oh..and it's inevitable..our camping trip was postponed and .. i will have to go home tonight :(   wait..maybe i can sleepover at my frenz place...ooooo..

man..the weather doesn't really like our plan for camping tonight.   we were gonna have a one night church camping trip to Guilford...but because of rain and threats of thunder and lightning, i dun think that's gonna be a reality.   so what are they gonna do yo.   maybe we'll have a sleepover anywayz, but at marina basement (where the bridgeport international academy is).   ::shrug::, i hope they don't cancel it.  *crosses fingers*

yesterday night, Paige called me and told me that the tire of the bus she was travelling on burst and they went onto the side of the road.   in the accident, she got cut on the side of her face pretty bad, and she had to go for stitches.   they don't know if there's any other problems, but they xrayed her..not sure.   GET WELL SOON PAIGE!!

The driving test is less than 4 weeks away....i'm in big trouble yo.   I'm still not like 100% sure of what i'm doin out there..like traffic rules and stuff.  eg. when turning left at junction with lights, can still turn if the green arrow is gone but green light remains..as long as no oncoming traffic.   i guess i got that one now..but there's a few more.   like stop signs, sometimes i don't know if it's a 4 way..then i like creep forward after making the legal stop to see if there's cars..wasting time.   haiz..i want to be able to show confidence on the test date (aug 17th)   AHH.  

i need to work on turning into the lane closest to me, obeying the speed limit (I'm almost always speeding!), check mirrors properly.  

erm..today's lesson was pretty bad yo.   it was the first instructor of mine..which technically taught me how to drive.   and he was being such an arse.   omg, being sarcastic, condescending and stuff.  my gosh..   anywayz..there was a bunch of stuff i did wrong today :

turning WAY too fast..and going out onto the furthest lane.   omg..   then at a junction, didn't look at my rear view when the light was amber to check if it was okay to stop yo.   haiz..and doin a 3 pt turn, hit the curb when reversing (narrow lane)  omg..i seriously don't want to fail this test.   but it's gonna be difficult cuz i don't have anyone to take me out driving yo yo.   i don't care..i will pay that person if i have to.  it's better than failing and losing ALL that money my DAD paid for the test.   ayayai!  

okay...worthy candidates for driving partner:
ANY ADULT!   i don't care if it's my snobby neighbour...

okay..i'm starting on the college application process..because i'm freaked out with all the stuff we gotta do.   i'm writing the essays now..and i'm gonna be soo stressed out during the course of the next few months..eek.

I skinned my first 2 chicken breasts this morning! It wasn't so bad, and i've seen my mom do it b4, so i wasn't altogether puzzled. however, i did it by myself, my mom had left for work and gave me instructions on how to make chicken soup for dinner tonight. I think it's a super system..she gives me the recipe of one of the dishes she usually makes..and i prepare it for dinner..b4 she comes home. She comes back at around 5pm+...with nick and jessie (guo ying and jia xin) after camp. This will give me valuable cooking experience i will need for later. oh yeah..and dissecting that cat during bio in school helped me not be disgusted when skinning that chicken :D

WHOO!! the interview went very smoothly and i think it couldn't have been better! I was more worried about getting there on time than anything else actually. Cuz my dad had a meeting to go to..so..i took the bus from shelton to new haven. it was a good experience taking the bus, now i know how to get to Yale by bus from the busstop 10 mins from mi place.

So I got there..and had to walk a few blocks to the actual venue. I got there RIGHT on time..not a minute earlier. Before going, learned that the interviewer would be a student at Yale..and it wasn't lying..i was actually quite skeptical about that at first.. My interviewer is a rising senior at yale..and she's really nice. The interview was pretty relaxed, got to say whatever i had planned to say..which was a bonus for me. Learned from her that yalies are not snobby or arrogant..but very down to earth..normal...

man..i'm leaving for my interview at Yale in 2 hours..and i'm friggin scured...ahhhh. okay..everyone says just be yourself and answer from your heart..even my lil sis (she said just say hi i'm esther and go with whatever questions they asked..isn't she so mature?)

This has been a very long week...it was very fulfilling..with a great team and painting a SUPER mural on the service for peace office wall :D! hopefully i can get a pic of that and you guys can all see it. Got it done with Hannah Boyd, Chung Hee Laberee and Jinmee Devine...3 great artists..all girls :D There was some trouble getting it started at first..design ideas thrown in the air and let crash to the ground...but we finally got a design that is the BOMB DIGGiTTY! Jinmee designed it with inspiration from Lillie (director), Hannah kept us all going when we didn't want to do it at all, Chung hee drew and I did the words and we all painted. So anywayz..it will be there for many years to come..even when it is handed over other groups.

I did almost 60 hours of service...and we get service hours from the time you arrive at the building to the time you leave...so you could be having lunch and it would be service..heehee...which is pretty cool. but it's all like service learning education and stuff..so tat's cool. er...some of the projects we did were: cleaning up the basement of Rescue Mission (christian homeless shelter), sorting food at the CT food bank, clearing out a empty lot of weeds at the YMCA (hotsun, weeds and thorns=hardwork!!), sorting clothes, clearing linens and cooking lunch at Prospect House (another homeless shelter) and renovation work at IPAC (international performing arts center). My favorite has to be IPAC. We arrived late..so the director was pretty mad..was threatening not to start cuz 'it would be a waste of time'....but anywyz..we started...in a circle of drums. It was cool..we established a united rhythm by counting and drumming appropriately. all bad feelings and uncertainty were gone, and it left us with inspiration and a sense of unity and confidence. We ended with drums as well....and we went away with an even more confidence. bare with my lack of vocab..haha.

on saturday, we had the SFP olympics..which is a bunch of games we play in teams and our team made 3rd place. :D we got 1st for 3 games..which is the most first places of all the teams. but we were lacking in a few other games..when we got last..haha. best team i've ever been on..i have to say. such team spirit we had..will be a standard that i will look back to for future team work.

I'm kinda depressed...there's only a month and a half of summer left..and I haven't really started to tackle the goals I have!!!

1. read chinese regularly so as not to forget
2. revise korean regularly (haiz..am i actually gonna be able to communitcate in that language? I mean, it's the reason why i'm studying it right? i can't even speak spanish..which i studied everyday during the school year. omg..)
3. read DP EVERYDAY! and learn to lecture chap 2. :(

I'm not making ANY progress in any of those. and let's not talk about getting ready for volleyball season (look at all this jelly! ...jiggle..) as well as Junior Achievement (want to be president) but actually..the program at Bryant and being team leader now is kind of training me for it.

Ahhh!! there's also my driving test! can't fail..can't fail!! @@

Oh, and I forgot to mention..my brother GuoSheng AKA. Brian, turned 14 yesterday!!!

Happy 14th Birthday Brian!

I will now start to challenge myself more than ever. It sounds kinda simplistic and dUH..you should be doing that..but i realized that I've totally slipped into a comfort zone..NOT GOOD! so..an example of practicing this is to read books of higher levels..more difficult ones. ya..

Today was the first day of SFP (service for peace). I've been paired up with Reynold, a haitian UB student who was helping with recruitment of SFP, to be team leaders of our group. My team members are Jinmee (was in my team last year too!), Ozzie, Roderick (from Delaware!), Michael Giampoli, and Edwin (who wasn't there today). I had some trepidation that we wouldn't click, some wouldn't be participating and just the whole idea of a dissipated group. However, everything went very smoothly! And I was surprisingly..confident..so I was able to articulate what I wanted to say NATURALLY and comfortably. *pat on the back. beeg accomplishment of the day.

It was really tedious filling out all these worksheets in our journals..which essentially asked the same friggin' question over and over again yo...questions like..what do you want to gain, what is your goal..blahdy blah. We only had 2 games..2!!! omg..and the thing lasted from 8 to 4. Last year, we had soo many more games. Everyone was pretty sick of it.. The facilitator, Nick, is a great guy..but..he sounds very, slow and .. safe..not much expression of feelings. you know what i mean? man..it's so BORING! not upbeat at all..which is a total no no for this kind of program yo. He also makes the games we play a bit too long, so they drag out and like, get boring. ya.. but you know what, he's new at this...so hopefully he'll get better.

alright..can't wait for tomorrow :D

ahhh..this summer is RACING past and I'm just left overwhelmed by my laziness and unmotivatedness. I had so much i wanted to do..but i don't think i have the zeal to go do it. haiz...during the school year, i usually say..i'll do that in the summer, i will have more time then. but i .. don't. !!!! I think i've really lost my discipline to do things. But it's not like i'm just watching TV and stuff you know, i'm doing things, but just not organized enough to fit everything i want to in my day. bleahz.

Service for Peace is starting tomorrow, monday, July 12th, in Bridgeport Connecticut!!! This is gonna be a great, challenging week of service projects in the community, character and leadership education, and LOTS OF FUN! Last year's was really good..and this year will probably be better. :D

whoa..i've almost reached a 1000 views of this blog...sweetness. if you're the thousanth viewer, pleast give me a shoutout!!! but you wouldn't be the thousanth if not for others who have supported my blog too. THANX EVERYONE for reading.

I've noticed that during the past month or two, pple have been changing stuff alot. Blogger...where i have my blog account on changed it's look and navigation stuff. Yahoo has changed it's mail stuff, for WAY better. it now has 1 GB of storage, which is absolutely fantastic..i used to take up 80% of my storage, but now, it's a mere 2%. I encourage everyone to try Yahoo out. And the front page for yahoo mail is also changed, for a personal email type to more..business like..but it has a corny pic of this lady trying to look hip.

er..then at home, we got a new monitor, moved the new comp upstairs and the one upstairs downstairs..then we exchanged the comp area downstairs with the piano...and in the kitchen, we got rid of a cabinet. it's like, pple have a trend of changing at a certain time...hmm. have i changed? yes i have..i'm more lazy, i don't have the discipline to sit down and blog properly anymore. AHH! what's becoming of me.......

but yeah, i have to say i'm not a person who likes change that much. if possible, i prefer things to stay the same. of course not for personal development or going through stages in life..etc. just small, not so significant things. ..

Last week, my dad took off from work, cuz it was indenpendence day weekend. pretty nice. So here's some of the things that we did last week.

We visited the biggest casino in the world - Foxwoods. ..yes, it's right here in connecticut, just 2hrs away from our place. It was gigantic, absolutely luxurious. So luxurious you may just want to puke. In the bathrooms, they had this lady employed just to wipe the sink countertops whenever a person used it..so there were never any drops of water on top. And I was surprised that you could smoke in there...guess the no smoking rule doesn't apply for casinos huh. no kids under 21 .. or was it 18... were allowed in the casinos..but there were plenty of shops and arcades.

After Foxwoods, we visited Mystic Seaport, which was free that day (a $85 actual cost for my family) cuz of a community picnic. Not all the exhibits were open...cuz..it was free..everything comes with a catch :P. However, we were able to see the inside of prominent ships, walk around, go to permanent exhibits...which were all pretty cool. It's the oldest museum..or something...it's outdoor and indoors, along a whole seaport..which is pretty unique.

Another day, we went to Talcott Mountain State Park in Simsbury. I recommend it to whoever wants an enjoyable, short hike (45 mins) that brings u up to a former summer house that has a tower. Named the Heublin tower, it has been a reknown landmark of the area for some time. The small estate was turned over to the state, and the house is now a small museum. The tower is just magnificent, you can see 360 degrees around u, so beautiful. As we started walking down, the pre-forecasted thunderstorm started looming over the mountain. Yeah...we knew it was going to rain, but in the morning, it looked so fine! haha..anywayz, it didn't start raining until we were like 2 seconds from our car. and it wasn't just raining..it was HAILING! arh...first time we ever had hail...which is frozen rain. er..it was small, like small pebbles..won't take out your eye or anything. but as we were driving, the noise of it hitting out windshield got kinda scary..so stopped under a tree :D.

AFter the hike, we drove over to Flamig farm...it stopped raining and suddenly everything looked so gorgeous. had a petting zoo..with really friendly animals. They would be in the shelter, but when they see u, they will come up and let u pet them. even better than humans!

last saturday..went to Quassy Amusement park in Middlebury. really not that great..and it's a good thing we went on carload night, cuz it isn't really that worth to be paying much more. on carload night, it's $14 for the whole family..which is WAY lot cheaper than normal. er..had rides..a tiny rollercoaster, some other scary ones which included being swung around high up, up and down...got me quite scared. and there was also a water park section..which we did not know closes 2 hours before regular rides...so when we finally got there..it was already starting to close..pretty dumb huh. again..the CATCH.

I received this thing from the national young leaders conference thing right, that's a 6 day program in the fall. And it's also a leadership program, but in a political point of view..similar to the bryant college program, which was business oriented instead. BIG DIFFERENCE: I paid nothing for the bryant college one..but they're expecting me to fork out $1200+ for the NYLC. wth? and its also 6 days...further away..and in an area I'm not very interested in. my response? sorry...to the trash.

On monday, we went strawberry picking at the Jones Family Farm which is in Shelton. Fell in love with strawberries after coming to the states..so yummy. At the entrance, we were given a simple box with a handle, which looks like a basket. each of us kids took a small blue carton. So we got on the truck that would shuttle us to the best strawberry crop of the day. It was a simple vehicle, had a roof, and just seats on the side facing outward with a pipe behind for us to hold on to, cuz there weren't any doors. but there was no need, cuz it was a slow ride.

When we got there, there were already a bunch of pple bending down amidst the rows of strawberry plants, picking. Since the season was almost ending, the strawberries were a little smaller. towards the end of our picking stay, we ventured into a patch that wasn't picked yet, and found a myriad of large strawberies. the others we had picked b4 were small, but they were very sweet.

I actually thought i was going to be just picking and eating it right away, but most of them were like touching the ground and in contact with some rotten ones. and it was like a competition between me and my sibs to see who could get the most and biggest strawberries. i think it was a draw...

Ended up with a gigantic basket of strawberries. I'm gonna make mi strawberry cobbler and my mom is gonna bake a strawberry sponge cake. YUM! also, you guys can try melting some chocolate, then coating strawberries with it...doesn't have to totally coated, just 3/4 would be find. put it on wax paper, or a surface that the chocolate can come off of when hardened. then put it in the fridge...CRUCIAL! cuz when it's hardened, it will have a crunchy outside, but a soft and juicy inside. :P