Yo MAO.

At the end of Hunter's presentation.. well.. near the end, she had Chairman Mao in her hell circle. T.T However, it was a really really nice powerpoint. I said "nooo...." and the whole class laughed. That was yesterday.
Today was the Mini Mu, and my gosh did I do the most random things. Erica and Sarah took almost all of my pictures, and I'm really glad they used my camera because now I have a bunch of the pictures that were used in the powerpoint by Mr. Goldstein, since Freed has the same camera. They used his cord on my camera, and it was wondrous.
In the beginning, I walked around, helping out with little tasks, eventually staying in Mrs. Chan's room, where all the proctors congregated, and Kavita and Freed spoke to them about their jobs. I took out a cafeteria bench with Candace so the mothers could set it up for lunch. After the proctors had gone, there was a lot of trouble in 8200. We felt really bad for Yige, the hall monitor there, because there were so many problems that he was overwhelmed trying to fix things. Overwhelmed because there was just that much; he was doing a really good job. When I went to visit him, most of the commotion had dissolved, and I ended up just helping Diana and Linda with two of the many elementary schoolers who were raising their hands to ask questions about the test. Apparently, one little boy didn't know what to do with the scantron. As I walked away from Yige to go out the door, he said, "Hey, do you like _______?" I said, "Why?" and he said something along the lines of "So you do!" Yeah, great reminder of something horrid as I walked down the stairs, trying to push it out of my mind. So, as things settled down, Carolyn and I went to the courtyard with Sarah and Erica, where the kids came and did some disputing after the first session. I left Carolyn to go back to Freed's, walked to the auditorium and back with Erica in lost search for a piano that I might be able to use for a few minutes, came back, and helped Logan and Marshall with scanning. Overall, scanning was quite smooth, but there were a few solvable problems here and there. The good part is that the program worked, which it hadn't yesterday before about 5:20pm. I stayed around for the awards ceremony until the powerpoint started.
The recital went smoothly for me, although I did make a lot of little mistakes. It seemed to be good to the other people who were there, so I'm not too regretful about it for once. Ah, much better than last year when I played a really short and boring and weird thing by Scarlatti. Chopin is so much better.
I've got about 157 pictures at which to look and possibly upload and I love that because pictures... Well, I'm not going to rant about pictures. Or put up the Christmas tree this year.

All the good fishes were taken.

Our AP Euro book: Sand's novel Indiana (1832), about an unhappily married woman, was read all over Europe. Her notoriety- she became the lover of the Polish pianist Frederic Chopin, among others, and threw herself into socialist politics- made the term GeorgeSandism a common expression of disdain for independent women.
-sob-
On another note, Lacey wrote an INCREDIBLE note to me on her blog: You are quite possibly the best person I've ever met. I haven't known you very long but I feel I can say that without any hesitation. No one's been that accepting of me in every way. That willing to help me, no questions asked. You understand. I wish you would think of yourself better because I think of you in the best possible way. You are AWESOME!!!
It really made my day a lot brighter to know that anyone would be so happy to know me. And oh, did we have fun torturing Blair at lunch today.
We're frantically getting ready for the Mini Mu, and it will be amazing. I have to leave at 2pm for a recital at the Westminster Oaks Retirement Center, and I really hope I don't mess up for them. "Them" meaning the old people for whom I feel sorry.
After school, by about 5:30pm, I was supposed to wait for my mother to take me home. It started to get dark, and she still hadn't come. I knew she was on her way by about 5:45pm when I called her, and as the sun was mostly set, I sat on the sidewalk and started to just think, ignoring my surroundings (which included a fellow jazz band member who kept asking me to buy his World's Finest Almond chocolate that I didn't want). I couldn't help it, but all the day's reminders of that one guy kind of built up and tears started coming out of my eyes. Thankfully, Michelle, Logan, and the band kid were too far away to notice. I couldn't let my mother see me crying, so I stopped myself with plenty of time to spare. It felt miserable to know that I still missed... things. Or wanted them. It's getting so tiring, as this post probably is because it started off sort of lighthearted, even though it kind of was an allegory. Well, actually, the Chopin thing was an allegory.

short

Clara gave me some albums through my memory stick and hers because mine ran out of memory. It was pretty amazing because she gave me so much. :] I'm excited to hear it and I've never had such an increase in songs at once.
Lacey was absolutely right. A case would be really helpful.
Ah, time for dinner.

Schedule Conflicts

December 8th:
7amish-4ish Chiles Mini Mu
11am-4pm Come Visit Caroline
3pm-5ish Piano Recital

Januaryish:
Howard Wilson Piano Contest
MAO competitions for which I have paid

April _?_:
FSMTA District Concerto Competition
MAO State

May 9:
AP European History Exam not in Orlando
May 9-10 FSMTA Competitive Events including the State Concerto Competition in Orlando

Studying

The lesson was moved to today and Freed isn't picking up his cell phone. I can't visit Caroline because of the Mini Mu and the recital, which actually overlap anyways so I REALLY can't visit her.
We survived another week of sophomoreness, so we have about two weeks to study for exams and we haven't even begun reviewing.
Anna had a little rant about study time, so here's mine.
The amount of time studying is inversely proportional to how much you understand the information and how easily you can process the extraordinary details that you need to make a very high A. At this school, most teachers don't really teach you the information, and for that, one needs to study more than just before a test to be safe. You can always cram the night before and it works, but you can't cram a lot of information so it depends on the class. There is no way of measuring studying by set hours such as "two and a half" or "five." You stop studying when you have a satisfying feeling that you understand everything and know the information that goes with it. The time it takes to do that is not something you can compare across classes. Anna may only need two and a half hours to cram for her math test, but I do not think Joseph would be able to successfully memorize a few chapters from his AP World History book in that time. It's all up to you, and if you don't feel like studying, it's your decision. Asian people do not all study five hours straight every day. That is a stereotype and I am proving this by not having done any homework today, and it's already 9:24am! There is no way I will be doing Euro for five hours straight. It would be extremely tedious and boring and worse than it already is.
The pep rally was a mediocre waste of school time. I really enjoyed how our classes were shorter, so I suppose it was okay. I talked to Lacey and Brianna part of the time. The acts didn't really contain much talent and some of them were very disturbing. After that, Jazz Band Reh went to 5pm, so it was still mandatory to stay at school actually doing something. This is further proof that I did not spend five hours studying because I went to bed at about 10pm and I had to have eaten dinner and checked my email and played around with my graphing calculator with MirageOS.

Not really listo.

Anna and I helped Katelyn decorate her Christmas tree today. I found a plastic gingerbread ornament, and it looked like a miniature version of Rodolphus from the Harry Potter Series. It had blonde hair and looked manly and evil and like it wanted to kill you. I was not on something.
Life is going to get really hectic again. Exams are approaching, and I constantly want to skip Jazz Band. It ends at 6:30pm on Mondays, and by then, it's already really dark outside and I haven't even begun my homework.
I finally added the Tetris Tournament app and beat Anna on my third try. It was great.
It's weird that our family even owns a Christmas tree and also weird that we have Christmas lights. I suppose it's all festive and Holidayness and great that the first Christmas trees were used by Germans who are balla'.
These last few hours before we head off to bed and wake up to a day of school are precious.

Last weekend haunts meh.

Today, I used our portable DVD player to watch The Notebook on the way to and back from Florida Caverns State Park. The park was interesting, but disappointing after the memories of crawling through Blue Mounds in 8th grade. The movie was extremely depressing and probably not something I should've watched at this point, and it made me kind of worried because those people loved each other for the rest of their lives and couldn't stop thinking about each other. It's obviously a fictional story, but it was a little creepy. With no doubt, Ocean's Eleven is still much more awesome than that movie because it had explosions and hacking and such and such.
At lunch, we had barbecued beef and onions, bread, chicken, soda, and a few other things. Chanyang called me right before I ate the bread, and said "I hate you!" because I gave her Ryan's cell phone number. T.T She called him twice today because she wanted to rant about LSU, who lost according to Jack. Her family and Joseph's family were coming back from Destin after their overnight condo-renting-ness and the beach. Jack, meanwhile, is in Gainesville watching the FSU vs. UF game. I wonder how that's going. Ryan is trying to find a place for his puzzle piece. I wish him luck.

6-1=5. 5 is a nice number.

I looked at the 5G iPods, and Circuit City is selling the Refurbished 60GB iPod Video for $199.99, so I think I'm settling with that. I just have to wait for it to be in stock! -EXCITED!- The only real downside is that the battery life is about 20 hours, which is half the life of an iPod Classic, but that's absolutely fine.
I cannot believe Lacey got Gmail just for me because I can't talk to her on AIM for obvious reasons. She made me feel incredibly special. Then, Katelyn went and got AIM! But she'll be able to talk to Ketan, so I'm don't completely feel bad.
::EDIT:: Today at Target, I bought The Notebook because I've heard good things about it. It's pretty amazing that it was there.

The 6th Generation

My parents said they will get me an iPod Classic (80GB) if I give them 100 dollars. However, they refuse to get it from anywhere except Sam's Club, which doesn't have any in stock right now. I kind of wish they still made white ones, though. The front was changed to silver and they took out the plastic layer because it was easily scratched. The worrying part is that the navigation seems to have issues... I actually want a 5G iPod Video, now that I really really think about it.
Today, I woke up at 4:37pm because my parents wanted to go to random places to buy cheap things. It wasn't very fun, but it only happens once and year, and I was bored. I'm still bored, but piano lessons are tonight, so it's not that bad right now. My Thanksgiving break has been occupied with forgetting about things, and whether it's working or not, I'm incredibly grateful that our teachers limited the amount of homework that was assigned to us. It's nice to relax for once in our sophomore years, and realize that we're going to simply drop dead when next year barely begins.
My father bought a 20-dollar Linksys wireless adapter thingy at Circuit City, so we have wireless internet! ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D It's exciting. And a few minutes ago, I realized that Circuit City was selling their 80GB iPod Classics for the same 237-ish price as Sam's Club.

The end.

The drama is over for most of us, so we expect to focus on our homework more these days. Actually, I don't have much of a say in that since I'm banned from AIM (which is actually a good thing), and a whole bunch of other stuff, I suppose. Plan to call me very, very much. :]

I cried a lot today.