I miss the little kiddies…
The Monday after we came back from camping, Wisdom’s Summer Culture Camp that was held in San Jose began. I volunteered to be a TA again (my third year!) and ended up in Class Dumpling, which consists of 3rd/4th graders. I was supposed to be an Office TA, but then the people there called me and asked me if I wanted to switch, and since I like hanging out with little kids so much, I agreed.
They turned out to be little hellions. (I know I’ve repeated this phrase a gazillion times)
They were more like that most of the time than little angels (one of the boys wasn’t even that tiny seeing how he was almost my height and was only going into 4th grade O_o). Those were crazy tiring five days. We TAs had to arrive at camp by 7:30 am the first day, and from then onwards at 8 am for the rest of the week. We stayed there until 6:30 pm every day, since we have an hour of TA meeting after every day. That means we spend, like, 8-9 hours with a class of elementary kids every single day.
We are in charge of taking them to the bathroom, watching over/playing with them during break, making sure they pay attention during class, dancing/singing/asking them to participate during activities time, telling them to line up whenever we go anywhere, and just basically being mothers. Of 31 children.
I don’t know what to say to this, but we have 31 kids in Class Dumpling (and I think there would have been more except some got moved up to the older class because then there would be too much in ours). Our camp is the smallest camp, being there is only a total of 90 kids put into 4 classes, and our class is 1/3 of that number. =_____=
Every class had 4 TAs except ours, which had 5, but there might as well have been 3. Crystal has been a TA there for 3 years also, and she really knows how to take care of the kids, so she was a BIG help. It was Joyce’s first time, but she caught on really fast. Not that I’m bragging, but I think it was mostly Crystal and I controlling the whole class. The kids only knew our names for a while. The two guys were kind of “whatever” and didn’t do much; they even slept during class! It was kind of like that for the first 3 days, then they slowly caught on and was better Friday, but that was already the last day.
I nearly cried during the last day when we were singing and had our hands on each other’s shoulders. The TAs were supposed to sit in a line facing their class, but I ended up sitting with the kids because I’ll miss them so, so much. They were much adorable when they sang, danced, talked to me about their interests, pulled my arm, hugged my waist, poked fun at me, and listened to what I had to say. <3
Truckee Camping
Last Thursday, I went to watch The Proposal with Michelle and Catherine. We originally planned to watch the 12:15 pm one, but then Michelle was going to be a little late, so to ensure that we get a good seat, we changed the tickets to 3:00 pm. Before we went in, we shopped around Forever 21 and made Catherine try on a whole bunch of clothes she would never try on her whole life (up to now, that is). Then we went to a lot of other stores that I forgot the name of (Victoria’s Secret, Papaya, etc.). I bought a pretzel and after a while, we decided to go into the theater to get seats.
The movie was so adorable and funny. Very cheesy, but I liked it. It was kind of like a Taiwanese Idol drama or something (reminded me of Miss No Good, which made me kinda sad). Ryan Reynolds was one infinitely cute piece of pie in there. xD The movie had some great and hilarious scenes that threw everyone in the auditorium into laughter (there was a woman who laughed so loud it was kind of outrageous). I really enjoyed the movie.
Afterwards, we shopped around some more. When we were walking, this weird Chinese guy came up to us and asked if we spoke Mandarin. He started speaking to us in Mandarin saying “How are you?” “Do you guys understand?” “Oh, are you ABC?” We were like O_o and told him no, then walked on and ignored him. At around 7:00 pm, we left the mall and Catherine came to my house. Her mom was already at my house when my mom drove us home. We ate some fruits and Kimchi, and then she left, and I had dinner.
On Friday, we left to go camping at Truckee at around 8:00 pm. We stopped at Ihop to eat breakfast, and we got to the campsite at around 3:00 pm. Alan’s family (sans Alan) was already there setting their tent when we arrived, and we circled the campsite a couple times trying to find out spot. We eventually found it and was completely blown away by how crappy it was. We couldn’t even fit our ONE tent there even if we tried; there were rocks EVERYWHERE; it was completely in the sun since there were absolutely no trees around it that could possibly provide us with shade on any given time of the day; and there was actual place to park our car. I was completely baffled by how such a shitty place could possibly be a campsite. Compared to everyone else’s (which provided room for 8 personal tents, parking space for 4 cars, and shade), our spot was a complete shithole. (Even talking about it now makes me mad). My dad scouted a place that was previously a site which had shade and was a little flatter to place our tent, so we just ignored what we were assigned and went to a random area. We even moved the huge and heavy wooden table to the other area so it would be easier for us to place our things.
It was my brother’s birthday, so we decided to drive to Reno to eat at the El Dorado’s buffet. Good food, good food. Makes me happy. =)
That night, we started a fire and roasted some marshmallows, except we couldn’t eat them because we used some random things for the fire. I completely burnt a marshmallow until it turned black. xD We just sat by the fire and talked until it grew dark, and then we made our way back to our own tent to sleep. We pitched our tent on a slight hill, so we were constantly sliding down in our sleeping bags and had to constantly climb back up so we wouldn’t step on my brother, who slept at our feet.
The next day, we went to the town of Truckee to look around. There was a parade celebrating the Fourth of July, and we stopped to watch it for a while. There were so many dogs there it was like a dog park. Then we ate dinner in one of the cafes there. I had a pastrami grilled cheese sandwich (later I wished I only got the grilled cheese). It was really good, and I ate too much so I didn’t feel good afterwards. After finishing our lunch, we drove to a beach there to swim. I got into my brand new bikini (YAY) even though it wasn’t a good idea seeing how everything’s just bulging out now. I didn’t really swim; just got into the water and splashed water at the other kids. Then I laid down on the beach to try and get a tan (nearly burnt my feet off standing barefoot on that burning, sizzling hot sand). Then we drove back to our campsite to rest, where we found a paper attached to our table telling us to move our things back to our assigned area or we were going to be asked to leave. Well, that area sucked, so we ignored the message and stayed on our spot. Besides, we were going to leave the next morning.
That night, we went to a nearby pizza restaurant to eat. They make really good bread and crust. We came back to the campsite and started a fire, thing time actually eating the marshmallows we roasted (screw the possibly of weird resulting gas). Then we sat around the fire again until it became dark and went back to our tent to wash and change our clothes. I sat outside on our chair for a while just enjoying nature (the moon, the trees, the sound of naturl wildlife). xD It was actually very peaceful.
The next morning, we quickly cleaned and packed everything on our car. We drove to McDonald’s at around 9:00 am to eat breakfast, and then we drove straight back home, arriving at around 2-ish in the afternoon.
Transformers: Robots in Disguise
Lol. I went to watch the second Transformers movie with Jerry and my brother yesterday. We had to give Jerry a ride, but when we got to his house I couldn’t contact him. I called his cell phone but no one picked up, and then I rang the doorbell (his actual house is waaaaaaaay inside a wall of gate). I had to resort to calling his brother and asking for their home phone number (turns out the door bell was broken… been for 2 years too).
We went and bought our ticket (actually, I paid for my ticket and my brother’s). He had a premium pass or something, and he said he had two free tickets so I didn’t have to buy my ticket, but it didn’t turn out that way…. =_______= Lol whatever.
We went to the food court first because it was still kind of early, but we weren’t hungry so we decided to go to Starbucks. I don’t really know my way around the mall, so we ended up walking the long way to Starbucks (”Geez Jerry you could’ve told us.”) and didn’t have time to finish our drinks if we bought them, so we just walked back to the theater. We bought the largest kettle corn (our lunch) and went to find a seat. When we entered the auditorium, some of the good seats were already taken, but we still got a pretty good one. Then more people came in and the place got filled up pretty fast.
The movie was pretty good seeing how it was a sequel (most of them suck; they’re only produced for the money of anticipating people who will just get disappointed). I read a Yahoo! article about how twin robots in there were racist, and after seeing the movie, it is kind of evident. Not only that, a lot of characters in there displayed racism…. Such a patriotic movie that puts the U.S. in absolutely a glorified light. Lol. Still a good movie thought. Except Megan Fox can’t act. (She had, what, 20 lines throughout the entire 2 hour movie? She’s more of like a scenery or background image, you know? Just there, for you to look at.)
And today was Relay For Life, which I hosted with Yang (it’s still going on, but I didn’t stay). It was hot. How the heck did it get so hot all of a sudden? And on this day too! This is an event to raise cancer awareness and celebrate, remember, and support cancer patients/survivors. Well, after staying in the sun, I’m not surprised if all of us end up with skin cancer. =_______=
We started the event a little late, so we had to rush through introducing the teams. It was very, very unorganized. A lot of the teams weren’t even in order (if they even showed up). We would have team 65 followed by team 28 or something. Yang and I had to flip through our pages to try and properly introduce the team name and bio. And the slight wind today just had to blow all of our script to the ground, so we were flipping, picking, and reading papers, and at the same time trying to figure out what the next team was. I had to read all the teams with Chinese bios, and when I practiced, I read them slowly just in case I mess up. BUT during the real event, people walked by so fast I had to speed through bios (I was already getting tongue-tied with the English part), so whenever I saw a bio in COMPLETE Chinese, I panicked. >.<
Through all that mess, though, I think I did pretty well. I dunno, hosting with Yang makes everything less scary on stage. I guess it’s because he’s been acting and performing on stage for so long and so many times that he’s used to it and doesn’t seem scared, so I kind of just follow his lead. Haha. It was fun (I had an urge to run up on stage and sing later on).
We went to buy some cold drinks at the super market nearby and at Tapioca Express. I had Thai tea with pearls. =)
Oh yeah, got my SAT II scores. Haha, I did horrible on history. Got a 610. LOL. Got a 730 for Math II. When I saw my scores, I was sad for about 10 seconds, and then I went “What the heck lemme go look at something else” and forgot all about them.
Night @ the Museum
I went to watch “Night at the Museum” (I can’t even spell museum) with Jessica and her sister Joanna Tuesday. I know the movie came out for a long time already, so there was only, like, 3 showings that day and the early bird was at 12:05 PM. When we went into the room, no one was there. We thought we could have the whole auditorium to ourselves, but then another family came in (and some other teenagers after the movie started for a while).
I thought the movie was okay, but I liked the first one better (it was way funnier). My mom drove us to the mall an hour before the movie was to start, so we ended up walking around the whole Great Mall. It was pretty empty, so that was cool. After the movie, we walked another lap around the mall. Joanna and I ended up buying clothes on sale at “5, 7, 9.” Then my mom drove us home.
My inner obsessive self has been reawakened (is that a word?). I finished the taiwanese idol drama “Miss No Good” a couple days ago (14 long episodes in 3 days!!!). “Miss No Good” is definately good.
I sobbed like a complete maniac (or like mothers watching some sappy korean drama with their favorite male lead in it), which I usually never do while watching dramas. But this–! This touched my very soul and I fell in love with it. Go watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/user/SUBlimesFansubs
Wilber aka Will Pan is so damn cute in there. I’m absolutely obsessed with him after watching this series. He is absolutely adorable. I love it when he fashions his spikiness (aka THE HAIR). xD
Look look–>
He’s cuter than the little boy next to him whom he is torturing. =]
Gahhh… he’s gushing with boyish charms.
I’m having so much fun posting his pictures. xD He’s such a hyper, overactive kid. God I wanna meet him in real life and just have him as my best best best best best male friend (cause I’ve already got female best friends <3)
It’s kind of funny how I keep saying I don’t wanna get myself Asian boyfriends, but I keep getting obsessed over cute Asian male artists. Thing is, all the good-looking ones are already on screen, so all that is left are the…. (people are going to kill me for this)
Change of topic: my Kakashi wallet BROKE & I LOST my 183 Club CD.
Remember this?
The buckle part in the back broke (practically looked like it got torn off). Poor Kakashi… I love this so, so much too. I went back through my old blogs to find that I got this wallet in 2006, so it lasted for quite a while.
And a few days ago, I was going through my CDs, and I found out my 183 Club CD case was EMPTY! E-M-P-T-Y! I thought it was in my stereo, but it wasn’t any of the CDs in there. Now I cannot for the LIFE of me remember where the hell I put that thing. At first I thought I forgot it in one of the cars we sold, but it’s unlikely since my dad would’ve checked it. Then I though I probably forgot it in one of the computers we threw away, but that seems even more impossible. I thought I might’ve accidentally put it in another CD case, but I checked all the ones which I know the CD was somewhere else, and it wasn’t there. Now I’m just down to saying that somebody must’ve borrowed and never returned it, and then we both forgot about it. But I have no clue who I could’ve lent the CD to.
For the love of me, please return my CD if you have it (and if you think you have it, search for it please!!!)!!!
Terminator Salvation
I went to watch Terminator Salvation yesterday with my entire family. Even though we had free tickets for my parents, it still cost us almost $30 to get in. Talk about expensive and insanely overpriced.
The movie was decent: nothing extraordinarily remarkable (except for some *cough* small *cough* surprises) and nothing extremely way-out-there. It had its explosions, its fights, its kisses, its tears. Christian Bale is ever hot in there, but the other main character male was pretty good-looking too.
I kind of forgot about the movie when we finished watching it because it kind of just blew by. Lol. My dad decided to watch The Dark Knight again last night, so I watched it with him. HOTTEST MOVIE EVER! LOL! xD
OMG We’re Seniors!
It’s officially summer! … but it’s not hot at all. ><
In fact, it's even raining. Lolz.
I went to the Class of 2009 Graduation yesterday! Jessica's mom came to pick me up at around 4-ish and then went to pick Shirley up too. Then we drove to the place but had to get out of the car early and walk the last block because there were so many cars (crazy traffic jam).
We all stood outside for a while taking pictures and running around to look for people we knew. When it was nearing 6 o'clock, the seniors had to line up so Joanna and I went to find a good seat so we can see people we knew. There was a line to get in because there were guards checking bags and scanning tickets. One of them pulled out my gum pack and went, "What is this? Is this some kind of candy?" Clearly he's never chewed–or seen–brand 5 gum.
I only had my digital camera, so I couldn't snap close-up pictures since we sat in the seats way up there. Joanna had those crazy long lense camera so she could zoom in more. We ended up running to the side where the seniors sat to snap pictures. The security lady there kept shooing people away because it wouldn't be organized if there was a mob of parents and friends snapping pictures on the sidelines in front of people's views. To avoid her wrath, we kept on walking up and down the stairs, pretending we were going back to our seats and running back down when we saw someone we knew. Haha.
After the senior graduation, we went outside and took some more pictures with bouquets of flowers (I ended up carrying one the entire time xD). Then we wanted to celebrate by going out to a nice restaurant, so we drove around for a long time: missing turns, driving onto a Bus Only lane, running red lights. Our first pick was to eat sushis at Japantown, but we couldn't find it, so we ended up trying to look for Original Joe's. We found it, but there were no parking spaces, so we decided to go to the Cheesecake Factory. Upon arriving, we saw the whole restaurant was crowded with people (apparently it's graduation for everyone!), so then we drove to Banana Leaf. There was a line too, and Jessica's mom wanted to see if another Thai restuarant might be emptier, but I was tired by then (it was 8:30 pm!) so I just insisted on staying and wait. There were empty tables outside, so we decided to dine in the outdoors.
We had this pulled bread/asian tortilla thing, satay chicken and beef (the peanut suace was good so we ended up eating the sauce by itself…), two different kinds of fried rice, pad-thai, fried oatmeal prawns, and REALLY spicy green curry. I tried making Jessica drink the whole bowl. xD By then we were full, but there was dessert: ice cream with fried bananas. LOLS. We were stuffed when we were done! (Jillian commented by saying: "If you guys didn't join Track, you'd be hecka fat now!") So true.
Junior Year Ends
There’s only one more day of school left! Can you believe it?
I already finished all my Finals, so tomorrow is al for PARTAAAYYYING!!
Junior year was a stressful, depressing, nerve-wrecking, heart attack-inducing year. Yet, we all pulled through and lived to tell the tale. I’m happy we’re going to be seniors next year. Time is going by so fast (distortion of reality) and soon we’ll be going to college. But we still have this milestone (applications to colleges, waiting, rejection letters….)
I want to get into a college that I like, not just going for some crazy Ivy League schools I will never get in. Even if I did, it’s just a name I can shove into other people’s faces when they ask me which school I go to. So what? It’s more important to go for what you want to study than what you want others to think of you.
And now in the midst of this joy, I look forward to a busy summer and a hectic senior year. I’m already afraid of what’s to come.
Kakashi Lives!
I swear Chapter 449 has got to be the stupidest thing I’ve seen Kishimoto pull out of his hat… and he’s been pulling out a lot of unbelievability nowadays.
At least Kakashi is alive and well. And we get to stare at his father a little longer. And we find out that his mom died way young.
Faire l’escalade à Yosemite
(I must continue this once summer starts. I am determined to finish this.)
Hier (dimanche 5/24), j’ai fais l’escalade avec mon père et son copain. Mon père et moi sommes reveillés à 6 heures du matin et nous sommes allés à l’auberge de son copain trente minutes après. Nous avon pris le copain de mon père et mon père a conduit au parc nationale. Nous nous sommes arrêtés en chemin pour prendre le petit déjeuner à Ihop. J’ai pris des œufs; du jambon; pommes de terre cuites, écrasées et brunies dans de l’huile; et du pain perdu aux fraises. Suivant, nous avons continué pour 2-3 plus heures.
Nous nous sommes arrivés à Yosemite vers 11 heures, et il y avait déjà beaucoup de voitures! Nous avons attendu un long temps pour entre dans le parc. Après, je pense, trente minutes, nous sommes entrés dans le parc et nous avons commencé à chercher le chemin que nous allons marcher.
Comatose
It’s been raining. Seems like the weather is resembling my inner turmoil.
I don’t feel like there’s a purpose in anything. Nothing I accomplish makes me feel happy. It’s kind of scary how nothing gives me a feel of satisfaction anymore. All I know is that I’m failling miserably in a lot of things in my life. One of them is Calculus. It makes me very depressed.
I have three AP exams coming up that I’m goingto fail. Calculus is on Wednesday, and I’ve failed every test taken in class before. US. History is on Friday, and we’re just rushing through the Cold War right now (I have probably 15 chapters I still need to read in that book.) The only subject I’m a little prepared for is English, but I really want to receive a good grade in that subject. What the hell has happened to my life?
Everything has lost color and purpose. I don’t have the motivation to strive for better. Maybe it’s because I’ve always done pretty well ever since young, and now all these failures are throwing me into a pool of depression.
On top of that, I was stupid enough to join Track & Field. I did it for my friends, yet I knew I would always be one of the last ones still stuck practicing for some stupid League Finals or something. I knew it. I hate it. I cried a whole week last year because of it. I threw tempers at my parents because of it. I refused to it. I annoyed my friends with my complaints. And yet, I went and did that all over again. What the hell is wrong with me?
Okay, maybe I joined this year because I wanted it to look good on my college applications. That’s a stupid, immoral reason, isn’t it? But I’m not astounding, I’m not hardworking, I’m not super smart, so that was the only way I could think to stand out. Now I’m just going to stand out as a little loser who quit or dissed her coaches.
But then again, why can’t I join a sport because I like running? Why do people ALWAYS have to go and ruin is for me with competition? Can’t I choose to NOT compete? I don’t care if I win or not in a race; I just like going out and working out with my friends. How come EVEYRTHING has to be pushed into a competitive level, and so much that I even have practice on a freakin’ SUNDAY?
That’s not what I want. It’s what they want. And I get no say in anything I do. Even I reveal my feelings, they just get angry.
With that arises the next topic. To put it simply, life is nothing more than competition. You spend 99 percent of your time forcing yourself to be better so you can compete better and the other 1 percent living. We all want to be in that one percent, to live according to our own leisure and pleasure without outside interference or pressure. But that never seems to work. We’re too caught up, with internal and external smothering, in trivial things from grades and college to looks and weight. For some, that blows over. For others, those trivial things get held in private suffering for so long that it eventually evolves to a bigger problem. And from that point on, only three things can occur: release of the problem through positive means, release of the problem through negative means, or continual containment. From those three, I can only point out one good outcome.
I came across this written by one of my close friend. I think all I’m asking for, is that one percent right now. I know that there are a lot of other people in the world who, from birth, had never gotten anything they want. Because of that, I shouldn’t be complaining at all, but that pisses me off. There are problems in the world that hurt me, yet I have no say because there are others less fortunate? Why can’t I let out some of my sorrow because somebody else is suffering more? I sound selfish and inconsiderate right now, but maybe that’s just because I hate everything in life now….
I want to go and see a psychologist. I wonder if I’m seriously depressed. I don’t know. What do you call it when everything in life has lost its value?
