After a great 3 years of Rice & Shine, Grace is stepping away from the show. For her last hurrah, we reflect on our personal and professional growth as Rice & Shine and discuss what comes next for each of us.

In this episode, we talk about social media's role in our lives as teenage girls. We get into our over-usage, which apps we each have, and different phases we've had in the world of social media. 

With college decisions being finalized among our senior class, Grace decides to talk with current Mercer Island High School senior Ryan Hsi. In this episode, Grace hopes to gain insight into his high school journey, thoughts on navigating the college application process, which colleges he did or did not get into, and affirmative action.

With Grace and Ava being unavailable this week, Sophie and Lauren take this opportunity to compile all of Rice and Shine's unused topics into one mashup episode. To hear about anything from weird food combos to celebrity crushes, make sure to listen in! 

In the 3rd edition of our brief series, Cultural Connections, Sophie goes over what it's like growing up as a Filipino in America. She reviews a recent family visit and what she learned after being surrounded by Filipino culture for a full week.

In this second episode of our new series, Cultural Connections, Grace and two of her friends at Washington's Korean Community Service Center discuss a pressing issue of their culture: toxic beauty standards. At 10:30, they start to dive into eating disorders and body image issues so we recommend clicking off if that's a trigger for you. 

As the year heats up as juniors we have decided to launch a new series: Cultural Connections where we talk about connections we've had with our respective cultures. Lauren is up first to talk about her experience going back to Japan (specifically Hokkaido) after 5 years and what differences she found between Hokkaido and Honshu, the mainland. 

You may remember "Music that Made Us" from season 1 in our freshman year, so we decided to bring it back and see how things have changed. We compare/contrast our music taste from then versus now, go over our Spotify Wrapped results, and play some of our favorite songs for each other. 

It's our junior year (aka the most stressful) and so we sit down to talk about how our first round of finals as juniors went. As we talk, the conversation turns into the pressure for us to succeed. The conversation gets deep as we talk about our competitive school, being compared to our siblings, and the pressure we put on ourselves. 

After a week of finals, we decide to make a short and sweet episode about the generation gap between us and our grandparents. We discuss the factors that play into our distance from them--the language gap, geographical separation, and differences in attitudes.