Junior year introductions

So today was the first day of my junior year, the day I have been dreading since.. oh I don't know, the beginning of summer pretty much.

I'm quite happy with the people I have in my classes, more familar faces than I had previously thought. But I was entirely right about the workload, it's pretty bad already and it's only gonna get crazier. So to make myself feel better, I got some froyo afterschool :)

A rundown:
1st - AP Calc AB, Ms. Nguyen: Rumors abound that she is a hard teacher, not as lenient as Mr. Bautista, but will prepare you well for the AP test. That's gonna be one of my hard classes, I can tell already. She has a take-no-crap attitude, but seems like a generally nice and helpful teacher overall. We have a quiz on the unit circle tomorrow, which I never fully learned with Mrs. Leggin.
2nd - Honors English, Conradson: She is such a cute lady. I didn't know she was Mr. Hanley's wife! The stuff we are gonna do in class looks to be pretty boring though; we're gonna read books I never would have taken a second glance at. A WHOLE LOT of in class essays during the year, FML. We had a project due and a test today.. ALREADY, and we have an in-class essay tomorrow. The people in this class are awesome though, a whoooole lot of familar faces :)
3rd - French 3, Topping: She seems to be a fun lady, definitely won't drive me crazy like Mollot. Topping speaks too much French though damn it, and we have to write an entire letter in French that's due tomorrow. The kids from Mollot are gonna be so behind cause we barely learned anything... Oh btw, my new French name is Simone because Bettina said it sounded "sassy."
4th - Anatomy, Hentschke: He's awesome! Seems to be pretty lenient (doesn't believe in weekend homework YAY!) and has a sense of humor. I'm worried about memorizing body parts though, my memory sucks. But he has 3 microwaves in his class so I don't have to eat school food! Haha.
5th - AP Chem, Meyer: She's cool, so many memories in that class and here we are again. It's definitely gonna be a demanding class though (no lunch? no SSR?). I'm gonna struggle a whole lot more than I did with Honors Chem. Some fun people in that class though.
6th - Journalism, Colburn: He has a wicked sense of humor! As long as I do the work, that class is pretty much my free period. "I'm gonna talk about stuff, you're gonna learn stuff, then you're gonna do stuff."

On the brightside, I will be at college in exactly 2 years.. hooray. It's hard to believe that it was only two years ago that I was a freshmen, it seems like a lifetime ago. And it was nice to see people I haven't seen all summer; no one has changed all that much.

Oh, I am so lost on what to do because either way, someone gets hurt. And I feel like anything I do will be absolutely wrong and irreversible. I just need some time.

Corsages and peonies

I got home yesterday to discover a dozen or so beautiful couples in my front yard. Turns out, I had forgotten that I let the seniors take pictures at my house for their senior ball! Hahaha, told you my memory is bad. Anyways, they were totally nice about not intruding on my family and they weren't strangers or anything cause I knew most of them. I got a picture too but it looked weird cause I wasn't dressed up. Our senior ball is in exactly 2 years!

So anyways, my family drove deep, deep into the hills today to find this supposedly magical peony farm. My parents love peonies cause they were the flowers of the royal Chinese family thousands of years ago. Actually, scratch that; all Chinese parents will instantly recall stories about the flower, even I have heard stories from my grandparents. It's actually a very beautiful flower, more so than roses. The lady (after hearing stories about this asian flower, I was surprised to discover that the lady who sells them isn't asian, she is white) that sells it has like hundreds of varieties she imports from China with her very own importation license (I didn't know that a flower importation license existed). Her husband raises 16 llamas that just lounge around and eat hay, he told me he used to raise 42! How cool would that be... to be able to say, "Hey guys, guess what? I live 30 minutes away from civilization, deep in the hills. Also, I raise llamas and my wife sells Chinese flowers. What do you do?" Haha! Below is a picture (not taken by me) of a peony called Caroline Mather. Ain't she pretty? :)

But I'm a riot, yeah.

I really don't want to take US history next year. No one else is and I don't want to fall behind cause I wasted a class period taking it. If only Mission didn't have that stupid rule to take only 1 class in the summer! And I can't do Ohlone or Deanza cause they interfere with another class. Ugh. Foothill and San Jose City College have yet to release their summer schedule. I am thinking about filling out the petition for enrollment exceptions but I can't think of a good reason why I should be an exception. Or maybe since they have an online class for US history, taking physics and US history together technically do not count as a 2 classes... hm. I'll ask my counselor next week and hopefully she can help me. All of that has just been bothering me. The more I get done this summer, the less I do next year so I can focus on all those stupid tests I have to take.

I crack my bones a lot. Is that a bad thing? Cause I heard it can mess up your bones. I can't help it though, I feel so stiff all the time. I do stretch every night but I don't think that really affects my bones, other than the fact that I am getting more and more flexible. I hope I don't develop that bone thing, osteoporosis? *knock on wood.

I have absolutely NOWHERE to go this weekend, for once! No Chinese school, no volunteer stuff, no tennis. I love it. Unfortunately, I have more homework to do than usual which is gross. But since I don't have to go anywhere, I can finish it by Saturday and go on a one-day road trip with my family like we always used to do. The weather is supposedly nice this weekend.

Gmail > Yahoo Mail, hands down.