My own Bucket List

I've returned! My trip was incredible, and considering it will be my last in a good long while, it was everything it should have been and more. I'm proud to say I accomplished one of my life dreams on Sunday night - #17.

Believe me, I am the type to resist the cheesiness of something like "the happiest place on earth," and of course I've heard every disgusting story about Walt Disney (including a particularly disturbing one concerning lemmings), but when you're there on Main Street USA, and you see the characters waving at everyone and there's a man with mouse balloons walking around you just give in to it all.

A morning in Disneyland, it was enough to rejuvenate (or maybe distract) from any hardships and worries I'd been experiencing days before. I mean, this was the place where they broadcast Christmas parades and where they filmed Sing-a-longs that I watched as a kid. It's also the place whose advertisements I used to get really sad over. I'd be 10, 12 years old and I'd see a Disneyland commercial and there would be that child on tv who gets to go with their parents and watch the fireworks and meet Mickey and everything, and I never thought I'd be able to do that. I'd only ever been once before when I was about 4 years old, so I couldn't even go let alone remember any of the cool rides. I remember having to sit and watch the intro video to the Indiana Jones ride while my brother went on once with mom and then another time with dad. It blew chunks.

Anyways, the fact that I was there with all my friends during senior year just meant the world to me. I'd taken the entirety of Sunday to walking around between there and the Paradise Piver in California Adventure (where they have the best tasting waffle fries EVER), and my legs were just about ready to buckle 1 minute into the fireworks. So I sat on a bench and looked up at the exploding stars and circles in the shape of a face and two very large ears, and on the speakers they started quoting movies and every quote started with "I wish..." It was amazing I'd never noticed how much they say that in Disney movies, but there were like 10 of them. It was literally wonderful.

Because of that night, I feel it'd be wrong to rule anything out ever again. Watching those commercials as a child I thought I'd NEVER see those shows but there I was a few days ago, in the moment. I encourage you to create a bucket list of your own, writing down the fantasies you have no matter how much you think they'll never come true. You might just find yourself standing in the middle of one of them one day.

(please not that these are by no means in order or desire)

#1 - become an ultrasound technician so I can show someone their baby's heartbeat
#2 - be a Power Ranger for Halloween
#3 - spend a year as a vegetarian when I am 24
#4 - receive a postcard from somewhere that's not North America
#5 - send a handwritten letter
#6 - have a pet dog and a pet genuie pig
#7 - take a picture of my foot on the Walk of Fame
#8 - wear a sari and get a monroe piercing
#9 - record an improvised jam session
#10 - make out in a library
#11 - have a Disney movie marathon, complete with the Aristocats
#12 - be able to quote/identify famous poets and authors, specifically Thoreau
#13 - enter an open mic night
#14 - attend a poetry slam and drink an exotic tea on a mildly smelly couch
#15 -sing on a cruise ship
#16 - watch the sun rise from a cliff barefoot
#17- watch the Disneyland fireworks from Main Street USA

there's probably more.