Current mood:	accomplished
Current music:	Some song from the Corner With Love OST, I can't read the the name of it (yet!)
Entry tags:	dreams

The right thing is no longer written in faded grey letters for us to trace. That's what was left of it when we got off the training wheels stage of having it printed in front of you in bold black letters: THIS is what is good, THIS is how you should live. Now we're into that fuzzy stage where sometimes you remember the lines you've always traced, but you wonder if it suits your handwriting after all. And if not, what will you do? And when will you get scolded and by whom?

I'm actually trying though. Lessee, I went out with Danae on Tuesday, and even though J-boy wasn't at the store we sat around and chatted with JC for a few hours. Then we went to Waffle House and snacked to help us warm up.

Though I've resolved not to worry about the guy thing for now, I could not help but to swoon a bit on Wednesday. I mean c'mon, back-to-back accents and pretty hair? That's just not fair! *sighs* Ah well, if pretty hair boy knows what's good for him, he'll drop out of Chinese. S'much as I'd like to have him around, he doesn't stand a chance of surviving 102 having never taken 101, especially since he seemed rather preoccupied with texting on Friday (and didn't come to Chinese Corner... *mutters*). Accent guy's just fun to listen to, but since he rarely talks and looks rather bored, he might not prove to be long-term entertainment either. Oh well...

I have friends in lots of my classes this semester. There's M. in Urbanization (and hopefully from this Tuesday on, he'll be in Geography as well), B. and A. and S. in Chinese (and now we've met J2. and J. counts too... maybe...), I don't know him real well, but L.'s in my Digital Media class, so that's cool. So on and so forth. I dropped piano though, because on the first day, I skipped it to sit in the bookstore and read for my 4:00 PM Urbanization class (my textbook hadn't come in yet at the time). It actually felt like the right decision, given all the signs. I was becoming borderline superstitious towards the end there.

That day I read in the bookstore, by the way? It snowed! So pretty, there was a delay that didn't affect my classes whatsoever. I had breakfast that day with Deans and Skateboard. It was fun, I felt almost giddy to be back.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention. On Monday, called a truce with Poggy, and went with her and Deans and this other guy to watch Gran Torino. I actually reeeeally liked it, and I wasn't scared out of my wits like I'd expected I would be. Maybe that's because of the way the ending turned out? Anyway, Poggy was a little miffed about their way of portraying Hmong people in the movie. When we got out of the theater- it was snowing! When I got back to the dorm, Skateboard and I watched some TV in the lobby and snacked and chatted until 2 in the morning. It seemed like a good way to start the new semester, lack of sleep aside.

Anyways, Thursday! On Thursday, I had that Urbanization class. The teacher kept having these moments of pause where he'd ask us to contribute our summary of what we read and no one would volunteer. It was kind of sad, most of the kids in the class (scratch that, probably all of them except me) need this class to graduate. They've got years more of experience with these kinds of subjects. And they know so much more (they make that clear when they actually DO raise their hands and rattle off some amazing stuff). But I really was the only one to talk about the material like I'd read it. And I did, it wasn't me just trying to fill the silence like I did in high school. I really stayed up late and looked up all the acronyms I didn't know and EVERYTHING to make sure I was prepared for class. So when M. said "Good comments" to me after class, I really felt a sense of satisfaction at that.

Friday I had Chinese Corner, beat up on J. by accident (I don't mean to be mean to him, mean words just come out of my mouth!). But we had fun and our chitchat had us leaving the EUC an hour later than we'd planned. Then it was a surprise party for Poggy at Hollywood's apartment. It was lots of fun actually, I kicked butt at Disney Scene It (minus the rules, and minus one literature question- dangit!), got to see Snake, ate a cupcake- good times, all in all.

At some point on Friday (or was it Thursday?) my foot started hurting. It got real bad, I was really worried, especially when it was still there and just as bad the next day. It's a little better now, but I'm still concerned. Here's hoping it leaves on its own, and soon. I'm not happy about the fact that I'm starting to expect it to hurt when I walk!

Moving on, Saturday- Korean lessons started at 9:30. I forgot to bring my money, but they seemed okay with it, I'll pay them next time. Class was hilarious, as usual. Let me never jokingly be innovative with Korean syllables again, okay? It ends up with a discussion on the many ways to say 'shit'. -_-;;; Truly a memorable class. But I DID learn that 'uncle' sounds a lot like 'wound' in Korean, and that I'm ethnocentric, after all! (Hurrah?). I discovered that I get frustrated when I can't figure out whether the teacher's saying a 'g' or a 'k', a 'd' or a 't', a 's' or a 'ss', etc etc. Then I started thinking about it, and I realized that OF COURSE it sounds funny to me. He's not saying ANY of those letters! The reason he can't clarify which one is because that sound doesn't EXIST in the English language. I need to stop expecting Korean to fit into my English-based hearing. That discovery was a bit humbling and I'll try to look at things more carefully from now on.

After class, there was the calligraphy lesson. I'm proud to say that I didn't do AS badly with horizontal lines as with last week's vertical lines. That is, I didn't put any holes in the paper ("Calligraphy shows your inner self", "My inner self is a mess!!"). I'm still pretty dang bad, though. Danae's got a real knack for it, I envy her big time for that. We're still worse than even the other beginner twelve year olds in the class, but we're trying. I got lots of ink on my hands this time, and it's yet to come off in some spots. I'm sort of proud of that, funnily enough. I keep thinking about that Korean short story I read about calligraphy, "The Golden Phoenix". I still don't get it, but I'm going to keep trying.

There was a really cute girl in the calligraphy class this time. Her name is R., and she's such a brat! She kept picking on the young assistants (by young, I mean younger than me and Danae), and she kept rolling her eyes about being stuck in this 'exciting' class. Danae and I adored her *giggles*. She spoke English, so we could actually comprehend the full extent of her disdain, and she was so obnoxious, it was really quite endearing. She high fived the assistants in class just to put ink on their hands. ^_^ The other girl, I can't remember her name, but she high fived me half-heartedly. We're really starting to get accepted there a bit- or at least, I can hope, right?

After that, Danae and I returned to my house to petsit. We took care of all the animals, then we went to an Asia Market, got some ingredients and made a Korean dinner for ourselves. Now, a couple of notes about this. One, at the shop, the lady at the counter said "Xin nian kuai le" to the customer before us. She didn't say anything of the sort to us, and when she started talking to the next customer, she used Chinese, then switched to English when the customer responded in English. So I threw back a quick "Xin nian kuai le" of my own on the way out, as a test. I hope I surprised her, but anyway, she said "Ah, good job!", and I replied "Xie xie" with a terrible grin on my face that I just couldn't cover.

The food we made? Absolutely amazing. Probably not at all authentic. But so so so good. We made jjajangmyun with some flat type of noodles, this potato dish with soy sauce, sugar, and onions, (and some corn syrup). We added zucchini to the potato dish and both agreed that was a good call. We also had Chinese steamed bread. At first, we couldn't figure out how to steam it, so we baked our first rolls. They were tasty, but not how I remembered them. Then Danae thought to put a siv (apparently called a 'colander' actually?) on top of a pot of boiling water. That did the trick, and the bread that came out was just as soft and flavorless as I remembered it being- mmmm!! I seriously think I ate more than I normally do in two whole days in just that meal. It sure felt like it!

After stuffing ourselves, we watched the Dreamworks version of Sinbad. I'm sure on a serious evaluation, it'd get a low rating as far as films go, but I really enjoyed it. Their way of illustrating Eris and her minions was so pretty. And the plot was fun, albeit super cheesy and too short at some points.

I forgot to mention- before shopping, we cut out giant brown construction paper circles. Danae's gonna use 'em to make fortune cookies for the Chinese New Year in her class.

Sunday morning we did homework. Bleh, the Digital Media had so many terms and companies and sources I didn't recognize, argh!! The departure from the house was awkward, with me not bothering to put down the stuff in my hands to hug my mom. That didn't bother me, and I didn't realize it would bother her. 'Course, it did. *shrugs* Still have things to fix, I guess.

The point of this ridiculously long entry? I'm trying. I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be doing. I'm not completely there yet, and I'm not feeling like I'm there yet (or is it "I'm feeling like I'm not there yet", since they're both very different statements?). I'm trying though. I can feel that. I'm trying to ignore my anger and my hate and my instinct to smash everything I'm trying right now to build up, especially with people. I'm trying to get past the self-doubt, trying to get over the irrational thought that I can resent people for not looking out for me more. I'm trying. Because if I keep this up, I think, I might just be able to pass myself off as a person someday. Just think. A real person.

Joanna Wang has a new youtube page. I'm absolutely thrilled. If I had money I felt comfortable spending on myself in that manner, I'd buy her album this instant. I love her voice, her attitude, and her character. I really respect her, though I think if I met her in real life her straightforwardness would intimidate the hell outta me.

Okay, it's half an hour past my intended bedtime, so I'm gonna go crash now. Hope everyone's been having an amazing semester/not-so-cold winter so far. Later, all *waves*.

PS- From a loooong time ago. That night I had that dream? I also dreamed that I was taking care of chinchillas and they got out and Bonnie sat on one. The others were okay, but that one was breathing funny, and I woke up with my chest feeling all tight 'cause in the dream, it seemed likely that the chin would die. Last night, I woke up at first from a dream where I was a bad person (can't remember in what way), but I went back to sleep and deemed my second wake up more acceptable.