Algebra II

Algebra II is pretty much the hardest class I have ever had the misfortune to take in my life. And I love my teacher as a person, but as a teacher I just don't understand anything she tries to teach me. What my friends and I have decided is that she doesn't speak kid, she speaks textbook. The teacher that I had in seventh and eighth grade was great at speaking kid, so I learned all year without feeling like I was learning at all. When we got to end of level tests, I was pretty proud of myself for only missing one question. He was just really laid back, so I actually kind of liked math. A lot of what helped was that most of the time was spent teaching, asking questions, and doing examples on the board, and then we had a small assignment that took about fifteen minutes. This year she just goes over what's in our study notes and then passes out a two-three page assignment that takes you a couple hours. And each assignment is only worth five points, but if you don't turn an assignment in then you stop getting curves on tests. Curves are really good, because when they're really high it's because everyone did bad, which happens a lot. I really wouldn't want to miss out on twenty extra points on a test I completely failed. So that's pretty much what motivates me to get my assignment in somehow. I'm not a very good test taker, especially not on timed tests (which hers all are). The hardest part about her class is that if you're sick for a day, you've just missed eighty minutes of stuff that takes forever to make up. This year math has just been really bad on my self esteem. When you can't seem to get a good score on any tests, you don't understand a word of what she's saying, and you're spending hours on assignments that you totally don't understand, it's kind of hard to feel good about yourself. So hopefully I won't fail this term and have to retake it again... Surprisingly I've actually managed to get all two A's and one A minus in her class so far this year. Mostly because if you are good during her class then she raises your grade up one level at the end of the term. (So like from an A minus to an A, or a B plus to an A minus) Hopefully I can do that again this term, but I have a feeling that I totally failed the test I took last week (I ran out of time). I got maybe two or three full pages done out of five, so I'm really just hoping that everyone else did bad so we have a higher curve. If nothing else, this class has made me challenge myself more and hopefully I'm getting better at math, even though it feels like I'm just getting worse. But I guess I'll just have to keep trying and doing the best I can and hope it works out.

"I've got a frog in my throat!" "iTengo una rana en la garganta!"

Well this week has just been delightful. While practicing for all my upcoming auditions, I noticed that my throat (that has been giving me problems for a few months) was cooperating less and less. Plus my nose was constantly stuffed up. Then I woke up Friday morning and all this was really bugging me, and my eyes were filled with a bunch of "gunk". I told my mom about all of this, so instead of going to school we went to see the doctor. After checking some things and taking a couple tests, he said that I had strep, pink eye, and a sinus infection. Since my choir audition was in three days (it's tomorrow at 8:10 PM) I was freaking out just a little bit. Luckily, the doctor had 4 different things to prescribe to me that he said worked really well. A pill called Amoxicillin for my strep that I have to take morning and night for 10 days, these tiny little red pills called Pseudoephedrine that help de-congest my nose and ears, eye drops for my pink eye that I take 3 times a day, and a nasal spray called Affrin that's really strong that helps extra-de-congest my nose. I made a chart so every morning, afternoon, and night I can remember what I'm supposed to be taking. So all weekend I've mostly just been resting with some tissues and Ricola cough drops nearby. The medicine works really well, because I've only been taking it for 3 days and I feel better than I have since before Christmas. I guess when they say, "If symptoms persist after a week, see your doctor," they mean it...

Anyways, Thursday, the day before I found out I was all sick and stuff, I went to the Foreign Language Fair at BYU. It was really fun, both Spanish classes came. The bus ride was about an hour long. Once we got there and sat through the boring opening ceremonies that no one was really listening to, we all had to do some kind of thing that we got a score on. I said a Spanish poem. I don't really get what it's about. But it's something about growing a white rose and giving it to your good friend and stuff like that. I got an Excellent! on it, so I was pretty proud of myself. Then we went upstairs to "Espańolandia", where we had to talk to all these fake Spanish store people, and we could only talk in Spanish. If we got caught speaking in English then they put us in jail. Honestly I spoke in English most of the time, just not when "la policía" were around. Once I had my "estampilla" in my "pasaporte" from all the people, it was lunch time. Since my sister goes to BYU, I talked to her during the day, and then she came over and had lunch with me. It was really fun since I don't get to see her that often. After she left, me and my friend went to the BYU Creamery there and got some "helado" (ice cream) that was "muy rico" (very delicious). After we went to the closing ceremonies, we got back on the bus. I slept most of the way home.

Partying With The Dinos

So for my term project for my Biology class, we have to go on two field trips. One to places like Farmington Bay, Dinosaur Park, etc, and the other one to somewhere like the zoo, Clark Planetarium, and places like that. So basically you have to go to one really boring place and one sort of fun place. So since you have to have one of them done by tomorrow, my friend and I both went to Dinosaur Park yesterday. Surprisingly, it was actually really fun. First we went through the museum part. My favorite part was the moving dinosaurs that made noises. There were games around that I think were mostly for little kids, but we played them anyways. They had like these touch screen word searches about different dinosaurs and stuff like that. After taking some pictures and getting some of the information we went to the outside part. They have this path thing that you walk on where they try to make you feel like you're in dinosaur time. Considering the fact that the park is meant for little kids, I thought some of it was kind of detailed. Like we walked by this nest with a bunch of little baby dinosaurs, and then about 5 feet away there's a velociraptor or something waiting to eat them! And then there were humongous creepy bugs and rats and stuff sitting around on rocks. I was kind of scared, but maybe little kids are a little braver than me. And I know that we don't really know what color dinosaurs are, but it was still kind of funny when we walked past a bright pink one. There were a ton of different kinds of dinosaurs and there were little things next to them that told you about them. I'd be lying if I said we read them all. But we had a lot of fun and took tons of pictures. At the end of the path thing there's a park for the kids to play in. It's a park, but it still kind of shows them some more types of dinosaurs, and there were even some pretty weird prehistoric frogs that you could climb on. What was really weird is that we think we saw a couple getting their wedding pictures done there. They were posing on the dinosaurs and stuff and they had a professional photographer following them around and taking the pictures. I mean they looked cute, but it was kind of.... well, a weird place to get pictures taken for your wedding. We just assumed that maybe that's where they met, or where they went on their first date or something. Me and my friend took some pictures too and had my little sister be the photographer. So even though going to Dinosaur Park sounded really lame, it turned out to be fun, pretty much because we made it fun. So if you have some spare time, six bucks, and nothing to do, try Dinosaur Park! The dinos really know how to party!