One of my friends always needs to be occupied somehow. If she's not kept busy she will descend upon your belongings. I have managed to appease her with a book but who knows what will happen tomorrow because I have finished that book and won't be bringing it to school again. D: Lately I have been working on something called a budget project, in which you make up four or five people to create a family, and then have to use a certain amount of money to rent a house, get a car and furniture, find a job, and feed and clothe all of the people. I am in charge of the food, so I have been looking over grocery coupons and fliers to try to find deals. (All the same, I ended up spending hundreds of dollars XD) Whenever I leave my pencil case out my friend starts rifling through it, or she takes the scissors and cuts up scraps of paper, or she "blows up" my backpack (as it is a roller backpack, that is basically pushing down the lever when it is up). I don't mind too much as long as she doesn't cause any serious trouble, but still I must be sure to keep a secure hold on my belongings.

Another friend of mine is less restless in comparison, but still enjoys poking around. She is a fan of sharp things, so she likes inspecting people's teeth. I think she ought to be a dentist or something. She likes swords, too, particularly katana swords. And if I have noodles as part of my lunch, if I give her permission, she uses the fork to separate the carrots and olives from the noodles, and then sorts the noodles by color (green, beige, and orange). Actually, the lunch looks more artistic that way, but not very appetizing.

Anyhow, as the blog post's title mentions dogs, I figure I ought to talk about them, namely the chihuahua (pronounced "Chi-wa-wa"). Back in fifth grade I remember my teacher would pronounce it the way it looked, so he called it "Chi-hoo-a-hoo-a". I thought of them since my history teacher mentioned it. (Yes, my history teacher is rather talkative...) The name actually means rat dog. My teacher doesn't like them since they are small and might even try to attack you, they bark so much and in a high-pitched way. He only likes the ones that are lazy and don't do much. He should probably get a cat, then, and not one of the hyper young'uns.

This week has been STAR testing week. STAR stands for Standardized Testing and Reporting. It's the annual test for all California students from second grade to eighth grade. (I presume that once you reach high school you can only take finals and SATs or something.) The eighth graders have six days of testing, but we only have four. The school class schedule is messed up now. We have a testing period that's practically two hours, and then thirty minute periods. It feels odd. I also have less homework (I've already done it, mostly, so I just have the budget project and a PE muscle drawing right now) and I fear I will lose my time management abilities because of the weirdness of school.

Lately at school the PE teachers have been discussing drugs, alcohol, and smoking. The first day we started going over it, my PE teacher asked us to separate to the two sides of the gym depending on whether we were affected by tobacco or not (meaning someone in our family smoked, or something like that). I should've gone to the Affected side, since several male relatives of mine like to blow some smoke. Then Mr. Robinson announced he was giving us a sermon (no, not the religious kind) called "How to Be a Loser". He said the very first step is to hang out behind 7-11, because there is bushes and stuff there so people can illegally smoke cigarettes. My teacher said he was very disappointed since one day he was jogging and saw a girl who used to be one of his star students, doing a rather suspicious activity back there. She pretended nothing was going on and said hello to Mr. Robinson, but he didn't reply, having seen the smoke billowing out from behind her back.

Labels: alcohol, belongings, chihuahua, Dogs, drugs, friends, lecture, noodles, projects, restless, smoking, state testing, teeth

If you have the game Wii Fit on your Wii, you can choose the male or female fitness trainer. (Both are pretty weird. I think the girl is better, since that's the one I picked.) While you do yoga and strength training, she constantly lectures you. She might say "This exercise is popular because it tones your arms" or "You're a little shaky. Focus on stretching your spine" or "Good job! You're pretty strong." It gets annoying after a while, hearing her blab on. They even have subtitles on the screen that you can't get rid of, for people who are deaf. (If you're blind AND deaf, like Helen Keller, then you can't play video games anyhow, seeing as touching the TV screen does no good)

Sometimes, to make the game seem more real...If you have a female trainer like me, once in a while, she'll be replaced by the other trainer, the male one, for whatever your first yoga/strength training activity is. I would assume it is vice versa if you are trained by the guy. The first time this happened to me, I was shocked and laughing at the same time, and then I couldn't concentrate for a while.

If you play a long time, you might unlock the three challenges - Pushups, jackknives, and plank. (In case you don't know, a jackknife is where you lie down on the ground, bend your knees, and then come up in a V shape, then go back down to the ground. Feels like a sit-up.) At first it's really amusing when you beat the trainer. She'll go "I'm not giving up yet!" or "It looks like that's all you can do" or "Still with me? Do 10 more" or "You win this time!" One day I tried to challenge her and she refused, saying she wasn't feeling up to it. I was pretty steamed, since this is the first time any video game snubbed me like that. XD

Anyhow, I ended up doing 100 jackknives and 180 seconds of plank. The plank was especially hard and after I was done, I felt my arm. The muscle in it (is it the bicep? or the brachialis? or maybe the tricep?) was really stiff and hard, since it had been strained. Probably I'll wake up with pains tomorrow, if experience tells me correctly.

I forgot to talk about Friday, so this is a good opportunity. It was a pretty miserable day for me. I didn't have a good test score, due to a lot of silly mistakes in math. Then Mr. Robinson the PE teacher was supposed to do weight and height measuring, but our class, 4th period, didn't get to because he had to leave and buy pizza for his champions (whoever does the most jumpropes and pushups or something. I've always been intimidated by those people). So instead we went over to Ms. Rawson's class and played a weird game. Two people face each other in pushup position. A blue ball is placed between them. When someone gives the signal, both people try to grab the ball with one hand while not falling down. It all relies on whether you have a fast reaction time. This must mean I'm not an old lady yet, so that's a relief.

Afterwards we ran for a bit and then went up to the giant green field. We had to do an odd kind of relay. You roll on the grass from the first cone to the second cone, then run from there to the small backstop cage thing, and then you have to "crab-walk" to the third cone (it's like you go on the ground with your knees bent and hands supporting you, and move in the direction of your back) and finally "bear-crawl" (walking on all fours) to your teammates. I didn't think it was too bad besides being exhausting until it was lunchtime and I was feeling strangely itchy. I couldn't stop scratching and soon the places where my arms and legs bent were pink and funny-looking. On my arm, a tiny circle of skin had risen up like it was swollen. I didn't want to poke it since it looked dangerous. Maybe I'm allergic to grass. (Next time I have to tell the teacher. I'm only afraid they'll think I'm making an excuse, like those boys who go to the bathroom a lot in class to avoid it)

Labels: allergies, challenge, exercise, lecture, missing, pep talk, pizza, reaction, refusal, relay, trainer, wii fit

One of the sites which I visit, Nutrinopets, seems to have a problem. Whenever I go there it says there is a problem with the database. I've gone away and come back, refreshed the page, etc. But all in vain. I guess I will wait until tomorrow to try again. Or maybe my IP address was banned? (Because someone was kicked off the website recently. If they got IP banned, if my IP is similar, I could've accidentally been banned? I have no idea at all.)

Anyhow...Today was a gloomy day. I woke up early in the morning (I don't know what time) and tried to get to sleep, but my thoughts and headache kept me awake, until at last I dragged myself out of bed around 9 am. I'm still tired even now.

At least I had a good lunch. We went to the Maru Ichi Ramen in Mountain View. I, as usual, ordered shoyu ramen, whereas my dad and mom ordered kuro ramen. (Kuro meaning black, so the soup is a color that leans towards black) And then I got some vanilla ice cream in a little paper cup, since my parents ordered the kids meal. (Which is fine, I guess, seeing as the ramen is still the same, just a smaller portion.) There was a room where a guy who worked there was supervising a machine which was churning out the noodle stuff. (It didn't look like noodles. Just a big sheet of...like dough?)

Later on my mom insisted on bringing me to a seminar. It was one of those that is meant to help you get into an Ivy League college. (I've been to two of these before, and they were kind of boring.) The guy who was talking is the Founder/CEO of something called the Ivy Review. (Is that what the suspicious building I saw in Cupertino was? It had an Ivy Review banner on it, but I thought it was just an advertisement.) Sometimes he spoke in Korean because some of the audience didn't know English.

Mr. Hull often asked people to raise their hands. For instance, he'd ask if you were in such-and-such grade, or if you took Algebra in 7th grade and Geometry in 8th grade, and so on. And he would tell some disturbing things. (Like he said it matters whether you sound optimistic or pessimistic in your application. If you sound too pessimistic they believe you are a "risk kid", one who might pour gasoline on themselves and light it up, or start a school shooting, if they get depressed by poor grades. I laughed, but he said to take him seriously, because it does happen.)

And he also said not to procrastinate on your personal statement (I'm not quite sure what that is. Is that the essay for your college app?). He said to start when you're a freshman, not four days away from the deadline. For instance, he was skiing over the vacation, and he got called by a frantic mother who said her son was having trouble with his personal statement. So Mr. Hull had to stop his vacation and try and improve the kid's college app. Mr. Hull says that kid had good grades, SAT score, # A-G lineup, and so forth (If you don't understand what I'm talking about...It's confusing) but he could've ruined it all by not starting his personal statement earlier.

By the way, you're supposed to write something compelling in your personal statement. Except nothing particularly extraordinary ever happened in my life...yet.

Labels: bad news, college, danger, error, lecture, lunch, personal statement, ramen, sleep

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