Earlier this month, there were flag football tournaments going on at lunchtime. Some of the students had been participating at the games. Apparently one of the PE teachers made the students stay late to clean up after the games (at least, they claim that, I wasn't there).

Well, I was sitting in my math classroom and the bell rang. A few students ended up being late. The first said, "Flag football," the second said the same, and so on...Until there was only one person left to come to class. As he was approaching the classroom, our teacher said, "Let's see what his excuse is."

To our surprise, when the boy came in, he said, quite simply, "I was late." My teacher was impressed by this, saying that the boy had taken responsibility instead of shifting the blame to the flag football games and PE teacher.

And then, during another math class, we were reading out the answers. It's usually like this: The first person in a row reads an answer from their homework, and then the person behind them reads the next answer, and so on. Well, it got to one boy and he couldn't read the answer because he didn't have his homework. "Do you have your homework?" asked the teacher. The boy fumbled for a response, but finally he had to say no.

My dad asked me later on if students ever claim that their dog ate their homework when they don't have it. I guess it's not really an excuse that's used nowadays. I mean, it wouldn't be a credible excuse unless someone had a dog in the first place.

Well, anyhow, I was reading a book called When Heaven Fell by Carolyn Marsden. It's about a girl living in Vietnam, named Binh. Her aunt moved to America when she was very young because it was rough in Vietnam at the time. Now that she is 35, she has rediscovered her family and traveled to Vietnam to visit them. But there's a lot of culture shock on both sides. The relatives living in Vietnam expect Di Thao, the aunt who lives in America, to be rich because she is American. And Di Thao has trouble getting used to the lifestyle in Vietnam.

For one thing, a relative asked Di Thao what her age was. Di Thao had said that in America, women didn't reveal their ages, before finally saying she was 35. Binh didn't understand why her aunt was uncomfortable because apparently, it's important to know someone's age so you know how to address them in Vietnamese.

And then the relatives asked Di Thao what she did for a living. She said she was a teacher. "What do you teach? Mathematics? Economics?" asked the relatives. Di Thao replied that she taught art. The relatives were confused about this. "People go to school to learn art? Why?"

The relatives also thought it was shocking that Di Thao was 35 but had no husband or children. As for Di Thao, she was surprised by the toilet, which you have to squat to use (Bleh! Horrible! I saw those kinds of toilets in China. I wouldn't go to the bathroom when there weren't the kinds of toilets that you can sit on).

I've been thinking that I really am very used to the American lifestyle myself. I love spaghetti (but when Binh ate it, she thought it was strange, especially the cheese taste). Our house isn't big, but it isn't so small that we all sleep side by side on the floor. (I think houses are pretty big in the USA compared to other countries. In Europe, things are more petite too) And we are accustomed to not wearing uniforms to school. When Binh saw a photo of an American school, and saw that the students wore plain clothing, she wondered if they were too poor to afford uniforms...In the USA it's usually just the private school kids who wear uniforms. I would like to be able to live in another country - not just visit it - because simply seeing a place for a week or two is not enough to really get a feel for what life is like there.

Labels: america, book, class, culture, different, dog, excuse, flag football, geometry, late, lunch, math, scapegoat, school, shock, sports, teacher, uniform, vietnam, when heaven fell

My language arts teacher recently decided that we had to give short speeches about our World War Two books, so she's been going over what we should and shouldn't do when speaking in class.

To try and show us what we ought to do when we're speaking, she showed us a promotional video for her friend who is a motivational speaker. It was pretty funny towards the beginning of the video.

He was saying, "What we played with the guys was sophisticated. We had TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES! What can be cooler than that? You had a turtle who was a ninja that you could take to school with you and you could decapitate a Barbie's head with it!"

Then my history teacher decided to talk about a very important thing when you're giving a speech. You have to have a message, something that you want your audience to remember even if they don't really pay attention to the rest.

His example was when we were doing our presentations about historical figures we had researched. One girl (let's call her A) went first. My teacher says that while she was presenting we were all thinking to themselves, "I'm not ready to present. I'm not ready to present. I'm not ready to present...Oh, wait, what was the name? I'll have to ask later. I'm not ready to present. I'm not ready to present..." and so on. And then when the next person goes, the people who haven't gone are thinking the same as before while A, who had just gone, is thinking, "I'm so glad it's over with. I'm so glad it's over with. Oops, I missed the name. I'm so glad it's over with. I'm so glad it's over with." Since everyone's kind of distracted by their own thoughts, you can't necessarily expect your audience to understand everything you said...So you have to make sure they at least get the important parts.

But the secret to a good presentation is something we learned in geometry class, pretty much by accident. A few days ago we were being taught about the areas of prisms and whatnot. While he was talking the teacher walked around holding up a translucent cylinder (I think it was glass or plastic, I couldn't really tell) and we were transfixed by it. He had the notes for the lesson projected, and every time the cylinder was over the projected screen, it looked strange. All beautiful and shiny-like. We were so captivated by it that my teacher said he was heart-broken. He had been teaching for 15 minutes and we were quiet because we were bored and uninterested. But as soon as that amazing cylinder was held up, we became very excited.

So, if you want your audience to pay attention, project something and then wave a magical prism in front of it. It's sure-fire.

Labels: attention, audience, geometry, interesting, mesmerizing, motivational, presentation, prism, projector, public speaking, screen, speech, teacher, teenage mutant ninja turtles, thoughts, trick

When I was younger, I would always sleep without socks on. It felt too uncomfortable to me, wearing socks to bed. On hot days, I even stuck my bare feet out of the side of the blanket just to keep them feeling cool. This went on for many years, even in the winter, when my feet became all cold and numb. I didn't like the alien feeling I got from wearing socks.

But that has changed this past winter. My blood circulation has not been good. (At least, that is the theory that my mom and I have; if you have a better idea, you should let me know.) My body temperature isn't always as it should be. When the weather is cold I cannot seem to keep my body heat unless I am wearing a thick jacket (and even then sometimes it's not enough). My hands would be icy cold while my parents' hands would be quite warm. One of my classmates was surprised that I was wearing a jacket since she thought it was pretty warm. I myself am shocked to see students wearing t-shirts and shorts even on chilly days. (In fact, in elementary school, we would joke that one kid never wore anything besides t-shirts and shorts, winter or summer.)

My feet were really feeling too cold, so I decided it was better that I wear socks to bed. At first it felt all wrong, but after a while I got used to the feeling, and so it became a habit of mine. In fact, it feels a little odd not wearing socks. But since the weather is really warm, I figure it's better to sleep with socks off again for the time being.

I kept realizing right after I turned off the lights that I had forgotten to put on socks before bed. But it's such a hassle turning the lights on again and getting up to get socks. My mom says that I should just keep socks under my pillow. She said that she did that when she was young. I've been thinking to myself that maybe she didn't have teeth to give the tooth fairy, so she left socks instead. That makes it the Sock Fairy instead.

Recently I've been feeling some discomfort in my feet. The bottom of my left foot (specifically, the area known as the "ball" of the foot) pained me slightly during the day. I was still able to walk and run, but it sure made things uncomfortable. I looked at it at night and saw there was something like a blister on it. A dry, hard part of skin...Yikes. And then my other foot, the right foot is a bit odd around the ankle area (the side that is facing inward, facing to the left). It hurt me to bend it in a certain position, but only sometimes. At other times it is just fine. I keep wondering if perhaps I have injured myself without knowing it. Maybe I was sleeping in a really weird position. (I recall waking up some days with a stiff back or with pulled muscles from sleeping in a bad position.) Or maybe it's just one of those unexplainable aches that goes away after a while.

I've been stressed lately as well, due to a group project we have to do for language arts class (it's just so hard to meet up with my group members, so it's really bothering me). And I've also had to take quite a few tests. The STAR tests aren't really that big of a concern to me. But I have been taking awards tests. Since eighth grade is the last year of middle school, if you can show your excellence in a subject (essay writing, speech, poetry, mathematics, science, social studies, or art) you will be given an award. I was a bit reluctant to take a test for some of the subjects since I felt there was no way I would get the award (unless by some stroke of luck I managed to bubble in all the right answers, and it would be unfair for me to win the award when I didn't know what I was doing), but my mom urged me to, saying it would be a good experience and I might as well give it a try.

Well, the history was okay (though I didn't remember a lot, or didn't even know if I'd learned it), the science was tolerable, the essay writing was not too bad (just a bit of a time constraint)... But the geometry was something else. I could only understand how to do a few problems. Many of the things were either forgotten (like the formula for the volume of a cone or something along those lines) or I hadn't ever seen such a problem. These problems were beyond my abilities, so I ended up having to bubble in randomly at the end of class. (I should have taken Mr. Kulla's advice to just skip what I didn't understand immediately. I actually heard the problems at the end of the test were a bit easier...) Anyways, I am a little upset because I feel I had wasted a perfectly good hour of my time on taking a test that just ended up confusing me, but I suppose there's no use crying over spilled milk.

Labels: academic, awards, blood, circulation, discomfort, eighth grade, feet, geometry, health, luck, pain, pillow, problem, school, sleep, socks, STAR testing, temperature, test, tooth fairy

Well, I did hear somewhere or other that there's a song called Pocket Full of Sunshine (I personally am not a big fan of it, but I like the name!) but what really reminded me of this was my math homework. There was a problem about a guy who had angles in his pocket. I don't understand how that's possible. Does he have drawings of angles? Or is his pocket a really weird shape? Either way, it seems to be nonsense. The whole textbook is pretty weird. I mean, I've seen something about a parallelogram who was depressed because he couldn't fit into a circle, and also a problem about some alien who talks to people walking in the desert. I have heard that people who aren't that good at math are the ones who make the textbooks. All I can say is that they have some...interesting ideas.

I was feeling pretty chipper today, though. I got lucky since my math teacher is forgiving. Otherwise I would've lost a lot of points because I didn't notice there was a last page on the math text we took on Thursday... A close save, indeed.

Mostly it was the weather that caused me to be in high spirits. I like days like today, kind of cool but with the sun still out, and a nice breeze. There have been pretty clouds for the last few days, too. In fact, I was surprisingly energetic and ran faster in PE than usual. Too bad we weren't running the mile today. (Or maybe it's a good thing. I had some pain in my chest sometime which probably means I have a heart problem or something D: )

I was walking around during lunch when someone pointed out a sign on a door. It was a sign with Sponge Bob, of all things, on it. I wonder what Sponge Bob is doing at school... I can't say he's particularly educational...Unless you want to sing the "F is for friends who do stuff together, U is for you and me, N is for anywhere, anytime at all, down in the deep blue sea" song.

I found a drawing from...fifth grade? Or was it fourth? All I can say is that it had a Bulbasaur and a Chikorita on it (both green plant-like Pokemon) in a forest setting. It was not a very good drawing but I thought it was cute. It sure brings back memories. The Pokemon represent an old friend of mine and I (in our Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team forms). There are other drawings I dug up in my house, like the drawings from the time I was trying to make a calendar with a seasonally dressed anime girl for each one. I abandoned the project when I lost those papers. (I'm sure it must've been in elementary school, when I still had enough free time to draw.)

I still do draw, though, in class, especially in my math notebook. I got the idea in seventh grade and have been doing it ever since. Maybe I should scan them and then erase them from my notebook so my math teacher will not be shocked when he grades my notebook.

Labels: angle, calendar, clouds, drawing, energy, fun, geometry, happiness, health, notebook, pocket, pocket full of sunshine, pokemon mystery dungeon, song, spongebob, test, textbook, weather

Yet again this is a book title, and yet again I haven't read the book... (By the way, it's by Garth Nix, and my mom's friend's daughter was reading it the last time we went to their house, which was...not that recent) I think I may have found the answer to what I was wondering about in my previous post, "◆ something wicked this way comes". I found another clue yesterday, which was a dead worm on the ground, when I was walking home. I think I sort of understand what it could mean. I have two guesses...

1. If birds, then worms. If worms, then soil. If soil, then nutrients. I am trying to put it in conditional form. But maybes that's a little confusing, so I'll just say this; I saw dead birds, and birds eat worms (at least some birds do). And worms live in the soil, recycling the nutrients. So it must be related to nutrition. Maybe I or someone in my family has a health problem to do with nutrition.

2. Remember the eight crows, a symbol of heaven? I think someone is going to die or has died and will be buried in the soil, and recycled by the worms. And it means that person is going to heaven (which I have no idea about as I am an atheist but this post is not meant to be about religion anyhow). I am hoping that whoever died is not someone who I hold dear.

Then again, all this could be something invented by my imagination. I am the sort of person who sometimes hallucinates so perhaps my lack of sleep is getting to me. (I am waking up early, either due to stress, or the heat, or some other reason) Or perhaps it's just because I have trouble paying attention in class after a while and end up distracting myself since I no longer read books in class. (This proves to be a problem since I take forever to finish books if I don't read them in school. But if I read them in school, I'll get ratted out and the teachers will have steamed broccoli.)

Recently it was the birthday of one of my friends, so I brought her two balloons. I wrote on one of them. It was very nerve-wracking for me since I am freaked out by anything that makes a noise when exploding. I was afraid of fireworks when I was younger and when people pop the air in their plastic bags, that scares me as well. My dad says the balloons have good enough quality not too pop, but who knows...I did an activity last year in school where my two partners and I drew the continents, oceans, etc. on the balloon (I wrote about it, and how it lived for a month before popping, in posts a few months ago). Some people popped their balloons because they applied too much pressure. Poor balloons.

Labels: balloon, birthday, books, conditional form, death, fear, geometry, heaven, imagination, loud, nutrients, nutrition, popped, school, small world, soil, the keys to the kingdom, worm

I may not have much knowledge of this matter, but I've always thought make-up was meant to be used on faces. Not drawings on paper. But I have a classmate in my Japanese class who uses lipstick, nail polish, and other things to color in strange drawings of female faces. She said that she uses make-up instead of color pencils for Fashion Design class. Two of the people sitting with me keep pulling their desks away whenever she takes out the make-up since they say it smells too strong.

It's kind of funny, but depending on what kind of twins you are, sometimes siblings are more alike than twins are. If you're identical twins then there's no match for you but if you're fraternal twins of the same gender, then it's possible for two regular siblings to have more resemblance than you. I know two guys who look very alike. Not completely alike, but still with enough similarities for people to mistake them for twins. But they are actually just brothers.

I have discovered a song that I find endlessly funny. The name of it is Ippon Demo Ninjin. It's a song about counting from 1-10 in Japanese using various objects like carrots, sandals, yachts, grains of sesame salt, rockets, turkeys, bees, whales, glasses of juice, and strawberries. Unfortunately, I couldn't locate the song, which was a great disappointment to me. I wish I could show you all, but only my Japanese teacher seems to have a video of it.

Geometry really is hard like I had expected. There are some things I know - like how two angles would add up to 180 degrees so you just need to play around with numbers already provided - but there were problems about clocks which stumped me. I hadn't remembered that when the minute hand moves, the hour hand must move too. I really need some practice otherwise I'll be like my 7th grade math teacher, who had to retake it because she wasn't good at Geometry. Then I'll have lost the head start I got by going to Pre-Algebra in 6th grade. (And possibly, the chance to go one of the colleges I've been thinking of!)

I wonder if I have become too used to drinking bottled water. My mom says that since it's the summer, I should just pour some water from one of the really big Crystal Geyser water containers since that would save plastic and in turn the environment. However, out of habit, I end up grabbing a water bottle whenever I feel thirsty. And only later do I remember that I should have filled a cup with water. Probably I will be unlucky and I won't learn to do that until the end of the summer. It's kind of like how I want to sleep in on Mondays but wake up early on weekends, and how when I go to China I only become used to the time zone at the end of the trip. I have some belief in karma and I bet I did something in my past life that wasn't too bad, but bad enough to earn me faults.

Labels: appearance, clock, cosmetics, count, drink, geometry, habit, ippon demo ninjin, japanese, math, oddity, siblings, song, summer school, twins, unlucky, water bottles

I'm wondering about this since I am always saying odd things to my friends, and then they stare at me, make a comment, or laugh. And sometimes they are scared of me. Such a thing happened today.
Me: *says something disturbing while trying to coach people on push-ups*
NC(initials for her name): Whoa. I can imagine you with a chainsaw.
Me: Well, yeah! I have one in my backyard. (It's true. I have one in the shed or garage. At least, it's a saw of some sort. I actually have no idea what kind. I only know crosscut, back, and hack saws from Woodshop class)
NC: *eyes widen and backs away*
...Don't worry, I don't bite anymore like I used to do in fourth grade, and I couldn't kill someone, I'm not aggressive enough for that kind of behavior. (But who knows. People can turn out...different when they're older).

It is truly almost the end of the school year. School seems the same, yet different. We're on the last study guide in history class (we do a "study guide", which is a worksheet with questions and you have to write down vocabulary definitions, every chapter of the book. There is a total of 35). I feel like we're finishing too quickly. Then again, my teacher says it is because the superintendent thinks all kids are the same, like cookie cutters, so he expects us all to lower our book standards to match the rest of California. I am upset since we are not learning about the south African kingdoms, like the Congo kingdoms. (I mean, I have to say I don't particularly like Africa because it seems like people are dying and starving there right now from lack of food and medical treatment and clean water, but still, I'm curious.) So my history teacher and the district superintendent don't get along too well. Whenever the superintendent comes to our school and goes by Mr. Blair's classroom, then Mr. Blair talks about something scary to drive away the superintendent.

Also, in math we are on the last chapter out of 12 book chapters. I am both happy and unhappy. I look forward to being finished but that means we'll be doing projects instead of regular homework, I think. I don't like projects since you have to work in a group (and as Shiroi Hime says, if your group won't get along well, then you're in a trouble). You might have to give a speech. Even though my mom signed me up for debate class last summer it just made me lose my self confidence even more. And that means that Geometry in eighth grade is looming not so far ahead. I don't feel prepared. I mean, I don't remember what I learned in Algebra that well.

In science, it is THAT TIME OF YEAR. Nope, not Christmas. Not my birthday. Not Friday the 13th. It's "Human Growth and Development". They don't talk about how babies learn to walk or anything. It's about people going through puberty. Mr. Brown didn't say this out loud but the speech he gave before we really started implied that some families and cultures wouldn't like what we would talk about in class. I read on a sheet of paper sent to our parents that they'll be talking about homosexual people this year. o_O;; Well, I'm pretty sure that's what he meant, because my mom said she knows a person who came from China and then had a child in the USA. The son became a gay when he grew older so his parents were embarrassed of him. I know it must seem unnatural and shameful to the parents since they grew up with different values, but apparently in the USA we are all wild animals in a democracy and it is accepted. I heard there was a fun parade for gay people in San Francisco or something. And you may have heard of someone called Harvey Milk, who was gay but was killed by some spiteful person. (This happens to everyone...John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and some other people.)

Labels: africa, algebra, chainsaw, conversation, culture, gay, geometry, hgad, history, homosexual, projects, saw, school, shame, south, study guide, superintendent, textbook

I don't remember the phrase exactly anymore, except I know Gill (an angelfish) and his gang (other assorted fish, all of them living in a fish tank in a dentist's office in Sydney, Australia) said that when they were making Nemo (one of the main characters, and he's a clownfish with a mutated fin) one of them. If you've watched the movie Finding Nemo, this may ring a bell in your head. For some reason I kept thinking of it lately. I guess it's because when I'm playing a video game, Animal Crossing: Wild World, I keep on catching clownfish when I'm fishing in the ocean. (It's too bad you can't go swimming or own a boat in that game, but oh well.)

Lately my parents are talking to my dad's friends a lot because my family is planning a trip to Australia this summer. We're going for a pretty long time, a couple of weeks, I think. Though it is shallow to think this, I always wonder if I'm going to get Internet access, because I don't want to get behind on role-playing on one of the websites I visit (by the way, role-playing is kind of like writing a book, except each of the characters is controlled by a different person, so basically it's a group effort. Role-plays can be anything from a pack of wolves running from humans, to vampires mingling with humans - sometimes it's too much like Twilight, so I only join ones that aren't using Twilight characters - to depressed people going to a summer camp). Also, I don't want to miss making money on the Internet, even if it's fake money. I guess I am too used to having a computer around all the time. Or maybe I'm just a worrywart.

Something happened on Tuesday in math class that I didn't expect. On the part of the board where the homework assignments are written, the teacher was writing down "No homework" on our side of the section (one part is for the Pre-Algebra 7, or regular math, and the other side is for the Algebra 1, or advanced math). There was a lot of surprise in general since usually we have homework every day, unless it's the day before a long vacation, or we just took a test. It turned out we were taking a test which doesn't affect our grade to judge how much of the Algebra curriculum we knew. I know I must've failed miserably since I didn't remember most of the stuff. So today my teacher said some people scored really high, but some people weren't retaining the things they'd been taught (she must have meant me XD) and she was worried about it. She started talking about how we needed to remember all these things in Geometry, since Geometry is different from most of the other math courses we'll take, and so on, blah blah blah. (Note: I don't mean to offend anyone with the last three words)

In the mail, we received a letter from the BestFriends Animal Society addressed to my mom. It was saying how they were trying to give homeless animals homes, and they wanted her support to help make their goal possible. My dad and I could hardly believe it since my mom is not too fond of animals. She thinks cats are kind of useless and that big dogs are scary. We get all sorts of other weird things in the mail, especially flyers advertising the store called Express, and how it's having sales on women's jeans and things like that. It's always addressed to some random person called Eun M. Ji. (By the way, please don't Google this person or anything like that, or it'll ruin their privacy) I wonder why we keep getting them. Did this "Eun" purposely ask Express to send mail to us?

Labels: algebra, animal crossing, animals, australia, exams, express, finding nemo, geometry, internet, mail, math, movie, roleplaying, RP, vacation

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