I woke up really early this morning and tried to get back to sleep, but for some reason I never managed to get comfortable enough to sleep again. When I came out in the morning, my parents told me that there had been a shooting and that school had been canceled. News about a shooting where 2 people died and 6 were wounded has been on TV all morning. Being the skeptical person that I am, I did believe that the shooting had happened, but I wasn't convinced that school was really canceled. Even though my parents showed me several phone messages and an email that said students should be kept home today, I wasn't really sure because I heard something on TV about the schools in Cupertino still being open. I thought maybe there were people conspiring with the criminal who thought, "Hey, let's have the kids stay in their houses today so we can go around the neighborhood and shoot everybody", but of course my parents dismissed that as my usual paranoia. However, the kids at the elementary and middle schools are apparently being asked to go to school (they just said that again on TV) so I'm not sure why my school district thinks we should stay home... So now here I am at home, simultaneously afraid, bored, and somewhat excited.

I feel like a really selfish person because I didn't really think long about the fact that people are dead (probably because I've never actually known someone who died, so I guess I don't know how it feels to lose a loved one)...I mostly only thought about "What am I going to do all day? I should be going to class!" and "Are they going to make us go to school for one more day this school year to make up for the day we lost?" But now I'm also really worried because my parents left for work...The shooter hasn't been caught, so what if he happens to be going the same way as my parents and...? I don't want to think about this anymore.

I have one complaint right now, and that's the fact that neither my school district's website nor my school's website says anything about school being closed today. They haven't even updated the lists of teachers since last year, so the teachers and classes that they're teaching this year are not accurate on the website. Can't they at least put a message on the home page telling us to stay home because it's not safe? How hard is that to do?! (But I guess since they called us and sent emails, they think that's a better way than using the school website...)

Labels: cupertino, danger, news, school, shooting

Did I ever talk about the time I picked golf as my sport for PE? No? Well, I guess I'll tell you about it now.

Golf had never been particularly interesting to me as a sport - if it had been, I certainly would've pestered my parents to let me have golf lessons at one of the local courses. (There is, in fact, a golf course within easy walking distance of my house.) My dad, on the other hand, was itching to play golf after watching it for so many years and would occasionally ask me to please consider taking golf classes so that he could accompany me and learn to play. (I always thought it was ridiculous; go learn yourself! Are you embarrassed that you're so old and are a total newbie? Why can't you leave me out of it?)

It just seemed like the most boring thing ever. Some guy wearing a cap and polo shirt (though sometimes there are some pretty scary looking outfits, like a bright orange shirt and pants... *shudder* ) stands there shuffling his feet and pretending to swing. It probably takes longer for them to get ready for the shot than to actually do it. I always thought it was pretty simple and didn't understand why they needed to take so long. Maybe they wanted to make extra sure that they swung perfectly and ended up in this position. The sport is so slow, in fact, that oftentimes the cameramen will film ducks, blimps, or frogs instead of golf players. Of course, I like to see the animals, but this is not Animal Planet or the Discovery Channel...

Still, I figured it was more appealing than the other options for sports that time. There was street hockey, but I intended to save that for last, and I certainly wasn't going to swim (too much hassle) or join any sport that involved throwing things (believe me, I am terrible at football, and frisbee is the stuff of nightmares). So off to golf I went.

I ended up with my usual PE teacher for golf, and he began the first class by naming some golfers and asking how many of us had heard of them. Of course everyone knew Tigers, and a handful of people were familiar with Michelle Wie, but I was pretty much the only one who recognized the name of a rather old golfer. (Hey! Not my fault I've been looking at my dad's Fantasy PGA Tour picks for nearly half my childhood.) I realize later I probably shouldn't have raised my hand because I bet the teacher expected me to be some golf pro. He would soon find out the opposite.

I must say now that I greatly underestimated what it takes to hit a golf ball, not only in the right direction but also with the right amount of power...I'd say, though, the hardest part was actually figuring out how to hit the ball. Us students were taught to hold the club a certain way and do some wimpy half-swings to get used to hitting the balls. I missed the ball a lot or ended up taking out chunks of grass in the process. Eventually I kind of got the hang of it, but even then it was rather up-and-down at times. Some days I was practically a pro and had been asked if I'd played golf before; other times I was messing up even on easy holes. And of course, when we were playing golf in teams, there was much shock and dismay when I missed the putt that they were all counting on me to do. So it is indeed a tricky game - even your choice of golf club can make a big difference in your golf skills, as I learned the hard way. In some ways it's a mind game too; when my concentration was off, my golf suffered as well. At the end of the golf unit I was still not much good at golf, but at least now I understood why people came out in hordes to watch funnily-dressed men swing sticks. It is indeed a sport to be admired.

Labels: ability, animals, boring, clothes, clothing, fantasy golf, game, golf, lessons, PE class, revelation, school, skills, sports

Yes, you've guessed right, this post has to do with yearbooks. Or rather, my lack of one.

Before this year I had always purchased the yearbook each year. I have the whole collection from my life as a student from kindergarten up through middle school. But this time, for once, I didn't buy one.

The only way to buy a yearbook at my school, or at least the easiest way, is to buy a certain membership card. This card grants you access to the dances at this school, and it comes with a yearbook as well. However, at the beginning of the year, since I decided I had no interest in attending dances, I didn't buy the card. I'd been hoping there'd be some way for me to just waltz up and purchase a yearbook, but I'd heard rumors that if you wanted a yearbook now, you would have to buy the card to get one. The card isn't exactly cheap, either, and I eventually made up my mind not to buy it.

I am a bit regretful now, as the yearbook looks quite nice (and heavy too! Lots of pages, certainly more than my middle and elementary school yearbooks). Though I did get creeped out at one point...I was flipping through someone else's yearbook and saw the page for the boy's swim team. They were all naked except for their Speedos. Not really what I want to look at.

I do wish, too, that I had brought along something for my friends and teachers to sign. One of my friends makes her own tiny books just for signatures. It's quite cute, and even has a few of her drawings on some of the pages (she's really good at drawing...too bad her scanner is broken D: ). She offered to make one for me next year, so I'm looking forward to that.

The yearbook that I'm really impressed by the most, though, is the one that another friend of mine has. She brought her old yearbook from when she lived in Korea. It's very fancy - there are very nice photos, such as of the school and of the places the students went on field trips. Even the students have their own individual photos, not like the ones we have in yearbooks around here. The students get to pose, and the photo shows not just their head but also their torso, so you can actually see what clothes they're wearing. They also have a nice background full of green bokeh. Looks like the students actually got to have their yearbook pictures taken outdoors. Not like the photos that have been taken of me each year: me sitting stiffly and tilting my head, pasting on a fake smile, with a lame bluish-greyish backdrop behind me.

I mean, really. Take a look at the yearbooks from the schools I've been to. We just get a headshot, and the photo is small. All the students pictures are lined up side by side in neat rows. Our names are in a column at the side of the pictures, so it takes a moment to match up each name and face. As for my friend's yearbook from her school in Korea, the pictures are bigger, and the name of each person is just beneath his/her picture. It's easier to get a feel for each person's individuality. I wish the yearbooks of the schools around where I live weren't so...impersonal. It makes me feel like I'm just one of many clones. Only identifiable by the 7-digit ID number assigned to me by the school.

Well, to end, I have some videos to share (though they're totally unrelated to yearbooks). This is a Matryoshka/Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica crossover. For some reason I found it highly amusing.


Here, I just like the mustaches. XD

Labels: card, comparison, contrast, dance, drawing, friends, korea, membership, money, personal, photos, school, sign, speedo, swim team, uniformity, yearbook

The past few days, I've been having a lot of dreams at night; the day before yesterday, I woke up three times and each time I knew I'd been dreaming right before. Yesterday's dream, however, is the only one that I can remember clearly.

I know that in the dream I was at a school, though I can't tell whether it was middle or high school. The class was going to watch a movie (for some reason I thought it was going to be a basketball movie). My 9th grade science teacher was there, and in the main menu for the movie, she started picking various traits. She could choose from varying levels of certain traits for a male character, like how nice he is or how good-looking he is. Depending on what combo of traits you put in, you get to see a different movie.

The movie that we got was one about a boy who would sneak into a private school's library because he loved to read. One day he was in the library, and so was a class of students who actually attend the private school. Then apparently some accident had happened because the teacher was ushering all the kids out. There was a door out of the library even though the library was on the top floor of the building (which was evidently several stories tall). For some reason or other I felt like I was there too, running out of the building with them. To get down to the ground, I climbed down one of those tall, spirally playground structures. It was like this, except it was blue and a lot bigger. (Actually, I think there's a park near my old elementary school that has one more like what I'm talking about. Maybe if I stop being a homebody I'll go out and take a picture of it.)

I knew I was back at my actual school (my school in the dream, not my real one) because I saw my dad coming over to take me home. I told him I had to go get my backpack because I'd forgotten it in my classroom. On the way there I met my friend SnK/Shiroihime (I am not sure which I should refer to her by) and she said to me, "Sorry, I broke your marker." I told her it was okay and dashed off to my classroom, which was on the second floor of the school. In there was my previous Literature/Writing teacher. She was putting out food, as if she was setting up for a party, and she also had some perfume in the room. As I went to get my backpack, I suddenly remembered that I had brought some money to buy perfume, and then I woke up. I'm still wondering right now why I wanted to buy perfume. It makes me sneeze. o_o;;

Like all dreams, it didn't really make sense and it probably won't ever make sense. I thought it was interesting, though, how I wasn't sure what was real in the dream. (Yeah, I know, technically it was all fiction, but nevertheless.) In the dream, I couldn't really tell whether what was happening in the movie was real or what was happening at "my school" was real. It sort of reminds me of the movie Inception and how you can't really tell what's reality sometimes...I'd like to really have a dream within a dream sometime.

Ah, that reminds me, in my Writing for Publication class, our end-of-the-year project was to make a photo slideshow. We are the narrators, and we talk about something we believe in; we put the recording of our voice together with the photos. I remember one girl talked about how when she was young she spent time picking which pajamas to wear at night because she believed that what she dreamed about depended on which pajamas she wore. And since she had a twin sister, she thought that if they wore the same pajamas they would dream about each other or show up in each other's dreams. It'd be really cool if you could actually control dreams like that.

Labels: class, dream, dreams, escape, inception, movie, night, pajamas, playground, project, reality, school, slideshow, writing for publication

I spend a lot of time on the Internet for two reasons in particular: To look at artwork, and to avoid thinking about important matters (namely, my homework). But, of course, it's only a temporary measure, and soon enough deadlines are bound to come calling. Many evenings I end up scrambling to do my homework, cursing myself for spending so much time on the Internet. (Seriously, though, it's so hard to keep track of time on the Internet. It really feels like no time has passed at all.)

And surprise, surprise! I was wandering around Flickr the other day when I Read more »

Labels: art, audacity, classes, coincidence, dream, flickr, french, friday, gender, internet, photography, procrastination, rebecca black, school, song, teacher

In elementary school, it had been a tradition for the 1st graders to put on a play each year called "Once Upon a Lily Pad". It was about a frog who had trouble jumping, or something like that, and he bumped into various other pond animals, like crocodiles and snakes. I had a very short role as the Mama Frog. Even after 1st grade, we upper graders would still watch the performance, and the one thing I remember clearly about it was a certain song that goes "Listen to your parents, listen and obey" (it was a catchy song, though I'm sure my parents would be much happier if I actually followed the song's advice XD).

There was, of course, a happy ending with the frog joining our elementary school's jumping team (which is nonexistent, so don't try to find it). It's too bad real frogs can't have such a lovely life as is depicted in children's books. I was at the supermarket today with my mother, and we went to the seafood section...It was there that I saw a glass tank.

And inside of it were frogs.

The frogs were still alive - not moving much, just kind of sitting there and breathing, but they were certainly alive. On the tank, it was written that the frogs had to be killed before they left the store if you bought them.

I guess frogs can be eaten, and people do eat them. I mean, I have no qualms about eating fish. But even my appetite for fish was ruined when I saw a lady buying fish. She gave the store worker the A-OK, and he took two flopping fish and started whacking at them with a mallet. Even then, they kept on moving, kept trying to live, but the hammer thudded down, over and over, and finally, the fish were still. Dead.

It's funny to me, how I'll be repulsed by something for a while, but I always go back to normal life. I guess it's necessary for me to keep going. To keep pace with such a speedy world. But I do wish that I could take it all at a snail's pace. Just ooze along like I have forever and a day to do what I like. Even if I get squished in the process.

Labels: death, elementary, fish, food, frog, kill, once upon a lily pad, play, school, seafood, snail, song, speed, supermarket, time, world

Not men, sorry, and I haven't watched that show, but that's nothing new. I hear about many things, wonder if I ought to find out what they're about, and promptly forget about them. I've recently tried to get back into watching anime (which was a lot easier once I finished the second season of Kuroshitsuji...It was disappointed, I recommend you only watch the first season) and have been adding to my list of animes to watch. Hope I can actually get around to all of them. Considering that more animes keep coming out, though, that's hard to say. (By the way, is the plural of anime "animes" or just "anime"?)

Well, anyways, it's been an easy week back at school, even though I expected it would be difficult - particularly because my real language teacher has arrived. She was gone for the whole first semester taking care of her twin babies, and I had no idea what to expect. But she seems nice enough, so I think it'll be a good semester, as long as I pay attention in class and participate more. XD And in order to facilitate the adjustment back to school, there's been some little destress activities going on during lunchtime - which includes free food, much to my delight - and one of the things to do was paint your nails.

This is an activity I have not done since I was in elementary school, probably around third grade or so. I do like the sensation of painting, and how shiny nail polish is, but I always seemed to get bored of painting them. (Not to mention we only had one or two colors of nail polish, and I don't know if we even have those bottles anymore.) But I didn't really feel like working on homework, so I thought, "Why not?" Two friends of mine painting a nail each, and I started painting a third one after trying to fix the other two, but ran out of time. So I ended up with a reddish-pink thumb, a dark blue index finger, and a half-painted aqua middle finger (which I have scraped the nail polish off of, because it was gathering in a strange blob). It looks rather lumpy now that it's dried. Still, painting it was fun. And I don't mind the smell of it, even if it's rather artificial.

I've been thinking that I should use the New Year as an opportunity for change. It always seems like people make New Year's resolutions, try to follow them for about a week or two, and give up (kind of like what often happens if a child gets the dog she was begging for). But I have been wishing that I could change certain things about myself - how I treat other people, how I manage my time, perhaps also how I look - and I want to make 2011 a great year (and after that, 2012, 2013, 2014...the rest of my life). Easier said than done, and maybe I will be like most people, giving up after only a week or two. But it shall not be from never trying.

Labels: 2011, anime, attempt, behavior, change, colors, forget, forgetful, incomplete, kuroshitsuji, nail polish, nails, new year, resolution, school, teacher

I've been having lots of dreams over this past holiday season. Not really dreams that make me happy, though - I seem to have more and more nightmares these days. When I was younger, I was a major worrywart, though now I slack off a lot more and have a "whatever happens, happens" mentality. Can't say it's a good thing, because even if I might have a blast during the day, my sleep will be haunted by the fears that I've buried. My winter break's coming to an end, and it's rather depressing thinking that I have to go back to the tiresome daily grind again. One of the earlier dreams was about going back to school...except it was far stranger than I'd imagined it would be.

I assume that I returned to my high school, considering that in the dream I "knew" that I had 7 periods. But I had science first thing in the morning, even though it's my last class of the day, and there was a strict lady with short hair and glasses instead of my teacher. And one of my friends, who is not in my science class, was sitting near me, and her cell phone rang in class (which is impossible! She doesn't have one). I didn't have a locker, so instead I put down my backpack on the ground and was rifling through it when another friend of mine came along and told me, "I heard there's a great dessert menu!" (Since when would school lunches include such things?) I said that it sounded great, but I wasn't sure if I should eat it (I'm bound to overeat if I have too much tasty food around). She insisted, "What is food for besides eating?"

The strangest thing by far was PE. There was no locker room to change clothes, so we went into a building that looked alarmingly like a supermarket. Boys and girls all changed in that room, no privacy at all. And in the swimming pool, some guys were just fooling around, and then they must've challenged the dessert friend from earlier, because she got really fired up, saying "OH YEAH?!" and swam at a demonic speed.

I had another, shorter dream, where I was at my elementary school campus, walking with a friend I met in middle school and one who moved away when I was in 5th grade. We passed by a huge pile of brown stuff, which was apparently camel poop.

Last night's dream was weird, too, and it involved the friend who was in my dream's science class. Some of our friends had gone off during the school lunchtime to go to a nearby 7-11 and buy some food, so we decided to go too, after they'd left. But I was having difficulty getting out of the school, and could not find a way out except for trying to crawl under the barbed wire fence (luckily, there was a driveway that we walked down instead). But we didn't go to the 7-11; somehow we ended up at some other stores, one of which was a GameStop, and my friend went in and started admiring the TV screen, which was playing some Japanese commercials for video games. I don't remember what happened next, but somehow we ended up at my house, and I started to panic when I realized we were running out of time and had to get back to school. I suggested that we go out the front door and just walk back to school, but my friend, oddly enough, became very angry with me and insisted we go back the way we came. Problem is, I had no idea how we'd gotten to my house in the first place, so I followed my friend, and there were two men in the house. They went over to a wall, and one of them reached his hand into it like it wasn't solid. And he must've found a doorknob, because a door formed, and he opened it. We ended up in the outdoors, in a place full of plants (which I now suspect might've been a different version of my backyard). I don't remember anything else, as I woke up right then.

Dreaming's pretty hard work, even if it sounds like such a lazy activity... I wake up tired every time I've been having dreams. I guess it's because in a way you've been awake all night long - running around, talking to people, living an entire other life.

Labels: 7-11, camel poop, cell phone, changing clothes, dessert, dream, fantasy, friends, lazy, life, new year, night, PE class, school, slacker, sleep, strange, stress, time, worry

This is a post that really deviates from the original topic, just so you know.

I suppose if you watched Ed, Edd n Eddy a lot as a child, you might've thought at first that I was talking about the good ol' Plank in that show. I don't know why I still remember that. Ed, Edd n Eddy was never one of my favorite cartoons. Guess it's always those odd little things that stick with you after all these years. Sometimes I'll just be sitting there, and it'll hit me all of a sudden...I remember things that I'd forgotten for many years. It hadn't seemed like much to me before, having enough time to read books and play Pokemon games and draw on my hands with washable markers. Back then I'd taken it all for granted. I always hated being told how lucky I am and how I should be grateful. I never understood it back then. But now I think I'm starting to.

This year's French class seems to have a focus on boards. We were able to use a SmartBoard one day. It's pretty cool that you can move stuff around with your hands and "write" on the screen (I suppose it's kind of like a giant tablet). But after that we haven't gotten to use it again. I wonder if there are other classes using the SmartBoard. Or maybe it's stored away somewhere, collecting dust. I often get the feeling that the decision-makers in my area don't make such wise decisions. The library has got some new check-out machines, which save time because you can check out multiple items. All you have to do is stack your items on the machine and it'll check 'em out for you. It is very cool, but did we really need to toss away all those older machines? They worked just fine (well, most of the time).

Well, anyways, back to the subject of boards - quite recently, my teacher passed out white boards for us to use. It sure is nostalgic having them again. I think the last time I got to use them was in 6th grade, and even then it was only rarely. In elementary school, I thought it was really fun to write or draw on a whiteboard, and I wanted to get one myself. When I finally did get a whiteboard for at-home use, I ended up hardly using it. I don't really spend much money anymore because this syndrome is so common for me. I seem to lose interest in things once I have them. But when I've lost what I used to have, then it hits me that I should've appreciated it.

The past seems so beautiful now, even with all its pitfalls...And the future often looks so bleak. I've been wondering for a while now what I'm really doing. It's required by law to go to school, so I can't really worm out of it (my parents can't homeschool me; they have to work, and they're not really good enough at English. And they don't really know any history or cell biology), and I have no idea if private school would be more fulfilling (not to mention the hefty price!).

I love to learn. But going to school is so exhausting. Each day I have to squeeze all the juice out of my brain, have to pay attention when people are talking to me, have to smile even when I don't feel like it... (And even then, one of my friends told me that I should smile more, which was very surprising to me. Several years ago, I was told by someone else that I looked like I was always happy, even when I was angry. I guess things have really changed since my childhood.)

There are lots of things I want to do, and yet here I am, glued to the spot for the next four years. Some days I'm feeling cheerful, I have energy and optimism flowing through my veins. But other days I'm in despair, because it seems like such a waste. Four years when I'm still young...I could be pursuing all those dreams of mine. It's such a waste. Such a terrible waste.

It's especially painful because a lot of things are my own fault. I didn't hang on to my old friends. Maybe it's inevitable that people will grow apart. But there are times when I could've made more of an effort, been more considerate. Sometimes I've been cruel or unsociable on purpose, just to keep people away from me. I've been very selfish, and I still am. I discover sides of people that I really don't like, to the point that I want to detach myself. Or I'm too cowardly to get close to someone because I expect that I am only going to lose that person. It has happened many, many times, and it will surely happen again. But the choice is mine: Will I take the risk? Or will I throw away the chance to befriend someone who might turn out to be a soul mate?

Labels: cartoon, choice, class, ed edd n eddy, french, friends, future, money, myself, past, people, school, smartboard, tired, waste

I often hear students exchanging information about the content of a test. I have the bad habit (or is it a good habit?) of eavesdropping on conversations. Many people either don't realize how loud their voices are or they simply don't care.

One student, for instance, said, "It's usually choice C! If you don't know which one, you should pick it." I actually have seen that some tests seem to have a lot of C answers. Wonder if that's a coincidence or if people really have a tendency to make C the answer when they're creating tests.

My science teacher has caught onto it, though, and she told us, "Don't think I haven't heard you guys saying 'Pick C!' " She and my math teacher have been reminding students not to reveal what's on the tests to our friends, which unfortunately I am guilty of having done before (though I'm trying to be more vague about what I say).

Last year I overheard some students talking about what was on a science test. They were really talking about very specific things, too, which was rather unsettling. I couldn't bring myself to report it because I didn't want to be thought of as a tattletale and because I thought that maybe the students would all deny it, and I wouldn't have enough proof or something, so I would look like I was just trying to get them in trouble out of spite.

I always make excuses about everything, because it makes it so much easier to run away if I have some other reason for it. I really should have just tried to put a stop to all that sharing of test information that goes on, but I'm still not courageous enough. There are a lot of things that I realize I should have done, looking back on my past. Lots of things I should have said, or shouldn't have said. I can't change the past. What I'm afraid of is that I'll keep making the same mistakes as time goes on. I don't ever seem to learn. It sets me to thinking about what sort of person I really am. People say that it's what's inside that counts. But what if I'm rotten to the core? I'm fearful of what I'll find.

Labels: academic, coincidence, courage, horrible, information, inside, mistakes, option c, past, repeating, report, school, sharing, students, teachers, test

Today a childhood friend of mine came over to my house. She has been living in Shanghai ever since she moved away many years ago. I haven't seen her for a few years. She's in California now because she's attending a creative writing summer camp (I believe it lasts for three weeks) at Stanford.

I'm afraid I'm not very good with people. Although my zodiac sign, Leo, says I'm supposed to be extroverted, strong-willed, ambitious, and a born leader, I don't think those things are true...Maybe I used to be more like that, but I've been changed by my experiences. (Or I happen to be unlike most Leos.) A person once said I was more like a Virgo. Virgos are shy, meticulous, intelligent, analytical...as well as being perfectionists and worrywarts. Maybe I was born at the wrong time. (But I was actually born a little bit late, so maybe I'm meant to be a Leo with a Virgo's personality?)

I'm not a very good host, and I couldn't really say much. There were things I wanted to ask, but I couldn't really express myself because I thought the questions would be too blunt and rather strange... And I couldn't really say what kind of things I do when I'm at home during the summer because it might take a lot of explaining. Nor was I able to properly tell her how video and computer games that I was playing worked. (I guess it's partially because I don't know what to say exactly and partially that I've usually figured out how to do things on my own or by reading instruction manuals, so I'm not so familiar with giving people verbal instructions...)

She did say that the Korean boys at her school were quite fond of Starcraft, and it occurred to me that some member of the Korean boy band SS501 had become a Starcraft programmer or something of that sort.

Anyhow, though, that's not really important. I'm sorry, I got sidetracked again. (I apologize for my disorganized posts recently. My thoughts are a bit...muddled.) To me, living in Shanghai is a foreign concept, even if I've visited the city several times. Through listening I've noted various differences between the city where I reside, in California, and Shanghai, China.

- SH: Hot and humid in the summer
CA: Hot, but apparently not as hot as SH (both my friend who lives in Shanghai and my friend who lives in Taiwan say that here is cold, comparatively. I was horrified. XD)
- SH: Friend gets on the bus at 6:45 am and rides it for an hour to get to school
CA: I leave for school at 8:00 am, about an 8 minute ride
- SH: A polluted city with weak sunlight
CA: Bright sunlight (but in my town, you can't see the stars that well at night. Yosemite, on the other hand, is just splendid for stargazing.)
- SH: No wildlife, except in zoos.
CA: Birds (mostly pigeons, crows, and seagulls) and squirrels. (Stanford University, as I just discovered today, has so many squirrels in this one area. It was amazing.)
- SH: 8 classes at the school my friend attends (which is an "international" school that teaches by USA curriculum.) 4 classes in one day, then the other 4 the next day. (It's a good idea. You would have 2 days to do your homework so you can manage your time. And if you have trouble with it you have one day to ask your teacher for help.)
CA: 6 or 7 classes, daily. (It's predictable, but I want to try the 8 class system.)
- SH: Many students use Skype.
CA: Kids are more likely to chat through Gmail.

I wonder if I would come to like Shanghai if I went there. Maybe I could have a dog, like my friend does, if I lived in Shanghai. But I have very little grasp of Chinese (at least as a written language - I can speak Shanghainese somewhat better than Mandarin, so maybe that's okay) and I like my big backyard and getting to use the Internet freely (in China, you can't access Facebook, Youtube, or Blogspot, as well as other thinsg). Perhaps trying out the lifestyle is the only way to see.

Labels: atmosphere, california, china, comparison, friends, inability, instructions, internet, korean, language, leo, lifestyle, school, shanghai, squirrels, stanford, starcraft, temperature, virgo, zodiac

Two nights ago, I found myself in the world of dreams. This hasn't happened for quite a while. In fact, I can't recall having any dreams since I got out of school.

I was at school and we were going on a field trip. We got onto a bus - but it was no ordinary bus. The interior was more spacious than your ordinary school bus, and the seats, instead of being lined up in two columns, were against the walls. We had chosen where we would sit beforehand by marking places on a chart. I had gotten the direction mixed up and sat at the right edge of a black bench at the back of the bus. I was supposed to sit on the left side, where two friends were. But since the bus was moving and I thought it would be troublesome to ask everyone to scoot over a bit so I could take my rightful place, I decided to remain where I was.

Then I noticed one of my friends was taking a picture of me using a device. I'm not sure how I knew, but I knew it was a camera. It looked very strange, with yellowish-orange and black colors.

Eventually we got off the bus and arrived at a place that seemed to be a recreational center. We all went to a room that looked very much like my language arts classroom. The teacher said to get our sleeping bags ready for later. I realized with a jolt that I had seen "sleeping bag" on the recommended items for the trip, but I had deemed it unnecessary and forgotten about it. I hadn't expected us to actually have naptime on the trip.

Then I left the classroom and began walking around. I recall walking on a grassy hill, and I think there were some fenceposts here and there. I eventually decided to go the bathroom. I saw someone I knew there. When I was exiting the bathroom, I went out the wrong door and found myself facing a swimming pool. There was a banner of some sort put up near it. The girl that I knew came out that way too. I was going to go back into the bathroom and exit through the correct door, but she said, "You can just walk around to the front." So that's what I did.

I don't remember much else of the dream. I think I had woken up from it by then. But I do recall having seen one other person in that dream - probably while I had been walking around the grassy hill. I've seen that person in another dream, too. It's been a long time since I've been able to talk to that person. I wish we could be friends again. Like we used to be.

Labels: bathroom, bus, camera, classroom, door, dream, field trip, friends, past, people, recreational center, school, sleeping bag, summer, swimming pool

On Monday, almost the entire eighth grade of my school hopped on buses and headed to Great America, an amusement park in California.

I hadn't been sure whether to go or not. I thought that it would be wasted on me because I cannot go on rides much scarier than the carousel...Since I have gotten carsick, airsick, and seasick in the past, I was sure that riding on a rapidly-spinning ride or a roller coaster would cause me to pass out, throw up, or some other atrocity.

But I didn't want to stay at school, either. For one thing, I had no idea what we would be doing all day, seeing as all our textbooks had been returned and there was nothing academic left to be done.

Also, I had hoped to gather up my courage to try a roller coaster for the first time. (I vaguely remember having ridden one and having been very upset by the experience, but then again, it could be my imagination and not an actual memory, so I instead consider it to be that I had never been on a roller coaster) Since so many young people seemed to enjoy thrill rides, I figured that it would not kill me to at least try it before dismissing it as undesirable.

I traversed the park with two friends. The first place we headed was the Kidzville. (Supposedly, the rides intended for younger children would be milder than the rest of the ones in the park.)

We rode one of those swings that go around in a circle first. I cannot describe how terrifying it was at the beginning... My head felt unsteady and so did my intestines. It was all I could do to not scream and cry and thrash until someone stopped the ride to let me down. I tried closing my eyes. Then I realized that the ride was really just a pattern. As you went around in a circle, you would swing upwards and then drop a little downwards, and that would repeat. It was easier to deal with the nausea if I closed my eyes right before the highest point and opened them once I started to move upwards again. Towards the end of the ride it was bearable and I could look around with some degree of calmness. But then the ride slowed down and we got out of the seats.

hen we went to the roller coaster in Kidzville, but the man working there compared our heights to a pole and said we were too tall. (Maybe he didn't feel like working, so he figured he'd reject people until he felt like taking customers. I mean, it is kind of waste to run a ride for only three people, but it was still annoying since we were only an inch or two too tall. And we were able to go on the swing ride, even though the same height restrictions are used there) Isn't it ironic? I've been considered too short before. So it's unexpected that I'd be told I was too tall for a change.

I thought I wouldn't be able to try a roller coaster because I figured there were no other small roller coasters in the park, but it turned out there was one, the Woodstock Express, in Snoopy Land. I thought we were going to die several times. (There was a point where the ride seemed to stop and then jerked...) And when it was rushing up and down I thought we were going to crash into something or run off the track... And then when it was going around the bend I thought we were going to fall out of the seats... I was so surprised that I was still alive after the ride. (I must have been crazy because later that day I rode the Woodstock Express a second time.)

Nevertheless, I declined offers to go on certain rides such as Berserker and Centrifuge because they seemed far too dizzying for me to handle. But since I wasn't going on as many rides, one of my friends urged me to go on a ride called Whitewater Falls. I thought I was going to die again when we were going down the slope...I didn't pay attention to where I was going and started walking off but then the people working on the ride told me the exit was the other way. Whoopsy-daisy.

I wonder if someday I'll have enough courage to go on one of the really thrilling rides, like Drop Zone or Invertigo. Or perhaps I never will. Maybe I won't ever do it and it'd turn out I would have been fine even if I had gone on those rides. Perhaps I've been afraid unnecessarily. And that fear may have prevented me from doing a lot of things, from taking risks that would have turned out well for me. But at the same time I wouldn't want to be too reckless. Still, I wish I could be a little braver...

Labels: amusement park, children, courage, danger, death, dizzy, fear, great america, height, irony, nausea, pattern, quote, reckless, rides, risk, roller coaster, school, thrill, trip

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

Not that long ago, in language arts, we were doing a group project that involved a skit. We had to meet up outside of school to film it because there was no time in class given for doing so. We met up at the school and went to one of the girls' houses. We knew one of the members of the group would be showing up late, so we tried to call her to let her know that we were meeting at the house instead, but we weren't able to get into contact with her. We ended up going to the school again to try and find her. But we didn't see her anywhere.

We decided to go onto the school campus to look for her. It would've been okay, but there was something we didn't expect going on at the time: Japanese school.

We went onto the campus and walked around looking for our fellow group member, but we were stopped by a guy. He said, "What are you doing here?" We told him that we were from this school. He seemed confused. I don't think he understood that we were talking about the actual school that's in session during the weekdays...I think he thought we meant the Japanese school. He seemed very suspicious of us and kept staring at us and following us as we walked around.

It made me feel really unsettled. I didn't really have a reason to be uncomfortable since I didn't commit any crimes and I AM a student of the school, but still, I felt like I was being considered an outsider, a stranger, perhaps even dangerous. It was as if I didn't exist during the weekdays when I came to school as a student.

But I am a student there, and it is a familiar place to me, so it bothers me that I would feel this way when Japanese school is going on. Even more unsettling is the fact that Japanese school has been here for quite a while and I've never seen it going on until now. And it makes me realize how many things about this world I still don't know.

But I guess that's to be expected. It's like Mandarin - Even if you study all your life, you will never be able to learn every character in the language. And even if you lived your whole life trying to discover everything in the world, you wouldn't be able to. But you can always try. The quest for knowledge is neverending.

I kind of wish I had chosen to take Japanese in high school. I like French, and since I have already started it, it is best to continue with it, but at the same time I also wish to know Japanese. I think both of them are very beautiful languages. For now I can only learn Japanese through watching anime, but someday maybe I'll be able to focus on it. One time I thought that I would like to learn all the languages in the world and learn how to play all the instruments. Both are quite ambitious goals and I don't know if I can accomplish them. But I'd rather regret trying than regret not trying...

Labels: alien, anime, crime, danger, french, group, guard, japanese, knowledge, language, language arts, learning, outsider, project, quest, school, student, suspicious, weekdays, weekend

Do not be alarmed. The sky is not falling. Your hair is not on fire. Your family and friends are all alive and well. The world is not ending.

The running that I am referring to here is not running for survival, but as part of a chosen lifestyle.

Judging from what I am hearing and seeing at my school, being a teacher can be a really great job. Sure, you might catch colds from the kids, have to deal with rude and overly talkative children, and complain about not being paid as much as you deserve, but teaching has its perks, too. You receive pension when you're retired, and you can go to school with your kids, if you're like my math teacher (his kids are in middle school right now, so he gets to go to school and leave school with them!). You also get to watch kids grow up and have a hand in how they turn out. It must be really cool seeing your students come back many years later, mature and successful.

The PE teachers have a nice time. They can be outside in the fresh air and have less grading to do than other teachers, but they are paid the same. They can exercise if they feel like it or they can just stand and order the kids to do something. And I don't think you would normally have to work overtime. (My parents still do work at home after they get back at work. I think it's more lax if you're a PE teacher.)

I heard that one of the PE teachers injured his Achilles tendon and it was driving him crazy because he couldn't run. I'm very fearful of getting my Achilles tendon hurt because of how important it is - you could be out for a year, depending on how bad the injury is. It's pretty important in walking and running. It was already bad enough those times I sprained my ankle and kept getting left behind when I tried to run in PE.

I just really wish I could live the active lifestyle. Even the non PE teachers have the chance to pursue athletic hobbies. One time, during PE class, I saw my history teacher jogging on the track. Maybe it was his prep period and he didn't have anything to do so he decided to enjoy the nice weather. I wish I could be as lucky as him, doing a job that I like and also doing one of my hobbies at work.

I am sad about going to high school because I don't think I'll be able to take PE every year. I know I will take it for at least two years, one time in 9th grade, and the other not determined yet. I really want to take PE every year because I fear I will not exercise enough without it. But I don't know if I can. We can only take a certain amount of classes. And it really saddens me.

Labels: achilles tendon, classes, family, health, high school, hobbies, injury, jealousy, job, life, lifestyle, mature, overtime, PE class, pros and cons, running, school, teacher, time, wish

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

The mention of Saturday school would normally bring a different sort of image to my mind. Saturday school is sometimes given as a punishment to students. Some teacher will be supervising the students attending on a Saturday and you can do homework or read a book or something like that. I have no idea what it's really like, nor do I have much knowledge of detention, but although it doesn't sound too bad, I think it would be a pain to have to go to school on a weekend, and it'd also be a blemish on your record (supposing that you had committed a offense to have gotten into Saturday class, right?).

Well, this was sort of a voluntary Saturday school. It had been mentioned briefly on the school announcements that there were flyers in the office regarding a language arts workshop. At first I had not been particularly interested, because my language arts teacher attended a workshop for teachers, but the info taught didn't really apply to her teaching because it was a little too basic (better for elementary school than the upper grades, anyhow), and this gave me some distrust in the ability of a workshop to actually be a help to me. But at urging from my mother, I dropped by the school office to look for a flyer, and found that there were none.

My mother took it upon herself to look up the workshop, presumably on the Internet, and so she registered me for the workshop. As I have said, I was rather reluctant, but I think my mom has inherited my grandmother's stubbornness, and there is no point arguing with her. She insisted that it would be a good experience, and I had decided to try new things in my life (I am not much of a risk taker, but I thought I would miss a lot of good things out there if I didn't...) so I ended up being won over.

This morning I was still groggy. Waking up around seven or eight o'clock in the morning is not unusual for me, but since I was sleeping poorly lately (due to me being sick with a cold) I would wake up and then go back to sleep until about nine. I have never been one for sleeping in that much. My brain always seems to think it is a school day so I often wake up around eight or so, since my mind must be unconsciously saying, "AHHHHH!!! We're late for school!!!" and forcibly getting me up. And sometimes I have to use the bathroom in the morning. If it is late enough in the morning I will not be able to fall asleep again. (But I can't just not drink water. I get dehydrated easily and if I don't drink water I will wake up with bad breath and an icky feeling in my throat.) I can't wait until we go on vacation this summer. Once I get home I plan to not adjust back to Pacific Time so that I can do what I did last summer after my vacation. I would wake up in the afternoon, and go to bed at midnight or some other late time. In this way I got more sleep than I could ever have gotten if my body was following Pacific Time. I hope I can do this again this summer. I have a small chance of growing taller if I can get a ton of sleep.

For the workshop, you could choose two out of three classes offered in the morning, and everyone attended the same class in the afternoon. I picked blogging and oral storytelling for my morning classes. The afternoon class featured comedy. I suppose I should not reveal too much of what I had heard or else anyone reading this right now would not have much reason to attend such a workshop.

I will, however, say that the instructor of the blogging class, who is a professional blogger himself, says that it's easier to get the attention of people with a shorter post and having the text in the beginning be related to the title of the post, whereas having a longer post is to the benefit of people who are already readers of your blog.

He also said that there are different kinds of bloggers - people who write for the sake of writing (who just have to write, it is their passion) and people who write to get read (because, let's face it, it's kind of rough if you're writing and no one ever cares. It's like shouting at a wall or something.). But there are also a few who are a mixture of the two, who write both for writing's sake and for people to read it. I guess I would be the mixture type of blogger.

The instructor seemed to be much more supportive of Wordpress as a place to blog as compared to Blogger. He said that as Blogger is part of Google, even if you asked them a question you wouldn't get a response, but if you need to know something about blogging, you can just drive over to San Francisco and ask the Wordpress folks. Although I have thought about making a Wordpress blog, I am not sure if I want to switch over because I have kept this blog for such a long time...It would be such a pain to make a change.

Labels: blog, blogger, brain, classes, dehydration, help, insomnia, language arts, plan, punishment, saturday, school, sleep, summer, time zone, vacation, water, wordpress, workshop, writing

Lately, in my science class, we've been dealing with explosives. We learned how to make uranium bombs in class. The process starts with getting ahold of uranium, which can be obtained by digging up ore from the ground, separating the uranium from the...other stuff, and making it into a powder called yellowcake. (Oddly enough, yellowcake was something I saw in the movie Get Smart.) Then the uranium is exposed to fluorine and is heated up to 56 degrees Celsius, where it becomes a gas called uranium hexafluoride. The gas is pumped into a centrifuge, which works like a merry-go-round/carousel... The heavier uranium atoms move to the outside and the lighter ones are gathered more around the inside/center. The lighter ones are the ones that are wanted for blowing things up. They are unstable and more fissionable than your regular old uranium atoms.

The uranium gets put into a bunch of centrifuges (in fact, about 1500 of them) so that it eventually reaches 90% purity (meaning the lighter and heavier atoms separated well and the uranium is easier to blow up), which is considered "weapons grade". The uranium is molded into a sphere which can be put into a weapon...As for actually setting off a bomb, that's not something I know or am allowed to be taught. o_o;; Otherwise we might not have a school anymore if some student was curious or vengeful. I mean, I think I heard someone suggest burning textbooks in the past.

I heard that you can't mention bombs at the airport, or some other place with security. I'm kind of curious what will happen if I do but at the same time I don't want to get in trouble when I have no intention of being a terrorist.

Anyways, we also watched some of a film called Kaboom! made by Nova. It talked about how explosives were discovered and developed over the ages. I hadn't known before that Alfred Nobel had bought a company that made guns or something like that. People thought he was being a hypocrite since he called himself a pacifist but made explosives, which served to kill people. Actually, he was hoping he could make a perfect weapon that would make war meaningless, but that didn't happen. And Alfred Nobel was haunted by the negative feelings coming from other people.

This kind of reminds me of the situation with Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner, but he wrote against slavery. This led to people considering him a hypocrite. But if he hadn't owned slaves, and had been an abolitionist, people would say, "You don't get it because you haven't had slaves." So it was either people didn't listen to him or they thought of him as a hypocrite. Not the greatest choices.

I haven't done much exploding in my life. Probably the most has been the typical experiment with vinegar and baking soda. Explosions are somehow captivating but are at the same time so devastating. They spread out so quickly.

Actually, I always think the adventure in the video game Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which is called "The Subspace Emissary". You'll see a lot of blowing up of areas there. It was pretty fun playing that, actually. I remember I got stuck on a part where you have to figure out where to move and jump or you'll die. I ended up having to look up how to do it on the Internet...Ugh. I try to figure things out on my own at first, but at the first sign of trouble I turn for help (I cheat like crazy in some games, like Starcraft and the Sims). I used to be so proud because I learned how to find my way around web sites and other things all by myself. I wonder if I'm becoming more dependent as I age, not less.

Labels: alfred nobel, atomic, bomb, cheat, dependent, explosive, get smart, guilt, hypocrite, movie, school, science, super smash bros brawl, the subspace emissary, thomas jefferson, uranium, video games

Have you ever heard of that TV show called Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? I think I've watched it once or twice, not very much, but enough to get the gist of it. It's a game show, where a person tries to answer questions to win money. Sometimes the contestant asks for help from one of the fifth graders present. I used to be shocked by how little the contestants seemed to know. Like how they didn't know the epidermis was the outermost layer of skin.

But then again, I, having been quite a bit younger than those adults at the time, had learned the facts more recently, and since they were still fresh on my mind, I could recall them easily. Adults cannot remember all that much of what they learned when they were younger, except maybe the subject they teach if they are a teacher. My parents weren't even taught that much biology (there was more focus on physics and chemistry). And it's hard for me to talk to them about science because they learned the terms for things in Chinese, whereas I only know the English words. Well, anyways, there's no guarantee that they remember any history they learned. They still know how to do math, but they use it in their jobs (and in daily life - there is always that stress on "Math is important!") and I make them help me with hard homework problems, which are probably the main reasons for that.

I wonder if all these years of going to school are really worthwhile, then. If we don't remember much of it later on, what use is it to us? Knowledge is power, but if we lose that knowledge, has it not gone to waste? Or is it worth it to go school for other things, like the memories and friends we make? And yet at the same time it can be painful, when friends drift apart or fight and never make up, when friends move away, when you have difficulties in academics or in PE that you can't seem to overcome. When you have a teacher who seems to have a personal grudge against you. (Some of these have not happened to me. But I have drifted apart from friends. And many of my friends have moved away. I am lucky in being able to maintain contact with some of them. But I fear I might never see others ever again, except by some chance encounter. And what if I didn't recognize them? Because we had changed so much in our time apart?)

We still go to school anyways. (It is required by law, so I suppose it isn't much of a choice, but nevertheless...) We still take the good together with the bad. A few people do lose faith, lose hope, want to give up, try to end their lives so they can find an end to it all, have a chance at a fresh start. But as I heard in a school performance about puberty, "Suicide is a permanent solution to what may be only a temporary problem." And I suppose we all still have to keep struggling, keep living, reach out for the things we want, despite all those things that stand in the way, make you experience all the emotions you wished you would never feel again. I think it's something amazing, how there are still little things - and big things - that make it all worth it, that we can all bear our burdens for the sake of something precious.

I am getting awfully sidetracked. But then, that's not necessarily a bad thing. My history teacher was rambling about something that wasn't necessarily related to history, and then a student raised his hand to ask a question. The teacher said with a humph, "Great. You shouldn't interrupt me when I go off on a tangent. Now I feel like teaching again." At this point, we all groaned, since we preferred hearing interesting stories to getting an education. (I mean, hearing stories is a kind of education too, an education in life instead of just in academics.)

We didn't have much to do in science class at the end of the day, so a student said, "Hey, do you want to play Stump the Science Teacher"? The teacher asked how it was played. The student said that it was his goal to ask a question about any kind of science that the teacher would be unable to answer. He asked, "What is cement made up of?" The teacher said, "Well...What kind of cement are you talking about? Different grades of cement are used depending on the purpose. Do you mean our modern cement, or the kind that was made a long time ago in England?" and so on. I think it was more like the teacher stumped the student than the other way around.

Labels: are you smarter than a 5th grader, cement, change, daily, distraction, education, friends, game, life, loss, math, memory, pain, school, science, show, story, teacher, television, waste

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