Romaisa's Reflections

The best part of listening to a really good song is hearing it for the very first time. I’ll hear a song, then I’ll eventually forget what it sounds like, so then I’ll get excited to hear it again. Then I’ll play it again and again until I get tired of it and find new music, and I think about how amazing it sounded when I first heard it. There is literally no way for me to decide on one single song that I would want to hear for the first time again, so I’ll write about multiple songs. When I was younger (well this was just a couple years ago), my favorite song was "Starboy" by The Weeknd. That was the only song I listened to back then. Before I discovered Spotify, I used to buy music on iTunes, and "Starboy" was the first song I bought. That song (and Party Monster) was what introduced me to The Weeknd and got me into music. Another, more recent, song I’d love to hear for the first time again is “Drift” by Choker. I just discovered this artist; Sp

If I were to describe Central Illinois in one word, it would be: flat. It’s pretty boring in terms of geography, and it contains mostly small towns. There are fields everywhere; when I’m in the car I almost always see vast expanses of corn or soybeans flying by my window. However, that doesn’t mean everyone who lives in Central Illinois is a farmer. I am most definitely not a farmer. It also doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do.  The area’s climate is interesting. In the summer, it can get pretty hot and humid, but if you prefer warmer temperatures, like me, it’s fine. The winter, though, is where the weather gets really weird. Here in Champaign, it started snowing on Halloween. That wasn’t very good for the trick-or-treaters -- though I still had a couple of determined trick-or-treaters come to my house. Last winter was really, really cold. The thing about winter here is that it is both cold and windy. This makes walking to Kenney Gym a real issue -- you have to trek through the

My earliest memories of music would be the piano lessons I had as a kid (and still have now). I started piano when I was in around 5th grade . My teacher was a cranky, old woman who lived in a small house with pink and green walls. I’d always be nervous going to piano lessons with her, because, being a cranky person, she’d get mad at me often. She gave me candy after every lesson, though, if I played well that day. One day she noticed I was nervous about the lesson and she told me I’d get stomach ulcers if I was nervous. I don’t know if that was supposed to relax me or what. Eventually, I had to stop having piano lessons with her, because we were moving to another town. When my mom told her the news, the teacher didn’t show any understanding of the fact that we were moving; she got mad and said she had to pay for her bills for all her surgeries. What a strange lady. My next piano teacher was a nice young woman in Champaign. She gave us prizes for doing well, and ha

I read somewhere once that what you fear is how you died in your past life. Well, in that case, I either died from a ghost, from being in the dark, or from being in deep water. My friend fears storms and has unexplained memories of a tornado that never actually happened, so maybe this theory is true. Like many other people, I have a fear of the dark. However, it’s not the actual darkness that I’m scared of. It’s what could be in it. Since you can’t see well in the dark, you don’t know what possible threats could be hiding in it. Even though there’s nothing dangerous in my house that would be hiding in the dark, I’m still scared of it.  Another thing I’m scared of is ghosts. One day in fifth grade, my friend was telling me ghost stories, for some unknown reason. I have no idea what it was about those stories, but from that day on, I became terrified of ghosts. Even though I was scared of the supernatural, I’d become addicted to reading ghost stories online, scaring myself on purpos

At first, I didn’t know what to write for my blog post. I like photography, so I ended up choosing the first prompt. I found a picture of me from around 12 years ago and asked my mom about it. She said, “People used to call you Dora,” and when I asked why, she responded, “Because they think you look like Dora”. I guess I looked like Dora. I had short hair like her. As a kid, I was obsessed with Dora. I was one of those people that talked to the TV when she asked a question.  Anyway, this picture was taken in California at Huntington Beach. This is where I started to learn how to swim. One of my dad’s friends brought me in the ocean and I splashed around with these green floaties I had. We also went to Disneyland (or Universal Studios; I don't remember which one). Mostly what attracted me to this picture was my smile. I don’t often smile like that now, so this picture makes me want to smile more. That’s kinda deep lol. My mom also said that she likes my “million-dollar