The building I am speaking of here is the California Academy of Sciences. It was completely only recently. It's located in Golden Gate Park, pretty close to the De Young Museum. I heard it had started being built ten years ago...Wow, that's a long time.

We arrived at the museum around maybe 11 am or so, I believe. I should've gotten up earlier (I woke up pretty early in the morning, but stayed in bed being lazy) but it's too late for that now. The line was really long...My family had thought that since it was Black Friday, a lot of people would be out shopping to get deals, but it turned out that wasn't true. There were a lot of people there. I guess it's because both the kids and the parents have the day off, so it was a good opportunity for them all to go to the museum. We had to wait for quite a while. Luckily, we made it inside before they started metering. (Metering is, supposedly, only letting people in when people leave the museum. I'm sure that must've been annoying for the people who wanted to go in.)

We started out by going to the rainforest. There is a four-story rainforest in the museum. Quite a few animals were there, such as macaws (which are a kind of bird, they look like parrots), frogs, lizards, butterflies, and other birds. I tried to take pictures of them, but there were kids shoving me, the glass on the cases (some of the animals are in display cases, but the birds fly free inside the rainforest building) was reflective, and besides, the birds and butterflies moved around too much. In fact, I think some of the animals in the museum were mocking me or something, because they would suddenly move when I pressed the button to take the picture. (I couldn't think of how to describe that...I think there was some other term for it, having to do with shutters or something)

Afterwards, we went down to the aquarium. Lots of fish there, some that really huge...My dad was commenting on how it would be tasty to have sushi made out of the huge fish, but my mom said that it wouldn't taste good and would be tough to eat. (Well, there was a term she used, but it was in Shanghainese, so I don't know how to translate it) There were some jellyfish, which I discovered come out nicely in photographs. I will probably upload them somewhere later on, once I get all the photos onto the computer.

Speaking of photos, I ran out of batteries on my camera...I think that my Panasonic Lumix seems to run out of batteries even quicker than my old Nikon Coolpix. I really miss using Nikon. This is a bit off topic, but I heard that Canon and Nikon are the two best brands of cameras...But more folks say that Canon is better. I don't remember whether I've used Canon cameras before or not. If you have a camera, what brand do you have? Does it work well?

Back to the topic...There were other things in the museum as well, like dead animals. I saw some jars with things in them; one jar had a fruit bat, another had a snake, and a third had black rats. The rats looked kind of nasty. You know, I once heard that although squirrels and rats are similar (can carry the same diseases, and both are rodents...or at least rodentish), people tend to dislike rats more than they dislike squirrels. Personally, I just think it's funny how when the squirrels run it looks kind of like a wave. (I mean waves in water, not a person waving their hand)

The museum also had some penguins. They're bigger than the penguins I saw in Australia, I think. When I was in Australia, we saw some dwarf penguins, which I believe are the smallest species. They live in the wild, I guess, but you do have to pay to go see them. It's actually quite interesting. It was nighttime when they were coming in from the ocean, so it was hard to see them at first. But then eventually I could make out groups of penguins swimming to shore. Sometimes, if they got scared (there were a lot of people watching, though from a distance, and besides, there were seagulls on the beach also staring at the penguins) they would run back into the water instead of crossing the beach. But once they thought the coast was clear, then they would all sort of line up, and then run like mad across the sand until they got into the safety of the bushes. It was really funny. I thought the penguins were quite amusing, but I had to leave because we were supposed to meet some other folks to eat dinner in a Chinese restaurant. Sigh.

Well, this post is getting really long and confusing, so I shall continue another time.

Labels: animals, aquarium, australia, batteries, beach, birds, butterfly, california academy of sciences, camera, fish, macaws, museum, penguins, preserved, rainforest, rats, running, squirrels, sushi

For homework, I was reading the Declaration of Independence (well, I have no idea if the whole thing is in there, considering how the textbook skips various events in history). There was a phrase in the Declaration, saying that the colonies of the America were separating from Britain and so they would now have the same relationship with Britain as they did with the rest of the world - "Enemies in war, in peace friends". The grammar does sound a little odd. But then again, back then the writing was a lot different. D: I wonder, though, when you fight with someone, would be you be enemies with them automatically, and then be friends again as soon as you stopped fighting? (But I guess the relationship between two larger bodies, like countries, might be different than the relationship between two people)

I learned something curious about my history teacher just the other day. I usually arrive a bit early for class, and since it's cold outside, I go inside and sit down and start getting ready, or I read a book. My teacher was sitting, staring at the screen of his laptop. I thought all was as normal, but suddenly he started talking. "Crossyourfingerscrossyourfingers... Awww!" he said, among other things. One of the students, who was just walking in, was freaked out and backed away. A person already in the room told my teacher, "Uh, you scared ____ away." (I use underscores to keep the person's name private) The teacher seemed unperturbed, saying, "That happens." So then the other student told the one who had gotten intimidated, "It's okay, _____, he wasn't talking to you, he was talking to his computer."

The teacher explained what he was talking about. See, apparently he likes to play fantasy football (basically like fantasy golf, which is like gambling, sort of, it's not a video game or anything). He had the choice of either a very good player who was facing a good defender, or a not-so-good player who was facing a bad defender. He went with the not-so-good player, which was a mistake, since the very good player scored 4 points and threw the ball quite far but the not-so-good player didn't throw so far, had a fumble (not that I really understand football terminology, but oh well) and only scored 1 point. My teacher sighed and said, "There go my perfect rankings this week." (Wow, I guess even people of different generations - my dad, and my teacher, who is quite a bit younger than my dad - can have similar interests)

I've taken to using a whiteboard that I bought some time ago. I've had the whiteboard for a year or two already, but I didn't use it much before, besides occasionally copying Chinese characters whenever I saw them onto the board. Now I've started writing things that I need to do at the bottom of the whiteboard. This way things actually get done, and though I still procrastinate, I don't put things off as much as before. I'm glad to be able to put my whiteboard to use. (The only problem is that the markers smell kind of nasty when you use them a lot)

We've moved on from lacrosse in PE. I really liked lacrosse, so I'm sad that we're not doing it anymore. I'm scared of "missiles" flying toward me, and so I have trouble in ultimate frisbee and volleyball, which are sports where you have to react quickly to catch or hit dangerous objects. At least in lacrosse you are armed with a net/stick/whatever you call it and so it gives me a feeling of some sort of security. I keep thinking of the lacrosse net as a bug-catching net, though, so when I saw a butterfly I tried to catch it. I actually snagged it by covering it on the ground, but then it flew out of a hole in the net. Grr. Oh well. Butterflies don't live that long anyhow and it would have a miserable life if I actually caught it and took it home, unless I were to release in my backyard.

Labels: britain, bugs, butterfly, colonies, declaration of independence, enemies, england, fantasy football, fantasy golf, fear, friends, lacrosse, PE class, peace, sports, to do list, war, whiteboard

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