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Note: There are very minor spoilers for the 1965 film The Sound of Music in this entry.

When I was little, my favorite movie was The Sound of Music. (It’s still one of my all-time favorites.) When people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always answered “Liesl von Trapp.”

I wanted to be just like her when I was sixteen. I wanted to receive telegrams from the boy of my dreams and twirl around inside a gazebo with him before he gave me my very first kiss. I wanted to sing “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” with a boy who would be able to sing the verses about being seventeen going on eighteen. I wanted to have her optimism, her poise, and her grace.

I’ve never had an attachment with any other fictional character; Liesl is the only one.

I didn’t realize there was so much about Liesl’s story that involves the loss of innocence and the onset of heartbreak. At sixteen, she’s right at the brink of adulthood. She’s “innocent as a rose” at the beginning but by the end, her innocence and naivety have faded and she has a much more realistic outlook about the ways of the world. Some of that has to do with her short-lived courtship with Rolf. But most of it has to do with the von Trapp family’s unfortunate circumstances thanks to the Nazi invasion of Austria and the onset of Hitler’s regime throughout Europe. Either way, the Liesl at the end of the film is very different to the one at the beginning, and her character development is something that I’ve always taken away from The Sound of Music.

There are so many things that I love about Liesl and a lot of what I love about her has changed over time. When I wanted to be Liesl at the age of six, it was Liesl’s fairytale princess quality that I loved most about her. Now, though, what I love about her is how her story carefully tells a tale of one girl’s transition from child to adult and her slight brush with heartbreak. A lot of my attachment to Liesl is for sentimental reasons, because whenever I watch The Sound of Music I’m transported to a time when I was younger, more innocent, and more naive. Perhaps it’s wishful thinking, but there’s a lot of Liesl’s initial trusting innocence that I think I, too, had when I was about fifteen or sixteen.

I wanted to grow up to be Liesl at the age of six, and now at the age of nineteen there are traces of her I can see in myself from three, four years ago. It’s funny how some things turn out.

I still want to be Liesl von Trapp when I grow up.

Today is my favorite holiday of the year, Chinese New Year!

As usual, I spent the past week cleaning and doing laundry in an effort to get rid of the “bad spirits” of the old year as I usher in the new one. I wanted to have a newly purchased outfit set aside to wear on the first day of the year, but time and money didn’t extend to a whole new outfit so a new shirt will have to do. And of course, I won’t be washing my hair today as it’s bad luck to wash your hair on the first day of the new year.

Since I’m away at school, I won’t be able to enjoy all the delicious foods and wonderful atmosphere at home. However, I’m managing to have an enjoyable time nonetheless. My friends and I have plans to go out to eat Chinese food and my Chinese class is arranging a dim sum lunch to celebrate. I haven’t had dim sum since the last time I was in Hong Kong during the summer of 2008 so I’m really excited as dim sum is so delicious!

I hope everyone has a great day whether or not Chinese New Year is celebrated. 恭禧发财，新年快乐！Happy Year of the Tiger!

This is the view that I woke up to this morning:

Those giant white splotches are clusters of snowflake that have clumped together on my window. That brown box thing in the distance? That used to look like a building. And those big green things in the middle? Yeah, they’re trees, but it’s a question of how long they’re going to remain upright before they break and collapse underneath the weight of all the heavy snow on the branches. You can compare my photo from last weekend’s Snowpocalypse/Snowmageddon to this week’s Snoverkill storm to get a better idea of just how much snow there is outside.

There is a blizzard warning in effect until 7pm tonight and the government has halted snow removal because it is simply too dangerous for the workers to continue plowing the roads. Snowmageddon/Snowpocalypse dumped almost three feet of snow and Snoverkill is due to dump at least another two feet in the area. At minimum, there is going to be four feet of snow total – and that’s not even calculating the amount of (sometimes black) ice underneath the layer of snow.

I haven’t had class all week and I definitely won’t have it tomorrow. Class on Friday is looking pretty dicey at this rate as well. While it’s been nice to have an unexpected break in the middle of February, I’m starting to get a bad case of cabin fever. I’ve been trying to occupy myself by reading, surfing the web, and watching TV (until the satellites go down because of the blizzard). But there’s only so much that can keep you occupied when you’re shut up inside with friends who are feeling just as antsy as you are…

ETA: Someone made a time lapse of last weekend’s Snowmageddon. Now, take that and multiply it by about 100 to take into account Snoverkill’s blizzard status, and you should have some idea of what it’s currently like in DC.

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