11/30/2011

Today I found out that I have a lot of muscles on my arms. To be honest, I'm freaking out already. A girl with muscles? That isn't cool. I don't want to look like the muscle women you see in TV. Also, my shoulders are getting wider and wider. The muscles and wide shoulders are caused by swimming too much I think. I know that swimming would cause people to have wider shoulders but I didn't know that it would be that obvious. I hate wide shoulders. Really. Last time I was trying on a dress for winter dance, but then found out that it would look good on me only if I didn't have these wide shoulders. Actually, not only that dress. Almost all clothes will only look good if I had thinner shoulders. The only way to prevent my shoulders to get wider is to quit swimming which is something that is quite impossible for me. It's the only sport that I'm good at. On land, I trip, fall, and hurt myself too frequently that my mom won't feel surprised when I hurt myself. I will continue swimming, but I guess I really have to deal with my muscles and wide shoulders.

11/29/2011

Today, I realized how fast time is going by this year. It feels like things were happening yesterday instead of a few months ago. To be honest, the camping memories are still fresh in my head. So many things happened these months and since we're really busy having lots of work to do, time flies so quickly. It feels like I don't have the capability of grabbing onto time and time is dragging me around. Yesterday when I looked at the school calendar and found out that winter break is three weeks from yesterday. The last day of school is a Friday, with the winter dance at night. Being a member of student council, I'll have to stay after the dance is over and do the cleanup. I might have to arrive home at some time around 12 in the morning next day. On the 17th, many of the student in PAS are going to go to Japan to go skiing for 5 days. I guess I would really be sleeping a lot on the plane, not watching any movies, which is something that I do all the time. I hope that time would really slow down a bit. There are still a lot of things that I haven't done and would want to do. Although sometimes I hope that time would pass faster so that some things would end. I know that running away from things won't solve anything, but I guess it's human nature to run away from obstacles.

2011/11/28

Tomorrow, there is a biology project due. Most people didn't do it till the last minute, including me. This project was to make a video about an experiment that could be done in space that would have a difference from doing that experiment in Earth. People were rushing through this project and didn't have great ideas. I too, didn't think a lot about my project. I did some research and found out that water in space and in earth have very different physical appearances and also that around 65% of human's body is made out of water. So my question was what effects will there be on humans when they go to space. I wondered if the water in our bodies would change too and what effects there will be if it really happens. I am also a very bad artist that had to spend a lot of my time trying to draw a good circle, water drop and humans. I kept drawing and erasing, drawing and erasing, over and over again. Finally in the end, I got figures that are acceptable and started filming it. It felt really weird talking to my computer by myself though no one could hear me. Making the video wasn't actually as hard as I thought it would be, but was as annoying as I thought I would be.

11/27/2011

I used to hate dogs a lot and feel scared about them, but today, unbelievably, I got a dog for myself. We had a Corgi around four months ago, and I never interacted with it. I like pictures of dogs because in pictures, they won't attack you or hurt you and are almost always cute. In real life, I never had the guts to go near or touch a dog, not even the one that I had in my home. These days, I saw pictures of a kind of dog called Japanese Spitz from Facebook of my friend. This type of dog looks like a fox and is white and to me, is super cute. Perhaps, the cutest kind of dog to me. Today, my parents told me that my brother wanted a second dog and I said that if we have to have another one, we need to get a Japanese Spitz. They agreed and surprisingly, they got the dog today. It is really stinky now but still really cute. We can't give it a shower yet for one week because the seller told us that when dogs move to a new environment, they can't shower because they're trying to adjust and they will be afraid to take a shower. So, I have to bear with its smell for one week. Also, this dog is quite fierce. It's his first day in my house but it already isn't afraid of the older dog and when they met, the older dog was actually afraid of it and moved away from it.

11/22/2011

These days in school, we've been talking about friendship often. In English class, Spanish class and also between us friends. In English class we talk about the similarities and differences between friends and enemies; In Spanish class, we talked about what good friends and bad friends are. I wonder sometimes too about the qualities of friends. I have friends that would listen to me and support me all the time and I really love them. Since I'm a person that always have issues happening, I always need suggestions from my friends and their support, or else I would breakdown. I would die without my friends, and I won't be able to part from them. Although friends have different opinions and might sometimes fight, but in the end, the misunderstandings always are resolved and we will go back to the old days. I often wish to have the ability to see if a person is going to be a real friends or just friends that want something from you. I've been through that pain, and I won't want to go through it again. It's too painful for me.

11/21/2011

Today is the performance, and the last one for me in the Taipei orchestra I've been attending since grade 3. I thought that I wouldn't feel sad, and yes, I didn't particularly feel sad, but I still had that moment of hesitation. I was hesitating about whether I should or shouldn't go back. Even though it's really tiring, I still feel that there are those benefits of going there. For example, today's performance, I learned a lot. For the practice times this time, I only attended around half of them. And on stage today during the rehearsal, I just realized how unfamiliar I was to the songs. I learned not to be too proud of myself, and think that I didn't need to practice and could play the songs well. I was really nervous on stage since I knew that there was a solo part today. Yes, I'm not exaggerating. I knew that I have a solo during the rehearsal today. It's quite pathetic, since I'm the "chair" of the oboes. I didn't really do well in this performance, which is quite depressing too since it's, in fact, my last performance. Still, I won't be going back and it's sad now when I think of it. I'll miss my friends and all the fun I had, and I guess someday I might go back and visit them!

11/20/2011

Tomorrow will be the performance for the orchestra I've been attending in Taipei. It'll be the last performance for me while attending the band, because it's really quite tiring to be coming back and forth between Taipei and Hsinchu. And since the amount of homework has greatly increased since I became a high schooler, I've decided not to go there anymore. It wasn't a hard decision to make too since all my friends that were there have left too and now, the people that are there are the new and I don't know most of them. Normally, the reason for me not to leave a place is because of friends. I hate leaving friends, so I wonder how I'll react when I graduate too. Anyways, tomorrow will be the final show. For this show, I always skipped practice because I often get sick these days from sleeping too late. I still hope that I can do well tomorrow though. Today was the final practice and it was really exhausting, having to play all the songs from the beginning to the end. The good thing about the performance is that I get to skip half day of school tomorrow and go to Taipei. If I'm lucky, I may even get to not eat school lunch and eat good food outside! Good luck to myself tomorrow :D!!

11/17/2011

I found a website that has a lot of prompt for journal writings because I am out of ideas already. Today I'll write about "What is the thing that would make you most sad?" To me, I guess that losing friends, especially those that would listen to me and understand me would be something that would make me sad the most. I'm a person that always think a lot when there's just a tiny thing that happened, and at those times, the thing that I need the most are the friends. Losing one of them would be so painful, especially if the definition of "losing" is to not be friends with them anymore. To me, all friends are important, and I wouldn't want to lose any of them. Another thing that would make me sad would probably be something that happens to my family. I think to everyone, it's the same actually. Even though some people may think that their friends are the most important thing in their life, family members are the ones that would never betray you.

11/16/2011

It's really amazing how I already finished all my homework and could sleep right after I finish the blog post. For the past few weeks, I've been sleeping the earliest at 1 in the morning and waking up at some time around 6:30 everyday. At school, sometimes it's quite hard to focus because you're struggling not to fall asleep. And when I get back home, I often feel tired and want to sleep for a while before I start working, but always, I won't be able to fall asleep because during the period of time of myself falling asleep, I often start thinking about other random things that happened or would happen if I make some kind of action. And most of the times, I would suddenly think about not being able to finish homework and then start to feel really worried, which would lead to myself not feeling sleepy anymore. I would bounce off my bed and try to get to work. But just like most students do, the first thing is to open Facebook and procrastinate. Although I know that spending so much time of Facebook isn't a good idea, it's just hard to resist the urge of getting on Facebook and checking out what's new. And now, I'm just going to study some Biology an go to sleep!

Today is Kara’s birthday. During lunch time, we had fun playing with shaving cream by spraying it all over her face, hair, and body. I was being such a “nice friend” by rubbing the cream all over her head. She had such a hard time trying to clean all those cream over her. Although we didn’t sing a happy birthday song to her loudly in the cafeteria, we still had fun by ourselves. But since we used shaving cream, which is of course, only used by men, we smelt manly the whole day. After school, we had the freshmen meeting first, then went to the hotpot restaurant below our school. We had a LOT of fun today. We ate a lot, chatted a lot, gossiped a lot, and enjoyed ourselves. We hope that this would be the best day Kara had in her life and that she'll like the gifts we gave her. After the dinner, we went back to school because our parents weren't there yet to pick us up. Sitting in front of the sofa, we chatted even more and I guess we got a little too loud that Carol, "jiao guan" came out and sort of scolded at us and wanted us to go home. Annie and I went downstairs first, and this is getting irrelevant. In conclusion, HAPPY BIRTHDAY KARA HU!! <3 :D

11/14/2011

Today we went to Kuang-Fu's swimming pool for swim practice. The water was sooooooo gross. It was salty and when we put into the water, we couldn't really even see through the water. It was really white and wasn't clear. After swimming for a while, the water started to make our skin itch. Annie started to scratch her skin so hard that it started to become red. Also, the water was really warm which made it really hard to breath while we swam. Today, in total, we didn't swim a lot actually. We swam for only about 1500 meters. In the end, Frank measured how fast we swam in 200 meters. It was measured in the end of the practice so we all we exhausted. And since I stopped practicing for 1 month and just started practice for 1 times last Wednesday, I couldn't really follow up. There were 7 people swimming today, and only 6 of us were measured. In my group, I was the last, but fortunately, comparing to the other group, I was faster than all of them. This made me feel good because I'm such a competitive person that wouldn't be happy to lose. I guess I'll really have to practice more frequently and not finding ways to skip practice.

11/13/2011

Today, I went to Maksim Mrvica's concert in Taipei. It was SO AMAZING. Not only the fact that I got to go with friends that could listen to me talk about bad things that happened these days in my life, Maksim was a really awesome pianist. The most awesome thing about him other than his skills, of course is how hot he is. :P. Unlike a lot of pianists, he has muscles and knows how to dress up to make himself look good. His skills really are indescribable. We were sitting at the third row because we got the tickets really early and of course, were more expensive, but it's worth it. Looking at his fingers move on the keyboard, I held my breathe for such a long time that I thought I might've died if he wouldn't stop playing. Also, I really wanted him to play "Flight of The Bumble Bee" because it's one of my favorites, but it wasn't on the list of songs he was going to play during the show, so I kind of was disappointed, but when the show was "over", and people yelled ancore, he played this song. When Sharon Wu and I heard it, we both screamed and grabbed each others hand from excitement. It really was so good. Not only that song, all his songs are really good. Although I'm not going to be a musician, I really admire his attitude towards piano. When he was young, there was war going on, so he and his classmates often had to stay in the basements of the school, since they would be in great danger if they go outdoors. When he was in school, he practiced piano almost all day long and of course, became such a successful pianist.

11/10/2011

What does loosing someone or something really important to you feel like? Should it feel really painful? If so, I guess I'm loosing someone that meant the most to me. We were once so close and we shared our deepest secrets with each other. Even though we are just so close, the mistake I made was so bad that made a huge crack form between us. Even though we still chat, things just feel so different. I want to do something to change it, and go back to the times when we were close. I really regretted what I've done but no matter what I do, everything's not going to change back to what it has been like. A quote from Annie, "Friendship if like glass, it can be fixed, but there will always be a crack". I didn't really believe that before, but now, I guess I really have to. Before, the person I'm talking about in this post and I are each other's "almost-priority" friends. Since my normal group of friends normally don't stay after school, or they don't really stay till as late as I do, I hang out with that person, but after the mistake, we never hanged out and had almost 0 interaction at school.

11/09/2011

Today is another tiring day, especially the swimming team practice. I've skipped practice for 4 weeks already, and today, we swam around 2500 meters. It was extremely tiring and there only were 6 people taht went. Jenny Tien and I were put in a group to swim at the same time. In the middle, she suddenly stopped and got on shore and said that she was going to throw up. I didn't and couldn't stop to help her, which I kind of regret not doing so now. Today most of the work was long-distances, which I am completely bad at, which made me even more tired comparing to if I could swim the same total distances but just in shorter distances each time. Although I felt and actually, am feeling, really tired with sore arms and legs, I still feel proud of myself, since it's the longest distance I've ever swam within a little more than an hour. I feel that I've accomplished something again. Frank said that from now on, each week would be more tiring than the previous week. Sitting in front of my computer, thinking about how tiring today's practice was, I'm starting to feel pressure towards the next practice. I wonder how tiring and how many meters we'll be swimming next practice. I want to improve, but as a normal person would hope, I don't want to be so tired.

11/08/2011

I guess the first quarter has officially ended and our grades can't be changed already. The new quarter has started, but sadly, I feel like I'm still relaxing. Homework hasn't been done effectively these days, and even when I do complete the homework, I spend a much longer time doing them. It's not that I've been chatting, I actually don't know why, but I've been blanking out for long periods when I do homework. I hate blanking out too, because it feels like a waste of time, since your brain doesn't work and you don't complete anything during that time. I'd rather be sleeping than blanking out. Since I blank out a lot, assignments are finished later and the quality may not be as well. I hope that this bad beginning doesn't show bad luck about my future quarter grades. I know that I feel lazy just after the midterms, and feel like relaxing and don't complete too much homework and not to give myself too much pressure, but I guess i'll have to change the habit sooner, or else I won't do any homework later on after tests.

11/07/2011

Today we marked the English Midterm. From what I heard, most people didn't do so well, although those people that always get the top grades still did really good. I know that I didn't do too bad, but I kind of wasn't satisfied with what I got. I made a list of all the midterm grades and also a list for all the quarter grades. Perhaps because I set my expectations too high, and I didn't achieve them, I got depressed. I hope that I'll do better next quarter! Nothing else really happened today again. Days just pass like this, and I try to live everyday happily. I've skipped swim team practice for already 3 weeks, and it's the forth week today already. I know that Frank isn't too happy about it, and also my teammates too, but since I really do have good reasons to not go, they couldn't really say anything. I'll be going to practice next time, this Wednesday though since I know that if I don't go, I'll slow down so much and would be very tired during the practice.

11/06/2011

These days, teachers have been posting our midterm grades on Veracross. We had 4 midterms in total, including English, Spanish, Expository Writing and Biology. Now, I already know my Spanish, Expository Writing and Biology's test grade. My biology and and Expository Writing grades were ok, but my Spanish grade wasn't too good. It wasn't that bad either, but comparing it to the grades I got in Spanish II, I didn't do so well. I wasn't really happy about it, but I wasn't too sad too. I hope that I'll improve on all the midterms though. And this time, according to veracross, I didn't achieve my goal this quarter. I didn't get straight A this year. So far, I have two Bs. I may sound really nerdy like this, but I actually don't think that I am one. All I am, is just a competitive person that wants to be good at everything. Although it is quite impossible to be perfect, I always hope to be really good at things. Next quarter, I would perform mostly the same in most classes, other than the ones that I didn't get As.

11/03/2011

Today will be the last night to be worrying about midterms. Tomorrow, we'll take the Biology midterm, which totally is freaking me out. There are 5 chapters to study and most of them are really confusing since a lot of them contain Chemistry, and I didn't take Chemistry yet. Trying to memorize equations, terms, and processes of things are driving me nuts. But surprisingly, I didn't sleep much last night, but I'm not really tired now although it's 11:20. Normally I feel tired at around this time but I force myself to stay up until around 1, but today, I really don't feel tired, just hungry. And in English class today, we played a riddle about Romeo and Juliet. We spent almost the whole class playing it, and when Howard asked the question "Are they human?", all of us went "WHAT?!" and thought that it was a stupid question, but when the teacher replied "No", all of us went "WHAT?!?!!?!?!" and then found out the answer. It was really fun although really confusing too.

11/02/2011

Today, we took our Expository Writing Class's midterm. It wasn't too hard and there wasn't that many questions to do, but some of the questions were a little hard to do. I had to think about it for a long time, but still not be sure if I'm right or wrong. Most of time during class was spent on writing the descriptive paragraph and the narrative essay. The descriptive paragraph was about the weather of Hsinchu and the narrative essay was about an incident that happened when I was younger. I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about what to write, but I spent a lot of time waiting for my hands to "recover" from the soreness of writing. I really don't like writing on paper since my hands get sore and get dirty, so I really wanted to ask the teacher if I could type out the essay instead of hand-writing it. Tomorrow is the only day that I don't have a midterm in this week, but I still can't rest tonight because of the Biology test on friday. I really feel nervous about it, and since the range is really big, I don't know where to start studying.

11/1/2011

Today, we had the Spanish Chapter test. Although it wasn't a midterm, I take every test and quiz very seriously. The vocabulary wasn't hard, but the grammar was super hard and I didn't know where I should start studying since I didn't know all of them. Also, the test was on a lot of parts, including the preterite, imperfect and subjunctive tenses, negative constructions, pronouns and some more other grammar things. Some of them were easy to get, like subjunctive tenses, but the imperfect and subjunctive tenses were really hard to get and really hard to know when to use which. Studying that made me feel angry, depressed and disappointed at myself. Even though I studied for a long time, I didn't thoroughly understand it and during the test, although I got most of it, I still had a headache after doing too many of those. Also, I remembered most of the parts, but a lot of the parts, I only remembered bits and pieces. When I found out that I only knew some parts of it, I felt nervous and then forgot literally almost everything of the grammar. Later on, many sentences were totally forgotten but when I saw the "cheat sheet" the teacher gave us, I remembered a lot. In conclusion, I didn't do too bad, but not too well too.