backtrack

shouting underwater

Wednesday, February 9

My mom accidentally spilled hot seaweed soup on my right arm and stomach area. A lot of my skin ripped off immediately at that time, and it currently still looks terrible now. Luckily Ms. Sheena gave me two small bottles of Melaleuca oil to put on early, so I am still in the process of waiting for the battle wounds to heal. Near my stomach area, the skin ripped off into a shape of a heart. Tiffany thought it was my birthmark, but no. It wasn't.

Friday, February 11

I skipped a day of school to go to the Special Ed Valentine's Day dance with the kids at Yerba Buena High School. We took three different buses and lots of long walks to get to the school safely together. The overall event was just amazing. They had their own DJ spinning music for them, and everyone had a good time dancing with each other in general. Even Kyle, who was shy at first, got excited to jump up and down after awhile. The lunch sacks were so adorable because Yerba Buena had its own special ed classes decorate the sacks for the other schools who were coming to the dance. Inside, were neatly half cut Lee's Sandwiches, bags of regular potato chips, and Valentine's Day themed pieces of chocolate for everyone. Out in the lobby, they even had a heart shaped balloon arch for photo sessions! I got the chance to finally meet Amy's infamous boyfriend Tony. Despite the fact that he actually fit into all the horrible criteria that most of the teachers placed him in within the short time frame of the dance, he seemed to make Amy immediately act as if she were an entirely different person-in a good way, that was. I say this because you just know when Amy is angry at you.

After we left the dance, we went downtown to wait for the second bus. There, I played pretend Power Rangers with Kenny and Eliza. I pretended like I knew who the pink ranger was and how she acted. Kyle joined in and actually didn't seem shy to pose when everyone else was posing. From there, my time with the special ed kids concluded for the day. As soon as I got home, I started my Saturday school homework and then hurriedly worked on the photobooth grams that I wanted to give out to the TGIF group. I gave in a lot of time after midnight to create the photobooth prop signs because I wanted to have a dreamy and surprisingly festive Valentine's Day party for the TGIF gang. I remember going to bed around after 3:00 AM that night.

Saturday, February 12

After 3 hours of sleep, I was out by 6:00 AM in my backyard putting up the purple, pink, and blue streamers. I set up the rectangle table and laid out my ideas from my chicken scratch drawings from some old crumpled binder paper. Surely things worked out the way I wanted them to work out, and I was off to pick up Anne by 8: 40 AM for school. When we got off at 11:30 AM , my dad immediately took us to get sandwiches for lunch, and I picked up a few more bags of supplies for the party until 12:30 PM . Tiffany arrived at my gate at 12:35 PM, and from there, we worked on our English video project props, while Anne continued helping me decorate my "photobooth" with streamers and balloons. By 2:30 PM , Tiffany, Anne, and I met up with Dan at Cataldi Park to wait for Amy to arrive with the swimming noodles for the video. Unfortunately she was out of luck in finding swimming noodles in this season at most stores, so she ended up driving all of us to Sports Authority at the Great Mall. Luckily, I found exactly two hidden swimming noodles behind these big surfboards. It was just perfect. We quickly grabbed them and headed back to the park to set up our obstacles for the video. All of this took us until 5:30 PM, when we finally finished the core of our video. Heading back to my house, I continued to work on decorating and setting up until 7:30 PM when Laurie arrived at my gate. My dad then reheated the stuffed pizza and we enjoyed a very festive dinner outside on my patio in the dark. Dan never ended up coming, but Lin did. After our photobooth session, Tiffany, Laurie, Lin, Anne, and I went back in my house to make hot cups of green tea to sip on and baked goods to bite on. Then we just caught up with Glee together, in my room. After everyone left, Tiffany and I ended up staying up until 2:00 AM just laying on my bed talking about our ideal future hangouts and what's probably going to happen after high school ends. It was the best pre-Valentine's Day weekend I've ever put together and had.

Sunday, February 13

The on-going day just continued after Saturday, when I woke up from a four hour sleep to prepare for the Key Club breakfast at Cataldi Park. I stayed until 10:00 AM and went back home to edit and create the video for our English project until the night grew old. Now I've never ever, ever in my life edited or made a movie before. At that point, I just remember thinking that group projects can never be up to any good. But then I thought about it again, and realized that the good thing was that learning to actually use Windows Movie Maker once could actually benefit my knowledge into creating home movies on my own in the future later; so I did it. It took me a little more than 8 hours altogether to put the videos, pictures, text, and music into a four minutes and 54 seconds video. In the end, I made sure that we had the video on my Youtube account, Tiffany's USB stick, and two extra DVD disc copies, so nothing could go wrong on the actual final turn-in day. My biggest accomplishment on that day was trying something that I've never tried before, and teaching myself to work on the one thing that everyone kept on putting off.  With group projects, I always tend to realize that it's actually really difficult to rely on anyone at all during these crucial times; because usually the only person I could ever trust and rely on in the end every time, is myself and only myself. Full group effort had always been a rare thing for me. But all in all, I'm glad that the video worked out just fine and everyone enjoyed watching it.

Monday, February 14

Valentine's Day actually happened for me on Sunday afternoon when I took my quick hiatus to visit my grandma at her house. She just got out of the hospital on the same weekend, so I brought her the heart shaped helium balloons I originally got for her, (but used for part of my photobooth for the Valentine's Day party ) , fake roses (so they would never die),  a picture frame of the two of us (that she's been asking for for the longest time), and the heart shaped felt gift I made for her a few weeks ago. She was really happy that I came by to visit, so while my mom went out to get groceries for her, we celebrated our early Valentine's Day by spending our lunch quietly together.

Tuesday, February 15 to today

I worked on my "Going for the Looks" essay for English and wrapped it up by Wednesday.

On another note, Christine, Trang, Kevin, and I have been holding Key Club interview for executive officer positions throughout the week rain or shine. This year, a lot of people signed up and it was extra exciting to be the one listening to the speeches in the library this time around, instead of being the one giving the speeches myself. All the speeches and interviews this week really reminded me of what I went through in my past experiences. Surely, we are the future. I see a lot of future leaders who have a lot of potential to bring about well-rounded unity, compassionate companionship, and committed dedication to Key Club itself. The best of luck goes to all of the running candidates.

Winter Break is going to start after tomorrow ends, but I just wanted to catch up with my blogging tonight because I felt as thought my Winter Break had just begun a few minutes ago. This hectic week of an on-going slow, but fast pace of running is finally coming to a short stop, my friends. Enjoy the time while you can, because time waits for no one.