I tried to post on Sunday but the computer kinda froze up so it didn't work out. Wah.
Updates:
School: I started school at the end of August (I point this out cause the last post is from July, but I edited it Sunday which is why it has an October date). I am now at mid-semester, with the work piling up fast. I am taking Biological Anthropology, Principles of Oral Communication, Asian Philosophy & Religion, and History of the Americas, as I believe I said before. Right now I have an anthro essay due soon, a speech for my Oral Comm class coming up (and we just did another), a "microtheme" (mini-essay) for Philosophy due next week, and a research paper for History that I'm doing on Dutch expansion in the Americas. Plus we have our triterm in Philo on China in a few weeks.
As for what I'm studying...right now we're still in the early colonial age in History; we're studying Daoism right now in Philo, particularly the Tao Te Ching, which Professor Scott-James had us buy and read; we just started our Human Evolution unit in anthro, and we just finished our informative speeches in speech class, and now go on to the final lecture days of the whole semester, which are on how to do persuasive speeches. The rest of the class is going to be taken up by our two other speeches, our persuasive speech and our final speech. I already know my topics, since Mr. Moura contracted us on certain topics for all our speeches for the whole semester early on. My persuasive speech is on why we need fairy tales, which has been rather hard to come up with good arguments on...so much the stuff on fairy tales affect us is rather speculative or involves complex psychological stuff. My final speech is an informative one on tennis, and I have so much info I need to sit down and sift through it. I know I will definitely need a visual aid or two for that one, though it's not required; with my persuasive speech, there is not really anything that requires extra visual illustration, so I can do without a visual aid.
The main issue with my persuasive speech was that it was tough to figure out where all the info from my notes would fit in. So I scripted it, writing out more or less what I was going to say. I need one more source since I eliminated one of the fairy tale books I was going to use, but this is ok cause I need some statistic or scientific fact anyway to back up my assertion that you can get far in life by planning ahead and using your brain. I also may need to cut some stuff out cause it looks long. But this is mainly cause I use actual fairy tales as examples and thus have to give plot summaries of them all as briefly but as completely as possible.
Work: Bad. I found out I am going to be let go as of November 1. So I have to find a new job and fast. I am looking primarily for work involving computers that doesn't involve customer service (since I haven't been doing too good with customer service at Loaves & Fishes). There are some of these -- mainly receptionist and clerical jobs, as well as secretarial/admin assistant jobs -- but a bunch of them didn't work, because I didn't have prior experience, or they were too far away, or because I didn't know some programs, like Outlook or Quickbooks (an accounting program), or because I'm not bilingual (which around here means you speak English and Spanish fluently).
IVCF Fall Retreat: I just got back from this (well, not just, on Sunday). It was awesome. I felt like I was really touched by God while there, plus it was fun. We stayed in a nice hotel in Newport Beach and had big group sessions and seminars at nearby UC Irvine. Some parts of it were tiring, like the late nights (the evening session, with small groups afterwards, often did not get out till around 10:30) and walking up the long, steep ramp to the lecture hall where our main sessions were in my not-good-for-walking shoes (most of us wisely decided to park across the street by a shopping/food area called University Centre rather than pay $7/day to park in UCI's parking structure). We also had to pay for all our food, even breakfast. And pretty much everyone ate out -- I don't think anyone ate at the hotel restaurant or got room service that I know of. Some people were smart and bought groceries somewhere so they'd have snacks and stuff. I ate at La Salsa Fresh Mexican Grill with my carmates Elizabeth and Raquel for dinner the first night, had pita chips from Jamba Juice and a peanut butter bagel sandwich from Breugger's Bagels for breakfast with Cassandra and Yvette on Saturday morning (they put WAYY too much peanut butter on my bagel though), ate lunch Saturday afternoon at California Pizza Kitchen with a bunch of other people from my school who decided to make an excursion to South Coast Plaza, ate dinner to go Saturday night from In-n-Out with Cassandra and a couple other girls, found my own breakfast Sunday morning at a place just down the street from our hotel called Panini Garden Bistro (I got toast with butter, a scrambled egg, and a can of Coke all for $5.30 with tax), which I brought back to my hotel room to eat (I've never had toast and a scrambled egg to go from a restaurant before...it was interesting), and then ate lunch with a bunch of other people from school at a place in University Centre called Lee's Sandwiches. Lee's Sandwiches is great cause it serves simple stuff, like sandwiches, ice cream, and smoothies, with a bit of an ethnic twist, and it's really, really cheap. (I got a medium drink and a garlic baguette and only spent a little over $2!). It obviously caters to UCI students, cause we saw a lot of them there. Actually, all of University Centre basically caters to UCI students.
Other Stuff: I'll make this quick cause I gotta go get dressed soon.
- My birthday's tomorrow! I turn 22 this year. I'm not getting many presents; I'm getting my hair styled today and Mum wants to buy me an interview outfit. In other words, getting a job is top priority right now.
- I managed to download all of Code Lyoko season 3, which finally aired this month. I am very happy about this cause I have new clips for vids. Granted, Movie Maker is still not saving right, but I'm trying to figure out how to get around that. I have made some movies with a program on our family computer called Sony MovieShaker, but it's only good for non-clip movies.
-I have not been able to get online on my laptop for about a month now. It is driving me crazy. My antenna and the router card I've been using both only pick up a "limited or no connection" signal.
-I lost my mp3 player (*sob!*) somewhere at school. So I have been having to rely on my portable CD player, which uses up the battery really quickly. I'm hoping to get a new one soon.
Ok I'm gonna go.
