Most Beautiful Moment(s) in Life: Danielle

A little background: Danielle is a friend I've known for about three years. I met her at Asian Alliance Club when I was in eighth grade (I went to high school part-time). We bonded over a mutual interest in Korean pop culture and continued to grow closer in and out of color guard. She graduated last year, but we still frequently talk and occasionally meet when she returns from college. 

"Tell me about the best times of your life."

"That's seriously such a difficult question. I've been thinking about it for the past 10 minutes...Okay, I'm between 2."

"You can do both!"

"Okay. The first one is when  I went to Japan, but it wasn't the fact that I was in Japan. (A/N this is the same Japan trip as Jacob.) It was the people I was with. We would all head down to convenience stores and buy different foods, then go back to one of our rooms all together and just sit and talk about what all happened that day. And we made TONS of jokes and shared our food. We'd all reminisce. We did that basically every night."

"What were your favorite foods?"

"I liked the sandwiches, but we also tried tones of chips and breakfast foods."

"So how did that impact your friendships?"

"Well now I"m really good friends with Tyler and I still try and keep in touch with Jacob and Taylor. I see Brenna pretty often too. Oh yeah, I cried when everyone left Japan. That was the last time I remember crying for something that happened in my life and  not because of a TV show. I'm always thinking about ways for the Japan crew to reunite. We all want to plan a bowling trip and invite Sensei."

"What exactly were you feeling as you left?"

"When I left or when the rest of the group left? 'Cause we left at different times."

"Both times."

"Okay, when they left I was really sad. I didn't want to be apart from them. I wanted them to stay so we could have more fun times. And when I left, I was ready to go. I had been walking everywhere every day, constantly in motion, so I was ready to go back and rest, but I didn't sleep on the plane at all and was just so exhausted on the way back."

"When was the last time you all met up?"

"All of us? ...Not since before school started. Actually that's wrong. Since coming back, there's never been a time when all of us were together."

"So what about your other memory?"

"It was my friend's 16th birthday party. We went the the PlayStation (laughs). Basically, we were all like 'Aren't we too old to be here?', but when we actually went in, we had soooo much fun. The others started a ball fight with all the kids For some reason, all the kids liked me and thought of me as one of them, so I joined forces to wage war against the 'big kids'. It was just a stupid fun time and we all felt like little kids again. I don't know, it's just a precious memory. It's fun to imagine Cahill and Chelsea and all of us plaing around in the PlayStation with a bunch of 5-8-year-olds."