I'm so lazy... I never write in here, in my Xanga, or in my real journal (where it really matters) anymore. Lots of stuff happen, but I'm usually too tired/sad/HAPPY (?) to write about anything anymore. Mostly tired.

-_- Zzz... that's me...

Anyway, I saw all of my old middle school friends at the football game on Friday. My school lost miserably 25-0, but esta bien. I just wanted to see all my friends again, and yes, go through the heartache that I always feel after leaving this game.... it's my last one, and after this year, I probably won't see them again much.

As Todd says, "SEEN-YORZ!" 06!

Oh, how lovely.

Last night, I watched the last episode of this Chinese soap opera - it's about this angel who comes down from heaven to see if there are any good, righteous people left. A lot of the members from "Do Yu" were in this soap opera. Well, in my opinion, this soap opera was kind of weak because all the episodes were about daily life, and nothing traumatic even happened. The angel (played by this innocent Chinese guy ^_^) and the cute girl (from "Do Yu") are so pure, it's crazy :) I cried at the ending because it was, in a sense, bittersweet. Oh gosh, my sister proclaimed that I'm "emo." Okay, so I cry a lot, big deal.

Blah, I'm so tired and overworked- I need to stop doing so much stuff... ;(

I already missed 2 days of school this year - blahhhhhhhh...

I'm so proud of my heritage... call me a dork, but a lot of the weekends, this is what keeps me up at night when I should be a normal teenager that's simply sleeping. You know what I do a lot of the weekends? If it's not sleeping (haha), no, it's not partying and getting drunk like a monkey (like some of my classmates have a penchant to do), but it's learning Chinese. Translating words and phrases.

I wish everyone had the opportunity to grow up billingual. Since I did grow up billingual, indeed, I have no idea what the other side feels like, to only have a (somewhat?) command of the English language and nothing else. Parlez-vous francais? and Hola do not count. I know a lot of kids in high school French, Spanish, etc. are only in there for credit/college applications, and I know most kids don't even come close to "profiency" in high school foreign language. I know unless I do outside reading and speaking, there's no way I can survive in Mexico, or Spain, or Venuzuela despite my (now) three years of Spanish class. However, I have been exposed to Mandarin since I was born, really, and if you threw me in China or Taiwan, I think I could manage :)

Being billingual (or trilingual, or whatever) is a powerful feeling, and a useful one at that! :) Being able to communicate with relatives, businesspeople, and simply people from that country(ies) is a huge barrier people can overcome with another language. There's a lot of appreciation to be gained with the knowledge of another language, too. For your own background and the other country's background and culture. Okay, in my case, there are still a lot of words/phrases that I'm not sure what they mean, but with every sentence I translate, hey, I'm getting there. It's like decoding some "secret" message, only like, two billion people know, but you don't.

Which gives great satisfaction to me. :) Maybe I should be one of those cryptologists my physics teacher was talking about - breaking all this code. It's kind of the same, right? :) I love figuring out and deciphering stuff. Definitely the hard part, but the end result is almost always so rewarding.

I'm still alive.

I didn't go to school today because I woke up exhausted. Actually, I almost didn't wake up, I don't think... or get up, anyway. Bah. I slept from 8pm - 6am, 7am-11am ... what a day, what a day. I'm still not really okay because my health is perpetually just bad.

Anyway. I watched The Terminal w/my family this evening. What a cute movie - and it's not thy typical romance movie, either, which was fantastic. It didn't end the way I thought it would, but I guess that what makes movies/books stand out, eh? Bravo, Tom Hanks :) And first time I saw Diego Luna in action - ha ha ! :) He's still on my wall...

Okay, off to bed. Volunteering tomorrow. :)

I don't know if I should still do Early Decision to UPenn...

Hello.

Senior year is no fun... whoever said it was fun was probably referring to second semester. I always find myself sleeping at 12am at the earliest... this is bad. Am I procrastinating too much? Maybe I should step back and observe what in the world I end up doing after school, after band practice. Almost every day, two hours is lost due to power napping.... and then like, 1-1.5 for eating, showering, brushing teeth, etc. I wish I didn't come home at 5pm almost everyday.

LHS WON 12-0 TODAY! CONGRATULATIONS!

I'm so excited. My freshman year, our football team was 0-10 for the whole season. Since then, we have never had a winning football record, and we just got lost to winning like, three games and losing the rest. Now, I'm back in marching band (after a year hiatus) and excited that we're now 2-1, which is a miracle to everyone's eyes! We're seniors now, and I hope we can end with a winning record. That would be nice to be the class at LHS that actually has a winning record, for once. Let's break this dry spell.

In other news, I found out there are COLORED PICCOLOS and they are so pretty! The base is one color while the keys are another. There are pretty pairs like blue and silver, purple and blue, red and gold, etc. My piccolo is dead (you should see me trying to play it. I look so silly), so I am in search of another one. I don't know if I have time to play in college, but I would like to have the chance... perhaps it would be an outlet from all this studying I would probably be doing. YEAH! I love music.

I hate studying.

Yesterday... after spending two hours volunteering at a nursing home, I almost slept the rest of the day. Things have been rather hectic, and I've been getting not a lot of sleep. I think my health is failing, which is definitely not a good sign since I need to be really robust and healthy in order to get anything accomplished. I've downed like, 200 ounces of gatorade/powerade to replenish all that lost minerals/electrolytes from excessive sweating.

There is so much stuff to do, and so little time, but it is not even September yet. Am I worrying too much?

Sleep-deprived.

I never seem to get lots of sleep lately - around 5-6 hours/weeknight. The thing is, even if I do have time to sleep, I...don't. It's quite strange. I must have an addiction to reading, which, considering the alternatives (drugs, alcohol - read the Newsweek issue about meth), it sounds rather good and rather nerdy. Like, last week, I couldn't stop reading summer 2005 back issues of Newsweek (I wish I could write/have the knowledge of Fareed Zakaria), even though it was around 12am. Of course, there's the constant studying because I don't get home until 5pm three days a week and I have to leave two hours for nap (and shower, and a short dinner) because standing in the sun for two hours is really taxing on the body. Like my good freshman buddy Jaime says, I "sweat like a dog." Thanks.

I love my freshmen! They're so funny.

I just sweated about 10 pounds of of me.

Tonight was the first football game of the season. I am guessing the humidity index was like 2450% because I've never sweated so much in my life. Ok, how about this - all the practices I've been to so far amounted to this one game. YIKES. Not to gross you out or anything (I want you to come back), but I looked like I took a shower. Except, uh. I didn't.

Shuaib is awesome - when we band kids (dorks) were kneeling for the halftime show for the other band, I saw him and Vikas (these are my two brown friends, woot) walk by. I said hello and complained about the utter humidity (UGH), and he went and bought me a powerade, which I had to drink after the halftime show. Awww, thanks for spending $2 on me, that means a great deal, especially how I was dying of dehydration out there. :) I got to hang out with my Indian guy friends (and my girls, ZAHEERA and ISHITA) at third quarter, which was nice. I usually don't see all of them congregate in one area (I wish I had more Chinese guys my age/grade... cool Chinese guys anyway. The little we have I don't really associate with them). Ah, I love my friends, but why do I have to have this stupid antisocial part of me that seems to kick in at the wrong place, wrong time, everytime?

We played lots of cheers. I screamed a lot. I played an octave higher on the piccolo, and everyone knows that the piccolo is already high enough :P I misheard those cheerleaders' chants... they were spelling L A K E S I D E and I always caught the last part, but I didn't understand what they were spelling, so I thought they were spelling S T I C K E R. My friend and my sister almost died laughing. Eh. Funny things happen when one is delirious, tired, and dehydrated.

I finally stepped in the Lakeside bathroom for the first time in my four years there. Wow. Stadium bathrooms are horrible.

Well, to wrap it up, after many frustrating "so close, yet so far" moments, surprise surprise, we lost 20-10.

And now I'm going to eat something. :)

I love cheesecake.

When I was little, I was repulsed by the very idea of cheese + cake. One salty thing and one sweet thing? How in the world did they ever go together? I tasted some, and I thought what a weird combination it was. I felt like I was eating soft, sweet cheese... you know, some items just don't mix together, and I almost gagged.

I'm not sure what I was thinking because now, I'm addicted to that stuff! Maybe the strange sweetness of cheesecake finally grew on me. We bought this no-bake cheesecake that required just milk and mixing, and after freezing it to firm it up, I already ate almost 1/4 of it :D ... wow. The graham cracker pie crust is absolutely divine with it. You know how fat I am going to get? :D No wonder I'm so, uh, well endowed. I grew up with all this milk and good food, and I'm adding cheesecake to the list. If I grow up to be featured in one of those Success Stories in Shape magazine, that will be a sad day indeed. You know, the classic "she was skinny in high school but in college she gained 200 pounds and finally got back to a healthy weight" articles that are fun to read. I love the before/after pictures. I hope I don't have any drastic ones, though.

I can't believe I wrote for two minutes about cheesecake.

Marching band practices are hell.

They're so hot and blistering. Sweat beads drip down constantly from my face and neck. It is a most disgusting site. The grass and mud beneath my feet don't help, either.

Two hours of hell... Three days a week... This had better be worth it.

Anyway, you are now reading the entry of a girl who got one hour of sleep last night. That's right. This idiot ended up taking four tablets of Midol. If you don't know what that is, it's an OTC pain reliever for menstrual cramps (in particular), and it contains 60mg/tablet of caffeine to perk up the average bloated, cranky menstruating woman (like me, except I might be above average when it comes to cranky). 60 x 4 = 240mg of caffeine for me in one day = no sleeping from 12:30AM - 5:00AM.

Wow. I had to turn on the rap station full blast this morning to wake myself from this dazed mode. So strange. Everything felt surreal. I had to chant (more like scream) vocabulary words and song lyrics to wake myself up on the way there. Thank God nothing happened because if I were any more tired, there could have been a serious accident.

Time to shower, nap (for once), and study, study, study.

I better get into a good college. Preferably with financial aid/money, too :D haha... unlike the rest of my school, I am rather anti-UGA.

This is the first time in a long time that I have gone without a personal website.

Granted, a lot of the pages I hadn't touched in awhile and were in need of major updating/touch up, but hey, they were still there, and I spent some hours typing (or c + p) the HTML coding and messing with Photoshop. Keeping a blog is fun, but it's kind of... well, empty! I've been so used to seeing "ABOUT SITE," "DANI," "GUESTBOOK," and so on, that with just the blogging in it (notice how my entries seem to vary in length?) is a bit unsettling. Nadine offered hosting to me, which I am ever grateful :) but I'm on "hold," sorta, due to school. Maybe in a week or two (or three), I'll get my life back on track and start HTMLing/Photoshop-ing once again! Haha, I've been doing websites since like, 2nd-3rd grade, however rudimentary they are/were. It has been awhile, yes indeed.

I looked at my list of prospective colleges. Most of them are very selective, and I'm wondering if I should put more good schools but for my profile, a "safety school," you know, in case I get rejected from everything except GA Tech and UGA. Ahhh. Am I just throwing $300 of fees down the drain? Well, if you hope for nothing, you will never be disappointed, so if you get something (good), then that's great because you weren't expecting it, and good surprises are usually, well, good! Sometimes, I don't know if I agree with that 100%, but what kind of mentality am I supposed to have towards this issue?

Ahh, everyday at band practice, I look upon the flute/piccolo section. Most of them are new freshmen, and when I see them, I sense the "innocence" and the, eh, vulnerability of being the youngest and the newest ones on the field. Yes, I was there once, and totally clueless :P but I ended up making friends and being commended for my playing (Erica, Heather, and Leanne, if you're out there, hey! I miss you all!). Quite an experience. I am not a leader, though, because I rejoined marching band a bit late in the summer, but I still feel, I don't know, protective of these kids, especially the three that are near me on the field and very awesome indeed. Except for my younger sisters, I have never really felt this kind of feeling towards younger people because I used to be one of them myself. Plus, I'm not too satisfied with leadership this year, but I don't want to, like, comandeer the position and upset some people. Maybe if there is an appropriate time, I will step in. Actually, I need to teach them some cheers/stands music.

AP Physics C actually requires thinking! It's not TOTALLY math. We need to get out of this spoonfeeding, cookie-cutter mold like people tend to be in math class. I just hope I don't fail Physics this year :P or make a *gasp* B.

So much on my mind!

Well, thanks to this 6.0 GPA dilemma, I've been wondering if I should take an online course. Registration is until August 20, so I have some time. I am wondering if I can throw in an extra "AP" online (I found Statistics, World History, and Psychology, for starters). I'm guessing it would be after school, but these websites and my own stupid board of education don't tell me where online students are supposed to take the classes! Am I supposed to go after school in a lab or in the comfort of my own home or a public library? The sites say "log on anytime during the day," but I am pretty sure that last year, kids had to stay after school. I don't know. Maybe I can get out of those horrendous (hot) band practices on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. No more sweat-soaked shirts, maybe? -_-

School hasn't been too terrible yet. To my delight, I got a, 84 on the way-too-long Macbeth quote test... although I think I should have gotten higher if I just went back and checked some answers. You know how it is. This is the first time I'm happy with a B! :O ... our class average was a 54.

Methyl - CH3 nonpolar
Amino - NH2 weak base, accepts H+
Carboxyl - COOH weak acid, donates H+
Carbonyl ketone - C=O not at the end, polarity
Carbonyl aldehyde - H-C=O At end, polarity

I thought we were done with orgo back in AP Chem. XD

Macbeth? Act and Scene? What?

I can't do quotes. Especially for those that require labeling of what act/scene they were located.

I think I'm going to fail tomorrow.

Thursday, I had band practice from 3:00-5:00p.m.

We were all about to pass out. It was humid. It was hot. We only had one water break. Every time we had to go get our instruments on the ground, they would yell that it wasn't water break when a few of the dehydrated ones (like me) would trudge to the giant cooler. "It's not water break, you know."

All I have to say is: WHAT. THE. HECK.

I saw one poor freshman who was on the verge of passing out. I could have added myself to the ranks, too, when I was on the stairs coming down to go back to the band room (we practiced on this field that requires steps to reach). Everything blacked out for a second, which was not exactly great news because I was on the verge of stepping down the step.

You know what makes me mad? About 70% of the time we spend out there in practice, we get nothing accomplished. In this mass confusion, I just stand there, conversing with my fellow bored flutists around me, while I wonder why I am not home sleeping after a long day or doing much needed studying.

I know, it's only the first couple days of school. But I've seen better first practices. I wish our leaders were better. I wish we cared more. I don't, but I wish I did.

On another cynical note (copied and pasted and modified from my Xanga):

I'm wondering if I should drop Spanish 3 (not AP) and take some random AP class. Why? This new 6.0 GPA system at my school, where if you have AP classes, those classes goes up to the 6.0 (for a 100), depending on what grade you get. This is very unfair because that can mean that I worked my butt off three years of high school (while being consistently 2nd or 3rd in the class), but then someone can beat me in rank by .02 of a point GPA wise our senior year just because they took one extra AP than me... like ... AP Psychology, which every knows is an "easy" class. Even if the teacher has upped her standards a little, I really doubt that the class has as much weight as, say, AP Biology or Physics C, for that matter. I didn't really realize the significance of this new 6.0 scale (all other non-AP classes are 4.0-5.0 for A's) until I saw what all of my other classmates are taking - 5 to 6 APs ... which can probably boost their GPAs by a mere .05 points, but hey that's .05 points more than me, which is detrimental to class rank. Why are they using this new system when the AP grades already has a 1.05 curve to begin with? By the time I'm done with high school, I will have taken 6 APs total (which is not bad, right?), but there are people that will have taken 9 or 10... but some of them are like, weird classes (like Psych? Env Science? Most of my friends laughed those APs off...). =\ I worked my butt off too much just so I can lose everything I earned for three years in my senior year.

To continue my ramblings: Necesito practicar mi flauta. AHORA. ^_^

My last first day of high school begins...

Tomorrow.

I'm really surprised at how fast time flies. No matter how big of a cliché it is, well, that fact is true. It's a pity that I'm still stuck in the mindset that I am 15. Why can't we ever seem to grow up these days?

I'm excited about this year. Sure, there are going to be days where I hate life. But I've learned how to embrace challenges and just, well, deal with it. Hopefully, I'll emerge as a better person, and one who's definitely ready to take on whatever there is after I'm done with this year. I hope to strengthen some friendships because last year, I was a wee bit antisocial when it came to doing anything. There are some people that are really beautiful gems, and I love them for being themselves! :D I hope to hang out with them more often instead of like, being stuck at home studying Bio all day.

'06.

So close, yet so far.

I bought Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time for Gamecube back in March or so, and since then, I haven't really had time to play it much. Well, that's changed because now it's the last days of summer, and I'm trying to get in all of my gaming that I can before I don't have time anymore. If you don't know what the game/series is about, it's about this Middle Eastern (?) Prince who acquires this dagger that can hold the Sands of Time. Something goes horribly wrong at the Sultan's palace, and everyone's turned into sand... except for you (the Prince) and this beautiful princess named Farrah. You wander through this "obscenely large palace" with lots of booby traps and walls to scale. Whoohoo. This game is time consuming because one usually has to get a full view of the huge room to see where to jump to next.

I was happily playing along, and I even got to see this cute cutscene where Farrah says, "My love" to me (although I'm like, knocked out). Whoohoo, I'm 69% done with the game! Shortly after, I attack about 30 of these "sand creatures," and when I'm done, I go and save at the save spot.

When I come back from the short scene, my screen says "GAME OVER." I thought it was a joke, so I hit "retry." Hey, wait a minute, what is Farrah doing in that pit full of spikes? "GAME OVER." Okay, you've told me that once already.

I thought the disk had a problem, so I took out and brushed it off gently. I even blew on my memory card because Gamecubers know how much dust that thing can accumulate.

No avail. Everytime I start the game again, it says "GAME OVER" because Farrah is being impaled on the spikes. Great.

I even went back to a previous save... at 33% completion. GUESS WHAT- that has a glitch, too, and with Farrah! She disappears, and then the game is over.

I am very mad at you, Ubisoft.

These past couple of days have been the busiest I've had this summer, considering that for the first half in June, I've been mostly "house-ridden" due to a sprained ankle. The first part of July was mostly spent touring the East Coast, and these last couple of days in July have been productive.

Monday and Tuesday were spent frying in the sun. Literally. Remember, sunscreen is your best friend this summer... oh, and water, too, lots of it! I decided to join band again this year, including marching band. If you don't know Georgia sun, be glad because it is SCORCHING! We spent 8:00-11:30, 1:00-3:00 doing nothing 60% of the time outside on the two hottest days of the year. I feel sorry for the people who do nothing but burn all the time (you know, the ones that turn really red?) - My scalp is really red/brown, and my left shoulder's epidermis is like, gone... (well, not really, but when showering, it sure feels like that) If you don't understand about the scalp part, it's like this: if you shaved off all of my hair on my head, there would be this red/brown jagged line amidst all this white :P

There's something new this year; a "Leadership Team" instead of traditional titles like "rank leader," "band captin," etc. Apparently, the leaders are supposed to be on the same level as every other leader, which doesn't make sense. Maybe they don't like hiearchies? There isn't an official "rank leader" title anymore, which goes against all of my band sense. I always found it fun that there would be these people that would overlook their section plus a neighrboring one, like "Woodwind Captain" would look over flutes, clarinets, saxophones. Of course, there were rank leaders within each section, too. Best case scenario would be that the ___ Captain get along with everyone and know who's in their "care" because quite frankly, I don't know the clarinets or saxaphones that well. I think I would have been Woodwind Captain last year if I stayed in marching band, which is probably why I 'm talking about this... Now, they're just this one big mass. Like my friend said, "Why is half of the band 'leaders?'" Anyone who wanted to be a leader applied, and now we have twice, maybe three times the number of leaders...Sorry, I know I am on this bitter tirade here, forgive me, I'm not usually like that. I'm pretty sure not all of them are competent.

I went to volunteer at school yesterday and today. Why am I showing myself around school a couple of days before we actually start? I do this every year, volunteering... Fellow volunteers and I probably see more of the school than most people, especially those that commit truancy. I helped out with stamping and moving books around yesterday, and today I helped decorate a teacher's bulletin board. I got a life lesson about how AP Statistics can make one live comfortably in retirement 50 years from now by predicting the stock market. Good idea, Mr. LaMarsh!

All right, I'm really sleep-deprived right now, so I will go to sleep now. I have band practice again tonight, and I'm considering on skipping it... however, I don't like skipping out on things :P

Hi! After nearly a month of no contact, I'm back... but not at memento--mori.org. I have no idea where Kathie's domain went, and I have not heard from her in a really long time. If this is you, Kathie, please e-mail me (you know the address).

A lot of things have happened lately, but I haven't had time to recap it all. All right, here goes. Since I'm a dork like that, for easy reference, you can click on the following words to read about a section since this blog entry is like, fifty in one. Or you can just read and skip around! (Duke) (Connecticut) (UPenn) (Vermont) (Harvard) (Yale) (Miscellaneous)

My family and I went to Vermont and the New England area from the end of June to mid-July. Why? College Tours Summer 2005, of course! I'm about to be a senior in high school, and I'm really excited about the year, even though I'm taking four APs and doing marching band/band, too. This trip gave me a long get-away from home and some memories of beautiful campuses. Getting in ______ , however, is another issue.

Our first college was Duke, and in addition to being greeted by humid/hot weather, I got to see one of my good friends Howard, who I haven't seen in awhile :) (since we went to Duke a second time on the way back, I'll write about my experiences there, too). He showed us around campus, noting buildings, etc. Some people don't like it, but I thought the Gothic architecture was elegant, especially the famous chapel. The gardens there are really pretty and big; we only walked a little portion before we had to go because we were parked "illegally," ie without a ticket. I thought it was funny how the admissions and other office buildings were originally people's houses. Anyway, I think I will apply to Duke because I hear they are really good for pre-med/med, but I have no idea if I will get in. I didn't realize how selective they were until quite recently (yeah, I've been living in a cave), and I don't exactly have the best SAT scores (to us Asians, it's like, > 1500), or that great of involvement in extracirriculars, besides flute.

Traffic was really bad up in the New York area around July 4th. Argh. On a turnpike, it took us two hours to go from point A to point B one mile away. Sigh. A funny thing happened in Connecticut... since the North doesn't seem to have many restrooms, we stopped by in this random plaza searching for the bathroom. We finally spotted a McDonald's, and as we were walking towards it, I heard someone yell my name. Turns out to be my friend David's voice, and with it, his parents and a friend. Hey, what are the odds of meeting up with someone in the middle of nowhere? Yes, he goes to Yale, but we weren't quite that near New Haven yet. I think in a couple of months, David and I will still laugh at that. :D

We also visited UPenn in Philadelphia ("Philly"). The campus has this historical feel to it and lots of foliage! The main walk, Locust Walk, is really pretty, with buildings lining it (like the Wharton School!) and trees. I saw the giant broken in front of the library. If you haven't seen this thing, it's huge - Probably 10 feet across (I can't judge distances). The story is quite random, how the students say that the button is from the nearby Ben Franklin statue and, he got too fat so a button popped off. Anyway :) I hear their Wharton business school for both undergrad and grad is phenomenal, and I was pleased to see that UPenn offers dual/joint degree programs, which is awesome because of all the different courses you can take towards your degrees :) If I actually got in UPenn, I'd probably do dual/joint. Eek, but I hate how all these Ivies and private schools are 40k/year!

Vermont is a really spectacular place. I want to go there for the summer since Georgia summers are almost unbearable. We lived in this small but cozy resort nestled in the mountains. I could stand outside and appreciate a lot of green. Actually, we were so removed from civilization that I heard a bear regularly comes to the dumpster in the back... wow, can you imagine dumping the trash only to find a bear staring in your face? :D The mountain roads are scary at night because it's so windy and twisting, and the mountaineers zoom past you at 75 MPH with no effort while I can barely stand my dad going 50 MPH on those roads. It gets foggy at night, and there aren't many streetlights; I bet with the snow, it's even more dangerous. The towns here are small; the biggest one we went to was Brattleboro, and it had everything so that people could live comfortable lives there. There's a cute downtown there, with tons of shops you can't find anywhere else and good food. Felt like a big, comfy bubble!

Harvard. One of the two schools we all hear about in education and where all these people in politics came from. Well, I didn't know that Harvard is nestled in a bustling city, around the Boston area. Talk about traffic! We had a little difficulty finding parking and walking to the campus because of so many cars and people! A real city, huh (this is from a girl who's lived in the suburbs almost all her life). :) I like all the coffee joints and cute restaurants everywhere. The weather is pretty chilly out there, too! I actually bought a Harvard hoodie (biggest splurge on clothing) and used it because it was so chilly! Anyway. Harvard's campus just felt...old. I can't really remember much of the campus since our tour guide talked way too much and didn't do enough showing, but we did see that John Harvard (?) statue. I didn't know that at a lot of schools, rubbing the foot of a statue equals good luck, so I was a little disgusted to see the feet of many campus statues so tarnished... you know how many people touch that everyday?! Yes, I did touch the one at UPenn, although hesitantly. Anyway, I'm not sure what people major in at Harvard - philosophy? Economics? Pre-med? I know they're ranked highly all the time, but what do people at Harvard (not grad, undergrad) do?

Yale's fun. :) New Haven is this small city. Sure, there's traffic, but not as crazy as Harvard's. There's a downtown with all the great shops but half the hectic air that other bigger cities have. Of course, there are lots of trees (there aren't many trees where I live anywmore since people seem to love building more and more shops and homes that make the area even more crowded. But I digress) and what is that I spot, SIDEWALKS? :) If I remember correctly, the buildings are scattered this way and that (or am I getting that confused with UPenn?). Their acceptance rate is unusally low; last year it was 9.7%. I mean, should I even waste my money/time applying? ...

Well, I will write more about the instate schools I went to later on. I think this is a big enough entry that I can afford to write in another entry. I miss all of you that I haven't seen/read your blogs in awhile! Summer is ending very quickly for us; we start school August 3rd (those stupid people at the Board of Education), so I need to start doing something productive.