roboppy.net

I know I said that I was going to stay in school this past weekend, but instead, I didn't. But this was beyond my control, if you disregard that I called my mum to drive here to pick me up and that I drove home. I mean, the weather sucked! Period. What was I to do? Anyway, the apple picking did not become a reality and I was full of many tears. Wah.

...I really was sad. I haven't gone apple picking for a very long time. I know I've been apple picking at some point, but I think I was younger than five at that point. Or maybe that was a dream. Apples don't sprout wings and tapdance, do they?

So I went home where instead of being confined to a little dorm room I was confined to a house. It's better than a little dorm room. I went to Barnes & Noble with my parents where I found out they sell used Japanese books in the sales annex. USED JAPANESE BOOKS FOR CHEAP! Most of them were too complicated for me, but I found a book about the history of Japan in manga form featuring Doraemon. Kinokuniya should get into the business of buying used books...it's generally hard to find cheap Japanese anything besides free newspapers which I most definitely cannot read.

I practice reading Japanese on a regular basis, but I still suck crap at it. And this is just hiragana I'm talking about. In November I'm going to learn katakana, and then my brain is going to explode and the "Nihongo" fairy is going to laugh at me and take my teeth...wait, that's the tooth fairy.

I downloaded something so I could type in Japanese. I don't actually know much, but here are some phrases you might like to know:

これは、いぬ。 (Korewa, inu.) = This is a dog.
それは、ねこ。 (Sorewa, neko.) = That is a cat.
わたしのいぬは、わたしのねこをたべました。 (Watashi no inu wa, watashi no neko o tabemashita.) = My dog ate my cat.

Actually, I lied. Well. It could be usefull...alright, no it won't. And it probably wouldn't be written all in hiragana, unless it was in a children's book, and I don't think a children's book would be about a dog eating a cat. I'm not even sure if that last sentence is gramatically correct, but you know what? WHO CARES? HAHAHA...

...I have a Japanese dialogue test on Wednesday. Uhoh. I have to start off saying 「あのう、それは、なんですか？」 (Excuse me, but what is that?) and then my teacher points out some kind of food and I ask her what's inside it and whats ourside it...sounds kind of odd. We have a practice dialogue to ...erm, practice from and the example is 「いなりずし」 which definitely has an outer thing and an inner thing (I used to love that stuff), but she said she'd say something else during our actual test. Something with an outside and inside, I guess? And then we ask if it's [adjective] and she answers. Muuh. I want an A in Japanese because I won't be able to get an A in any of my other classes.

I have been eating way too much food. I can't really explain it...I just got hungry. Except I couldn't possibly have been hungry. I mean, I gained 1.5 pounds this weekend! That's what I get for going home and eating lots of yummy nuts and dried fruits. I think I ate five apples today 「きょう、わたしはいつつりんごをたべました」 and...I lost count of the other stuff. Maybe eight plums? I hope it doesn't seem obsessive that I keep count of what I eat, but it doesn't seem to affect how much I eat. It's just a tally:

5 apples
2 carrots
2 kirby cukes
8 plums (4 yellow, 4 long john)
5 (or more) nectarines
2 peaches

I'm trying to figure out how it all even fits in my stomach, and I guess the answer is that it doesn't. And how come I just pee a lot? Isn't this a buttload of fiber? Literally? (ha...ha) Eh oh. That worries me.

I bought two skirts today from a flea market type thing that was going on in the College Center. One of them isn't really a skirt, but a pair of shorts that look like a skirt. There's a name for it, but I don't know how to spell it. It sounds like "coulat" I think? I could be totally wrong though. Anyway! They won't fit me in a few days if stuff doesn't find it's way out of my intestines. Really. Ew. Why am I telling you this? Or maybe a more important question is, why are you reading this?

I'm seeing Radiohead on Friday. This hasn't really sunk in yet for some reason. I guess because I'll be pretty far away (not that I'm not grateful that Diana got the tickets) since it's at Madison Square Garden and I saw them once before. I wonder if I should bother bringing my camera. I always bring my camera to concerts, but I don't know if there's much point in this case. I may as well just relax (behind my binoculars) and enjoy the show. I'm trying to find my seats right now on this chart...hm. Interesting. It's section 313. The last time I saw them I was in section 232 or around there...so this will be a totally different experience! From the left! Hooyeah!

What else is there to talk about? Erm. Um. Well my roommate isn't in here right now because she's studying at the library. And she's been there for a while. Yikes. It works out well that she prefers studying in the library because I prefer studying in our room...wooha! I swear that I am indeed studying. Sometimes. Wanna read what I've written for my English paper due on Thursday? Our assignment was to write an "autobiographical fiction." Yes, very vague. I haven't finished yet:

“WAKE UP, PEOPLE! Come on, come on, come on!”

Every cell in my body told me that I wasn’t ready to wake up. My mind was so addled that I’m positive my pillow whispered, “Keep sleeping.” Deciding that pillows could in fact speak English and that its order was the more satisfying of the two, I continued sleeping.

“Melanie, it’s only six AM. Go back to sleep,” mumbled Simone.

The room filled with more mumbles of agreement from three, half-conscious 11-year old girls. I inputted a weak “meerh” and went back to sleep. Only when Melanie tore off our blankets and continued shouting did we decide to ignore our biological instinct and wake up, although the idea of murdering Melanie also crept into our minds.

It was the second day of my six grade class trip to Kenting, a seaside province at the southern tip of Taiwan. From our school in Taipei it took nine hours to get to Kenting by bus. Needless to say, by the time we arrived in Kenting we wanted to do something that didn’t involve watching movies featuring talking animals. Our wish was met with a swim at the beach, an activity which was a far cry from anything we could have done back in the city. We also had to get settled into our rooms that would be our homes for the next five days. I was good friends with my roommates, Melanie, Jessie, Jamie, Pearl, and Simone, but we decided to set up some ground rules first. Of course, rules such as, “5-7 minutes max in bathroom” and “Keep your part of the room tidy” were not remotely probable by six pre-teen girls and would inevitably be broken.

Today’s activity was a three-mile beach hike. While I was excited, I wasn’t “wake up at the crack of dawn” excited. However, Melanie’s incessant shouting snapped all of us awake and we hobbled out in a zombie-like fashion to eat breakfast.

The previous night’s dinner consisted of rice, fried chicken, and vegetables, and most of us agreed that it was fairly good; today’s breakfast consisted of a loaf of bread and two jars of what we assumed to be jam and peanut butter, but it was hard to tell. A brave soul hesitantly poked the red colored jam with the spreader, at which point I decided breakfast could wait until I got back to Taipei, or perhaps I could just never eat breakfast again.

When we arrived at the beach, a cool breeze coupled with a beautiful view created a setting of an enjoyable stroll along the water’s edge. Of course, Mother Nature has a sense of humor, so she decided to send the wind on a little coffee break and let unbearable humidity take its place. While I tried to make my water bottle last for the entire hike, I wasn’t even close. Of course, Mother Nature kept reminding us that we were surrounded by water we couldn’t drink by splashing waves onto the rocks by the water’s edge that we walked on. It was fun at first to get our feet wet, but my socks and sneakers became soaked by the end and my white socks turned a bright purple. Why I even wore socks and sneakers to hike on a beach I don’t know, but I wasn’t the only one; Melanie’s socks turned a disgusting shade of brown. Gee, Mother Nature, you’re just a bucket of laughs!

The beautiful view soon became a rocky shore littered with shoes (only with left sides though; perhaps this area was once inhabited with one-legged people) and various debris. The only interesting things to be found on the shore were immense glass floaters once used for fishing nets. I was thinking that if I could name the beach, I would name it “Floaters and Shoes.” And this is why I shouldn’t be allowed to name anything.

---comment replies!---
Rebbie: YAY APPLES HOOHAAA!

Mika: Trample people? Eek! I must have really missed out...poo. Well this Thursday I plan to go to a show put on by one of the campus comedy groups....not that that's the same thing, but...um. Uh. (loses train of thought because it smells like incense in the hallway)

You must be sooo ahead of me in Japanese. We would NEVER be able to write an essay, I'm pretty sure about that. And I won't learn katakana until November! :O I'll have to break out the flash cards again...doh. From what you wrote I recognized "naka," "tsukue" and "ringo." And that's it. "Ga" sounds like something I should know. It sounds kind of familiar. I think I learned it as meaning "but" or something? What's "arimasu"? AHH!