Halloween

Well, it's Halloween again----but this year I didn't go trick-or-treating! There are two main reasons: 1.it's on a school and we have 2 tests tomorrow so I have to study; 2.I don't have any friends to go with me! Last year I went with my best bud Asma, but this year she's moved to Richmond so I am forever alone. Jennica and Leslie have also moved so the friends who live closest to me are probably Jessie and April...but still, their houses are a little bit far and it wouldn't be convenient for me to get around. Anyways, I did go out though! I was hoping that I could capture some great pictures of Halloween...but it was kinda disappointing. Most houses didn't have decorations! And because I don't have a costume or anything, I can't get into people's yard and take close shots. But I took some pictures of the pumpkins at the Marpole community centre and our Langara rental office. The rental office was having a party but when we came back it was already over and the office lady was starting to take down things! But I rushed to the door and asked if I could take some pictures---and she said yes! I took some shots of the decorations inside the rental office...sigh, it would've been much better if I was there earlier! But it was still good, and the rental office lady was really nice and she gave me a handful of candy! YAYAYAYAYYAYAYYA!

Brrrrrr

Gahhhh it's getting so cold outside! I miss all the sun-shiny autumn days. Looks like we are heading into a cold winter! I hope it snows this year.Yep. Just pure snow with NO RAIN. I don't really like how it always rains these days because then you would get all wet and cold and shivering and such. The rain also makes me wanna sleep! Ughghhghghg. I would be so unproductive if I am sleepy all the time. Nao...I must go away for tutor...and my mitosis flippy-book! :P

Japanese All You Can Eat Restaurant

So today after theory my dad's friends took us to this Japanese All-you can eaet restaurant in Burnaby (I forgot the name though). That restaurant was sooo crowded when we got there! We didn't book the seats, so we had to wait for like half an hour for available seats. Anyways, I could smell the wonderful aroma of Japanese food in the restaurant while waiting...and I was so hungry! Finally we got our seats and went in. We ordered a bunch of food ranging from the raw meat thingy (forgot the word in Japanese), sushi, teriyaki stuff, deep fried stuff and such. I really really liked the deep fried shrimp with the awesome sauce and the teriyaki chicken. I didn't eat any of the raw fish/meat dishes because I just don't eat raw meat. The sushi was okay-ish...I favored the hot dishes more because, after all, it's late autumn and it's getting cold, so I wanted warm food inside my tummy. We ate for a while until all the dishes were gone, then my dad's friend ordered some more because they are all grown-ups and thus they need more food. Lolz. Then it was time for dessert, and I ordered three different desserts off the menu. I really liked how they put the desserts in small portions so I didn't get too stuffed from one dessert. I ordered mango pudding, and two other weird desserts made from milk. Yum.

I was sooooo full after dinner and my dad's friend drove us home. I am still very full now and I think I am gonna have a hard time trying to get to sleep.

Oh, It's the Weekend AGAIN

I know, I know, the weekend is tomorrow-----and I should be happy about it, right? Well...weekends aren't really thrilling for moi sometimes. Tutor, turor, and endless tutoring-----I mean, tutoring someone is great, and I can earn money and have a great social experience at the same time----but going back and forth between two places is just exhausting, especially when you have to tutor for 2 hours and spend 1 hour for the trip. Yes...and theory. I am trying to finish the whole basic harmony book before December so I can do it for my exam. I started basic harmony in the middle of September and I am going by 20 pages (40 sides) of homework per class so I am very close to getting the book done. I also have to do some advanced rudiment practice tests because I will be doing that for the exam as well...anyways, there's a lot of work waiting for me to finish. We also have a science flip-book due on Monday and English debate. I am not too worried about debate because I've already had some experience before. But the science flip-book? I don't know, I wanna keep my percentage still high. Busy times. Busy as a Bee.

The awesome thing is that tomorrow night we are gonna go out for dinner with friends. Yay! A break from all the hard work!

I Like This Song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub9RSrVcBvs Me Gusta :P The lyrics are just so touching!

Rush Hour

This afternoon I was soooo busy. Me, Celinna, Carina and Jennica had volunteer orientation at Marpole Community Center right after school. That lasted for an hour...and then me and Celinna just went right away to Langara Canada Line station, because she had to take the 49 bus there and I had to go to Oakridge 41st and then take the bus to Granville for my theory lesson ( normally I would have it on Saturdays, but next Saturday I have the debate tournament so my teacher moved the 2-hour lesson to two 1-hour lessons on this Wednesday and the next one. I just missed one bus because of the street light (I couldn't cross the street in time) so I had to wait for about 10 minutes. My schedule was sooo tight because it was only 10 minutes before 6:00 (my lesson time). When the bus finally came, I just hopped on and for a moment I was relieved. Then I spent 5 minutes on the bus and it took me to Granville street and then I just hopped on a no.10 bus and got to Shaunessey Church (where I had my lessons). It was really really rushy and unfortunately I will have to do that AGAIN next Wednesday :/

Langara Trail

Today for photography we went to Langara golf course to take some pictures (about 60-ish). Well, it was really fun, and certainly a nice change (before we only took pictures around the school and not really anywhere else) Me and Alex buddied up and took a lot of pictures. First we took a bunch of pictures of gigantic mushrooms. They were in clumps and some of them looked really cute while the others looked gross and squished (because they were so crowded). Then we took a lot of pictures of the changing leaves. Changing leaves=autumnnnnnnnnnnn herp derp 0_o Anyways, we sure took tonnes of pictures along the way. I guess we were the last ones to come back to school. When we came back I saw a lot of our classmates outside Mr. Olson's room and I was like "what are they doing? Why aren't they going in?" Then I found out that Mr. Olson had shut the door when the bell rang (we came in after the bell rang). That was epic troll.

Ehhhhhhhhhh

I don't feel that good today. I mean, usually I am in a nice mood, but today....well, it's Monday, right? And I just received an email from Mr. Hauck saying that he is sick and so debate club is cancelled for tomorrow, and I don't think he is gonna be with us for English. I wish he can get better soon! His English class is always the highlight of the day.

I am getting a bit pressured from my upcoming piano competition in November. I have 5 pieces to compete. My brain is a bit jammed right now...Eh I will have to work harder and hopefully get myself some good results.

Growing up is kinda tiring and foreign. I missed the fun times I had as a little kid~~~

A Change in the Schedule

I wanted to go to this Chinese art show with my mom this afternoon just after church and before my evening tutoring session, but unfortunately...I had to change the schedule, so bye-bye art show. This morning I went to my piano teacher's house to help out with my student. I never knew that another girl was coming to do a duet with her! I mean, I know she has a duet piece... but I didn't know that her partner was coming TODAY. When they were done my piano teacher suggested me to tutor them at Tom Lee for thier duet piece. So the girls' moms just called the music store and arranged the praticing session at 3:00pm. I am gonna tutor them at TL for one and a half hour and then the other girl would leave and I would just tutor my student on her other pieces in her house. I've never helped out with a duet before...this is gonna be exciting and fun :p

Oh noes

I burnt my peanut butter cookies' bottoms! Gahahahhahahahahahahahhah annoooooooooo. But they were still edible, so we ate them and peeled off the burnt parts. I added less sugar so they were supposed to be healthier than yesterday's bunch! Lolololololol. Next time I should set the temperature a bit lower. Well, you can always learn from mistakes.

Peanut Butter Cookies

I found this super easy cookie recipe on my peanut butter jar, so I made some peanut butter cookies for myself! They were awesomeeeee. My ingredients: 1/2 cup of peanut butter, an egg and 1/4 cup of sugar. I just mixed them together and put them on a tray. Then I baked them for 15 minutes and watched the doughs expand and puff up. Then they were golden and done! Very soft and crispy at the bottom. Delicious!!!

Sleepy Days

It's just SO WEIRD. For the past few days I've been feeling sleepy a lot during the day for no reason! I mean, technically speaking, I am getting enough sleep (we didn't really have any homework for the past few days so I went to sleep at 10:30pm and woke up at 7:30 everyday since Monday). There. I don't know why I am feeling sleepy. I am eating right, exercising right, and sleeping right, BUT I STILL FEEL KINDA SLEEPY SOMETIMES! Nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuz. I am scared. This has never happened to me before. This.is.seriously.freaky. And the weird thing is, if I manage to go beyond my sleepy time, I would get super hyper that it would take a long time for me to calm down. Another freaky thing. o.o

Synergy Field Trip

Today's Synergy field trip was so much fun! This year both the grade 8's and the grade 9's went together. However, the buddy system got a bit messed up close to the end. But overall, it was fun. We went to the airport first and stayed there for an hour. My buddy was Levina (Viv's little sis). But I also took two more Synergy 8's with me because their grade 9 buddies got seperated with them. We explored around the airport and I found out that all the SY 9's just got into a bunch and the SY 8's just formed their own groups as well. So much for the buddy system. Then after an hour we went on the Cananda Line again, and our next destination was Yaletown Roundhouse. I was suddenly really tired and sleepy (I don't know why). But the roundhouse had a really cool chooochooo train. I took so many photos of it! To be honest I never knew there was a train museum in Yaletown. Today's trip really opened my eyes.

Then we went to Lonsdale Quay. We ate our lunch at the old pizza place. Today's pizzas were a bit cold so that was a little bit disappointing. But then we had so much fun at the little park! Oh geez, I love doing all the obstacle stuff. Unfortunately we were only allowed to spend one hour there, so yeah.

Then we hopped on the seabus again. When we got to waterfront, we walked directly to Gas Town. I've never really explored Gas Town before! We arrived at the steam clock at 2:00, so the clock "sang" to us. It was really cool, and I don't think I can ever figure out the mechanics of the clock. Then we saw the statue of Gassy Jack (I think that's the right name, right). And that pretty much concluded our trip!

Epicness

I am so happy that I passed my science proposal. 9/10. Ah, I made careless mistakes: I didn't specify my controlled groups. I know it's in the procedure, but I didn't really point it out directly, but oh well. At least I got an A :) And Ms. Jay signed it so I can do the experiment!

Oh wait, I forgot to talk about English. Anyways, for English, we went down to the Mac Lab. Mr. Hauck talked about our debate sessions today! <33333333 I just LOVE debate. Me, Celinna, Leslie and Judy are in the debate club! But it's gonna be even more fun when we get the WHOLE class to debate! I am really excited for next class. This class we just discussed about the basics of debate, because most of the class are still pretty new to this stuff. Well, we are gonna have so much fun arguing with each other in the face in the future! :P

Moving onto debate club. I have to prepare for my UBC tournament (cuz I am in the Junior team). My partner is Jason Ma but he didn't show up today (on vacation). Anyways that's okay, because I am just gonna send him an email about what we did today. Mr. Hauck gave us the topics for Junior debate. One is about cutting the funding for the arts in schools. The second one is about to never allow teachers from doing a strike. We have to find back-up reasons for both the government and the opposition sides. Oooooooo, I am so nervous for the tournament! First debate tournament of the year is gonna be a bit challenging.

Socials!

For socials today we had a map test. I think I got all of them right...except the bonus question. I don't think I put down the right number of non-EU countries...anyway, that's okay. Afterward we went into the stuff on England. We had to pair up with a chosen buddy for a info search activity. Mr. Martin promised that the first three groups that got it right would be rewarded with a higher mark for the quiz. Me and Jennica were SO CLOSE. We were like the forth, and we were only missing 1 number. Joanna's group beat us to it...Oh well, it was really fun. Lolz.

UBC Apple Festival!

My mom and I went to the UBC apple festival at the UBC botanical garden today! Well, we haven't gone on a lot of local bus trips recently...so this is kinda like the first one for the school year. The weather was really nice. Anyways, our schedule was a bit tight, because the festival ends at 4:00, and it was already 1:30 when we came out from our house. We spent about 30 minutes on the bus and it wasn't very comfortable because the hot sun was shining on my face the whole time. When we finally got there, we paid $8.00 for entrance fee. Then we saw the apple festival. I would say that I would probably have more fun at the festival if I was 4 or 5. There were booths for face painting and story telling and such. The apple tasting place was CROWDED! Well never mind that. I was more interested in the botanical garden itself. There was a special place for growing organic fruits and veggies. I took A LOT OF PICTURES there. Oh, I just love the plants! There was a really cute scene which I had captured-----a little ladybug resting on a bunch of purple grapes! It was sooooo cute.

And so we wandered around the botanical garden after a small tour around the organic fruit 'n' veggies garden. There was a special area for imported plants around the world. I saw some really really weird desert plants with chubby stems and leaves. We have plenty of them back in Hainan, China, so it wasn't anything new for me. But there was this really really weird plants with fruits like huge pea pods and sticky seeds. Lolzzz. I had a really good time in the UBC botanical garden. Today's trip was really awesome, and I think I will post some of the pictures I took for today's events on my photography website sometime this week or the next!

Ugh

It's Saturday AGAIN---one of the busiest days of the week for me. I did tutor in the morning and harmony in the afternoon. It was literally exhausting. For harmony, I did about 5 lessons from last week's assignment, so it took my teacher almost an hour to mark and explain my assignment. The progress is great, but sometimes the homeworks are just a bit rushy. Tonight I have to do my Sierra Leone written report, math and a little bit of French. Then tomorrow I have tutor AGAIN in the morning, church at noon, the UBC apple festival in the afternoon and tutor AGAIN at night. I am not gonna be able to do any homework tomorrow, so I have to finish my school work tonight. Sigh~~~~

Awesome Day

So this morning we had football and surprisingly, I was beginning to improve at it! I have overcame the fear of catching the football (before I was scared that it might break my fingers). Lolz. For photography I did shadow pictures. Alex forgot his memory card so he used my camera and we both took some pictures together. That was when I found a spikey ball from a dead plant. I scared a lot of people with that invincible spike ball. Hahahahhahah. Lunch I studied with friends in the counselling suite for English because we would have an English quiz after lunch, and I presented the spike ball to my friends.At first they were really surpised. Then we played with it for a while and continued on with our studying.

The English quiz wasn't extremely hard, but it still required some critical thinking. I had to rush my essay at the end because I was running really low on time. Still, I finished it, so I am hoping for a decent mark out of this! I knew Mr. Hauck would give us quizzes which are not easy! Oh, and my spike ball opened during that class, and the furry seeds inside showed.

For science we handed in our proposal. I brought the spike ball along. Then we worked on our egg experiment and that took up most of the class. It was really fun. The egg was really squishy from all the vinegar...then we had to put it in salt water. Then after the experiment we got our science test back. I got perfect! 19/19 A lot of other people got perfect too. It was an easy quiz.

Overall today was pretty enjoyable, except for now I have to fininsh up my harmony and wash the dishes :/

Finally

Today we presented our Sierra Leone project! It went good. We got an A! But I was really regretting over some mistakes we made. For me, I was being too aggressive at answering people's questions...I should've given more questions to Vivian, Jason and Alex. Sorry guys :~p Another mark was taken off because one of our slides got messed up during the presentation (I don't know why...technical problems from Google doc). But overall it was a great presentation, and I feel the weight on my shoulder lifting a little. This weekend I will have to work on the individual written report. I am also aiming for a good A! :P

Now I have to work on my science fair proposal. I already have an idea in mind...but I am not too sure that it will really work in reality to my advantage. I really really wanna do good job on all of my projects, so I have to get back to work now! Cya!

Sierra Leone Project Tomorrow

Gahhhh we are presenting our Sierra Leone conflict project tomorrow! Tonight we have to wrap everything up so the next day we will have no worries and be prepared. I am a bit nervous because I really really wanna get a good grade out of this project. I am putting so much effort into this project...and I hope that my teammates understand that. Oh geez. I just hope everything work out fine tomorrow! As for now, I must get back to work. We still have to fininsh the rest of the slides and our speech. Peace!

Rushing

This afternoon was a bit rushy. I had debate club RIGHT AFTER the last block. I knew we were gonna have a practice debate today... so I was a bit scared for my new piano schedule, which was at 5:30. The debate club thing ended at 4:45. It took me 15 minutes to walk back to my house, so it was already 5:00 when I got back. I quickly gobbled down some cookies and soy milk and then grabbed my piano stuff and headed to my piano teacher's place. It took me 25 minutes to walk there with a fast pace and I had to run a little. Anyways, I made it on time! My piano lesson was an hour long, and after that my mom picked me up and we just had a relaxing walk before dinner.

Teh Big Turkey

Our turkey finally defrosted. I have to marinate it now with thyme butter and oil! Tonight we are gonna have an epic feast with potato wedges, corns, yummy turkey with gravy sauce/cranberry sauce, turkey stuffing, pumpkin pie and root beer. Lolololz. This Thanksgiving my mom has given me total responsibility over the preparation for the turkey dinner.

This afternoon I finished cleaning the turkey and marinating it with salt and butter and oil (not so healthy eh). I put it in the oven around 4:30. Then I moved onto the stuffings. I chopped parsley and onion and celery. That was basically all the ingredients for the stuffing which require manual work (except the chicken broth, but I can make it later just with boiling water and stock mix). Then I made cranberry sauce and while I was cleaning out a jam jar for it, I almost burnt the whole sauce. Although the sauce tastes a little bit burnt (just a little bit), but it's still good to eat!

The turkey took me at least three hours to cook...but it was worth the waiting. When it was finally done, the skin was so crispy and golden.

The turkey dinner was awesome. I had stuffing, corn, potato wedges with gravy and turkey with cranberry sauce. It was an epic meal. Now I shall eat all the leftovers from the huge turkey for a week!

I Feel Sick

Oh noesssss...I feel very sick today. My nose was stuffy and my throat felt scraped. I even have an annoying headache in my head from the lack of oxygen (stuffy nose!). Gahhhhhhhh. Yesterday we got invited to this dinner and the people ordered a bunch of spicy dishes. Maybe that's the cause for my sore throat and such. My mom has temporarily banned me from eating cookies and chips. Nuuuuuuu. WHY. WHY. WHY?!!!!! The worst thing in the world is being sick and not be able to eat all your yummy food. I feel like Garfield right now. Errrrrrr. This has happend before.Three years ago when I was in TianJin my cousin invited us to this Korean restaurant and the food was really really spicy there. That night I was completely mute because my throat was badly "damaged" by the spicy food. I had to go to the hospital and get special puffers. It was great suffering.

Me Kick Mushrooms

Today I was on my way to theory class when I walked by a bunch of trees. Under the trees there were tonnes of mushrooms, and most of them are like ball-shaped toadstools. I was so tempted to kick them because....well, I was tempted. So I kicked one of them, and the mushroom exploded. I remember from my childhood me and my friends used to play mushroom football. So basically you find a ball-shaped mushroom and then you toss/kick it back and forth until it explodes into a million pieces. Well, someone had already kicked some mushrooms before me (because I could see like three or four broken mushrooms). I kicked two more mushrooms and it was fun. Lololooolll

Gahahaha Thinking about Thanksgiving Already

Thanksgiving is on Monday!!! YESSSSS epic turkey feast time. Last year we had a huge roasted turkey, onion and raisin stuffing, potato wedges and pumpkin pie. This year I am still gonna do the same thing..but with some extra stuff! I wanna cook something different...lolololololz. MUST.SEARCH.WEB.FOR.SPECIAL.RECIPES. Nomnomnomnomnom. I can smell the festival in the air already! This year's Thanksgiving is gonna be awesome!

I am thinking about doing some casserole stuff. Anything else?

English Presentation Time!

Today my group had our English presentation and it went pretty good! Jessie almost freaked me out when she told me that she didn't bring her netbook...but turns out that she brought the USB drive for our powerpoint...phewwwww. Mr. Hauck photocopied our quizzes during lunch. At the beginning we showed the cursed videotape from the Ring just to get everybody into the right mood. Then we took notes on the overhead. Then Jessie played the slideshow which I created using rage comic. Kathy converted the youtube video clip into an mp3 audio clip so we could play it on the slideshow. Then we had our quizzy quiz, and everyone was like "IT'S SO HARDDDD!" Muwwahahahahah. Then we began our discussion, and that was when the class got more excited. Anyways, today has been a fun day.

English Presentation Tomorrow!

My group is gonna do our English presentation tomorrow! We are the last group to do it...so I am hoping that we do a really good job (cuz I wanna get good marks). Right now we are just wrapping everything up. The slideshow is looking good...To be honest I am kinda nervous...:p k gotta get back to work now! Sorry for the short blog, but this is an emergency situation!

The Pressure

Today we had the second-last English teaching presentation! That means we will be the last one doing it on Thursday. Ohhhhhhhhhh I can feel the pressure already! My group is planning on finishing most of the stuff and hopefully everything tonight, because we don't wanna procrastinate tomorrow night! Ohhhhhhh geeez. Well, just a little preview here, we will be doing a slideshow, and it's gonna be fun. I finished the slideshow like days ago, but my teammates added some more notes so I have to transfer that onto the slideshow. I hope everything turns out fine. I AM SO EXCITED!

Samosa

Monday is not the day I usually look forward to, but the school's samosa always give me some hope. Monday is the day when the people sell samosas at the old dog pound. Today, I ALMOST missed the samosas! Celinna and I were in the clothing room trying to get some stuffings, and the bell rang, so I was really nervous, because I didn't bring my lunch (cuz I was expecting samosas for Mondays). We quickly took the box down to Mr. Olson's room and while I was trying to sort things out I gave a dollar to Celinna so she could help me get a samosa (she was getting one herself too). Lolz. When she came back she had two samosas (one for me and one for herself) and they were HOT and drizzled with the delicious sauce of awesomeness. I was like onmnomonomonomononomonoommmnonomoonomonom. ME GUSTA SAMOSAS

Clump o' Orange Mushrooms

So today I was on my way to my piano teacher's house and I went past a clump of orange mushrooms under a tree. I've seen that clump of orange mushrooms before. In fact, I first saw it like a week ago! And it's still there, so perfectly undisturbed. Usually people would kick mushrooms into pieces, but I guess this clump of mushrooms look too unusal and disturbing that no one wanted to touch it. Anyway I stopped and examined the mushrooms. They were in a really bright shade of orange, and there were a lot of small flying bugs around them. It was kinda gross, and I was like o.o They must be really hard. I wanna see if they are still there next week. They really stick out. ME GUSTA WEIRD ORANGE MUSHROOMS

Yesssssss

I just came back from my tutoring session and calculated my piano fees and such. I found out that I am using the same amount of money as the previous sessions with four piano classes and four theory classes per week (now I have four piano classes and ten theory classes per week). I am actually earning money for my own piano fees! So proud of myself. It's really good for me, and I think I got more than that. First, I've paid a percentage of my own piano fees; second, I've had a great opportunity to practice my teaching and leadership skills; third, I've gain some teaching experience. Such a win. :P I AM ACTUALLY EARNING MONEY FOR MY OWN LEARNING!!!!!! WOTOOOOTTT