Last weekend I had my first debate tournament. I did policy and my partner and I had three wins (one of which was a bye) and two losses, and we made it to the quarter finals (though it was kind of embarrassing because both our losses were to the same team). A team from my grade won the policy tournament, which was cool. Otherwise not much to say about it... except for maybe that guy in my grade who was there who wonders why I told him not to say "retarded" and didn't buy my explanation. That made me kind of depressed.


And homecoming is this Friday/Saturday, so for homecoming week we have these themed dress up days. Yesterday was sixties day, so I wore the jacket and armband from my military!China cosplay-in-progress and told people I was a communist. It was pretty fun. Some people actually thought it was funny/clever/original, which I was happy about. Then again I think some people disapproved. I hope no one thought I'm actually a communist though... >.>

And today was celebrity/TV show character day, so I dressed as Haruhi Suzumiya with the uniform and the headband/hair ribbon that I made last night from one of my friends' old headbands and yellow ribbon. Four people aside from my friends knew I was Haruhi. That was exciting. Everyone else who guessed thought I was Sailor Moon. OTL Sailor Moon doesn't have yellow hair ribbons... TT.TT I ended up carrying my copy of the light novel of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya around to show people that I was not Sailor Moon. In English the teacher took my picture to show one of his former students or something and these guys wanted to see my do the Hare Hare Yukai, but then class started, so I didn't.
Also, this morning in band, this guy named Eriq who reminds me of Radar from Paper Towns said, "Hey, Alice, are you Sailor Moon?". Alice is another East Asian girl who plays flute in band and usually wears her hair down, though her hair is shorter than mine and she was wearing contacts. Eriq soon realized his mistake and everyone on that side of the room kind of started yelling about how Alice was right behind him and how when my hair is down I look like Alice or something.
It's interesting how I haven't really encountered the "all asians look alike" problem over the last three years, but now people often mistake me for other East Asian girls and other Wast Asian girls for me. It probably doesn't help that among my group of friends are a Taiwanese girl and a Korean girl who have similar last names and usually wear their hair down, and the Korean girl's first name is similar to mine and she has bangs like mine.

There were actually a lot of people dressed as Pokemon characters today. There was a girl dressed as Ash, another as Misty, one as Pikachu, and there were three guys dressed as Squirtle, Charmander, and Pikachu using painted cardboard boxes as the bodies.

I decided to make China's military outfit. I may use it for Halloween/school band Halloween parade. I just got the materials. But I think I weirded out the lady who cut the fabric for me. She asked me if it was for my Halloween costume, so I answered "Yeah, sort of." And then she asked me what I was going to be, so, wishing to avoid confusion, I told her I was being a soldier. But then she asked me which army I was going to be from, and I told her the Chinese Communist Army. OTL


And on that note, what are you all planning to be for Halloween?

The con was fun. I went kind of early on Saturday with one of my friends from here, who's name is Deborah. We met up with two other friends, Hannah and Christine, around 10:00 and went to the dealer's room and met Christine's mom. The dealer's room was really big and not crowded. There actually were tables on either end of the room for people to sit at. After looking around for a while, I ran off to the Hetalia photoshoot. There were a lot of Hetalia cosplayers there. I saw a really awesome Belarus and a Hungary before I went to the dealer's room, but I didn't expect there to be that many others. When I arrived at the fountain where we were supposed to meet, I was confronted with a large crowd. There were about four other China cosplayers there, one of whom had a small wok and pretended to cook one of the England's stuffed unicorn in it while the England chased her and another of whom brought a New Year's parade lion head and a plastic globe with Hello Kitty in it dangling from a plastic rod that lit up and played "It's a Small Word" when turned on, which she described as "China in a nutshell".
We moved the shoot outside, which didn't seem particularly wise, as it was very hot, but we went back inside after taking pictures of everyone by geographical region. I met ~taiyue, who was dressed as Taiwan, and ~PerseusXAndromeda, who was also cosplaying China. When we got inside, we did some crack pairing shots and then this lady showed up and said that she got one of the con staff people to let us in one of the hotel ballrooms for our photoshoot. In there we were able to take a more organized group picture, for which ~taiyue kinda put in me a headlock, pinned me down, and declared that everyone woud become one with Taiwan one day. Then there were more crack shots and everyone kinda just did whatever and hung out for about an hour. A person dressed as Carmen Sandiego also showed up and pretended to steal people's props.
After the photoshoot, I met back up with my friends, who had been in the dealer's room for the whole time, and then almost imediately ran off again to change into my Momo Hinamori cosplay to go to the Bleach photoshoot, which I felt bad about. For the Bleach photoshoot, we walked to this building with lots of fountains and decorative pools to take pictures there. Everyone was tired and hot from the walk, so it wasn't really exciting, though it was kind of fun walking there. We got everything from weird looks to laughs to a kid at the CVS who said he'd never seen so many Bleach fans in one place. There was also this guy in a passing car who seemed to be putting lots of energy into turning in his seat to face us, stick his head out the window, and laugh loudly at us in a way that I associate with videos about the Civil Rights Movement. >.>
After we got back, I found my friends again, now joined by another friend named Jinhee, who had finally gotten through the registration line and was cosplaying as Maka from Soul Eater, but had apparently broken her sythe in the car on the way to the con, which was just as well, as she eventually took off her wig. We spent most of the rest of the day in the dealer room, where my dad called me around 5:00 and told me he was coming to pick me up to go to his boss's house for dinner. So I had to leave around 5:30. The dinner was nice though; ironically, the next door neighbors were there as well, and they had just adopted a little boy from China. He was really cute and spent most of the time after dinner jumping around pretending to be Spider Man.

On Sunday I went to the con by myself, but almost as soon as I got there I met ~taiyue and ~PerseusXAndromeda again, both dressed as China. They were also with a Denmark and Ash Ketchum. So I spent most of the day with other Hetalia people. ~taiyue told me that there was another cosplay chess event that day, something that I had wanted to see but missed on Saturday. So I signed up for it. There ended up being four pieces on our side that were cosplaying China, so to avoid confusion, I was to be called Taiwan, ~taiyue was Hong Kong, and ~PerseusXAndromeda was Aru. We were in the unscripted match, and our King (England, haha) was checkmated rather quickly. It was a fun experience. We also met more Hetalia people at the chess game and we all had lunch together. There we found out that there was to be another Hetalia photoshoot later that afternoon from two people dressed as Spain and Prussia.
I hung around with ~PerseusXAndromeda and ~taiyue until the photoshoot. When the photoshoot started, we went outside again to take a group picture and then came back inside for everything else. There wwere more goofy/cracky shots than the day before. Prussia sat on Lithuania and was offered a hamburger by two Americas and Korea was groped by a China. Slowly people started drifting away and the people left just kinda sat down and then got in line for the skits. It was nice to just hang out with a bunch of Hetalia fans. Turns out a lot of them live near me. Hopefully I'll get to meet them again.
The skits started at 8:00. There was one that was kind of a spoof of Pokemon that I liked. I left after the skits were finished but before the judges decided on winners. I'd totally forgotten that it was a contest.
But all in all, it was a fun con and a good social experience. I'll probably feel kinda weird going back to school tomorrow.

Have a nice Labor Day, everyone!

I suddenly felt the inclination to write a journal, despite the fact that I haven't quite finished my homework...

But a lot of things have happpened. I moved away, I started a new school, and I made some new friends-- wow, my brother just claimed that one doesn't need to look at a computer while drawing on it-- and there's a convention coming up this weekend! But instead of going on Friday evening, I have to go to a school football game to play football music with my school band becuase my mom doesn't think its safe for me to go to a con by myself and my dad insinuated that it's a waste of time. Grr. And the darn games last a really long time... Oh well.

In case you may not have realized, I don't have much appreciation for American football.

But yeah, so I will go to this con with the people I met at school on Saturday and Sunday. One of them has a mom that's selling stuff in the dealer's room, funnily enough. There seem to be lots more anime/manga/etc fans over here, but I still miss you guys whom I live too far away from now. But I'm really excited for the con! I'll be cosplaying as China from Hetalia and Momo Hinamori from Bleach. Man, I wish you guys could all come with me. And I hope you all at HB had a nice first day at school.

EDIT: Also, there's a new house being built across the street. It's really cool to watch it go up step by step.

Yay, my new pen just arrived~. Now I can go back to drawing digitally!