Hello, my name is Allyson Thurston, but you can call me Ally. I attended high school at Newburgh Free Academy, graduating in 2013. I currently am majoring in Psychology; my end goal is to become a marriage and family counselor. I chose to pursue psychology due to my love of helping others. All my life I have found myself being the “therapist” or “mom figure” of my friend group, everyone seemed to gravitate towards me when they needed a listening ear. My goal is to pursue a career through the government, I would like to work on military bases as a counselor and give help to those who have dedicated their lives to keeping us safe, as well as their families. Aside from helping those who need it, pursuing this career would also enable me to travel and live-in different countries. Before covid-19 I used to travel as frequently as I could. I find myself going crazy being restricted to one place for a long period of time, I like to blame it on my adventurous soul. Until 2019 I was fortunate enough to live in Okinawa, Japan, a prime location for anyone wanting to explore the Asian Pacific region. Living in a different country gave me a completely new perspective on life. Seeing how another culture lived made me appreciate the diversity every culture has to offer. Once it is safe to travel again, I plan on returning to Okinawa, it has become a place that I feel most at home. Beside traveling, I enjoy cooking and writing. Cooking for others has become a huge therapeutic outlet for me during the pandemic. While my dinner parties have not extended beyond those who live in my home, it still brings me great joy seeing them eat my creations. I myself am not a picky eater, cooking has made me very open minded when it comes to try things that may seem odd to others. Writing has been a huge hobby of mine since I was in middle school. At the time I was a very shy kid, I rarely talked in school. More times than not, my fellow classmates thought that I was mute. I always found a little enjoyment in shocking everyone when I finally spoke up for the first time. Due to me being quite anti-social I found myself taking to reading and writing. I loved getting lost in a good book, the entire world around me seemed to just disappear. After a while I wanted to challenge myself, reading still brought me great joy but it was becoming a bit repetitive. I remember picking up a pen and an old notebook, completely unsure of what I was even going to write about, yet the second my pen touched paper I found the words flowing out of me. Until this day writing brings me a comfort I could not even begin to describe. I have never allowed anyone to read my work, it has become a nice private “secret” that is all my own. When I’m not partaking in one of my hobbies I enjoy watching television with my husband. Our most recent tv show that we are hooked on is an anime called “Demon Slayer”. Normally I am not really keen on anime, but this show has me absolutely hooked! A show I recently watched by myself was “Bridgerton” on Netflix. I personally would recommend that show to anyone who either enjoyed the series “Gossip Girl” or who enjoys balls and beautiful dresses. I hate to admit that I binge watched the entire season in three days. The most recent movie my husband and I have watched was “The Dirt”, this film is based off of the book “The Heroin Diaries: A year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star” by Nikki Sixx. For those of you who are not familiar with Nikki Sixx, he is the lead singer of the band Motley Crue, a metal band from the 1980’s. The most recent book I have finished was “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, I am a huge Potterhead, I currently am rereading the entire Harry Potter book series. Why I am choosing to put reread such a length series is truthfully beyond me, but I can already tell I am going to enjoy it like I did the first time around. I truthfully am not a huge fan of video games. The last video game I can recall playing was Pokemon: Leaf Green on my Gameboy advanced. As a kid, my brother and I would play Pokemon together all the time, but I found that as they continued to add new Pokemon, as well as change up the series I grew up loving, I became disinterested in pursuing the games further. Recently I have had a huge case of writer’s block, so as far as creating anything literary I have nothing to report. I have however, been very busy in the kitchen making different soups and stews to combat the cold weather we have been having. My most recent creation was a shoyu ramen from scratch. Unlike traditional shoyu ramen, I did not stick to a complete soy sauce-based brother. To give it a little pizzazz, I added some beef bones and an array of vegetables to make the broth even better. To top it off I added sliced sirloin steak, a marinated soft-boiled egg, green onion and garlic on top. While the noodles were store bought due to not owning a pasta machine, overall the ramen was a hit! While ramen is one of my top five favorite foods, if I had to choose one meal to eat for my last meal on earth it would be authentic Mexican tacos. I would eat tacos all day every day if I could! If you have made it this far, thank you for reading my first ever blog post. I look forward to reading each and every one of your posts and getting to know you all better throughout this semester.
I wanted to include some photographs from my time in Japan. I would love to one day live there again, Okinawa will forever be home to me. The first photo is of my husbands R32 GTR, the car scene was phenomenal over there. The second is of a crepe in the popular American Village/ Chatan area. The last photo is of me at a hidden beach some friends and I found when we were out exploring. The third and forth were during a trip to Osaka during Sakura (cherry blossom) season. We managed to also visit the Shitennoji Temple, which was by far one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.
