also my family raises butterflies. pesticides WILL be bad for the enviroment, but you can use soap and water, i think. apperentaly red pepper keeps away squirrels i heard.

(this comment is a reply to Blackfooted Bobcat)

ah, okay, that makes sense :) maybe I should try boba tea at some point. I've only ever had herbal and black tea so far.

okay, thanks for the info on K-pop! I definitely don't plan to get into it anytime soon. I can definitely understand the way that K-pop and particular aspects of Asian culture can get misinterpreted or blown out of proportion. It's like Mexican culture - the media often represents it in this weird way that has almost nothing to do with what the culture is really like. I think it must be a common phenomenon, the media misinterpreting and misunderstanding different cultures. I think the solution is to have the cultures mix; people from different ethnic groups can marry, share information, interchange traditions... and then eventually they're comfortable with several cultures. In my case, for instance, I can understand both American and Mexican ways of being (although of course there are always some things that are a bit beyond me XD) It's quite interesting to be "mixed," as they call it.

ooh, I'd love to give some recs! I'm passionate about sharing stuff I love lol :) (You don't have to listen to any of them, of course, no pressure :) ). Also feel free to ask me for more if you find that you like these!

~"Te regalo," by Carlos Baute

~"Eu Quero Tchu, Eu Quero Tcha," by Joao Lucas and Marcelo

~"Adelante," by Naiara

~"Bailando Bachata," by Chayanne

~"Rayando el sol" by Mana

I would love to read a description of Hawai'i, but no pressure! Take your time :) It sounds so lovely that everyone just leaves the windows open... it must be so nice to just let the breeze come in. (Plus it's so much more ecological!)

WHAT NO HOW DID YOUR STRAWBERRY GET EATEN BY A SLUG this is awfulll :/

A fence might be our only option for the apple tree... it could very well work. Right now the new batch of seeds is sprouting and looking adorable :) They seem to be doing well, and I put some of them in the new raised bed where hopefully they'll be safe. Oh right, the raised bed, I never mentioned it! We got some wooden planks and hammered them together to make a raised bed, and then we put some soil in, and now we have some little bean plants growing there :D

I definitely would suggest boba tea! it's really really good. you can make it, but if you haven't had it before that might be hard. so if you want to get it somewhere, i would reccomend going to a slightly nicer place if you can, because a lot of the boba I’ve had that i didn’t make severely undercooked the boba and it was kind of gross. It doesn’t have to be fancy, though, it’s just surprisingly common for that sort of thing to happen :P what i'm saying is more to research where you're going, especially if it's a chain. also i’d suggest getting it a little undersweetened for a lot of them, especially because the boba pearls are cooked in sugar syrup so it can get pretty sweet. but on the other hand sugar is tasty. oh also it can be really expensive so be prepared for that.

I’m mixed race:P that’s actually kind of what’s happened a lot in Hawai’i. a lot of people are mixed race and even if you're not you grow up around tons of different cultures so there’s a lot of stuff that’s mixed in that way because a lot of people are mixed and it just happened naturally. 

Thanks for the music recs, i’ll definitely listen to them soon! What is it like in Mexico or being Mexican, if you want to say? Also since you mentioned that the media often misrepresents that, what would you like to see in a Mexican character? I tend to try to represent different cultures when i can, so i'd be interested, but no pressure :D just like favorite foods and maybe holidays or things you think are often misunderstood or that sort of stuff. It'd mostly be simple stuff, examples being favorite foods or maybe routines like making tea a certain way or stuff. mostly i work in fun stuff like having characters say "itadakimasu" before eating, or make spam musubi to bring on their fantasy quest, but anything really. and as i said no pressure :D 

As for Hawai'i - the gardening there is awesome. It depends on which island you’re on, though. We went to Kaua’i last time we were there because apparently that was where my grandma’s mom was from (something like that) and it was completely different from Maui (where my grandma lives now and i think where my grandpa’s from???). It was very lush and rainforest-y and there were so many nene. (That’s a certain kind of goose. It’s the state bird, but there are a ton of amazing birds if you go up on Haleakala or such) You barely see any nene on Maui. I like Maui better just because it’s what I’m used to. It actually gets fairly cold up on Haleakala. But it’s funny because my grandma is freezing and wearing all sorts of coats when it’s like 65 degrees. Where I live now, a decent portion of the year we’d be like “ah how nice and warm” XD 

But there are a ton of cool plants. Plumeria are a kind of stereotypical one, but I like them a lot because my grandma has a plumeria tree :D There are a lot of others, like pua kenikeni and a lot that i can’t think of right now heh. And the food is amazing, from spam musibi to mochiko chicken to poi :D Poi is mashed taro root, often soured (some people don’t consider it poi unless it’s soured, but it’s good fresh and sour. I prefer fresh though oops XD). It’s very much an acquired taste for reasons I don’t understand. Another thing is kulolo, which is like coconut milk and fresh taro put into a pudding-type thing. It’s very good. And purple sweet potatoes!! and there’s li hing mui and other crack seed candies (basically dried fruits in a certain kind of sour plum powder. They’re really good. Probably also acquired taste??? Idk but i tried cherry last time and they were SO GOOD.) and of course there's more traditional stuff like kalua pork (well and poi i guess), which is also amazing. and lots of fish. Hawai’i is the kind of place where the most rundown restaurants are the best and if it’s fancier and more touristy it’s probably not going to be as good. Oh and haupia! 

Which made me think of shave ice, which is nothing like snow cones - it’s really finely ground and more like actual snow. There are a lot of syrup flavors (cotton candy, guava, strawberry, lychee, calamansi, etc) and you can get it with haupia (coconut basically) ice cream on the bottom or mochi on the top or sprinkle li hing mui powder on it. It’s so good. A lot of places use biodegradable cups and spoons, i think. there's a lot of good sweets, from crack seed to shave ice to haupia to malasadas... admittedly it's not usually the healthiest. and people eat a lot of spam XD and portuguese sausage. but the food is SO GOOD. there's this little like... it's kind of like a Japanese convenience store in that it has food. But it's like a little market that has super super good food. unfortunately most things have soy sauce and a lot of places put bread in their hamburgers (like come on!!) so it's very hard for me to eat there because i can't have gluten or dairy... 

There are a bunch of smaller things i want to write about but don’t really know how to… but like all the windmills up on the mountain and this stream we would go to and try to catch tiny minnows but they were always too small for the nets and how my grandma’s temple sells guava and peach and probably other kinds of jams. and how the mall has a really good boba store that actually cooks the boba pearls all the way and also a bunch of other cool stuff like the Friends of the Library bookshop with a ton of books in different languages like Japanese and such and a shop with overpriced crack seed (XD) and all sorts of great stuff. oh and there are chickens everywhere!!! and so many cool birds like i'iwi and apapane and especially pueo, which is an owl. 

There are a lot of tourists admittedly, but there's a lot outside of that too :D it's annoying though because like there are the touristy malls and then there are the less touristy malls, and like a lot of stuff is just very touristy. idk if i explained that well

anyway this is long but Hawai'i is amazing!! most of this is about Maui, as i said it varies a lot on different islands.  

I am European New Zealand from my mother's father, European from my mother's mom, and Scottish from my father, which I DEFINATELY look. My hair isn't super-red, but it's the EXACT color of a penny. I have a lot of freckles and have blue eyes and pale skin. Sorry if that was unwanted TMI. How did we get from tea and gardening to different countries??? Anyways, my dad lived in Thailand for a couple years, was an exchange student there, and had his honeymoon there, so he recentaly planted a BUNCH of Thai herbs. My sister has a magic touch with zinnias, and I grew catnip and catgrass even though my parents and brother are allergic, because I love cats, and secretly hope to lure in some stray ones.

Okay, I'll look into trying boba tea! Thanks for the tips :D

Ooh, you just asked me my favorite question! I love talking about Mexico. To be honest, I left when I was still a little kid, and I only lived in one particular area, and I wasn't exposed to all aspects of Mexican culture because my family was partly American as well as Mexican, so I'm not an expert on all the different parts of the culture. But here's a (somewhat) summed-up description of what it was like when I lived there:

First of all, the place in itself is gorgeous. There's beauty and color spilling out everywhere. Here in the United States, I'm really struck by how commercialized and soulless the cities seem. (Not to say that they don't have beautiful things too, though.) Maybe it's because in Mexico everything is so old. There are cathedrals and houses and ways of life that have been going on for hundreds or thousands of years. In the older neighborhoods, houses are often painted really bright colors, and sometimes there are balconies and orange trees. Even the newer areas have parks everywhere - just small square areas of grass and paths where you can take the kids to play, or meet a friend, or take a walk. Some parks have fountains - in fact, you might find a fountain even if there's no park nearby, like if you're walking to the bank, there might be a fountain next to the sidewalk. And there are trees that have brilliant flowers, like jacarandas. Things get decorated for particular holidays; for instance, at Christmas, Nativity scenes pop up everywhere, even in shopping malls. And most days, it's sunny, with this super strong, bright, golden sunlight that makes everything seem deeper and more soulful. And the sky is so blue. Some days it seems almost purple. And the sunsets - ! They're the most brilliant things I've ever seen. It's usually pretty warm, too, though it can get cold in the winter and March and April are super hot in some areas.

Oh, and the hotels! The ones I've stayed at are amazing. They can have stupendous architecture, and they often have gardens and outdoor swimming pools. When I came to the US, I was so surprised at the way hotels can be just plonked down next to a highway, without any gardens or anything!!  They just didn't seem to my little-girl self to be actual hotels.

Aside from hotels, the houses usually have patios instead of gardens. It's kind of nice - a patio is a lovely place, with high walls and the blue sky arching above you and plants all around you - you feel like you're in your own particular safe space, shut off from the world. Usually there are gates, as well, or walls - there aren't any front gardens or driveways. Cars are parked in the garage or the street. Admittedly, the big cities do have very modernized areas, with skyscrapers and huge apartment buildings and trendy shopping malls, so it's not all traditional.

The society is a bit more difficult to describe. It's very, well, social. There's a huge amount of social interaction, and there are usually a lot of people you know. For instance, in the neighborhood where I used to live, there was a guy who swept the street every morning, and we knew him well because he was always there and we often chatted with him, even though we weren't friends per se. Then there was the guy whom my grandpa bought newspapers from (you can buy newspapers, brooms, fruit, stuff like that from stands that people set up on the sidewalk), and the family taxi driver, who's super sweet, and the band who regularly comes around to my grandma's house and stands there playing music until you give them some money to get them to go away :P There are people all over the place - washing cars, for instance, or helping you park. You drive over to a parking space, and then one of the young guys standing there directs you, using a series of whistles, as to how to park safely - so that you don't have to watch out for other cars at the same time as you're maneuvering into your parking space. He might also wash your car, for a fee, if you ask him. Then there are people selling stuff on the street, or gardeners taking care of the flowers growing next to the sidewalk, or just people hanging out.

Beyond daily acquaintances, you also have your friends, who might drop in during the afternoon for a chat, and your family, who's usually very large and very supportive and caring and ultra-fun :) Of course, it varies a bit from one social class to another. The wealthier people are usually a bit more stuffy and snooty. As a side note, social classes are pretty clearly defined in Mexico, and while they all interact a lot, and they all have the same legal and social rights, they don't actually interact on an equal footing. That's one of the things that's wonderful about the US, there isn't this notion that a rich or elite person is going to be treated differently from everyone else because of his social class. Power does make a difference around here, but not your social class.

Society is in a way more restrictive than in the United States: there are clear expectations about behavior and manners. But beyond that, I get the feeling that it's a lot freer. You're pretty much able to do whatever you want and be whoever you want, and you can be sure that your family and friends will love you unconditionally always. When you have a family of about fifty people, that's a lot of unconditional support :) And I think that's very freeing. There aren't any expectations about "fitting in with the group", and there aren't any stereotypes about how women should behave. Women in general are extremely well-off as regards social position - mothers, for instance, are respected - which is something that the media really needs to get straight. Of course there are some exceptions, like among the Indigenous groups. (I love to bring up Sister Juana Ines de la Cruz, a famous Mexican nun who wrote plays and poems during the 1600s. A nun who wrote during the 1600s - it sounds like she wrote prim narratives about how to be good and go to heaven, or perhaps treatises on theology. But... guess what. Among other things, she wrote a comedy, Los empeños de una casa, which is terribly funny (I read it for school a few months ago) and, aside from being slightly risque, has a character who's probably gay. Homosexuality was considered a sin at the time, so it's amazing that a nun of all people would've been including gay characters like it was nothing.) There are also lots of opportunities to have fun within your own neighborhood - you go to the park, you go to the ice-cream store, you drop in to the church, you visit a friend, you go shopping, you hang out downtown, you visit a museum. Plus every five minutes there's a party! A baptism! A wedding! Another party! The birthday of your mom's friend's youngest baby! A baby shower because yay, there's another baby on the way! If you have the means, you can even drop everything for a weekend and go on a road trip to a beach or a lovely old city - you don't even have to make hotel reservations ahead of time. It makes for a very happy society. There's also this feeling that you have time. I don't know why, but in the afternoons, after you've had lunch, the daylight just goes on and on, very slowly getting deeper and more golden as it wanes into dusk, and there's the feeling that you have all the time in the world to do things. It's as if the afternoon will never end, and even if you're not doing anything in particular, you don't want it to end. Time seems to go more slowly. I really miss that, it's so peaceful.

I think one thing I would really want the media to understand, is that a huge swath of Mexican society is made up of middle- and upper-class people. It seems like there's a large tendency to see them as peasants with donkeys and sombreros, or refugees crowding the border, or just very poor, struggling people to be pitied. And yes, unfortunately that is often the reality. But there are also a bunch of very sophisticated people - college professors, writers, architects, engineers, and, of course, the old elite, who used to be Very Powerful (in the days before the revolution equalized everyone) and who haven't forgotten it, thank you very much. There's also this whole thing of the "popis" kids - the typical wealthy teenagers going around dating each other, being super fashionable, whizzing around on motorcycles, that kind of thing. If you've read P. G. Wodehouse, it's the equivalent of Bertie Wooster. These people may be bops, but they're at the top of their social ladder, and they're as far from the image of the poor uneducated immigrant as you can get. Also, in Mexico, poor does not equal uneducated. Poorer people may have had a harder time going to school, but they're often very eager to learn, very skilled in particular areas of expertise, and smart.  They're usually also very talented and courageous, and I think we should respect them, not pity them (although of course they deserve sympathy for the difficulties they've been through). And then the whole society in itself is Very Cultured. There's the Feria Internacional del Libro (International Book Fair), which I think is the largest book fair in Latin America; there's a huge amount of museums, universities, etc.; education is very valued; and, well, you get the picture :)

Another thing that really bugs me is the narrative of the poor Mexican deciding he wants a "better life" and struggling through untold dangers just to get to the wonderful United States where all his problems will be solved. Up until recently, the only thing the United States could give Mexicans was more money (if that). A couple of my parents' friends, for instance, came here because they could earn higher salaries. But recently, that's changing. The problem is that, even though I talk on and on about it, Mexico has a lot of problems which have recently gotten very bad. Crime is one of the main ones. Drug dealers have been getting more and more powerful and violent, until by now you could be kidnapped or killed in broad daylight and no one will do anything about it. (Rules and laws aren't often followed, and while sometimes that's okay, it does make the country quite unsafe.) That's the main reason my family came here. The other problem is the climate and water supply, which has only been getting worse with global warming. So if you're a parent, and you don't know if your kids will live to grow up, and you don't know if you'll be able to have any water to drink, you naturally start looking for alternatives, and the best alternative is often the United States. But very often, people only come here because they have to, not because they're propelled by a dream. That's the reality of the situation as I've seen it. (In fact, most of my family is still solidly rooted in Mexico and won't even think of leaving.)

Another common misconception is that society refuses to accept anything out of the ordinary or different. That may be true to a slight extent, but there are plenty of immigrants who've integrated into Mexico without any trouble (the "Los que llegaron" TV documentary series is a great way to look further at that). And racism/ethnicism is really not a problem, especially since all Mexicans are fundamentally a mix of cultures ranging from ancient Rome to the Aztec empire.

Anyway, in general, Mexico has a lot of problems - corruption, crime, poverty, littering, a lack of respect for the environment - but there's also a tendency to laugh, enjoy life, create lovely art and music, make jokes, slyly subvert the rules, and celebrate the diversity and variety of human beings. I'm a little worried about the future of Mexican culture - it's getting so Americanized, which can have a good effect, but it seems like people are losing touch with their culture. 

Looking up some photos would be a great idea, so you can actually see some of what I'm talking about... let's see, what would be some places you could find photos of? *ponders a bit* Here's some suggestions, in case you're interested :)

-the Barranca de Oblatos valley

-Guadalajara Jalisco (there are a lot of good photos on Wikipedia)

-try looking up "sunsets Guadalajara," that gives a lot of good pictures

-Telchac, a beach (when I went there, it was super stormy and cloudy, not at all like in the pictures, but still)

-Cancun, another beach

-Merida, which is an absolutely gorgeous city

-Colima

Well, I don't know if this is what you were looking for - I hope it wasn't too boring lol. Since you wanted to know about actual details of what people do, I'll post about that later on, and also reply to the rest of your post (I loved reading about Hawaii, btw!) - right now I have to go :/ Thank you for taking an interest in all this! It's been so long since I talked about Mexico to anyone, and as you can probably tell, I miss it a lot. And thank you @admin for reading this whole long post :)

Cat grass gives my cat indigestion, and anyways it was starting to dry out so we just stuck it on the table in our garden out of reach. She loves catnip, so we grow that, as well as two types of mint (in pots), sage, rosemary, two types of roses (yellow spring and pink early-summer-to-late-fall), and fuschia, which attracts lots of hummingbirds. In the front yard I have a lemon tree, some alyssum, more roses, and two lantana bushes, as well as aloe. Everything is pretty adapted to living in a place where it rains sometimes in the winter and almost never in the summer, and with a person who forgets to water them sometimes (that's me...).
Catnip is the only herb from my garden I've ever had in tea, and I don't drink any caffeinated tea, but I love herbal tea. Sometimes I have boba, though not very often, and I sort of like it but not too much.

will respond soon, Poinsettia!