01/30/2012

Today is the last day of our Chinese New Year Break, or in the way our school named it, Lunar New Year Break. It wasn't quite long, only 10 days for the non-juniors, but it wasn't too short for not being able to go anywhere. On the weekend, my uncle and grandparents came to Hsinchu, but nothing really changed, since my brother and I stayed in the room most of the time too, just like the usual. After two days, we all went to Taipei and stayed there for two nights. One the first day, it was so boring. Other than the times when we went out for dinner, we stayed at home, staring at the boring TV shows or playing cards. Cards were fun at first but then got boring after too many rounds. Even though we were sort of gambling, and I won the most, but I didn't get the money that I should've got. I'm fine with it too though, haha, since I've used my parents money to buy a lot of clothes and accessories during this break, definitely more than the amount of money I've won by gambling. On the second day, I spent two hours shopping with the helper in my home because no one in my family wanted to go out, but I couldn't stand staying at home all day again. 

1/19/2012

It'll be the last day of the finals week which also is the last day of this semester. Tomorrow, I'll be having the Geometry and Spanish finals. They are the easiest subjects comparing to the other subjects, and because of that, as usual, I procrastinated, but I procrastinated even more. It's already quite late at night, but I haven't done studying for any of the subjects, and didn't finish on my homework yet too. I really don't like how these days I procrastinate this much, but I just am not able to stay in focus for that long. I tried to deactivate my Facebook account so that I might be able to stay focused, but obviously, I failed. I reactivated it after a few hours, finding myself eager to stay updated on anything that just happened to people on Facebook. Sometimes I hate the invention of these social networks, being such a big distracter for people like me. In the upcoming break, I don't know what I'm going to do actually, I believe that my family will go up to Taipei for one or two days, and after that, I think we don't have anymore plans. I hope that my parents will let me go out with friends to the movies or KTV, since I really miss going to places without being stressed about schoolwork. 

01/18/2012

Finally, I've gone through half of the final exams this week. It's been a hard time, and the total amount of sleep I've got in these three day won't go more than ten hours. If there is a final exams month, I bet I would be dead during the second week. I really don't need to be sleeping this late, but due to how much i procrastinate, I can't help but sleep late in order to finish the homework and the studying. The English test today we got wasn't actually as hard as I've expected it to be, although there were still around 10 questions that I either didn't know the answer to, or wasn't sure about. I guessed for all of those, and I hope that I wouldn't luckily get them right. Tomorrow, there will still be another portion of the test on English, and I hope that the questions will be around this same level. I've memorized the vocabulary already, although not really sure if I'll remember them all tomorrow. The stories, I've read through them thoroughly already, and I know about what happened in all stories, but what worries we is if I've misunderstood something in the story and didn't know, and wouldn't be able to do the questions on the test correctly. 

01/17/2012

I've finished the Biology final exam today too, and even though I had quite a few questions that I wasn't sure about, and in total, I guessed for seven questions. I wasn't sure about five of them, and the other two, I was sure that I didn't even understand the question and I didn't know the answers to them. When doing the test, it was quite funny in the beginning how people kept coughing, as if they were telling others the answers or something. Later on, people became more into the situation and quieted down. The test wasn't actually that hard, but the part that made me angry was how I studied for photosynthesis and cellular respiration for almost two hours last night, but in the test, there were only two questions that weren't detailed at all. You probably didn't even have to study the chapter to know how to answer those questions. Other than that, most of the questions were fairly easy, unlike the chemistry class. From what I've heard, almost everyone came out, saying that they'd be satisfied if they didn't fail it. Someone even set their goal as 40%. I'm actually glad now that I switched to Biology instead of staying in chemistry. 

1/16/2012

Today, I took my history final exam already, and I'm quite confident in it actually. Even though I was unsure about one or two questions, in the end, I believe that I got them right and should get most of the points or full points. Also, I'm happy about how I got the bonus question of guessing who a man was, with only his picture shown to us. I didn't know how I got it right. The picture looked familiar to me somehow, and without really knowing it, I put down his name, and got it correct. I was able to answer all the questions and meet the requirements stated in the question, and for writing all those words and rushing through the questions, thinking that I wouldn't be able to stay after class to finish up the test, my hands were shaking with pain in the middle of the test. Tomorrow, I'll be having my Biology midterm, which is one of the hardest ones to me I believe. We're being tested on 10 chapters, and a lot of the things I've learned before have totally disappeared from my brain. Reviewing took a long time too, because Biology has actually a lot of things to understand and memorize at the same time. After studying one chapter, I feel like I've forgotten something from the previous chapter. I hope that I can do well on this final exam too!! 

01/15/2012

Tomorrow is the first day of the finals week. I'm having my History final tomorrow, and I am very ready to fail it. I can't believe how bad at remembering things from a few months ago I am at. Looking back at my tests from before, I wonder how I came up with those answers. I wasn't even able to remember some of the details that I wrote inside the tests when studying today. I spent my whole day on History yesterday but still couldn't remember many things while reviewing today. Also, the annoying thing about our history final, is how it will contain materials from seven chapters, but only having 10 questions in the test. Having only 10 questions in a test would be a good thing if the test doesn't contain that much material to study, but 7 chapters with only 10 questions? That's too exciting. We don't know how broad or how specific the questions will be, and we don't know which parts we should study more than others. It's too hard to try to guess the questions in such a big range. I hope that I can do good of course, even though I'm already sleepy and almost giving up. 

1/12/2012

It's been so long since I've been this sick. I know that I've been sick for quite a while, and because of me hating wearing all those thick and heavy clothes and jackets, and how I never dry my hair after swim practice, I got worse yesterday. When I got home from swim practice, I started to have a fever and a serious headache. I went to the hospital at night and the doctor gave me a shot on my shoulder, which made my whole left arm sore and I couldn't raise it for a long time. Today, at school, I almost threw up many times, and during Wordly Wise class today, I couldn't stand how stuffy the auditorium was, so I spent almost all of the class time outside, standing beside the lockers, breathing the air that would make me feel better. Also, tomorrow, I won't be going to school because of the fever, headache and how I almost fainted in front of the bathroom today when I was about to shower, my mom finally let me not go to school tomorrow, and rest at home. She wants me to recover soon so that I could study for the finals and be in a good condition during the tests and my up-coming swimming competition in February. 

01/11/2012

Today was a really tiring day. I've been sick since the day of the winter dance, and I didn't recover from it yet. I know that it's been a long time, and in the meantime, I could've gotten better, but since I joined swim team and I always don't dry my hair properly after practice and I think that should be the reason why I never recover completely. Today, it became worse. I started to have a fever and am coughing my lungs out. Coughing that hard makes me feel like throwing up so bad that in classes, I often make a voice that sounds like I'm about to throw up which always scare a lot of people away. It is actually quite funny seeing their reactions, even though I always feel really bad after I make the throwing up sound since it really makes my throat ache really bad and feels like it's burning. I don't want to be sick all the time too, since it's final week next week and in one month, it's the swimming competition. I take all of these really seriously and due to my personality of being competitive, I don't want to lose any of these and I want to be healthy too. But being healthy and achieving those goals won't go together and if I really have to choose one of those, I would choose to achieve those goals rather than to regain my health. 

01/10/2012

Although I wrote about finals yesterday, I'm still going to write about it again today because it's been bothering me for the whole day today already. Today, all the seniors are done with their final exams, and even though some of them seemed quite satisfied with their grades, there were those who did poorly on some subjects too. For those who did great on the finals, I felt glad for them, and of course, hoped that I could do good on the tests like them, and for those who did a bad job and were depressed, I felt sad for them. The bad thing that's happening to me is that even though I know that I should really be studying for the exams, since I believe that I have about 5 subjects to be studying about, but I haven't started on any, and this time, I really want to get straight "A"s. So far, I'm succeeding, and I wouldn't want to let the final exams' grades pull my A down, since some of them are really close to getting a "B". Many people may feel like I'm a nerdy person, but the truth is actually not like this. I don't like studying, and I normally just do the bare minimum of work, and I'm actually quite lazy and loves to procrastinate. I hope that I can do good in the tests, but I don't study. 

01/09/2012

These days, the seniors are taking their final exams first because they have to have their grades sent out to the colleges for their applications. Even though it has nothing to do with me, and I know that I still have some time to prepare for my finals, the atmosphere sometimes make me feel nervous and feel like I should be studying. For example, after school, there won't be as many seniors fooling around in the hallways. All of them are either in the sofa area, studying, or at home already. And also, on internet, you won't see the seniors online as often, and the amount of time they spend on chatting has sharply decreased, obviously showing that they're being busy. Another thing that showed that they've been tired, is how some of them seem really sleepy in classes and after school. In the morning, when walking in the hallways, you may sometimes hear them moaning about how tired they are and when they slept the night before. Knowing about how tired the seniors are make me nervous. I don't want to be that tired. Actually, no one does, but it's kind of something unavoidable, so I'm trying to start studying earlier for the exams. 

01/08/2012

All students now procrastinate, even though all of them know that they aren't supposed to be doing so. One bad thing that happened to me during this weekend was having to rush through homework in this weekend. On Friday nights, I normally don't do any work because it feels like I finally got out of doing all the school work that I've been doing for the past five days. And on Saturdays, I normally do do homework, because I often have plans on Sundays, but this week, I didn't know that I had any plans on Sunday on Saturday. So, instead of doing work on Saturday, I did none, and watched tons of TV shows, both Taiwan ones and also American ones. And when I woke up on Sunday morning, finding out that we were going to Taipei, I mind went "KABOOM", knowing that every time when we go to Taipei, we normally spend almost the whole day there. It wasn't a good sign for someone who's in a school that is almost going to have the final exams, and having quite a big amount of homework to do. I didn't dare to tell my parents that I hadn't started my homework yet, and so, as I've expected, I got home at 7 at night, and had to rush through all my homework. After this lesson, I know that I shouldn't be procrastinating, but I also know that I still will be doing the same. 

01/05/2012

As usual, nothing much happened. The thing that I would want to talk about would be about our school's new policy about locking students out for the whole day if they're late. I agree that the problem of being late is quite big in our school and that there should be some kind of punishment towards it, but I don't think that locking students out is that good of an idea. A lot of the times, students don't have a choice to be arriving to school early, because of their siblings or parents. And sometimes, there are those sometimes, that something happens, which would cause a delay to all schedules. And while paying so much money to come to school, being sent home to study is really a waste of money. Another thing is that it is quite dangerous. What if the student lives really far away, and the only way to get home is by their parents, but their parents have work to go to too, where does the school expect the students to go to? What would the school say if something happens to them while they are outside, finding a way to get home? I don't think that the policy should be this harsh, but I would agree on having a rule set to minimize the amount of late students everyday. 

01/04/2012

To be honest, I don't know what to write about today already. During the winter break, I got my ears pierced. I've been begging for 15 years already, and finally, on the day I came back to Taiwan from the 4 day skiing trip, which was also my fifteenth birthday, I asked my mom again the same question, "Can I get my ears pierced?". And surprisingly, she agreed with it. That was totally unexpected, and I asked just because I felt like it, I didn't have any hope in my heart. So when my mom replied me that I could get them pierced, my eyes nearly popped out. Of course, after I recovered from the shock, my smile was so big that my face hurt. I was really happy, because earrings are my favorite type of accessories, even when I'm not a girl that likes having a lot of jewelry or weighty things hanging on my body. Every time when I go shopping to store that sell jewelry, I spend almost all of my time in the earrings section. A lot of the cuter ones are often ones that require you to have piercings, and there weren't many to choose from with the clip-ons. All members of my family didn't agree on the decision, but in the end, they chose to respect my decision, since it's my own body. 

01/03/2012

During winter break, other than skiing, I also went to the movies twice. The first movie I watched was Mission Impossible 4. It was really good, although it wasn't as good as I've expected. Before, when I watched the other Mission Impossible movies, I enjoyed them a lot and felt excited every time I watch them. This time, I expected it to do the same affect on me, but sadly, only some of the music scared me and the part that made me excited were the scenes of them fighting and when the main character was climbing outside of the tallest building in the whole world. Other than those, I think that the plot of this movie wasn't as attractive as the previous ones. The second movie I watched was Puss in Boots. This one though, was so much better than I've expected. At first, I thought that it was just a cartoon movie from Disney that wouldn't have much story plot and would be just a pure comedy. But after watching the movie, I figured that there were some moral themes in it. I don't want to spoil the movie here, so all people should be going to watch that movie! The trailer may not be really attractive, but it's in fact, a really good movie!

01/02/2012

Yesterday, I only talked about some of the things that happened during the skiing trip. The main things that we did was of course, skiing, and each day, we spend around 6 hours skiing, since we don't have that much energy to use. On the first day, the first lesson was really boring because it was teaching all the basic things. Even though it's really important, but once you get it, and seeing other people not get it, you would get bored doing the same thing over and over again. Also, since Annie and I were in the beginner course, we were with people that weren't able to ski well yet, which made us feel annoyed. When we finally got to go on the mountain and ski from higher above, I got really nervous since only Annie and I got to go first because we were relatively younger and learned faster than the other people in our class. The coach slowly lead us down, but because of my nervousness, in the middle, I started to lose control and went down in full speed. That made me really scared that I would fall and the fact that it was the first time I was skiing that fast made me move around, causing me to speed up more. The coach yelled out loud to me, telling me what to do, and finally made me slow down after a while. Everything that happened in Japan was really exciting and I had a lot of fun there, especially when we went shopping! 

01/01/2012

Today is the last day of our Christmas break. Throughout this break, I went to many places and did many things. First, after the winter dance on the last day of school, I went home and checked my luggage for the skiing trip to Japan. Many people in our school went together. It was really fun but at the same time, really tiring and I got hurt many times. There was a humongous bruise on my left knee because on the first day, our teacher brought Annie and I to a higher mountain and came down. I guess it was because it was the first day, I didn't feel confidence in myself. When we got to the higher mountain, I fell into the snow and my ski board hit my knee, really hardly. At night, it was so painful. I didn't have to push it hardly to feel the pain. Just simply putting my finger on it hurts so bad that I wanted to scream. Our coach wanted me to push hard on it to try making the blood go around and so that the bruise will be better earlier. The scary thing is that I got hurt two weeks ago, but the bruise is still there and still hurts when I push on it.