There is a book that goes by that title, and the author is Margaret Peterson Haddix, but I'm not talking about that. I mean that there is always someone similar to yourself. Sometimes people say they know someone who looks like me. And in an anime (Sister Princess if you wanted to know), one of the people often sayings things like, "You know there is such-and-such-number of people in the world who look exactly like you." I was reminded of it when my mom talked about how she was in line at a store once and the person in front of her looked like me, but taller and older. The person was wearing a UCSF Medical School Class of 2010 sweater or shirt or something like that. I was a bit disturbed since I don't want to be a doctor. (No offense if you do. I think it is a fine career. Just not one I have particular interest in.) So I hope it's just a coincidence if someone looks like me. After all, a lot of times I might be walking somewhere and see someone who looked familiar from the back but when they turn around I realize it's not the same person.

Nowadays I've been writing something for history class. Our assignment is to write a letter and pretend we are in Florence touring the places. You can write to your mother or your pet goldfish or whatever. (But don't put your real address! I don't know about you, but the town where I live was only founded in the 1900's, so it couldn't have existed centuries ago) We have to explain what the Renaissance is, what humanism/individualism/realism is, how the Greeks and Romans influenced it, and so on. Then you have to describe the five senses (olfactory, visual, audio, tactile, and taste). Just make up a bunch of stuff, for example, you bit into a watermelon and thought it was juicy and sweet. (Note that I don't like watermelons. Especially the seeds. And I remember when I was young my class went to the nearby park, and we had a watermelon, and one of the teachers pretended it was a dinosaur egg)

As I keep on rambling I am reminded of the book I was reading just the other day. It's called Pillage and the author is Obert Skye. (According to the book cover, he is the author of Leven Thumps, some fantasy series or something of that sort. I saw a poster of it at the school library.) It's not really one of my favorites, but it's okay as books go. Kind of an adventure/fantasy/sarcastic book. Later on in the book you'll hear something about dragon eggs. So, not that far off from dinosaur eggs.

My dad is continuously watching the Masters Cup in golf. (The Cup stands for the weird glass goblet you get for winning golf tournaments.) A lot of males wearing polo shirts and either visors or caps are walking around, swinging golf clubs. I think golf is too slow-paced and boring because sometimes the game is so lacking that the cameramen film ducks flying overhead instead of the golfers. I saw Tiger Woods so apparently he's back to playing golf. He had an unhappy expression. My dad says it's because he's not playing well.

I think my science teacher is getting married sometime around now. He is going to marry one of the school counselors, apparently. My mom doesn't know how old his wife-to-be is, so she thinks my teacher is way older (I doubt that, he just has prematurely grey hair and a rather "weathered" look, like a sea captain, I think his fiancée isn't a spring chicken herself. No offense intended). One of my classmates was offended that we weren't invited to the wedding (after all, sometimes you do get to go to your teachers' weddings, one of my friends did just a year or two ago). The classmate insisted that we were more important than his nieces and deserved to go. (That's too hard, I think. There is at least a hundred kids in our "village", and besides that it would be unfair to the teacher's previous classes since they wouldn't get to go just because they were born in the wrong year.)

Labels: age, books, egg, florence, golf, identity, invitation, italy, letter, marriage, masters cup, people, pillage, renaissance, teacher

Actually, that's a folk song or something, but oh well. I decided to use this because I've always heard of life being filled with "hills and valleys". The valleys are the hard parts and hills are the good parts (though that doesn't make much sense since it's hard to walk uphill, but whatever). So, since I'd just gotten around one of the bumps in the road, I thought this blog title might be suitable.

This bump in particularly would be the piano recital. It comes every year, and all the students must perform once if they can make it (if you don't show up, you'll be wasting your money since you need to pay a recital fee, and you'll be wasting your time practicing the song the teacher picked for you for all those months). If you're high level enough, the teacher will want you to perform in both recitals (there are two of them because the teacher has so many students!). Unfortunately ever since last year I have to perform twice. I didn't do so well on the first recital this year and even ended the song on an obviously wrong note. I was very much embarrassed so I just put on a grim poker face of sorts. The second recital was better since I got to read my book in the meantime (the higher level your song is, the later you play) and reading always calms my nerves, though it is rude to the people playing before me.

I'm watching an anime called Kaze no Stigma. It was good at first but now it's getting weird and kind of scary. Especially since the main character went insane and started attacking people and his eyes turned red. (This always creeps me out, since albinos have red eyes and white skin) I thought he was way better when he had blue eyes. Since I'm almost done with the anime, I guess I'll just bear with it to the end.

My history teacher told us about a Renaissance book called The Decameron. It is about a group of young adults who escape to the mountains with food and such to avoid the deadly plague which was taking over Europe at the time. Every night they tell ten stories and they take turns being a "leader". (But one guy tells a story about whatever he wants, since he asked especially, and my teacher says he's got some pretty crazy stories) Anyhow, my teacher says he'll raise our grades by 1% if we read it, and he'll talk to us to see if we're really reading it or not. I wonder if it's available in my local library. Still, it seems like a mighty feat to read more than 1000 pages.

I was very pleased today with what we did in PE. My PE teacher, let's just say he's Robin, decided we would do three different state fitness testings in one day - Pushups, curlups (situps), and trunk raise (lie down on the ground facedown, hands and feet not leaving ground. Then try to lift your head up as high as you can without using your arms or lifting your legs). I was horrible at trunk raise, and managed to do all of the curlups. It was pushups that was the high point of the day (weird because I like curlups better). I got 31 pushups, which is not much really, but at least it was better than most people. So I'm glad of that at least.

Labels: anime, books, bumps in the road, freaky, kaze no stigma, life, PE class, performance, piano, pushups, recital, renaissance, state testing, the decameron

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