of obsessed with red pandas, owls, foxes, and Stitch. Because really, they are so freaking adorable. I even got a red panda plushy for Christmas who I named Aka.

Really, how

could you

not 

love them???

I am sure that there was more (no kidding, it's 365 days) but I am being distracted by NCIS currently, so I'm gonna cut it short. That, I think, was the most important stuff. I can think of a couple of really fun little stories, but I tend to be long-winded in story telling (curse of the Creative Writing major, sorry).
So, what about next year? Well, my goals are as follows:

-Finish Undergrad (hopefully with a 4.0 semester)

-Hike part of the Appalachian Train

-Read the entirety of my new, beautiful copy of The Arabian Nights 

THANK YOU ALYSSA

-Brush up on my Latin in Grad School Prep

-Learn some French. Also for Grad School. 

-Um, Well, Grad School. 

-I think I want to crochet another scarf. In something that's not a single stitch cuz that takes forever. 

-If I at all get the opportunity I'm going to travel. 

-More dancing. I want to go to a few events and I want to just keep getting better. 

-Be fabulous. Oh, wait, already doing that. Never mind. ; ) 

Also, for your pleasure, here's some music/ videos that have made an impression on me this past year. 

I'm in love with this video. And his soothing voice, and his lovely ginger-haired, British, face. 

I have danced around like a stupid person to this more than once when alone.  

Will always love driving and rocking out to this song.

Dance with me tonight. and tomorrow night. and the night after that. Any night, really. 

As creeperish as this song is, I love these two singers so very much, and actually I enjoy this song so much.

 And the video is adorbs. 

Honorable mentions:
MKTO- Classic, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ba_qTPA4Ds
Imagine Dragons- Demons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWRsgZuwf_8
Sam Hunt- Leave the Night On, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuMiMBjcvWU
 Frankie Ballard- Sunshine and Whiskey, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYKnP-6cDWE
Meghan Trainor- All About That Bass, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PCkvCPvDXk
Taylor Swift- Blank Space. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ORhEE9VVg
Michael Buble- Come Dance With Me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gXUdgdF5-U

So yeah. That's what I got. Enjoy the music and dance a bit maybe. I'd like all that stuff to be a thing, though I know that it'll probably have way more in store for me than I could foresee for myself. Happy 2015, then, everyone. I hope it's super wonderful for you! I send lots of prayers and hugs, and raise my imaginary glass of bubbly to you!!! :)