Translations

Friend 10:09 pm:
        -so tired. going to bed early hella tonite. chúc ngủ ngon. 

(**Literal Translation = Wish good sleep, Correct = Wish you good sleep.**)
       
    Me 10:11 pm
        -lmao
        -nice
        -you forgot the word 'you' tho
    Friend 10:11 pm
        -no, google did. :-P 


Haha! :D, made my night. 
   

Key Club - Upcoming Event

To the people who know what Key Club is, I'm proud to say that I'm a member of that group.

In February, the CHSKC (Cleveland High School Key Club) is actually planning a little mixed show. We're hosting a fundraiser and we're basically playing the newlywed game with couples at the school and throwing in a fashion show with it.
For people who don't know what the newlywed game is, it's basically a show where a husband and a wife, just newly married, compete against other newlyweds to win a prize. The games are various gameshow sort of things like, "What is your wife/husband's favorite..." or "What would your wife/husband do if..." Things like that. Our club will emulate that sort of style and hopefully we'll simulate the popularity of it. I really hope we get a lot of ticket admissions, because we're raising up for our district convention and to get Key Club sweatshirts :].

I'd love any suggestions you may give.

Psychology

I'm utterly disappointed at myself. Today I received news from my psychology teacher that I have a 3.9 as my final grade. I'm sorry if that does come out somewhat ridiculous, because 3.9 is a good grade, however I've never gotten that my entire life. It just ruins my 4.0, T.T. However, I will have to live with it.
I think the worst part however, was that it was a 3.8 before and my participation in class gave me brownie points with my teacher so he bumped it up to a 3.9. There were about 8 tests or so. I got 2 B's... I'm sad.
*Sigh*
I'm future-oriented now however, because I can't change the past, so now I need to find out how that will translate into my high school grade. It's kind of confusing because I'm getting college credit for the class, but I'm also getting high school credit for it. Plus, high schools determine GPAs by saying that 90%+ is a 4.0, so now I have no idea. I'm just crossing my fingers right now...

Bipolar Weather

So in psychology yesterday, we learned about bipolar depression. Today I learned first hand about bipolar weather. What a coincidence!
As Seattlelites will know, the weather today was extremely odd.
At around 4am there was a little drizzling not too bad.
At around 6am there wasn't a single drop of rain; it was merely cloudy.
Right after 7am, the clouds just carpet bombed the city with raindrops. It was horrible. You could barely see through the front windows of the car with the wind shield wipers going on full. I have to say it was the worst rain I've seen in a long time.
*Apparently, there was lightning at around 8am, but I wasn't witness to it. (Crazy stuff)
Then, after I got out of history class, at 9:30am or so, it was sunny. Yeah, sunny. Of course that didn't last long however. In a matter of hours, it was back to cloudy again, but you get my point.
Bipolar weather.
Weird stuff.

Frisbee Banquet & Christmas Ship

Today, I got word that there's going to be a frisbee banquet. Awesome.
On the other hand, I hear it's going to be an Asian food buffet...great. The food I already have everyday dished out in buffet format. Oh well, I can't complain, it's only $5 for it and food is food.
In the fall I was on the varsity frisbee team and now I think it's great that we get to celebrate the end of the season. I feel somewhat guilty that I had to miss out on a lot of the games because I had other conflicting events; however, I think I'll get over it once I'm there.

As to the second part of this title. Right after the frisbee banquet, the tennis team is planning to go watch the Christmas Ship. It's a ship lighted up with Christmas lights that sails around the bodies of water around our area and has choirs on the boat which sing over loudspeakers which project quite a distance. I went last year and I have to say it was pretty enjoyable. It's just a nice time to wind down the last days of school for the year and to hang out with my tennis team family. This year, there's going to be a lot more people. I'm sort of hoping such a large crowd won't ruin the serenity and comfort of the trip, but I'll see how it goes.

Christmas/My Birthday is almost here :]

A "Funny" Mistake

So as the title states, I ran into a funny little mishap a couple of days ago. In my history class, *no names, but a lot of people know the teacher and how the class is already*, my teacher was handing back graded papers. At first all was innocent because it was just a routing thing. Student A writes paper, teacher A grades paper, student A gets back paper. What happened however, was that Student A (me) didn't get back his paper immediately. In fact, he got student B's paper instead. The "funny" part was that I got someone else's paper with An in the Name line. In the beginning however, I thought it was mine.
Like a typical student, I looked straight towards the grade but before I reached it, I ran across these foreign words. I told myself, "What the... was I doing this at 3am in the morning or was I just out of it?" After asking that of course, I looked at the Name line of the paper and saw that it was actually another person in my class. Coincidentally it was a girl.
To those who read my essay, you know that it was about the quirks of having my name. One of the reasons behind the strangeness of my name was that it's a girl name in English, and here's just more proof of that all too common blunder of thinking that way... though not exactly. It was more like my teacher didn't see the rest of the line. The rest of it read a totally different name from mine. Coincidentally though, it was actually a Vietnamese name belonging to one of the girls in my class.
In the end I laughed and knew it was an honest mistake, but there's so many more ways I could connect this moment to my third essay that it's scary.

Ice Skating

So a couple days ago, the tennis team put forth an idea to go ice skating. (Hurray!!!) We had actually gone last year, and now we just confirmed that we're going to be going on December 17th, five days before my birthday :].
I remember last year. I can only describe it as an epic fail. I remember I was able to skate okay because I knew how to inline skate, but it was just horrible trying to break. I always had to hit the sides of the rink to stop, or try some weird curving technique with my skates. *Sigh.*
Surprisingly, however, despite not knowing any techniques or moves, it was still incredibly fun just going in circles, one after another after another. I don't know what part of me loves it so much, and why other people love it so much too. I suppose it's just a refreshing new experience that won't lose its novelty anytime soon.

Back to the present, the tennis team is actually going up to Bellevue to ice skate. Hopefully this year, I can actually try to do something even quasi-impressive. I've actually been trying to master the crossover and the backwards skate, so we'll see.
Maybe hope to see someone I know there? :].
Have a happy holiday to you, reader.

Ice Skates

Civilization

One last pass at history class. This time it's a totally positive one.

Lately, I've been playing this game called Civilization IV. For this who don't know it, it's a turn-based strategy game where you build your own empire through technological, political, and militaristic advances. Your ultimate goal is to either dominate, influence, out-tech, ally, or destroy the rest of the civilizations who you compete against.

Civilization IV

Why I mention this game is that it's actually one of my big 100 projects for my history class. I love the fact that our teacher believes in student guided projects and that he is also an avid fan of video games of these sorts. Both work in my favor, and in the end, here I am playing a video game and writing about what I do/think for a class project. I love my history class and I also want to give a shoutout to other teachers like mine.



Thanks for all you do.

Wisdom Teeth - Part IV

Well apparently my wish didn't come true. Fate played me again.

So I went to the hospital with my mom today. I had to skip a part of lunch to go to Harborview, but luckily my next class after SCCC doesn't start until 1:15 *phew*.
So after arriving at Harborview, and getting lost for a bit, we finally reached the Oral and Maxillofacial Clinic. The people there were nice enough; however, what sucked was that apparently there's a giant waiting line. They're not even making appointments yet. Now I'm frustrated. They told me I'll probably have to wait until January or February to get my 2nd molar pulled. Great. More waiting.

And I thought those movies about the hospital scenes were overdramatized.

On the flip side though, it least it only took 20 minutes or so :P.

Profile Picture

So this time, I won't be talking about my profile picture. However, if you guessed that this post was related to Facebook, you would be correct. Ding, Ding, Ding.

So a few days ago, I was looking up something on the internet, using Google of course, and I ran across a picture of this random Asian girl. What I was looking up, I honestly had no idea, but I stumbled upon this picture that looked exactly like one of my friends.
With her being her of course, she immediately told me it looked nothing like her. In disbelief, she disregarded any attempts I had to persuade her. In the end I made with her a bet.

"Post it as your profile picture on Facebook, and we'll let the world decide."

So she did and to sum it up in two words... I won.

7-2: 7 people didn't realize that it wasn't her and told her that it was a cute and beautiful picture, two recognized that it wasn't her. Of course, it was her "older brother" and close friend that recognized her; however, it was still surprising that there were some people she talked with often that still didn't recognize her. After leaving my own comment, I left it as it was.

It's funny how you can pretend to be who you aren't on Facebook, even if who it seems is on the cover is oh so close to who you are in the albums. Confusing in this context, philosophical if you're willing to extrapolate what you will.

*Unfortunately, I can't post a picture of the girl I found on the internet. It would just be an brash invasion of privacy. However, if you're privy to this who situation, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Wisdom Teeth - Part III

Sunday, Thanksgiving Break.
#1 Priority? Schedule an appointment with the dentist.

And so I went. It was Wednesday where I went down the my dentist's office to check out my "dilemma." After doing the typical waiting room business, I went in to see the dentist.

An x-ray shot and some Vietnamese later, the dentist came in and broke the news. He showed me the picture first.

"I have never seen anything like this before."

I'm screwed.

On the picture, there was my wisdom tooth stuck almost right under the tooth right next to it (2nd molar). The problem was, my dentist explained to me, my wisdom tooth was pushing on BOTH the roots of my 2nd molar. In summary, this means I had to get the thing pulled. Great.

Trying to look on the bright side of the things, I told myself that getting a tooth that's already fully out probably hurts much less than getting a tooth that would potentially require a lot of sawing and hacking pulled out.

So I came back in a couple days later and that's when the fun really starts. The dentist goes through his normal antibiotics and anesthetics procedure and he soon starts.
Now this is just an aside, but anesthetics are crazy. (More on that in another post.)
Anyways, soon after my dentist starts injecting me with a bunch of unknown chemicals, he begins to yank my tooth out by wiggling it back and forth with this clamp-looking instrument. Surprisingly, it hurt very little and I was soon expecting my tooth to be pulled out and my troubles to be over with.
Unfortunately, fate my was yanking my chain.

After a few spurts of blood (Apparently that's what the dentist said he encountered. However I didn't feel it.), my dentist stopped and after a few brief pauses, injected a couple of more needles into me. (I would find out later that those would be to suck in the blood that apparently was flowing out.) He then told me to go into the other room and take a full mouth x-ray. After doing that and gargling some water, my dentist fell into this deep contemplation while he waited for the photos to develop. To me, it was a troubling sign. He kept staring at my previous smaller x-rays. If only I knew what he was thinking.

A few minutes later, the x-rays came back and my dentist told me that it confirmed his suspicions. Apparently, I'm severely lacking "bone" on the right side of my mouth and it's because of this that caused all of the major problems I faced (the bleeding and the strangely placed wisdom tooth). My dentist told me that because of the large amounts of blood that could potentially be involved in pulling out my tooth, he had to refer me to an oral surgeon at Harborview.
Great... more fun.

He had also mentioned that I was lacking that "bone" possibly because of a cyst or because of something else that affected me (I didn't hear the second one). Now I have a strong feeling that it was because of the swelling and bleeding episode that I had, which toppled the dominoes. I was feeling their impact.

Now as it stands, I have to call Harborview to schedule and appointment and pull the tooth ASAP. I'll see how it goes.

I just hope fate takes a little breather for this next part.

Wisdom Teeth - Part II

So after a couple of days in terrible apprehension and frustration, the cogs started to turn.
They grinded.

After a couple of days of having my gums swollen, I finally decided looked up on the internet the symptoms that I experienced, and soon enough I found what could have been it. Pericoronitis.
To save you some trouble of looking it, it's basically an inflammation of the gum that usually sits over the wisdom teeth. There's also a little flap that develops that food particles can get into, causing it to get infected.
Yet despite all of this, I was too late.
The next day (Saturday), the gum got infected. There was this little white spot on the gum, which my parents thought was actually the tooth coming out, but I was suspicious. Convincing myself that it was an infection, I started to gargle warm saltwater twice everyday for two days. Despite it all though, I couldn't stop the inevitable.

One night, after gargling some warm saltwater, my gums started bleeding a little more then usual. I went upstairs and looked into the mirror, and before I knew what was happening, my mouth started flooding with blood. The swollen part bursted open and thick, dark red blood started gushing from my mouth.
It lasted for a few minutes. I was lucky to be over a sink.

To say it was traumatizing would be overboard; however, it is something I won't forget anytime soon. Most likely, the memories will probably stay with me for the rest of my life.

Perversely, in the end I got my wish. The day that I couldn't chew, I fervently wished that I could eat again.
The day that the blood rushed out of my mouth, the swelling went almost all the way down. I could chew almost all the way again. It was almost unnatural to do so.
In the end, I was left with crazily tender gums, some unforgettable memories, and tidbits of paranoia creeping on the edge of my mind.
Unfortunately, that's not the whole story...

Wisdom Teeth - Part I

So here starts a recount of my past week of pain, starting from Thanksgiving Weekend.

Thanksgiving Break started out all normal for me. It was a typical R&R sort of vacation and it just meant a couple days off of school work, which was nice. A couple days into the break though, my gums in the far lower right part of my mouth started to swell just a bit. I said to myself, "No worries, it's just another wisdom tooth growing in," and with that, I left it alone.
That Thanksgiving Thursday, that same section of gum surprised me. It grew to twice it's size and soon I couldn't even chew anymore without biting down on it. It was unbelievably unbearable. I couldn't do one of my most favorite things to do in the world, eat! With that, also came the weird mouth postures I had to keep in order for me to actually close my mouth.
It was incredibly frustrating, but at the time, I had no idea what would happen or when anything would happen. It was naive of me to believe that it would just go away. I would soon find all my fears to be met.

My Mentor

To keep continuing on with this mentoring motif I thought of today, I thought towards my own mentor.
I'm in this leadership development program named Summer Search. It strives to help low-income or needy students to develop a strong character and a successful mindset towards achieving their future goals.
I love the program.
I love being able to say whatever and whenever to my mentor, uninhibited. The feeling on letting lose on someone who you know won't judge you is just pure joy. Though on a side note, I feel kind of bad for my mentor because she has multiple mentees and she must have to deal with a bunch of teenage ramblings about how bad life is. Bleh, haha.

Lately I've been thinking about my 2nd year trip. I'm really conflicted. Should I continue my college prep program at the UW, or should I take the chance to convince my parents that going to university in another state to study abroad is a better idea. I don't know...

However, in the end I think that I'm going to take the latter option. It just seems like an amazing opportunity to study abroad and I won't run into many other chances like it. Hopefully, I can convince my parents. Wish me luck.

Mentoring

I didn't fully understand the idea of being stretched thin until now.
For a mentoring program we call Frientors at Cleveland High School, juniors mentor freshmen into creating a path for themselves that lead to success. However, it's much tougher than it seems, especially if you're really dedicated to tutoring and your mentees need a lot of attention.
I find myself stuck over five mentees. I'm lucky that I have 3 mentees who I have time for because they don't need too much attention; however, the other two are a different story.
I just recently got a new mentee from a recommendation from my advisor (who started the program). I actually really like him now and we're buddies. The thing about him is that he just needs to focus in class. He's actually pretty smart and knows the ropes, he's just climbing up the wrong one at times. I think I'm going to be okay with him though because I gave him a little assignment to do and he completed it on time. I think for him it'll be fine, but my last mentee is the one making me the most worries.
His grades are not where they should be and he's only at school every other day. Coincidentally, he's not at school on the days when I plan to meet with him, and he knows when I meet with him. I think and hope it's just a coincidence however. For this last mentee, I think there's a problem at home for him. He can do his work and pays attention well when you talk to him 1-on-1, but his attendance just destroys his grade. I can't get him to school and he tells me he's really/too late a lot of days because he can't wake up. He's told me he's gone to the doctor, set multiple alarms, and had his parents wake up to no avail. I feel now that there's more to it. I think I'm sending this info to the people with the paychecks, trained to do this.
We'll just see how it goes. I'm hoping for his sake that it will turn out okay in the end.