Nice to be Nice

The first five people who comment on this status with "I'm in" will receive a surprise from me at some point during this year (2015) - anything from a book, a ticket, something home-grown, homemade, a postcard, absolutely any surprise! There will be no warning and it will happen when the mood comes over me and I find something that I believe would suit you and make you happy. These five people must make the same offer on their Facebook status. Once my first five have commented "I'm in" I will forward this message to you privately, so that you can copy and paste it, and put it on your status, (don't share it) so that we can form a web of connection of kindness. Then message me your address.

I have seen this status (or something similar to it) circulating around Facebook this past year and have always been tempted to put it up on my own Facebook profile wall. But then it kinda died down, and I've forgotten about it until today! One of my good and brilliant friends, Neha (who has just recently graduated but already authored a book!) posted this as her status today and I thought I'd finally give this gig a shot.

But instead of putting it up on Facebook, I decided to share it here, yay! Below, you will find the modified version of the original status stated above. I hope you consider jumping on board with me! :)

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The FIRST FIVE people who e-mail me "Yo, Laura, count me in!" will receive a surprise from me at some point during this year (2015) - anything from a book, a ticket, something home-grown, homemade, a postcard, absolutely any surprise! 

There will be no warning and it will happen when the mood comes over me and I find something that I believe would suit you and make you happy. But if in case we don't know each other on a personal level (yet), feel free to mention in your email your likes and dislikes, just so I can get a more specific idea of what will make you smile!   

Optional: These five people are free to make the same offer on any form of social media. I won't require you to keep this gift-giving going, but it would be wonderful if you could! The idea is to simply spread kindness and love. It's nice to be nice. :)  

Send your e-mails to la.pastores@gmail.com, with the message subject title: "NICE TO BE NICE" (hehe wala ng maisip lelz) If you will be part of the first five, I will reply with a confirmation message (wow parang legit contest lang?! lelz2) and will be asking for your address.

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The limit does not exist

I just wanted to share something insanely wonderful real quick to help you truly start your new year right with full of positive energy. This excerpt is from a daily devotional book entitled "Jesus Calling" by Sarah Young, and I am in love with it. The passage below is from last night's reading.

 Devotional Reading for January 06, 2015

"I am able to do far beyond all that you ask or imagine. Come to Me with positive expectations, knowing that there is no limit to what I can accomplish. Ask My Spirit to control your mind so that you can think great thoughts of Me. 

Do not be discouraged by the fact that many of your prayers are yet unanswered. Time is a trainer, teaching you to wait upon Me, to trust Me in the dark. The more extreme your circumstances, the more likely you are to see My Power and Glory at work in the situation. 

Instead of letting difficulties draw you into worrying, try to view them as setting the scene for My glorious intervention. Keep your eyes and your mind wide open to all that I am doing in your life."

This 2015, let's not limit God. Fearlessly believe that this is your year of miracles and answered prayers.
Get excited.

Love,
Laura

Page 365

2014
"It's been a great year! Thanks for being a part of it."

LOL
If you've frequented your Facebook home page, you'd be familiar with that line. A year in review, brought to you by Facebook, highlighting all your "most liked" posts, assuming they were some of your best moments.

So before this year ends (can you believe we're down to the last day of 2014?!), I thought I'd give my own "Year in Review" and show you my favorite moments and memories for each month of 2014 :)

JANUARY

Getting back to the US and keeping the SAS spirit alive

The SAS Sisterhood of the Traveling Journal + Bracelet: My SAS best friends and I decided to keep in touch through a notebook and a charm bracelet that we would be mailing to each other. The idea was to have each of us add a charm that best represented us (i.e. I added a ballet shoe charm to represent myself) and then write about anything exciting, funny, or memorable that happened to us while we were wearing the bracelet. We would then mail it to the next friend in line (we have a whole rotation set up lol), and they would add their own charm and write on the journal, and then pass it on to the next friend, and so on. We can be very cheesy that way, and we're perfectly fine with that  The friends you make on Semester at Sea are truly some of the best you will ever have. These were the people you saw and experienced the world with. And that, well, that is one strong bond. 

FEBRUARY

Westminster Love

Fall semester of 2013, I was on my Semester at Sea adventure. As awesome as that was, that also meant a whole semester away from the place I've learned to call my home away from home--Westminster College! So upon my return for Spring semester of 2014, I was all sorts of excited to be reunited with my Westmo best friends! And yes, that meant enjoying every weekend out hahaha #seniorstatus

MARCH

Talent Show + Spring Break

March was good to me. It was when two of my dancer friends and I entered Westminster's annual Talent Show, and bagged second place! Wuhoo! Performing for the Westmo community in itself was already fulfilling enough, but to have placed doing what we love (dance) was such a bonus. Hooray!

March was also spring break month! This year, I got to fly out to the East Coast to visit one of my sisters, Kai. She was taking her Masters Degree at the University of Pennsylvania at the time (yes, I shall give you a moment to exalt her and her brilliance), and we thought spring break would be a good opportunity to have a mini reunion and travel the East Coast together. My favorite part was taking a day trip to New York City! Another hooray! 

APRIL

Kapal Mode: ON

In the month of April, I won Best Smile. HAHAHA 

Sorry na, April was kind of a lull, so this is my highlight hehehe 

During our Senior Night at Westmo, we had Senior Superlatives where we were given different categories (i.e. Most Likely to Become Westminster President, Best Laugh, Best Dressed, etc) and seniors nominate and vote who they think best fit the different superlatives. I guess it pays being happy and smile-y all the time. Haha thanks, classmates! 

MAY

Graduation

I did the whole graduating from college thing. Nbd. 

Jk, it is a huge deal! I managed to get out of college alive, with my name on the Dean's List to boot aww yeah! Yabang?? What made it even more special was the fact that my family traveled all the way from Manila to watch me cross the stage and get my diploma! Ate Kai even flew in from Penn to surprise me! <3

Whatever Wednesday: The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

You know what I'm talking about. It's EVERYWHERE. You go on Facebook and your newsfeed is flooded with videos of people voluntarily dumping a bucket of ice water on their heads. You go on Twitter and your timeline has links of videos of people voluntarily dumping a bucket of ice water on their heads. You go on Instagram, and oh yes, you see 15-second videos of people voluntarily dumping a bucket of ice water on their heads.

Photo from Wikipedia

But don't worry--this is all done for a good cause. If you get nominated by a friend (or an enemy who wants to see you get drenched with ice cold water..you never know), you have 24 hours to replicate the challenge done by the nominator. The challenge is to either donate money to the ALS Association, OR, as punishment for not donating, pour ice cold water from a bucket over your head. At least, that's what I originally understood the mechanics of the challenge to be. But from what I've seen lately, a lot of people have been pouring water over their heads but are still making donations. I think that's pretty awesome.

When I first came across this challenge, I thought it was a really cool campaign to raise awareness of the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis disease, also known as the Lou Gehrig's disease, and get people to donate to fundings for its treatment. I personally did not know anything about this disease at all prior to the Ice Bucket Challenge, so I'd have to give props to the now-viral challenge for putting that out there for everyone to be informed that there is such a disease. You can read more about ALS here.

It wasn't until late last month that I began noticing the trend that is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. It picked up its pace in the popularity race when I saw that different people every day were doing it and flooding my newsfeed. With each scroll on my feed, there was at least one person who was either doing the video, or being nominated for the challenge. There's no escape!

Articles of both positive and negative feelings toward this trend have been making its rounds on the Internet. I have read a fair share of both sides, and I'm somewhere in between. I think it's absolutely amazing that because of this challenge, The ALS Association has received $22.9 million dollars of yesterday from all the donations brought in. Twenty-two point nine MILLION dollars. MILLION! It is also fantastic that this phenomenon has increased awareness among people, who would otherwise be clueless that such a serious disease exists. I believe these points make for a strong argument in support of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Plus, it's fun seeing people get dumped by water, especially if it's a celebrity or a whole cast of your favorite show (did you watch the challenge done by the Grey's Anatomy cast? Hihi pretty cool)

Photo from the Jackson and April Facebook page!

On the other hand, I feel as if some of these challenge participants are doing this popular challenge because that's exactly what it is--popular. It's what's trending, it's what's in, it's what's "cool" (pun intended) on social media right now. I don't mean to sound all judgmental and accusatory since I really don't know what people's true motives are, but I know you kinda get what I mean. Any trend that goes viral on the World Wide Web is bound to be followed by the huge netizen population.

Another perspective that was pointed out that critiqued the challenge comes from this article(click) I read by William MacAskill. Basically, the point he was trying to get across was that as great as it is that the ALS Association is getting literally millions of donations from participants of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, this tends to overshadow other charities and causes that may have the same value and urgency as ALS. E!News has written an article on why some critics aren't that excited about the challenge. You can read it here.

I understand both positive and negative sides to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. I support the challenge because along with funds, awareness is also being raised. And as I've mentioned, it's kind of fun/funny to watch the videos, especially when things don't exactly go the way as planned...Exhibit A right here(click).