Separate Paths

Yeah, it's late at night (1:30 A.M.). I can't sleep, rather, I don't feel sleepy. I'm just sitting here at my desk thinking about all kinds of things. Then I thought that I should update this blog again.

This time, I'm going to write a post that's probably a bit more personal. [You have been warned. Turn back now if you don't wanna read something deep and depressing...] It's something that's been on my mind lately, what with preparing for my final days of high school and my future days in college. As you can guess by the title, it's about when people part ways in life. I'm finding that the older I get, the more people begin to drop out of my life as they move on to a different path.

I'm sure you know the feeling. That feeling of not necessarily losing a friend, but having a wedge of distance placed in your friendship. Since around 6th grade, I've had quite a few friendships have this wedge placed in them. Friends have moved away or started attending public school. With closer friends, sometimes irritation with differences forces a distance between us. And when I see the person a year or so after they leave, either we pick up our friendship where we left off, or the conversation is awkward with the usual "How's life?" talk. My point is, even though the pain from distance eventually eases, I hate the fact that the friendship has dissolved, either a little or a lot. Am I the only one? Even though I've gotten used to not seeing those people, am I the only one who still hates the loss in that friendship? Even after years of distance? I hate it.

As my junior year approaches its halfway point, I'm beginning to prepare myself to say goodbye to the two seniors in our home school group. They're both great friends of mine, both of whom I've known since, I believe, 7th grade. This'll be tough, and I know it's going to happen. I'm going to miss the laughter they cause with their humor and characteristic comments. I'll miss their presences in their usual seats in the classroom. I'll look through our yearbook a hundred times or so just to relive the memories. But recently I found out that those two aren't the only ones who are leaving.

He's someone I consider one of my closer guy friends, though I don't know if that feeling is mutual as a gal pal. However, a few weeks ago, I was practically blown clear out of the water when I discovered that he wants to go to school next year. Since he lives a distance away, that pretty much means I'll hardly, if not never, see him. I'm not gonna lie: it has made me upset and very sad.

No, I'm not looking forward to three more empty seats in my world next year. That gap that I hate so much will once more appear, and I don't want to get used to it. If anyone knows me, they know I hate change. But what I hate even more is loss.

Thank God for technology like Facebook and Skype.

[Sorry if this is too personal for a blog post. You were warned. But like I said, it's been on my mind, and it's late, and that's what happens to me sometimes. I know, this isn't my diary or something. But I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way about these things. It's something I hope will create a mutual feeling...or blah. Whatever. I'll shut up now. Goodnight. ;) ]

~K

Funny Animal Video: British Animal Voiceovers

I'm sure a lot of people have seen this already, but if you haven't, watch it now!

~K

Merry Christmas!

The most wonderful time of the year...ahhh...
A break from the grind of school, at last! Time to do whatever I want for two weeks!
Ok, so, maybe it's down to a week and a half. I've squandered half a week already. And I still have homework, namely reading The Picture of Dorian Gray for my book report. I'm actually enjoying it, but I feel as if all of the characters are rather childish and whiny. I imagine that my friend Charlotte would enjoy ranting about this book if she was the one reading it.

Shealinn and I had a fun-filled Christmas Eve. I slept in pretty late (courtesy of my crazy idea to stay up as late as I could for no reason), then dragged Shealinn into doing a photo shoot with me. That took forever, especially since I was the one running around trying to rearrange the furniture and search for our little white fan. After we finished, the sun was already going down. Christmas Eve was ending already?? Time to get ready for our neighborhood illumination/iluminary/whatever they call it.

It's a wonderful tradition in our neighborhood to take white paper bags with sand and a candle in the bottom and place them along the median strips by the sidewalks. The result is a beautiful flickering display of glowing lights in the quiet of the night. Shealinn and I took a walk around the block later that night to enjoy the display. But before that, we partook in the chaos of making dinner, cookies, and messily assembling the gingerbread house. Regarding the gingerbread house, all I could say to Mom was, "It's not pretty, but at least it'll be tasty." This was the first year she made us assemble the pieces. I think she regrets it now.

After the aforesaid walk, Shealinn and I sat in the basement, decorating presents with bows and ribbons. Add some Cody Simpson music. And some belittling insults about each other's decorating skills. And random guesses at what presents we were getting. And hysterical laughter. Eventually we got tired (it was close to 11) and began slapping bows on the last presents instead of painstakingly decorating them.

Finally, after we prepared to retire to bed, Shealinn came into my room and we commenced our final tradition of the day: reading a few Christmas stories from our old children's Christmas story book.

Yeah, I can't wait for Christmas, and I really should be going to bed. I'm definitely getting excited as if I was little kid again.

Merry Christmas! Happy Birthday Jesus!

~K

Catching Up

Wow, I realized that it's been almost two months since I updated my blog, even though I know hardly anyone reads this thing anyway. But school, school, school has kept me so busy! This'll be a quick post, hopefully. Please ignore any grammar mistakes or choppy writing. :-P
Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy birthday to me!
And anything else I missed...

Not much to say about my birthday. It was quiet except for everyone's singing to me at Awana later that night. On Tuesday we brought cake into class. Everyone was there to sing for me except two, and I forced them to sing for their cake when they returned from the cafeteria. More like, they dragged out the song and sang off key, or at least one of them did, which ended up being the highlight of my week. Later on Thursday, at fencing, everyone sang for me and my fencing buddy, who has the same birthday as me but is three years younger. And Shealinn got me a Timcanpy plush doll for a present! If you've seen the anime D.Gray-man, you'll know what I'm talking about.

I had a good Thanksgiving break with my family. My grandmother came to visit and stayed with us for a week. My sister and I played board and card games with her and had lots of fun teasing each other. I was still wrapped up with homework even then. Thanksgiving Day came and went with our family gathering at our house. We hosted our typical family debates, this time about the existence of evil in the world...or something like that. Good food, laughs, and shouting debates make up the best of our family gatherings, which is why I love my family.

Now I'm back to the grind. I had another calculus test for which I have yet to find out my grade. But I'll be finding out tomorrow. I feel pretty good about it though. Oh, our home school group is having a Christmas party after class instead of lunch...come to think of it, my youth group has a Christmas party too on Wednesday night...

BUSY!

Just watch, it'll be another two months before I update again.... ;-)

~K

Answers about Home Schooling and a High School Dream

As a home schooler, it's no surprise that I get a lot of questions about homeschooling. I've been thinking about it a lot recently, and I thought I should answer some of those questions now. These are the ones I get a lot from friends and strangers alike.

"Why are you home schooled? Why not go to public school?"
Like it or not, there are a ton of problems with the public school system. The problems don't apply to every school, but some that I've heard about are things like bullying, problematic or incapable teachers who sometimes can't control a classroom, social classes in the school society, etc., not to mention that the average score on each section of the SAT is now below 500. That's scary. I did, in fact, have a choice of going to public school or being home schooled for high school. Maybe I was too scared to try public school and face the unknown, but honestly, I do not regret being home schooled one bit.

"Do you sleep in everyday?"
No. We don't get up as early as you who are in public school, but we don't sleep in until lunch time (I'm not exaggerating. Some think that I sleep in that late.). Our parents would throw a conniption if we did that. My best friend gets up at 3:30 for swimming, and another friend must be up by six because he attends NOVA classes. I know that my other friends get up at a range between six and seven. As for myself, I get up between seven and eight -- I'm just not a morning person unfortunately.

"Do you do your homework in your PJs?"
Yeah, I do. Ok, well, only in PJ pants. It's really comfy, you should try it sometime! Just kidding. I know my best friend does homework in PJ pants, but I don't know who else does. That aside, yes, it does happen.

"Do you get homework? Do you get a lot? Is it hard?"
First of all, what makes you think we don't get homework? Yes! We get homework, just like any normal student does. As for the amount and difficulty, it depends for everyone. It also depends on how many and what classes we take. For me, I'm working on homework for most of my time. I have a bit of a procrastination problem that I'm still working on fixing, but I do have a life aside from homework. I'd say the hardest class I have right now might be the NOVA calculus class I'm taking, only because of the amount of work. It's an honors class, so that's kind of expected.

"Does your mom/Do your parents teach you?"
Well, yeah. But when we get to the middle school or high school levels, most of us take classes at a co-op, or home school group. The sizes of these groups varies, but we pay a teacher to come teach a class or classes. My group is small (the high school group is between fifteen and twenty students) and we have two teachers. But my mom teaches history and science, while my dad teaches our math. I'm taking the NOVA class, of course, but dad still helps me with my homework when I'm stuck.

"Do you stay at home all of the time?"
This question isn't as frequent, but it does pop up from time to time. But frankly, I don't understand why I/we get this question at all -- no offense. We aren't unsocial freaks who live in a dark room with our homework all day. We do sports, clubs, and go out to places all the time. In fact, the best part about being home schooled is that we go where we want during the week and.....nobody is there. Take, for example, the library. If I went there on a Thursday afternoon, I find that it's devoid of any kids and teens alike. It's practically empty. Of course, there are always the weird stares that scream, "What are you doing out of school?? Are you some kind of delinquent??" which is kind of funny.

"Aren't you worried that you miss out on homecoming/pep rallies/clubs/prom?"
No? Not really. I don't know what any of that stuff is like, so I don't suppose I miss it. I do have one exception, however. Ok, so time for a little secret of mine to be revealed.
*Deep breath*
It's kind of my high school dream to go to a dance, like prom, before I graduate. I reallllyyyyy want to go to a high school dance just that badly. I see it in movies, read it in some books, and I always get a bit of a longing for it. I want to get all excited weeks before a prom. Go out with my girlfriends to pick a stunning dress. Have a guy ask me to the dance. Get all dolled up on the big night. Hear the doorbell ring and know that my date is waiting outside for me. Meeting and giggling with my girlfriends about the excitement when I get there. And the magical experience of the dancing, like in the movies....
I don't know everything about high school dances, but yeah. I suppose that's something unusual coming from me, for those who know me. But seriously, I want that. Hey, I have a feminine side. I'm not a total "tomboy". :-P

Anyway, if there are anymore questions you want answered, I will happily answer them. But just know that home schoolers are not, I repeat, are not aliens. We're just educated in a different way.

~K

Busy!

I haven't written here in a while. I've been unbelievably busy! Even now I should be studying...I have a calc test tomorrow afternoon. It seems like 24/7 I'm yawning and wishing that I was in bed. What's making it worse is this sudden cold weather. *shivers*

School has been going well, and I have a test coming up like I said. I started my Japanese class last Saturday, and it's a bucket of fun. My sensei, or teacher, is a short elderly Japanese native. Of course, Japanese can't pronounce "L," and since my name has two of them, she always pronounces it like Koreen-san*. All of her L's come out as an R sound, but I knew ahead of time about the L's and R's. It's perfectly fine with me, plus before class started, I was curious to how my teacher would deal with my name. Aside from that, she's pretty funny sometimes. For example, this past class six of us stepped up to the board to practice writing Hirogana. Once, when she rechecked someone's writing, she saw her own exemplified writing and exclaimed, "Good! That is much better!" Then she did a double-take and saw that it was her own hand-writing. "Oh, no wonder it is so good! That's mine!" Much laughter ensued. But she's a wonderful teacher with a good sense of lightheartedness. Oh yeah, it's an adult class and only two of us are gals. Everyone is so nice and loves to act my age.

That aside, well, not much else is going on. I should probably get back to studying before Awana tonight. Ugh.

~K

* -san is the Japanese honorific for Ms., Mrs., or Mr. Something like that. :)

Rain Down

Whew! How about all of that rain we've been having? Talk about many natural disasters. First an earthquake, then a hurricane, and now flooding! Sheesh.

I went walking out in the rain a few times the day before yesterday, taking pictures and a video of the flooding in our yard. We had three rivers flowing through our yard, not including the drainage and sidewalks. I had to retrieve a garbage can from the curb, but doing so almost got me knocked off of my feet several times. As soon as I wrestled the current and can in my favor and retreated inside, Mom pointed out a huge branch that was blocking the water drainage at the curb. It was a fairly large branch, one that had fallen from our tree during Hurricane Irene. Darn. Out I went again, umbrella and all. The branch was harder to manage than the garbage can, but I finally dragged it back into our yard. After I finished, my clothes were soaking.

The next day (yesterday) as we drove home from an allergy treatment, we saw that a road that bridged a creek was partially destroyed. Mom, Shealinn, and I all wished we had a camera. The entire route home was still eventful with flooded roads though.

But now I'm thankful that the sun has decided to grace us with it's ever "sunny" presence, along with fluffy white clouds and a sapphire sky. However, now I wonder about the end times even more. Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods - they seemed so far away to me since this area doesn't experience those things very often. But after these recent events, well, it honestly frightens me. Nevertheless, I can't stop whatever God is planning to do.