Coincidences

Have you ever heard of those?

I have the weirdest time right now:
Back last semester, when there were 8 to 11 Rockets players enrolled at KSS, I didn't really see a single one - and I always watched the masses to see the grey sweaters with the Ogopogo Monster emblem on the right side.
But to no avail - I would glimpse the sweaters, or something that might have been similar sweaters, but never really.
And now, where there are only 4 Rockets left at KSS (the rest graduated already), I keep seeing them everywhere.
Yesterday, for example, I almost ran over Chartier - okay, it would probably better to say that he almost ran be over, since he has something close to a foot and  more than 30 pounds on me, but fact is that he was hurrying through the hallway with his eyes lowered, I was hurrying through the hallway with my eyes glued to my kindle (no, I can't even stop reading for that long) and I looked up at the last moment basically and managed to jump into my classroom - but it was close.
And then I was waiting outside for Andy to pick me up - and guess who's standing maybe 15 feet away from me? Two guys clad in grey Rockets sweaters!
And today, while I was supposed to be in class, I excused myself to get my headphones out of my locker, and I think it's obvious whom I met in the completely deserted hallways, right? Chartier and the last Rocket.

Since I embarrassed myself with one question (I asked him what it felt like to be down on ice level when the National Anthem was sung and then clarified I meant standing on the blue line - being the starting line -, which is not something a rookie like Chartier would experience... And I didn't realize it until much, much later, so duh), I only ducked my head and took the stairs two at a time...
But I could have handled that smoother.

Other than that ... school was alright.
Since I'm running on way too little sleep (I just can't go to bed), I handed in the wrong, incomplete version of an assignment and got a C- for it, by far my worst grade this year. I hope I can remedy that tomorrow by presenting the correct version.

And in Creative Writing we formed Palindromes - poems you can read from top to bottom and they are dark, and then you read all the lines in reverse order - starting with the bottom most line and then going upwards (you're still reading the words in the correct order, it's only the lines that have changed).
Here is my attempt. The content isn't superb, but they're hard enough to write as it is, not to mention to find content:

They'd broken up three years ago
Even after having lied that
They loved each other
They didn't
All they did was mock and hurt
We'd thought
That they would get married
It was quite the shock

And now read it from the bottom up! :)
It was really cool to do that!

And that's about it... Nothing interesting...

Have a great day!

Julia

Rockets Wednesday

So, I've got about an hour starting from now (11 p.m.) to write my blog entry and finish everything up - mother's orders (plus Andy's orders, so there's no way I can not do it).

I'm super relaxed. Even though we have two tests tomorrow and I am less than well prepared.

I woke up this morning, almost fell back asleep, pulled on my American Eagle Sweater, pulled my Canada Olympics sweater over it, was still freezing, trudged upstairs, had a bowl of cereal, sleep-walked back downstairs, somehow managed to brush my teeth and even left the house at a decent hour. I thought I was late (8:28 a.m. at the bus stop), but I was still the first one!
As always, I read on the way to school, and once there, I grabbed my Spanish books out of my locker, checked whether Mr Wishlow was there (he wasn't, so I left him a note telling him it had been suggested we take the picture of him and Chartier at the rink) and hurried to my Spanish class - the teacher doesn't like us being late, like, not at all.

Didn't matter though, I was there half a minute or so before the bell rang.
We were assigned 6 pages or so of exercises in our work book, and I powered through them because I had Math to do, which I then did. I got pretty far, I dare say!

I took my Math stuff to Entrepreneurship, too, and while the boys in our group said they would come up with a different slogan for our project (they screwed around on fb and the web instead), I was doing Math (and designed a new logo whilst doing that).

Lunch was of course ESL - it's been changed to Wednesdays now, but Ms Snuggs wasn't there, so we had a sub - Mr Kletke's sub, and he still remembered me!

I dashed out of there though as soon as I could, dropped my stuff off in Mr Derksen's room, and went to see Mr Wishlow - I had told him I would drop by near the end of lunch - but he wasn't there again. On my way out, the other teacher in his class room stopped me and said "I have a message for you from Mr Wishlow", which basically just said he would drive me to the rink and he had his camera (it's a really nice camera).

I was so excited to go and see practice I almost squeaked, but I managed to contain myself ... that wouldn't have been dignified...

So I went back to Mr Derksen's room and wrote a bit in my journal - and I'm definitely doing the feelings-analyzation compilation...
In Creative Writing we did a thing on embellishment and adjectives, although I think I didn't use enough...

In the end we listened to a Brit explaining how to start writing your novel.

Math ... I know the stuff, but I keep making stupid mistakes - in the quadratic formula (Mitternachtsformel) I write under the the square root instead of 4ac 2ac and then I wonder why it doesn't work out the way it should, or I keep messing up plus and minus in the same formula...
I so hope I can concentrate tomorrow!

After Math ended, I packed up my school bag and went to Mr Wishlow's room, and he finished up what he was doing - he has a real snake skin hanging in his classroom: "I used to bring him to school while he was alive, and when he died the lady who owned him let me have him and we dissected him in class" - Him being a nine foot Python!

We took his truck to the rink - it was snowing slightly again - and then we walked around the building once until we found an unlocked door ("I usually would take the player's entrance, but they're changing right now...") in the office door. We went through the offices (it's beautiful, let me tell you! Milk-coffee coloured walls and pictures of past Rockets Teams and the Rockets when they won the playoffs...) to the ice and watched some of the guys skate for a moment, Mr Wishlow pointing out the goalie coach (second goalie coach for the LA Kings, when they won the Stanley Cup, he was flown down to coach their goalies and then also got a day with the Cup here in Kelowna!) and the assistant coach Dan Lambert, who played 10 years in Germany, before he talked to somebody, I don't know who, and we went to the shop.

I talked for a moment with the woman there while he got somebody to unlock the press box door - and the media have the most amazing view of the rink. Like, seriously, you can see everything and it's really awesome!

We ventured back downstairs after that, and watched the players take the ice - those that had been on the ice when we'd come in had gone back to the locker room where the guys who still go to school were changing, and they went over what they would do during this practice session.

Mr Wishlow stopped Chartier and another student whose name I didn't catch before they could take the ice and made me stand between them before taking a picture - and let me tell you I felt small - and talked to a couple of guys about school related things, before we watched practice for a moment.

When the last guys had taken the ice, he took me on a tour through the locker room ... it's pretty smelly to be honest, but what do you expect? There aren't any windows, and I still remember the change rooms at the Ritmo Dancing Studio.
The locker room was almost empty. In the middle, there were a couple of boxes - they have to get on the bus early tomorrow because they play in Victoria that afternoon, so most of their stuff was already packed up.

One guy was in the physio-therapist's room, because he's out with an injury, and I was introduced to him and the physio-therapist, but I was introduced to so many people that I not sure who he was - not the player, the player was Mitchell Wheaton, I think. (Everytime I was introduced, Mr Wishlow didn't so much as mention my name, I had to do that myself, but he always remarked that I am an exchange student and that I got into hockey here, but that my knowledge was pretty good :) )

He showed me the equipment room, and then took me up to the gym (pretty impressive, with a dozen or so stationary bikes, agility stuff and weights) and when we left, we encountered Mitch again.
My worries were totally unfounded. They were all super professional, and all the people I met off the ice were super nice. They all asked me things like "Where are you from?", "Where in Germany are you from?", "How do you like Canada?" and it was super great. And the Rockets were way more mature and professional than I had dared to hope - nothing at all like the boys their age back in Germany!

Before we left the locker room,Mr Wishlow got me a couple of things:

Unfortunately not signed, but it's anyway more than I could ask for! (They sell these game pucks with the logo for $5 at the store and I got mine for free - and it's one that's been played, by somebody who has good chances of becoming an NHL star!)

We went back out and watched practice for a bit, Mr Wishlow telling me about his coaching, about the Rockets' coaching, a bit of Trivia about the WHL and the organization and the Rockets and so on, and then on the other side of the ice a white haired guy was waving at us, but Mr Wishlow didn't notice.
The man made his way around to us, and I was introduced - to one of the most influential and knowledgeable people here in Western Canada: To Rockets Owner and WHL chair man Mr Bruce Hamilton - and he was also super nice, and nice and smooth as you would expect from such an influential man.

Unfortunately, Mr Wishlow had to leave then, but I watched a bit more of the practice before Andy picked me up.

So it was a really great afternoon, just Math and Spanish, the two tests we have tomorrow, came a bit too short...
Well, I'll manage. And I'm anyway way more relaxed than I used to be, so I'll draw the last graph tomorrow during Spanish or Entrepreneurship or lunch or so - I'm off to bed now!

Good night! :)

Happy Day

So, after pouring out my heart - I was of course disappointed today...
But let me start at the beginning - it was a pretty awesome day! (And this is gonna be a horribly detailed description of my day, instead of doing my Math stuff, but hey, I have a spare first thing tomorrow, so I can do that then!)

Okay, I woke up before my alarm, although I hadn't gone to bed too early - I'm really looking forward to the stress being over, which is probably after the next Math test.

I climbed out of bed, folded my pyjamas (yes, that's a thing I do now), pulled on my favourite sweater and a pair of jeans as well as some socks (because it's really cold in the mornings, but I can't go to sleep if it's too warm in my room) and made my bed, which is also something I do nowadays.

I ventured upstairs, the only one in the kitchen for a change - not that I was the first one up, that's usually Bob, but she was changing in her room - and made myself a peanut butter toast, because I totally forgot about the porridge in the fridge. Everybody else also flocked into the kitchen and had their breakfast, but I went back downstairs pretty quickly.
I brushed my teeth, packed my school bag (I have enough time in the mornings) and read a bit on my kindle, before going back upstairs to put my jacket and everything on.
And I usually try to leave the house at 8:23-ish, because I like not having to worry about the bus (that comes exactly at 8:30), but when I got upstairs, I realized that, yeah, I needed to make myself some lunch!
I'd totally forgotten about that and made my ham sandwich in record time - 90 seconds.
I got out of the door alright and was, like usually, the first one at the bus stop.
I checked my backpack for my Creative Writing Journal, because I had the nagging suspicion that it had still been lying on my desk when I left my room, and sure enough, it was nowhere to be found. But well, too late, and I anyway have twice as many entries as the rest of the class. That's a great advantage of always having to write my thoughts down.

The bus came pretty quickly after that and I boarded it, iPod on (playing Christmas songs, but I didn't have the heart to change it) sliding into my usual bench.

I propped my bag up next to me and made to get my Kindle out - and guess what was in the back pocket, too? My journal!
So I was in pretty good spirits as I read my usual twenty minutes to school, where I had Spanish first thing - block order is 21-43 - with a review test. I had totally forgotten about that, but wasn't the time to fret.

Since the door to the Spanish classroom was still locked, I headed to drop off my Math book and notebook in my locker (at literally the other end of the school) and pick up my books for Spanish, but the teacher was still nowhere in sight when I get back.
And of course, instead of looking over my notes, I read a bit more.

But she finally arrived (and the bell wasn't switched on, so we got five minutes more) and let us into the classroom.
We had to rearrange our tables from the four-table-groups, facing each other, to facing-the-front, and she distributed the test.
We got the whole 73 minutes or so that were remaining of the class - 20 minutes later, I was done with the test (8 pages or so), had looked it over twice and handed it in. I picked up the vocab sheet on my way back and filled it in, and by the time I was done, hardly half the class was done with the test.
Guess what I did?
I read.

Got a great bit of reading in, but that wasn't the reason I hurried so much. No, the reason was: Everybody around me sniffing. And once I'd become aware of people sniffeling, I couldn't not hear it. It was pure torture, and it made me go crazy after a while. So as soon as I was done with the test, I plugged my iPod back in and drowned out any other noise.

Next thing was Entrepreneurship.
I designed the logo for our company, and then ... chatted a bit with Vroni and exchanged a couple of messages with Lisa.
Great lesson, I'm telling you - and tomorrow we're having a spare, because we worked during that one lunch hour (that I got out of, remember?).
So after Entrepreneurship, I went to see Mr Wishlow because of the Rockets practice, but his room was locked and he was nowhere to be seen. What else could I do but hide out in Mr Derksen's room?
It's what I usually do, after all.
First though, I ran into Mr Manderioli and he gave me the corrected version of my article.

Mr Derksen had a meeting, but he doesn't mind me dropping my stuff off and just sitting there, so that's what I did.
At the beginning of lunch I'd almost been sick with nerves - I detailed why in my post yesterday -, but by then everything was mostly alright and I was able to eat my sandwich while - surprise, surprise - reading, until a boy whose name I didn't catch came in and we talked a bit about worlds and writing. (Building worlds, I mean)

I excused myself shortly before lunch hour ended, and headed back to Mr Wishlow's room, leaving my stuff with Mr Derksen, because that was the next block anyway.

Mr Wishlow was talking to a couple of girls, so I didn't interrupt, just waited until he's finished.
He informed me he'd answered my e-mail, and that the Rockets didn't have practice today because they got the day off (much to my relief), so we re-scheduled for Wednesday.
And just talking to him, talking about NHL teams and the speed of the game and how the TV never quite manages to get it across (it seems a lot slower) as it is in Real Life, settled me enough that I almost skipped back to the English classroom (I'm having a hard time referring to it as Creative Writing - I'm still calling it English).

I exchanged a couple of words with Mr D, before the other students started to trickle in.
Today's topic was a very interesting one for the journal entry - "Voices Inside My Head"
The first thing, of course, that springs to mind there is

Nine out of ten voices in my head insist that I am not insane.
The tenth is humming the title theme of Tetris.

But I managed to spin together two pages of fairly coherent writing, because it's a topic I've thought about a lot, and I am satisfied with what I wrote down.

We got our big project outline, too:
 6 different options for our portfolio kind of thing.

Deadline April 2.
I have chosen Option #1 - Be the Creator

In this project, you are the Creator of an alternate reality, Earth-like? Fantasy? Science Fiction? Inner Space? take your pick. The project MUST include the follwing:

1. Title Page
2. Table of contents with corresponding numbers
3. A description of your alternate reality
4. An overview over the key characters/entities
5. The opening three chapters to a novel or an extended short story set in this alternate reality (2,500-5,000 words)

You may chose to include any of the following:
1. Drawing and description of key characters
2. A map
3. Notes on various apsects of the world you have created
4. Anything else you can think up (discuss with me)

THis project should be handed in as a single, completed project. Your presentation should be logical and neat

So that's what I chose, but other options included outline and first 10,000 or so words of a novel, a collection of poems, a collection of creative non-fiction (lyric essay, poetry, travel meoir, personal memoir, nature writing, feature journalism, etc), a screen play/play/movie script or something else, if it was okayed by him

I'm really excited about this project!
I've chosen to work on an alternate planet fantasy setting I had created for the NaNoWriMo a couple of years ago, and it's been kind of a pet project ever since.
But I want to work on it much more seriously this time and with much more though and I plan to explore the themes of friendship and betrayal mainly, but I'd like to try my hand at showing how other people perceive a character and how the character perceives himself...

Well, the deadline is April 2nd, as I said, and I plan to hand in the full history to my world - or at least what I have already planned out. Only problem?
It's in German.
But what can you do? It's gonna be so awesome!

Last lesson of the day was Math, and the part we had today was pretty easy, so I got all my homework for today done during the lesson, but then I got distracted talking to a girl, so I still need to catch up with my homework for Friday,  technically (out of twenty-five students maybe five have it done). But as I said, I'm gonna do this in my spare tomorrow. Don't have anything better to do, anyway.

Andy picked me up after school and exchanged me for Jenna at home, because Jenna has Arts and Crafts on Mondays.
And guess what? As I left the school, it was snowing!! We had warm (relatively warm, but the weather here  is close to Regensburg's weather) temperatures and all the snow was gone already, and now suddenly tiny snow flakes were whipped into my face!
It was kind of awesome.

As soon as I got into the house, even before I had shut the door behind me, Bobby was shouting at me to get downstairs, and guess what was lying in front of my door?
The package!
Freakin' finally!

My new phone is so awesome to handle, plus there is a new version of temple run which is really great, so I can hardly be happier.
And the Red Paprika Chips?
Hardly have I tasted something so delicious!
Other contents included Nimm 2 Lachgummis, a blank book for my Canadian friends, a fountain pain, some ink and a couple of photos  (Tanya almost wouldn't believe me that the girl in the shot from 2004 with the blond hair was me! :o I guess I've changed a lot?)

Dinner was a stir-fry, and since then I've only been screwing around on the computer, nothing big... But I'm really tired now, so I think I'm going to bed any moment.

So anyway, that's me for today!

Late Night

Once again pretty late post ... I just can't help myself.
I have so many excess words, I can't even describe it (isn't that ironic?).
And I don't care what Mr Derksen says, in this case I have to fall in love with my own words, just because I have to get rid of them.

 Today started out pretty uneventful - I had planned on waking up early, but I slept through Tanya, Andy and Bob leaving for Bob's soccer game.
Might be because even though I went to bed right after my post, I couldn't sleep and instead got inspiration for my article. I have that one typed up now, sent to Mr Manderioli for approval/changes and sent an e-mail to Mr Wishlow, because I need clarification on a couple of points.

No, I didn't send the e-mails last night - at least not the second one. That I sent today just after noon, which was basically morning for me.
After waking up, I finished up the birthday present for Claire - a wristband as I have undoubtedly mentioned - and then ... read. A lot (again).

Claire and her mother picked me up at half past five, so I had enough time to shower and send that e-mail to Mr W.

(I had thought Tanya or Andy would have to drive me to the Old Spaghetti Factory and Claire's mom would only drop me off afterwards, but obviously I had been wrong. Good thing I was ready to go!)
We had dinner - delicious dinner - at the aforementioned Old Spaghetti Factory (the very same restaurant that Doro had her last dinner with her family in Canada if I remember correctly) which was pretty healthy. At least for my standards, not gonna lie:
I had a Caesar salad, about half of the portion of Spaghetti with meat sauce (nobody calls it Bolognese here :/) and a scoop of ice cream. It was really good.
In attendance were Claire, her parents, her little sister, her sister's BFF, two friends from fourth grade (they've known each other since forth grade, I mean. They're all in grade eleven) and the little sister and mother of one of the two friends. I didn't feel like I was intruding though, and I had a great conversation with Claire's and Gavin's mothers.
Unfortunately, that conversation ended up being about the KZ, because ... I don't know what we'd been talking about, but the mood went back to good pretty quickly.

I followed hockey with one eye, because in every restaurant there are TVs mounted up on the wall, and since it's hockey season, it's not surprising that they always show hockey.
And the Maple Leafs... well, they were known to be the worst team in the whole NHL, but they beat the Senators (Ottawa) 3-0. (I asked Andy: Didn't they have a goal tending problem? ... Oh, no, it's not that they have just a goal tending problem, it's more like the Maple Leafs are a problem... but they seem to be turning around. And Ottawa just lost it's best defenseman - Achilles tendon cut through 70%, season is over for him)

And then we went to the Bowling Alley, which looked more like a club. They even played DJ Earworm's State of Pop 2013 :D Amazing song!

I came seconds in both games we played - the first time two points behind Claire and the second time one point behind Gavin, but over all, I was first by a pretty great margin.

We had ice cream cake and I was kinda watching the Oilers game on the TV mounted up on above the bowling thingies, seeing as Andy is an Oilers fan and I kinda like them - their "kid line" is rather cute and really fun to watch off the ice (Taylor Hall & Jordan Eberle are living together and made a tour of their home, which is great to watch, and are generally pretty awesome about each other - going on ice cream dates the night before a game, "when are you going to part ways?" - "When Ebs falls in love, I guess. It'll definitely be before me", "How did Jordan react to being named best player in all of 40 years of Team Canada for the World Junior Hockey Championship?" - "He scrawled at the very bottom: And where's Hallsy?"). On the ice, it's sometimes a bit painful, because so many of their passes don't connect or go just that tiny bit wide, and there you can see the advantage the Hawks have with having the same team as last year and being so "seasoned" although their core isn't that much older than Hall and Eberle (Toews & Kane 1988, Eberle 1990, Hall 1991, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins 1993), so I wasn't even so surpised when it was 3-1 at the end of the first and 4-1 seven minutes into the second, but then the Oilers seemed to pick up speed and by the time we left the bowling place it was 4-3 and when I got back home they managed to tie it at 4 just when I came in, and then they actually managed to make it 6-4. It was pretty unbelievable - and the Colorado Goalie was first star of the game (honouring the best players of the game) [although I'm seeing right now that they changed that apparently], even though he had let in 5 goals (the fifth goal for the Oilers had been scored on an empty net) - do you know why? Because he might have let five in, but he saved 50. The Oilers got a new franchise record for shots on goal in a single game, with 56 shots on goal.
That's a lot. Seriously.

And I really had to laugh yesterday, even though it's maybe a bit mean, because I saw that the EVR Schüler Mannschaft (that's the teams where the Rockets for example could draft from) lost 0:15. And that, my dear friends, is quite a feat. That wasn't just bad goal tending, that was bad goal tending and bad defense and bad offense.
Seriously. The last time I'd seen such a high score was the Champs for Charity game and the NHL All Star game, where you have the best player just playing for fun.

Well, anyway, since I still have so many words over, I'm gonna go back to writing that one AU (Alternate Universe) for the fandom I am currently obsessed with, which (the AU, not the fandom) can be basically summarized as "Character A and Character B get sent back in time into their high school selves and are the only ones who can remember." Now I only have to figure out how to make them realize that the other one knows about the future, because technically they meet for the first time when A is eighteen and B is nineteen... And before that? Oh... I might just have figured a way out...

So, I'm off!

See ya later,
Julia

Help

EDIT: Before I start, here have a picture I enjoyed very much:

(From the tumblr post Shit WHL Players Say. Also features one of the Rockets and great thoughts on food, bubble wrap factories and The Hobbit... The WHL is the Western Hockey League, which is where the Rockets are playing.)

[EDIT: More laughter. Seriously, check it our, there are some gems!
For example:

And plenty of Rockets, too! All of that, here!

I can understand]




Help, fellow Germans!
I have a huge problem:
Do we actually say "Der Hund bellt"? I never realized how weird this sounds, please tell me I'm getting it wrong! Why would we say "bellt"?
"Bell" isn't a German word, is it?
...
I think I should go to bed. I'm making no sense, am I?

Anyway, today was pretty awesome - I interviewed Rourke during lunch, and even though it was a bit awesome and stilted at points, as neither of us had any idea how to do an interview, he was surprisingly forth-coming - at least considering how unenthusiastic he's been the first couple of times I saw him.

They're playing Everett tomorrow, and guess what?
I got tickets!
I know it's Valentine's day, but what do we say in Bavaria?
An gschenktn Gaul schaut ma ned ins Maul, which sums it up pretty neatly. (Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I won't elaborate further here, but I'm sure you can guess/deduce what that means)

Although I had a pretty lengthy list of questions, it took me about half an hour - most of the answers I got were pretty unsurprising, but very interesting!

School itself was okay - not great, a bit boring, and I still haven't done my Math homework - but I got more than halfway through it during Math itself, so I think I'm gonna do it tomorrow during lunch. Doesn't make a difference whether I'm reading or doing Math, y'know?
In Spanish we finally held our presentations, and I think it wasn't too bad. Not great, but for the effort I put into it, it's gotta be awesome (I mean the relation of effort to outcome. VERY little effort :) )

And remember me bitching about those irresponsible teammates of mine in Entrepreneurship?
Well, let's just say I've been disappointed once more.
Our group was three girls - me, a Chinese international student (she finishes her education here) and a Canadian girl with whom I was at the OC [Okanagan College] for lunch - I might have mentioned it. And I really should learn to listen to my gut, because my gut was telling me "this is not perfect, Julia, this isn't what you were looking for". But since the Canadian girl already had an idea and kinda an outline for the business thingy, I shoved that down. - Not that I didn't really like the idea, I said I was indifferent about it, remember?
Well, today I missed the first part of the lesson because I had to go and squeal about the tickets and stuff, so I went to see Mr M, and when I came back, the girl was nowhere to be seen and CiCi also didn't know where she'd gone. When she finally did come back, she informed us: "I dropped the course."
I'm of course like WTF?! but well... nothing to be done...
CiCi and I asked to join a couple of boys since our teammate had bailed on us, and while they said they had to talk it over with their third teammate who wasn't there today, they believed it wouldn't be a problem.

Well, and that was about my day...
I'm invited to a birthday party on Saturday evening, with Claire, my friend from English, and that's it...
(I bailed on the gym because my right knee was feeling like there was a needle being jabbed repeatedly into the Hoffa's fat pad - like between the kneecap and the meniscus or what do I know, it hurt like hell; and my left knee felt like it was falling apart. I hate my knees, I seriously do.)

So have a great night/day!

Laughing so hard here

All in all today was a really great day:

I mean, it had a bad start - I went to bed waaaay too late (4 o'clock) (or too early, depends on how you look at it) and of course forgot to unset my alarm, so I was woken up at 7.15 am. and three hours is so not enough, I can't even describe it.
Unfortunately, it was already pretty bright outside, so by the time I managed to find my phone and switch it off (and I'm still not convinced I actually opened my eyes to do so), I had little hopes of falling back asleep. I blinked, and suddenly it was half past ten, which seems to be my usual wake-up time now.

I had some Cheerios for breakfast (because who am I kidding, you all love to know what I'm eating, right?) and then finally did my homework (I mean, I started on it Friday, but it's pretty tough to get yourself to do any homework when you have a long weekend), but it was only Maths and not really hard, except that I proved once again that I am too stupid to actually read the instructions (so half of my solutions were incorrect, but I fixed that :D ).

Jenna had a friend over for a science project, and then another friend with whom we went geo-caching, and it was really fun - although my toes were frozen by the end of it and it was all around really cold...
And even though my knees were (mostly) totally fine during the hike, my right knee is kinda trying to kill me right now - or at least that's what it feels like. And of course my bandages which the doctor says don't help usually manage to alleviate at least some of the pain are in my locker at school :/
Well, I'll survive :D

Before we left, Tanya made another smoothie for us, and it was mostly orange! I don't know what was in it, I'm guessing banana and strawberry (it was delicious), but the colour looked dangerous!

Dinner was ham with mashed potatoes and broccoli, and then we looked at the pictures Andy and Tanya took in México (Mexican people pronounce it Mechico, for you German speakers out there! But only in México itself :) ) and then Andy and I watched the first half of Slapshot, which is the hockey movie out there - or what am I writing, it probably deserves capitalisation - The Hockey Movie out there, and everybody who knows their share about hockey has seen it (according to Andy - he also told me that when he was traveling with the teams in a medical function, they would always on every road trip watch Slapshot on the bus, and that seems to be true as I found these tweets just today (the rockets returning from their trip to Everett:

I hope @rolsen94 pays particular attention to this movie on @kelowna_rockets bus. Exam to follow. #slapshot #oldschool
— Regan Bartel (@Reganrant) February 11, 2013

@reganrant already liking this movie #classichockey #oldschool
— Ryan Olsen (@rolsen94) February 11, 2013

I mentioned that to Andy today and he subsequently downloaded the movie and so we started watching it)

And yeah, the movie is pretty old (mid-70s?) and hilarious - not quite my kind of humor, but still so incredibly funny :D I like it!
It's about a really bad hockey team in a dying town, and well ... the team is struggling, and they get these new brothers on the team which are total fighters, and the crowd just loves them, even though some people on the team are less than pleased... And the team gets the notice that this is their last season because the owner can't afford them anymore, so they try to be as good as they can... And there is a lot of swearing. It's really funny :D
("Dave is a killer!" - "Dave is a mess" :D Nobody will understand that, but it's just hilarious! ... Seriously though, just reading these two sentences makes me giggle so much...)

So I'm in high spirits and not even the Math test tomorrow can bring me down :D

See ya 'round, guys!

Super Sunday!

I'm in a really good mood - and need to kill some time because my pyjamas are still in the drier :)
Actually I'm skyping with my mom, but she just got a call so I can write for a bit :D

What I didn't tell you about yesterday is that I skyped with Dorothea!
And she told me the funniest thing - she was on the plane to Vancouver and there was this dude where she immediately thought "Hockey player". She didn't recognize him and of course didn't ask him, but she said he looked suspiciously like Duncan Keith (although she wasn't sure anymore, just knew he looked "like one of your Blackhawks").
How I got to the belief that it was Duncs? Well, I knew two things: It was a flight from Kelowna to Vancouver, and it was (maybe) a Blackhawks player. And the only Blackhawk that could have any business in Kelowna? Duncan Keith, because he has family there, and the Hawks had a game in Vancouver on that same day and a day off the day before... So duh.

Enough of hockey (for that part at least) - except: the Rockets beat Everett 3-2 and the Hawks the Predators 3-0 (Crawford's first shutout since March 23, 2011!)...

But else: I slept in again - okay, I woke up at half past seven but decided it was too early and went back to sleep and dreamt I was on a ranch and riding and there was mind-control involved (don't judge, I was dreaming) and yeah, I woke up at around half past ten. Have I mentioned my dreams have been really weird the last week or so?

I had breakfast, went to do some homework (which I of course didn't, or at least not very much; but it's just so repetitive -_-), was interrupted by Bob who wanted to play some Rummy - and I really don't know why she's so obsessed with this game - and then we went to the park. We played a bit of tennis with a racquetball racket, and I was pleased to notice that I didn't forget a lot of stuff!
An acquaintance of Tanya's stopped by there with her dog, and it was so gratifying to see a big dog again and scratch a dog's fur ... I can't even describe it.
She's a children's librarian, too :D (Although Frau Gröschel is way more awesome; sorry but with her nobody can compete I am afraid!)

Tanya and I watched Bob and Jenna play on the new playground a bit, before we headed back.
While I was in the shower, Tanya made smoothies for us, and I almost didn't get anything! But it was really delicious. I've come to love smoothies!

Well, I went to dry my hair, and then it was already time to leave for Jim and Leslie's, Tanya's friends (we were over at their house after Christmas once already, and Jim was the one to give Tanya and me the tickets to the Rockets game!). Andy and Jim were watching the Edmonton Oilers - Columbus Blue Jackets game, and it was close - although the Oilers should have been able to pull out a comfortable win.

But this funny gif came out of it, just as I walked into the living room:

"Well, that's one way to get out of the way"

 But seriously, look at that:

I was kinda laughing :D
And it was even better when the Oilers pulled out a win!

For dinner, there was meatloaf - and it was so freakin' delicious, I can't even!
With some mashed potatoes and peas and baby carrots *-*

After dinner, I chatted for like two hours or so (more like one and a half, but who cares?) with Dylan, their oldest son. He's studying at UBCO, and he made himself waaaaay too much of a smoothie, so he shared it with me. And it was so awesome... He put some protein powder into it, and pure, that stuff tastes exactly like Vanilla icecream, so the smoothie was a mixture of vanilla ice cream and berries (mainly blueberries and some strawberries and a couple of raspberries), and that was almost to die for. Seriously, the vanilla adds something really great to it!
So that's one thing I'm bringing home with me for sure: Smoothies. They're just so great!


Anyway, I'm really tired now and my clothes are dry, so I'm signing off and heading to bed now!

Good night!

Mixed Thursday

Today truly was a mixed day.

But first of all, I'd like to say:
Everybody who's reading this regularly: I admire you.
My blog is so long and convoluted, I don't know how can read it every day. But unfortunately I can't keep this short, because I have to get rid of all these words, so please enjoy another day of word vomit!

I think I mentioned it here, but I was wondering a few weeks back whether mundane [alltäglich, weltlich, profan, irdisch (mundus = Welt oder so ähnlich, hatte kein Latein in mehr als einem halben Jahr - Yesssss), banal] equals boring.
I found my answer today.
It's been raining this morning, just very, very slightly (nieseln, as we in Bavaria say), for the first time in what feels like months (and probably is if you don't take the snow in consideration but recall that Kelowna is, in fact, almost in a desert), just while I was walking down the street to the bus.
And this, hurrying to the light to cross the street, this was so mundane, an action I do literally every day, that I had an epiphany (or revelation, but epiphany sounds better; stressing is on the pi), and well, it sounds probably really weird, but even though the action itself may be boring, you have to think about the odds of you walking down the street, starting with the fact that earth actually became inhabitable, that vegetation and life started to form, that humans started to evolve, that there are nothing but piles of nothingness (because the farther down you go, from limbs to cells to atoms to the sub-atomic parts, there is always so much more space than matter, that we're essentially nothingness) that can think, feel emotions, express themselves, smell, share their thoughts, relate to others, move, feel, sense.
And the chances of all this happening are so small, so infinitesimal, that no matter your action, nothing actually can be boring.
(Ideas unrepentantly stolen from our English course readings - A short history of nearly everything and Motes of Dust and the resulting essays we had to write)
So, anyway, I started the day philosophically.

Then I had to hurry to the KSS dance room, because I felt so nauseous yesterday that the dance teacher saw me sitting in the hall and told me to come to her room today because she had a few recommendations for me to read to get a grip on that stress (Feeling Good by David Burns, a book on positive thinking), and she was super nice and we talked a bit, and then I had to run to my locker, get my Spanish books and run back to the other side of the school (I'm constantly running back and forth, but at least I have two classes in the hallway where my locker is - and the other two are literally on the other side of the school), and while I was like 2 minutes late, I don't think she put it down as tardy...

Spanish is a waste of time with all this reviewing stuff. But at least I'm not the only one who thinks like this, both a friend from last semester's class and a girl from my Journalism class think the same way. We're totally bored, because we still remember all that stuff!

Our Business teacher was away today (he has the flu, so get well soon, Mr K!), and we had a substitute who I think subbed for my Japanese teacher - at least he remembered me and my goal to study Neurology!
He knows a fair bit about Entrepreneurship (made a bunch of money after giving up teaching), but we mainly chatted (our group) and I found out that I am not the only International student - there is a Chinese girl finishing her studies (in my group; she thought I was Canadian!) and a German boy in the group behind us.

I hung out with the Canadian girl in our group of three for the Dragon's Den competition, and we went to Okanagan college and spent our lunch there, talking. (And laughing at the guy wearing a penis costume for sexual awareness day)

I wasn't even late for Creative Writing, and it was awesome as ever. He told us a story about one of his students - again, but the story is really great (and not everybody was in his English class) - and I was laughing really hard. Despite (or maybe because of) knowing it already.

Math started out with a quiz. It was pretty easy, I dare say, and I finished the assignment-for-marks before everybody else (I started during the test already, although I wasn't the first to do so.)
Let me just copy paste the exchange between my teacher and me/the class from a message to Vroni:
Mein teacher: "Try finding the inverse for this function:
f(x)=x/(x+2) Try finding a solution, in the first block (also in der Parallelklasse) nobody managed."
Inverse bedeutet, du vertauscht x und y und loest das ganze nach y auf. also x=y/(y+2) oder der Graph wird einfach in der Strecke y=x gespiegelt.
Two minutes later: "Mr M, can you take a look at that?"
Mr Murphy: "... y=2x/(1-x)... And we have one correct solution. But you have an unfair advantage. Yes, the German system is about two years ahead of us, and solving functions algebraically (also sie mathematisch aufloesen) has been taken out of the curriculum." Also ich hab voll den fetten Vorteil - und das mit dem Voraus sein stimmt. In dem Grade 12 Kurs ist genau ein Thema, was wir auch in der 12. machen. Alle anderen sind 8.-11.)

I didn't finish the homework though - at least not the one we have to hand in on Tuesday, because we have a review period tomorrow, I have a weekend where I'm gonna meet up with Spencer and study Math and a free day (family day) on Monday. Plenty of time, don't you agree?

After school, it was of course Journalism time.
I finished my article on the You Can Play Project - Gay athletes. Straight allies. Teaming up for respect, which will be published in our sports edition in three weeks, and then more topics were handed out (right now it seems like I will be one of the few students actually getting two articles, just because the YCP Project has to do with sports and ... I'M GONNA WRITE AN ARTICLE ABOUT THE ROCKETS!!!!) and so I am meeting with the liason between the Rockets and KSS tomorrow.
The teacher is in charge of letting teachers know when the Rockets are out of town, making sure that the Rockets have good enough grades and stuff like that - I'm guessing a bit like what the ESL teacher is to us Internationals.
Not all Rockets are Students, of course, but I will talk to this teacher (and I have to amend, hopefully tomorrow, I don't have an appointment or anything) and ask him what his job is and how many Rockets are students and so on, and then I will talk (also probably) to some Rockets themselves, and next Thursday I will take my findings and write an article about it. I'm so excited! (Just in case you couldn't tell from the bold and cursive and capslock...)

On a related note, while the Rockets lost 5-0 yesterday in Spokane, the Hawks beat the Phoenix coyotes (and posted a wonderful video of them training yesterday... here, have some shirtless hockey players do Yoga and play soccer and football :D) 6-2 in a feast, extending their "undefeated in regulation streak" to 11 games out of 11 and giving them 20 points out of possible 22, which is league best :D
And my second favourite player is currently second best in all of the league in regards to points (8 goals, 10 assists, three behind the leader, who has 10 goals, 11 assists)...
And yeah, that's about it...
I think.
One funny thing from the NHL: last year, my second favourite Philadelphia Flyer was checked into the boards, and while he was trying to regain his balance, he slashed the wrist of the commentator (who is sitting between the benches of the two teams) and destroyed his watch! (Luckily, it was only the watch - another commentator on ice level didn't have so much luck and got a puck in the face - and kept commentating while he was bleeding rather profusely and was being tended to! He at least didn't look so ridiculous as the linesman who got a puck into his behind side in the last Hawks game :D)

Well, on Tuesday we're writing that Maths Chapter one exam (and yes, we will have had only 6 lessons by then, but nobody really complains), Wednesday is god know what, Thursday is our Spanish test (review test; I'm so bored, can't we just get a start on the Grade 11 course?!) and Friday is ... free!
So only three days of school and hopefully lots of sleep!

And talking about sleep, I'm heading to bed now.
(I had the weirdest sleep last night - I remember waking up at least five times, around two, half past three, quarter past four, half past five, quarter to six, maybe even more - glancing at the clock and falling back asleep - into the same dream where we had to make sure the apocalypse occurred [or maybe didn't? I think we had to make sure it did ocurr] so we were playing a kind of hockey against a team with polar bears and then the bad knights who wanted to stop the apocalypse, came, with ridiculous [read: scary] guns and we were all really scared and fled into the bunker which was made of glass and when I realized that I launched myself into the arms of the next person coming into the bunker - I knew the bunker was safe, but I didn't know whether everybody would make it in time, and it looked like a green house - who happened to be Marián Hossa, Blackhawks forward, and I think I might have played with the rest of the Hawks... And then I woke up for the last time, five past seven. I could have slept for ten more minutes! But my dreams are really weird as of late...)

Good night!

ASDFJKL

I'M SUPER EXCITED AND BASICALLY SCREAMING SO HAVE SOME CAPSLOCK TODAY!!!!!

So I was putting up the chairs in English class and this boy from my Biology class comes in and I've talked to him a few times, but he's mainly a friend of Spencer's. But since we're both polite and in Canada, we're like "How are you - I'm fine and you? Fine too how are your classes?" and he asks me whether I had gotten my Biology grade for the Final already.
And I'm like, no, so I think, well, Andy's gonna pick me up at five past four after he's dropped Jenna off at arts, so I go to the Biology room and meet my teacher in the hallway and we start chatting and not-quite-small-talk - it had always seemed a bit like he was just listening to me because he had to, so I tried keeping my questions and things like that brief (I told you I am sensitive in that regard), but while we waited for the Laptop to boot, he asked about my classes and I told him a bit about what I'm taking this semester (he seemed greatly amused by how excited I was about Maths, but the course is really interesting and has the potential to become demanding in a good way) and so we chatted for a bit and then he told me my grade AND IT WAS ALL I COULD DO NOT TO SCREAM AND SQUEAK AND CRY BECAUSE BASICALLY I WAS AIMING FOR 50% OR SO TO GET AN A AND I GOT FRICKING 96% AND I CAN'T BELIEVE IT BECAUSE I HARDLY DID ANYTHING AND I GUESSED ON MORE THAN HALF THE QUESTIONS (going by process of elimination and then guessing between the remaining two answers) AND I HAD NO PLAN ABOUT THE SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS AND I STILL MANAGED TO GET A PRETTY HIGH MARK AND I CAN'T EVEN AND I REALLY ALMOST CRIED.

So, I'm alright again - that was just something I had to get off my chest. But seriously, I don't understand that - the test I re-took was still only 80% and I actually studied for it and I don't understand this world!

And then I spent about $30 on school supplies - we need a notebook for both Spanish and Creative Writing, and I took a pretty nice one for the latter one :)
Because we have to write in it every day, and I think it will come in handy to have a nice one.


I was talking about attending a different school when I get back to Germany, but the plans have become slightly derailed, it doesn't work out as we thought it would for the friend I was going to attend the different school together and I'm not sure I want to do it all on my own...

Then I found new friends at school!
In my Entrepreneurship class :)
They're really nice, too.

And then the San Jose Sharks lost in regulation to the Anaheim Ducks (Yes, they're called Ducks, initially The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, after the Disney movie The Mighty Ducks) which means that the Blackhawks are now leading the league (and they're playing the Sharks next, so as long as they can force overtime, they will stay on top!) and are the only team undefeated in regulation...

The only "bad" part of my day is Maths, because as much as I enjoy it, it's kinda different from how we've done things, and there is the panic creeping up on me that I will not understand that stuff...
Seriously though, I spent more than an hour on my Maths homework - pretty much 80 minutes or so, which I never had to do in Germany.
But a) it's a lot and b) I have to draw a lot, which takes time.

But my teacher already has resorted to my German teachers' favourite sentence:
"Somebody else, please" (although I embarrassed myself by saying '1 through 8'. It's '1 divided by 8' or something else which I can't remember right now, so I think it was pretty obvious that I am not a native speaker... and my German Maths teacher has answered my e-mail, detailing what of the stuff we're doing when in Germany - and the three topics marked as 'especially hard' by my English teacher we're labeled 'not needed' by my German one! :D )
Here it is - sorry the comments are in English :D

1. Function Transformations
     1. Horizontal and Vertical Translations  DAS SIND DIE

VERSCHIEBUNGEN (WIE BEI DER PARABEL),WAS WIR MIT SINUS UND COSINUS DIESES
JAHR GEMACHT HABEN

     2. Reflections and Stretches   DAS SIND DIE SPIEGELUNGEN UND

STRECKUNGEN BZW. STAUCHUNGEN

     3. Combining Transformations   ALLES ZUSAMMEN, ALSO BEI DER PARABEL

y= a(x-d)^2+e  DIESE PUNKTE SIND SEHR WICHTIG!!!

     4. Inverese of a Relation (Graphs)  UMKEHRFUNKTION KOMMT IN Q11

(hier der Graph)

     5. Inverse of a Relations (Equations)   (hier die Gleichung der

Umkehrfunktion)

     6. Ich nehme mal an, dass das genau das ist, was wir in der 9.
        Klasse gemacht haben mit Funktionen, oder sogar schon 8.

Klasse...

 2. Radical Functions
     1. Radical Functions and Transformations     WURZELFUNKTIONEN

KOMMEN IN Q11

     2. Square Root of a Function
     3. Solving Radical Equations Graphically (Exact and Approximate
        Solutions)
 3. Polynomial Functions
     1. Characteristics of Polynomial Functions    POLYNOMFUNKTIONEN,DAS

IST DIE ERWEITERUNG VON QUADRATISCHEN FUNKTIONEN AUF FUNKTIONEN MIT x^3
oder x^4 usw.  SEHR WICHTIG FÜR NÄCHSTES JAHR

     2. Remainder Theorem   WICHTIG
     3. Factor Theorem   WICHTIG
     4. Equations and Graphs of Polynomial Functions  WICHTIG!!!
 4. Trigonometry and the Unit Circle
     1. Angles and Angle Measure    WINKEL AM EINHEITSKREIS UND WAS

FOLGT IST ALLES MIT SINUS UND COSINUS,WAS WIR IM 1.HALBJAHR AUCH GEMACHT
HABEN, WICHTIG!!!

     2. The Unit Circle
     3. Trigonometric Ratios
     4. Introduction to Trigonometric Equations
 5. Trigonometric Functions and Graphs
     1. Graphing Sine and Cosine Functions
     2. Transformations of Sinusoidal Functions
     3. The Tangent Function    (TANGENS-FUNKTION IST BEI UNS NICHT IM

LEHRPLAN!)

     4. Solving Trig Equations using Graphs
     5. Equations and Graphs of Trigonometric Functions (Problem and
        Equation Solving)
 6. *Trigonometric Identities*  (DIESES KAPITEL IST NICHT SO WICHTIG UND

WIRD BEI UNS AUCH NICHT BEHANDELT)

     1. *Reciprocal, Quotient, and Pzthaorean Identitities*
     2. *Sum, Difference and Double-Angle Identities*
     3. *Proving Identities*
     4. *Solving Trigonometric Equatiosn Using Identities*
 7. Exponential Functions    (DIESES KAPITEL HABEN WIR GERADE

ANGEFANGEN, IST WICHTIG FÜR NÄCHSTES JAHR)

     1. Characteristics of Exponential Functions
     2. Transformation of Exponential Functions
     3. Solving Exponential Functions
 8. *Logarithmic Functions*   (LOGARITHMUS IST AUCH WICHTIG V.A. AUCH

FÜR NÄCHSTES JAHR, ES GEHT UM "DIE SUCHE NACH DEM EXPONENTEN", IST ALSO DIE
UMKEHRUNG DES POTENZIERENS, NUR SUCHT MAN JETZT NICHT DIE BASIS (DANN WÜRDE
MAN WURZELZIEHEN),SONDERN EBEN DEN EXPONENTEN)

     1. *Understanding Logarithms*    WICHTIG
     2. *Transformation of Logarithmic Functions*  NICHT SO WICHTIG FÜR

DIE 10. KLASSE

     3. *Laws of Logarithms*   WICHTIG (RECHENREGELN), STEHEN ABER IN

DER FORMELSAMMLUNG

     4. *Logarithmic and Exponential Equations*  SOLLTE MAN KAPIEREN,

KOMMT IN Q11 NOCHMAL

 9. Rational Functions
     1. Exploring Rational Functions Using Transformations   

BRUCHFUNKTIONEN (WAR IN DER 8. SCHONMAL DRAN, KOMMMT IN DER Q11 DANN
NOCHMAL)

     2. Analyzing Rational Functions     VERMUTLICH WERDEN HIER

GRENZWERTE BESPROCHEN, WAS WIR AUCH IM 2. HALBJAHR MACHEN

     3. Connecting Graphs and Rational Functions
10. Function Operation
     1. Sums and Differences of Functions       AUS MEINER SICHT IST

DIESES KAPITEL NICHT SO WICHTIG, BZW. SOLLTE EH KLAR SEIN

     2. Products and Quotients of Functions
     3. Composite Functions
11. *Permutations, Combinations and Binomial Theorem*   

NICHT WICHTIG IN DER 10., KOMMT BEI UNS IN Q12

     1. *Permutations*
     2. *Combinations*
     3. *The Binomial Theorem*

Capslock are his comments :)

Sorry for the capslock and the screaming and the length, I'm just so excited!

Love y'all,
Julia

Go Rockets Go!

Yes!
Today was moderately exciting, so starting out as pretty boring and ending as super excited! (And btw: If you manage to get through the Hockey part, there are pictures at the end waiting for you :D )

It started out with me dreaming I was at home. It's about the fourth time or so I dreamt I was back in Germany and trying to catch a flight back to Canada.
Once I was at the GN (Gymnasium Neutraubling) to do some kind of trip through our school and then tried to catch my flight and almost missed it (but I got into the airplane) and then this night... We were at a pool. And suddenly the stairs went missing, so I just kinda slid down the stairs. But I remember that pool from previous dreams...
And then I was kinda packing but I remembered that I was already back from the grandparents, and then I really almost missed my flight and I woke up and it was 9 o'clock on a Saturday morning, my chest was hurting so I couldn't even go back to sleep and I was fully convinced it was Tuesday.
Whose idea was it to start the semester on a Friday of all days?


So I left my wonderful bed and - did homework. Yes, I can't believe it either. By the time half past eleven rolled around, I was finished with all my homework - and it was a lot, let me tell you:

And if you think now "It's just two pages", well then take a closer look and see how many exercises there are:
it was page 12-15, Nr. 1- 12, 17 & 18.

So these exercises:

Isn't it fun?

This is my Mathbook:

It's seriously heavy! And at least an inch thick... But still pretty new, which is kinda cool.

So, anyway, I finished that, then played around on my laptop a bit, went for a work-out (but only on the stationary bike because my knees have been bugging me kinda a lot) and then did nothing all afternoon long, before going to the Rockets game this evening!
I went with Tanya, and it was a lot of fun!

Here is the rink:

All that orange stuff you can see are noise makers they put on every seat so that we could cheer Kelowna on.
They were playing the Vancouver Giant, whom they had played the evening before (but in Vancouver) and beaten 5-1.
And tonight... it was amazing. They were really, really brilliant.
They scored 3 goals in the first period, then the Giants managed to step their game up during the second, and then twice more in the third period.
Cooke (who goes to KSS) had a shutout - they beat the Giants 5-0, and since Cooke let not a single goal in, that's called a shutout.
The Hawks were playing at the same time, against the Calgary Flames, and Andy texted me the score - Kaner finally scored early in the third period, but then Colorado scored with 4 minutes left again, tying the game.
And we were already out of the car, Tanya and me, when a new text arrived (and I was really hyped up from the awesome game we'd witnessed). It said Calgary scores with 30 seconds left and I'm like "Dang, our first loss in regulation."
But I enter the house, look at the TV and - it's going to Over Time! Tied at 2-2.
Well, no, Andy hadn't forgotten to inform me of another Hawks goal, Marián Hossa had scored the goal that forced Over Time with 2.1 seconds left on the clock. 2.1 SECONDS!!!

Well, it went to Over Time, and then to a Shootout, and Kaner scored for the Hawks and Ray Emery managed to make 48 saves out of 50 - so he didn't let a single goal in during the shootout, and the Hawks won!
Finally!
And the Sharks were defeated in a Shootout, so the Hawks have the league lead for some time! (Whether they can keep it depends on whether or not the Sharks lose their next game on Monday, because they've played one game less than the Hawks...)

So, enough of Hockey, here are the promised pictures!

A lot of snow!

Can you see the mountains in the background?

KSS

KSS front

So, have a great day/night whatever!

Julia

Whoopy

No, I'm actually not whoopy or anything, but I couldn't think of a title :)

Well, so I'm really tired and almost off to bed, but here's a short rundown of my day:

I woke up alright this morning, but thought I'd missed the bus - no, I was early and everybody else was late.

I am really looking forward to this semester, although I have now realized that it will be really work intensive.

Entrepreneurship 12 will be hard because we participate in "Dragon's Den Young Entrepreneurship contest", which is modeled after the TV show (you might want to google it, it's just another thing like X-Factor or American Idol or stuff like that, just that Entrepreneurs come to a jury and try to get them to invest into their business idea). We have to form groups and work on a business idea and work on marketing it and stuff like that - but the winning team receives $1,500, second place $1,000 and third place $750!

Spanish is probably my easiest course, just because I had Latin ... and the teacher last semester was a native Portuguese speaker, so it is doubly obvious that this year's teacher has only been to Peru for a year after graduation!

Then Math... is gonna be hard but fun. It's an incredibly intense schedule, but not that different than the German one - probably even a bit easier (remember, it's a grade 12 course - Pre-Calculus 12!)? But we're not doing Sine and Co-Sine (Sinus & Co-Sinus) functions, so duh:

1. Function Transformations
2. Radical Functions
3. Polynomal Functions
4. Trigonometry and the Unit Circle
5. Trigonometric Functions and Graphs
6. Trigonometric Identities*
7. Exponential Functions
8. Logarithmic Functions*
9. Rational Functions
10. Function Operation
11. Permutations, Combinations, and Binominal Theorem*

Those with an asteriks (* - that's what it's called, right?) are particularly hard - according to our teacher.

I think it's about what we would cover in Germany - at least in part. I'm pretty sure I've done part of most of the topics, my only problem is the language. I don't know what half of that stuff means, and honestly? I'm too lazy to look it up. I'll find out over time! (And I'll send that outline to my Math teacher in Germany, he can tell me whether it's similar or not!)

But it's gonna be a really work intensive course with lots of homework, if today is any indication! (I'm looking forward to it anyway... Isn't that at least kinda weird?)

And then Creative Writing is gonna be a lot, too, but the class is awesome. I mean in regards to the people. I think I would love to sit in the corner and just watch for a while, but I'm sitting right in the middle of the classroom, so I can't see everybody at the same time. Makes me a bit sad, but the buzz in the whole class was really pleasant.

Do you know what I mean?

English last semester, same classroom, same teacher, was always pretty quiet. There were groups, but those people had already known each other, so they were always on those same groups and almost exclusively talking to each other. It was ... cold. The atmosphere was still warmer than in Germany, but compared to the atmosphere now...
It's just everybody is really friendly and we all share a love of writing and our teacher has a Master in Creative Writing (and from what I've garnered whilst talking to him during lunch it must have been a very, very high mark he got on it... He's really awesome!) and it's gonna be so much fun - and so much work.

 We'll write for 15 minutes in class every day, so I'll need to take my laptop to school everyday ... my backpack is going to be so heavy! I'll start my daily journal up again, or something, because I don't know yet what I'm gonna write about.

But for some reason, I can't even mind the filled schedule. Especially since I seem constantly bored, but without any motivation to do anything.
I even started my homework today!

(If you wondered: Yes, I just copy&pasted it from an e-mail to a friend. I'm honestly too lazy to type it up again, so sorry for the informal style)

So, here's a funny thing a few of you (especially the mothers) might appreciate:

"Proefkonijnen - Dennis en Valerio krijgen weeën" is the original title :D Can you guess what it means?

Two Dutch television show hosts being hooked up to a machine simulating labour pain. Hilarious!
And honestly? I skipped the part where it says "Dutch", so I first thought they were talking English, then I was convinced it was German, before I finally realized it was Dutch. But it honestly sounds very much like a mixture of German and English, and I could understand most of what was being said without the subtitles! :D

Enjoy!

On another note: The Hawks lost again in a shootout against the Vancouver Canucks.
And the weirdest thing?
Brandon Saad, rookie filling in for Daniel Carcillo who hurt his knee pretty early on in the season, was the best man out there. He had an almost-goal (the whistle was blown before the puck could fully cross the line) and several brilliant chances, but in the end it was Patrick Kane once again who forced the game into overtime with the third goal of the season.
So they're still undefeated in regulation and got a point. I can't even be really disappointed - especially since it's been clear from the very beginning that the game would be abysmal. Passes didn't connect, they took a lot of stupid penalties and were generally all over the place. It almost seems like they're getting worse with every game (but they did step it up in the third period and especially in OT (4 shots on goal vs the Canucks' one...) but it wasn't enough in the end :/
And actually, I wanted to stay short about Hockey...

Well, anyway, I'm heading off to bed now, and we'll probably gonna see a Rockets game tomorrow! :D

Love y'all!

Julia

Semester Two

I honestly can't believe that Semester two starts tomorrow already ... and that Dorothea is flying home. It just seems so surreal...

I still need to clean out my binder, get rid of all the old papers...

I'm glad to be back 'home' here :D
But the parcel I was talking about? It's not the one I was waiting for. It's not for me at all.
But then again, small parcels usually take longer than big ones, for some reason. And it might be caught in customs...

So, here have a gemstone from the LA Kings twitter:

The "box" they're talking about is a glass cage also know as the penalty box where a player has to spend two minutes if he violates the rules :D


And the Oilers just lost to the San Jose Sharks in a Shootout -_- That means the Sharks are league leaders now - I'm now just hoping for a Hawks win tomorrow and a Sharks loss in regulation in the next game - then the Hawks are league leaders again! (But it's not as though that really matters - as long as the Hawks stay on top of their conference, it's the Stanley Cup final when they have to concern themselves with the Sharks - if ever ... so I'm crossing my fingers. They'll manage, I hope!)
I had a most ugly experience on tumblr today:
People tag their hate against other teams, so I was looking at the Blackhawks tag and it was really ugly. The stuff some of the 'fans' are sprouting there is beyond nice and fair. Things like "I would crash this player's flight" are a no-go, seriously, especially after the plane of a Russian team crashed and most of the players (or even all of them?) died. Marián Hossa, Hawks forward, for example wears a 37 sown onto his glove to honor his friend who died.
So I was kindly (and I was really nice) asking a few of them to remove their hate or at least not tag it anymore, and see the response I got:

Yep, isn't that a lovely reply? (The 'I know it's a bit late' is in regards to the game in question having been played yesterday)
But what was I expecting with that url?
Another guy replied something along the lines of "Don't take yourself too seriously it was only a loss you're not that important", totally missing my point (I sent exactly the same message).

From now on I'm staying away from the team tags, because it's really ugly what's going on in there. Another girl, however, replied with

Thanks I appreciate the sweet way of asking: )
Had anyone else come at me this way I would have had no problem..
It’s not that I hate the hawks.. it’s that they are my teams biggest rival ever… so you know.. it causes so much emotion…
I can’t promise I won’t tag anything but I’ll try… might get heated tomorrow night but we will see!!
Good luck to your team.. although they don’t really need any luck! Haha

And I've been messaging back and forth with her.
And one more girl was complaining about "Bandwagon fans", so fans who only came to the sport after the Hawks won the Cup, so I asked her what those fans were, and we had a nice conversation (she's the first American born in a family from Bavaria :D)

So it wasn't all bad.

Good night!

You Have Reached The End Of Semester One

Yep. That's it. Today was the last day of Semester One. Kinda officially.
So all that remains is that stupid re-test on Wednesday, and if I knew my final exam score right now, I would cancel it. But I don't so I won't. Not that it's gonna make any real difference... in my final mark it had an impact of somewhere along the lines of .35% or so... Why again did I believe that I had to make it up?

So, today was Japanese, and it was 20% and not 10% as he had initially told me - but I managed at the very least 50%, rather more, and I'm not complaining. I have my A for sure there.
And English... was fun. I wrote so much that my thumb started hurting where it joins my hand, but all in all it was pretty good - I wrote the same thing for my composition as for the practice exam. Not exactly the same, because no matter how much I pride myself on my good memory where it concerns spoken/written words, I can't memorize 1,150 and I didn't even try. But I think I got the gist and only changed the ending - it now simply says something like "It has changed the way I think, and if this is all that I take away from this journey [I should have written endeavour, that would have been a better word] then I am well satisfied with my achievements." Which is true. Because I think that realizing how I think and how my mind works will do me a huge favour in the future.

Mr Derksen said he's looking forward to having me in his class next semester... I think he even might have been genuine. No, he's really an awesome teacher!

And yeah... There is one fricking huge mistake I made in English: I re-wrote the first text production and forgot to cross out the first draft!
I meant to cross it out, but my mind was swirling all throughout writing and so I forgot -_- All the nice quiet of yesterday's Biology exam was gone :/
Well, can't change it now...

And it's not as though it actually matters for me...

That's it. I have decided that you will get the thoughts transcript from yesterday only if you actually know me and I can give it to you in person. Nothing against those I know only via web, but I honestly don't wanna type that stuff up...

And now I'm going back to watching Oil Change. No, it's not about cars, it's a documentary about the Edmonton Oilers that is really, really interesting :)
And I wanted to re-watch yesterday's Blackhawks game, because the Blackhawks commentators are soooooo much better than the Dallas ones!

Have all the love,

Julia

P.S.: NO SCHOOL TILL FRIDAY!!!!! (Except for the exam, but who cares?!)

P.P.S: And to anyone (silently) complaining about me being obsessed with things:
There is an article. Because Sidney Crosby "Wanted to feel a real winter again" and chose to walk in the cold. And that warranted a whole ARTICLE! Seriously, check it out. It's the Globe and Mail. (Crosby is considered the best player of the league [not by me] and the face of the NHL. And he is ridiculously good, although prone to injury)

Finals Day I

Okay, just a short post because I slept 5 hours and am really tired:
Finals went alright I guess. Once it started, I was feeling pretty relaxed, and Spanish went better than expected. I'm not so sure about Biology though... I have a thought-log about the two exams which I will type up tomorrow, just if maybe anybody's interested in what such a day looks like.

And of course I forgot the Biology notes we were supposed to hand in today. Or rather, I grabbed the wrong stack of notes...

I also didn't do anymore Japanese. I don't really care about it, and I will get an A no matter how my exam turns out, so duh.

Well, that's it.
Have a great day!