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Post by Sophie Conway on Dec 5, 2010 23:09:33 GMT -5
Sophie's blue eyes were wide with interest as she looked around. Hidden behind red plastic heart shaped frames, her eyes blinked a few times to make sure this was all real. She was walking along the boardwalk in Venice Beach and she was pretty sure she'd found where she belonged.
No she wasn't interested in the very many medical marijuana places, with people holding signs claiming "the doctor is in" or the tourist shops with what seemed to be the same T-shirts displayed over and over again. No, instead it was the artist and jewelry makers that had set up tables and the street performers doing everything from singing to break dancing to balancing absurd amounts of objects on their head. It was the cool boutiques with awesome unique clothing and sunglasses in every color and shape imaginable. Oh yes, this place was a hoot.
Her long blonde hair was down and curly as she usually wore it and she was dressed in hand painted sneakers, floral tights, a black and white striped skirt and a vintage purple T-shirt with Mickey Mouse on it. Her wrists were covered in a number of handmade bracelets as well as a candy necklace that she'd doubled around her wrist and had already eaten have the pieces in.
It was early so she carried a large pomegranate flavored Jamba Juice smoothie with her, which was doubling as her breakfast. She'd stopped at some of the art tables and she'd bought two rings from a local jewelry maker which now sat on two of her fingers. Man this was cool.
She took another sip from her smoothie as her eyes laid upon a boy up on one of the sand dunes. He was doing something weird sort of movements...and while some people gaped at him, he seemed to be at peace...as if he was meditating... Hmmm Was he a street performer? Or maybe protesting something? Sophie didn't see any signs...
Curiouser and Curiouser, she thought to herself as she started to walk toward him. Unlike the others who were watching him...who were standing sort of back, Sophie climbed right up onto the sand dune and plopped herself down, sitting cross legged in the sand. "What'cha doin'?" she asked, blinking at him a few times, although of course he couldn't see that through the dark lenses of her heart shaped glasses.
Taggles
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Post by Dean Wallace on Dec 7, 2010 7:29:17 GMT -5
Feeling a bit out of sorts and just quite glad the weekend is finally here, Dean decided to go out for an early jog. The morning was peaceful and empty. That is until he got to the pier. But the beach did look appealing to the teenager's eyes and soon he was sitting on a sand dune, enjoying the morning sun with the occasional breeze wafting in and pushing his long-ish hair back every now and then.
After a few minutes of sitting down, Dean couldn't stand it so he started his tai chi routine, something he picked up on in his travels. It calmed him down as he went through the motions; sweeping two hands to his left, then bringing it down palm upwards before making circular motions with both his hands...everything was slow and steady.
He didn't realise he had an audience until a voice sounded close to him. Not breaking from his motions, he smiled. "Tai chi. It helps me relax. Would you like to join me? All you have to do is copy my moves." He said, his eyes still closed.
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Post by Sophie Conway on Dec 7, 2010 9:37:22 GMT -5
"Thai Chi," Sophie said repeating his words and taking them in. Did doing that really relax you? Sophie was rarely relaxed. She tended to be on the hyper side of things, probably due to her diet of junk food and candy. So she couldn't help but wonder if doing this sort of thing actually relaxed you.
"Okay," she finally said after about a minute. She pushed herself up into a standing position on the dune, brushing off any of the sand that might have stuck to the seat of her shorts. She figured that it was worth a try. The boy seemed very into it after all...into it enough that he hadn't noticed anyone around him. He hadn't even opened his eyes to talk to her.
She had to keep her eyes open though, so she could follow what he was doing. "Moving hands in circles..." she murmured, giggling after a moment, realizing how ridiculous she must look. Although, she instantly felt sorry for laughing since the boy seemed to be taking this all very seriously. She took a deep breath and started over...
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Post by Dean Wallace on Dec 7, 2010 10:09:28 GMT -5
He nodded when the girl repeated him. "It's usually more vigorous but I am not doing this to get my heart pumping. Quite the opposite so stop giggling and try concentrating." Dean said even though there was a huge smile on his face. Her giggles weren't distracting him at all. But she didn't know that so Dean kept up the ruse, letting her think this was all very serious.
When he was in Singapore, he made frequent visits to the neighbourhood parks in different parts of the island and a lot of them had old people; men and women doing Tai Chi in the mornings. He had found it calming and asked the old people to teach him. They were much obliging and after two weeks of teaching, he got the basic movements down and added his own bits into it. Good thing he wasn't competing, he would have messed things up but it did slow down his heart rate and he rather enjoyed the peaceful moment he had while doing it.
Apparently here, it was a little weird to see someone moving their arms slowly round and round but that didn't stop the teenager from doing it. Well, at least now he had a friend even if she did find this all quite funny.
After a few motions, he stopped to take deep breaths in and out before he turned to see who was his companion and found a pretty blonde standing next to him copying his moves. He chuckled. Holding on to her hand, he twisted it just a little so her palm was pushing against the air. "There you have it. You're doing quite well for a beginner. Your glasses are neat."
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Post by Sophie Conway on Dec 7, 2010 11:50:43 GMT -5
Sophie frowned when he snapped at her. She really hadn't meant to make fun of him, probably like the others that were watching him, and now watching her. Sophie just had a hard time taking anything seriously, let along strange arm movements. She quickly thought that perhaps she would have to show this to her new friend Teddy who was in jazz ensemble with her...certainly he'd be able to turn this into some sort of dance they could do while they were singing. He was really talented.
Sophie smiled though when she noticed his lips turn into a smile. Perhaps he wasn't so angry with her. Still, she bit the insides of her cheeks to keep herself from giggling more and actually did try to concentrate, seeing if these moments could calm her. It took a moment for her to just be able to zone out from the sensory overload that surrounded her but then she supposed it was sort of relaxing.
It was precisely at this moment that she felt him touch her hands. Her eyes flickered back open. "Oh like this...?" she said now doing it the way he'd showed her, actually trying to figure it out. Sophie liked trying new things, especially things she considered creative. She wasn't much of a dancer (unless her extremely geeky dance moves could be considered dancing) but she could already see these slow motions that way.
"Oh thanks! I know! Aren't they rad?" she said snapping out of her momentary trance as she reached up and straightened her heart shaped glasses instinctively. "I want to find other shapes too but I can never find any that aren't meant for kids. I mean, I don't have a problem with kid's stuff but they kind of don't fit on my face properly," she explained.
"Sorry," she said, realizing she had broken the motions with her hand. Sophie was easily distractable. "You do this tai chi thing a lot?" she asked, tilting her head slightly to the side as she attempted to pick it back up again, although her mind was clearly elsewhere this time around.
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Post by Dean Wallace on Dec 7, 2010 13:55:12 GMT -5
Dean smiled at the girl's rapid attention change. The moment she started to speak, Dean knew she had forgotten the movements. He understood that people have really short attention spans and he forgave her for being one of them simply because she was pretty. And taller than him. Not by much but still...
"You could always find star shaped ones at vintage shops. I think quite a few vintage shops hold very um...teenage appropriate stuff." He had to start learning the native language around here. His 'adult language' wasn't going to get him anywhere. But how many yo's and what ups can he stand before he goes grammar Nazi on everybody around him?
He hardly thought "Eh, same old" was a good reply to a "How do you do?" and "Yo" was a terribly way to say "Good afternoon" or "Hello". He supposed he'd have to give teenage slang a chance much like he did with countless of languages he had acquired in his travels. Dean was hardly a snob but he did find it hard to understand why it is acceptable amongst his peers to write short messages like "TTYL" instead of the full "I'll talk to you later" in their 'texts'. And 'stuff' was not a good word to describe things.
"Um, not quite as often as I would like but that is probably because I have been busy with homework, a foreign concept to me since I usually learn on site instead of bringing it back home and copying what the teacher has said on to pieces of paper." He scratched the back of his head with a sheepish grin.
"Do you often buy drinks in that big cup?" He pointed at her big Jamba Juice cup with a small smile.
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Post by Sophie Conway on Dec 7, 2010 15:45:12 GMT -5
"You think so?" she asked. Anyone who looked at the way Sophie dressed would assume she shopped in vintage shops but she really didn't. The reason behind this of course was that there had been a great lack of them in Sacramento where she was from. In LA however...he was right...she could probably find a ton of stuff. "You might be right...there just wasn't much where I'm from so I've never been able to find anything good," she said, "stars would be cool though..."
She didn't really think much about his language. Perhaps it was something she'd notice in time but seeing that she'd just met him, he hadn't said anything too out of the ordinary yet. Sophie on the other hand was more likely to use slang from the the 50s or 70s than today. She just liked the was words like 'rad' or 'groovy' or 'daddy-o' sounded on the tongue.
"On site?" she questioned right away, "What do you mean?" she asked, glancing down at her large jamba juice cup when he asked about it. She'd stuck it in the sand so she could try out the tai chi. Now she picked it up and there was a layer of sand around the bottom of the cup, stuck to the Styrofoam. She brushed some of it off as she picked it up and took a sip. "You bet I do. This stuff is really good and filling too. It's like meal in a cup," she told him.
"I'm Sophie by the way," she said. "You know where the animal shelter is by the way?" she asked. "That's where I was headed but I got distracted by everything here. I think I like Venice Beach...it's pretty hip," she went on as she started to look around once more.
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Post by Dean Wallace on Dec 8, 2010 6:00:56 GMT -5
"I could try and ask my father if he knows those kinds of places because my father is a native of Los Angeles." Dean replied. "Oh, but where are you from originally?" He asked when he realised she had used past tense when she spoke of her abode. "I'm originally from Las Vegas. Or rather, I was conceived there and was given birth to there. And then my parents moved around a lot." Dean recalled his history, or rather the footnotes of his history.
"On site, meaning I learn as I do? I can't quite grasp the concept of sitting on a desk and filling out paper with what the teacher has force fed me from texts of books. It's not quite how I process things. I hardly think it could be very much entertaining for you?" He asked her with a tilt of his head.
A smile crept on to Dean's face at her description of the contents of the very big cup. "That's quite an innovation. I should try it sometime." He nodded.
"Oh, where are my manners? I'm Dean Wallace. And no...I don't know where the animal shelter is. I'm as new to this place as you probably are. I flew in two weeks ago, if you can believe it. And that was only because my father had to start his courses early. I would have come the first day of school. Which by the way, do you attend Gould Silver High? I'm a sophomore there."
"I think I quite like this place as well. The beach is very...pretty."
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Post by Sophie Conway on Dec 8, 2010 12:14:53 GMT -5
"Oh, I'm from Sacramento - the most boring place in the world," she said sounded exasperated. She had despised Sacramento. There was nothing there but politics and she wasn't exactly a fan of those either. The state capital was somewhere children went on field trips. No one actually wanted to live there. But she had for a long many years now she had and she was glad that she was finally out.
"Vegas, cool. I've never been there. It looks pretty on TV thought...with all the lights. I suppose there isn't much point in going unless you're 21 though...although I'm not sure I'd like gambling very much. I think I would like walking around and seeing all the lights though. I like bright things...and shiny things..." she giggled when she said this. "I probably sound a cat," she admitted. "That's what I'm going to get - a cat - from the animal shelter," she went on to say.
"So you've never been to real school before?" Sophie asked. "That's really interesting. I've always gone to real school but I think I agree with you anyway. It's much more interesting learning by doing things then listening to teachers talk at you," she said. "Gould Silver - yeah! I'm a sophomore too!" Sophie said. She gave him a look. Something was sort of familiar about him come to think about it...it was the way he talked. She walked around him for a moment, pausing to look at the back of his head before walking around to face him once more. "I sit behind you in art class," she said. "I didn't realize at first cause I've only seen the back of your head," she explained. "Well, it's nice to officially meet you, Dean Wallace," she said with a smile on her face.
"Would you want to find the animal shelter with me so I can get my cat? It's supposed to be around here...I've been asking for a pet for a long time and my mom finally caved. She went there the other day and filled out all the forms and bought all the stuff we need for it but now I get to go and pick one out," she smiled. She was very excited about this notion.
She took another sip of her pomegranate smoothie, slurping some more down as she twirled one of her blonde curls around her finger containing a sparkly blue painted nail. "So, whad'da'ya say?" she asked.
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Post by Dean Wallace on Dec 8, 2010 18:10:23 GMT -5
"I've never been there before. Sacramento...does it have caves? Or maybe sand dunes or maybe swamps that I could explore?" He asked after finding out her previous whereabouts. He hadn'ts explored America as much as he had other countries which in perspective sounded quite sad. But then again, he had been to Tibet and China and Pakistan...he didn't have much to complain.
Her ramble about Vegas made him laugh. "I didn't stay too long since my mother only stayed there because she was pregnant with me and she calculated too many risks of her traveling around while I was growing in her belly. And I love cats. I once had a cheetah come to my hut everyday for a month because I always had a supply of fresh ox meat with me." He smiled at the memory.
"Um, no...I've never been to a real school before." He shook his head before smiling when she agreed with him about learning by doing. "You are? Excellent!" He paused in mid exclaim as she circled around him like a hawk. Her revelation made him laugh and nod when she mentioned art class. Yes, he supposed she had seen her in there too! "Pleasure is all mine...Sophie Conway." He replied, remembering her name due to his teacher's attendance sheet.
"Most certainly. But if you don't mind, I think I would like to try that...jamba juice there. And then we can try and look for the shelter." He nodded, glad to have a plan. "Did you know that cats are the chinese symbol for luck and longevity? They also believe that the cats will bring them wealth and prosperity. I personally believe that despite all the tall tales about cats bringing bad luck." He rambled on with his useless trivia as he jumped off the sand dune and gently nudged Sophie forward so she could direct him to the Jamba Juice place.
"Why a cat though? For you I mean?"
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