Miss America!

Before we get to London Fashion Week, something else deserves a post.

#MissAmerica was the hashtag to tag Sunday night!

I didn't watch it live because I was with Luis (Saturday was our month-iversary and it continued throughout the weekend!) and he doesn't like that kind of stuff so we watched Now You See Me, World's Most Dangerous Gang, and Olympus Has Fallen instead. I'm not really complaining, we had a great time together and all the movies were great (Even though Olympus Has Fallen had a very similar plot to White House Down, and I'd much rather watch a movie about Channing Tatum saving the president than Gerard Butler... Just being honest here. Nothing against the Catholic Scot, I absolutely loved him in PS I Love You!)

Anyways, back to Miss America.

Congratulations to the beautiful Miss New York, Nina Davuluri!

I was so excited to hear that she had won, and even more so after watching the reruns of the pageant. She was fabulous, and she's been handling the win so well!

It seriously pissed me off to see all the tweets. If you want to really see my reaction to those... Here they are:

I was pretty upset to see all that nastiness. And then for some people to go in afterwards and say they were just messing around is just as bad. It's not funny, it's not a joke. Racism is very real and oppressive and some people just need to realize that it needs to end ASAP. We are too advanced a society to be putting up with this kind of behavior. Grow up guys.

Anyways, I thought her performance was amazing, and well deserving of her title.

I think that's exactly what Miss America should be. America is a land made up of immigrants, a land of diversity. It's a melting pot of an incredible number of cultures, traditions, religions, and rituals. All kinds of different people live here and make it the great country that it is. Miss New York did an amazing job of showing that cultural diversity that is America. I loved it!

But she wasn't the only superstar of the night. Miss Iowa definitely deserved something for making it as far as she did. She'd gorgeous, talented, and brilliant. No one can dare say she's disabled!

If this Miss doesn't provide inspiration to somebody, somewhere, well then I don't know what does.

Miss Florida was also incredibly brave and talented. How many women feel so comfortable as to go out on a runway in front of millions of people wearing a brace?

Not to mention wearing a brace while half naked in a bikini or while twirling batons. High fives all around for Miss Florida (not to mention that Florida is one of my favorite states!)

And a special shout out to Georgia, just cause I live here. And she did pretty well too!

I do find it hard to believe that 53 beautiful women could come together in a competition and not be catty...

But yay for group hugs and on-stage good sportsmanship!

Lonely

So Luis is away for two weeks on a road trip with our friend, Jon...

...And I'm all lonely in Atlanta ):

Jon moved to Seattle about a year ago, and now he's moving back to Atlanta, but since he bought a car while in Seattle he wants to bring that back to Atlanta too. So the two geniuses decided that it would be a good idea to drive from one ocean to the other in a stick shift car. Pray for them please.

And they can't even come straight from Seattle! They needed to make a stop in Los Angeles first and come through the south instead of cutting straight through the Midwest.

I just watched the movie Road Trip (the one with Robert Downey Jr and the slow guy from The Hangover) with Luis like last week, so I'm not feeling good about this. I even made Luis take his passport with him just in case they mistake the Mexico border for a Texaco (movie reference).

Luis is having fun though, so at least there's that. Although I am kind of jealous that he got to visit the Space Needle...

...and the first ever Starbucks... I love Starbucks!!!

And he keeps sending me pictures of all the beautiful scenery (I've never been out West), which only makes me even more jealous!

Oh well, at least I'm going to Florida this upcoming weekend, so I won't be completely bored while he's gone. I do really miss him though...

Food Inc

Luis has been bugging me for weeks to watch Food Inc with him.

He kept telling me about this that and the other that happens with our food and animals and whatnot.

Finally, the other day we were cuddling and being lazy, so I asked to watch a movie on the computer, and he volunteered Food Inc. I caved in and said yes.

I'm still not sure if watching that documentary was a good or bad thing.

Watch the video on their website here

I honestly wanted to cry at some parts of the film, and on others I wanted to go purge everything I've eaten in my last 14 years here in the United States.

Both animals and humans are treated like dirt in the food industry here.

Animals are all force fed corn, because corn has become increasingly cheaper to produce, and it's produced by the masses. Corn corn corn corn. There is probably an overabundance of corn, so why feed animals anything else?

It doesn't matter that a cow's diet should consist primarily of pasture, if pasture is expensive and corn is cheap. We're going to force our cows to learn how to eat corn... And when they adapt to corn and get all super sick, we have to suffer the consequences of e.coli. that apparently originated with people forcing cows to eat corn. It's like making a lion take on a berry diet, doesn't work folks.

Then they show a whole bunch of differences between now and then, and the comparisons are disturbing to say the least.

Here's two of the ones that bothered me the most:

In 1972, 50,000 food inspections were conducted by the FDA. Only 9,164 in 2006. With more and more people getting sick from food, why are we cutting the number of inspections so drastically? The video makes several accusations against these animal farms, including the revolting one that cows walk around ankle deep in their own feces. It's really gross everything that they point out in the documentary.

Then there's the chickens. I think this picture speaks for itself:

The poor little chickens can't even stand on their own legs because they grow too quickly and their muscles never develop well enough to hold themselves up. And they never see the daylight, so sad.

This above picture is of the only farmer brave enough to speak out against the companies. And the below is of a pasture-less field filled with cows.

It's all so terrible how they treat the animals and process the food. The few companies behind the entire system make a huge profit off of it, and drive the prices for customers down, making it near impossible for others to compete.

I mean really, when you live on a budget (like me), which one looks more reasonable. Lord knows I have had more than my fair share of Ramen noodles and ravioli since moving to college. The healthiest I get is pretty much Activia yogurt. When I can buy a case of noodles for the same price as a stem of grapes, it's simply more practical for me to buy the noodles. And that is a true fact for any person or family living paycheck to paycheck.

I think that the sign of a good documentary is one that makes the watcher think, consider things they haven't considered before, and motivates the person to change something about the world or their lifestyle. I'd say that this documentary was a successful one. I definitely walked away from the film (That's figurative because we definitely watched it lying down and took a nap afterwards) wanting to change something about my lifestyle.

We both looked up organic brands and talked about how we could start eating more organically, and perhaps even making a difference in how the system works. We're both broke college kids now, and it's hard to make those changes right away, especially since my dorm lacks a kitchen (my biggest pet peeve about my dorm). But instead of buying Activia on my last grocery trip, I bought one of the organic brand yogurts. Expensive, but worth it. It was delicious. I'll just have to cook with organic ingredients when I finally get my kitchen!

Here's the flyer from the Food Inc website:

What do you think about the documentary? Any changes in your life?

Birthday? No. Birth-week!

I prolonged my birthday celebrations as much as I possibly could.

I took the whole weekend off and made tons of plans with all my friends (:

Friday was just a sleep in until way past noon. Like way wayyy past noon. Like until 6. And after I woke up, Luis and I went to Panda and picked up some movies from the Red Box.

It was definitely a no makeup, no fixed hair, jeans and a long shirt kind of day. We went back to my dorm after gorging ourselves on fried rice, chow mein, mandarin chicken, golden honey roasted walnut shrimp, and green bean chicken. We watched Django, which was pretty good, then went right back to sleep.

Saturday we woke up considerably earlier at around noon. We then watched Silver Linings Playbook, which was also really good. (anything with Jennifer Lawrence in it is good!) Then I got ready to go out with my beautiful God-daughter and best friend, Alexa. I put on this top that I bought at Wet Seal from their penny sale. It's a little too small, but for one cent and cuteness, I can stand not breathing for a few hours.

I picked her up and we went to Bistro Niko to pick up my lost purse. I was SO happy when I woke up to their wonderful phone call telling me it had been turned it! Everything was still in the purse, it was great! We then stopped by Mickey D's because I hadn't eaten all day, and since my card was cancelled, all I had were the $15 I had left inside my purse. We then went to her place to meet up with her friend, Alise.

We chilled there for a while talking about make up and movies and jobs and all that fun stuff girls talk about when they get together. Finally, the fourth person to our party showed up and we went to the dollar movies.

We watched Jack the Giant Slayer and it was actually really good. I really enjoyed it. It made me sit on the edge of my seat (figuratively) in excitement over the action, made me sigh, made me hope, made me laugh, and made me cry. That's a pretty good movie to me.

Finally the movie was over and we went our separate ways, but not before Alexa gave me my birthday presents. I swear, she knows my style so well and always buys me the cutest things!

And it always comes in the cutest packaging. She once gave my mom this gift that came in the most gorgeous gift box I have ever seen. I don't remember what came inside the box, but it's still sitting in my mom's living room as decoration.

Inside the cute box above, came this beautiful scarf. The picture truly does not do it justice. It's a bad picture in awful lighting and way too close to see the overall image, but I promise, the scarf is adorable!

So cute! I feel like these earrings are totally business world, sophisticated earrings. Perfect for me! You don't see any teenagers running around with earrings like that, however, me? I'll rock them!

After I left the movies, I went to Luis's house so we could go to the wedding reception together. It was probably one of the most Mexican parties I have ever been to, and I go to a lot of Mexican parties, trust me. They had the whole banda there playing their 5 million instruments and singing. It was fun though.
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Luis wasn't really in the dancing mood, so I ended up dancing with his mom, which was pretty fun. There's this one song, Caballo Dorado, which is like a Mexican version of the Cha Cha Slide, only funner, that we danced to together, and I could not stop laughing! It was a great night!

Here's out picture for the night!

Then Sunday was nice too. We slept in late and went to Mass at 5.

After Mass we went to the last college ministry meeting for the school year. That was really fun. Since it was Cinco de Mayo, we had authentic Mexican food (not that Tex-Mex stuff) and ate to our tummies content. Then we had Adoration, which is such a beautiful experience every time. Adoration is probably my favorite part of being a Catholic. We then went our separate ways so I could study my butt of for finals!

Monday was just a normal day, no birthday fun. I worked in the morning, went to school, took a final, then spent the rest of the day on Hulu catching up on Once Upon A Time (I knew Queen Regina was a softie at heart!).

Then Tuesday was when things picked up again. I went to work in the morning and got to lead shift for the first time! I was really excited about that! I'm training to be a team leader (assistant manager in Chick-fil-A lingo) so finally getting to lead the shift on my own was fun and exciting. I ended up staying wayyy past when I was supposed to leave, so I could get more training in. Finally I leave and head to Chili's to meet my girls!

I have two other friends whose birthdays are also in May, Emily and Estela. So we decided that we were going to do something together to celebrate all three of our birthdays. We have been talking about going to Chili's to just get their chocolate molten lava cake since September and it still hasn't happened, so we figured that this would be our opportunity to do so! We invited two more friends, Daena and Jessica (not the shopping one, the one that I went to Rumba with. I'll just call her JP from now on because that's her nickname anyways) to come celebrate with us!

Of course, nothing ever goes as planned. Daena had a million errands to run for her mom and couldn't make it, and Estela's grandparents are in town so she couldn't make it either. It was alright though, JP brought another friend with her and the four of us had a grand time.

Me, Emily, Yane, and JP (:

We had so much food! We ordered that 3 different appetizers thing with spicy boneless wings, honey boneless wings, and potato skins. Then we each had an entree which was delicious. I had the light version of the steak, and Yane let me try one of her bacon something quesadillas which was also really good. Finally, the moment we were all waiting for came, dessert time! We ordered two of the molten lava cakes, one for us to eat then, and the other to take to Estela, since she couldn't join us and it was her birthday too.

When it was finally time to go, we turned Chili's into our photo booth. We took so many pictures and it was great. I had so much fun with my friends (: