Sunday, September 7, 2014

Sunday Funday: September 7/14

Image Credit: Kara Allyson via PhotoPin CC
Hi there! So my first week of school is now officially over and I'm pretty glad it's the weekend. I was very nearly about to write "August" as I was writing the title of this post and it really hasn't completely sunk in yet that school is in session. There are still some bits of my "usual" routine, or at least soon-to-be-usual routine that haven't actually been added to my life yet if that makes any sense, but I guess once those things (ie. Spanish class on Saturday mornings) are added to my schedule, it'll feel like I'm getting back to normal.

Loads of fun and exciting things happened this week for me, so keep reading if you're curious to get a little peek into that!

Last Sunday, my family and I hosted a dinner party with a few family friends and it was just the perfect way to end the summer, even though it's not technically over for a couple more weeks. It was just a really fun time filled with lots of delicious food and despite the slightly grumpy start to the whole food prep part of the day, I had a really great time.

Bum Mam by Alpha via Flickr
Bun Cha Gio by hermitsmoore via Flickr
I completely forgot to take photos, so I've included some from the internet, but we made spring rolls and this awesome seafood salad as appetizers and while the adults went and had a traditional and more elaborate Vietnamese soup called bún mắm and I had bún chả giò which is basically vermicelli noodles with spring rolls and lots of lettuce and cucumbers sliced up at the bottom of the bowl, drench in a special Vietnamese fish sauce vinaigrette.

So basically heaven in a bowl.

For dessert, my aunt made a bunch of lovely flan cakes and a sponge cake-type thing that I totally just pigged out on. 

After the commotion that was the gathering and a relaxed Monday spent doing random work to get myself ready for the new school year, on the Tuesday after Labour Day, I was back at school. It was really great to see some friends again and get to know new people that I didn't get the chance to get to know last year.

Something a bit less fun were the changes made to our usual class schedules. Before, my school was a bit different from all the other ones in my city and we had three classes before lunch at 12:35, which is a usual and reasonable time to eat lunch for me, and then one class in the afternoon, and then we were done for the day. It'd be the same order of classes every day until half-way through the semester when we'd flip the order of 2nd and 3rd period and would continue with the rest of the semester that way. 

Now, we have two classes in the morning, then lunch at the crazy time of 11:10 and then two classes in the afternoon, plus we're operating on a two-day schedule. I'm not crazy about the changes, but I guess that's how we all react to change at first. I'm not going to expound on how I feel about it because it might jinx it, so I'll end that here.

Aside from that, school has been pretty good even though it's only been four days. This semester, I have French and History with the same teacher, as well as Math which is thankfully enriched, and Art. Overall, I'm really stoked about my classes this year because I chose electives that are getting me really excited just at the thought of it and thankfully, I was fortunate enough to get into the all the courses that I wanted. 

A few of my friends actually had to drop courses that they wanted to take to prioritise other ones and I know that that's such a struggle when it comes to the whole picking process. Once you've gone through the trouble of planning everything out to the last detail to build yourself a good future which is already hard enough as it is, and then you don't even know if you can get all the courses that you basically need.

I think I went off on a big of a tangent there, aha. Anyway, I was "dreading" French and History the most (I say "dreading" but I wasn't really that unenthusiastic about it, just not nearly as excited as the other courses), and I'm really glad that I got the teacher that I did. He seems very, very passionate about the subjects and I think that that's going to translate really well and benefit me when it comes time for him to teach it to us. 

The worst is having a teacher who seems bored about whatever it is that he or she is teaching because as students, the majority of us already don't want to be there and if you're giving off vibes that you don't want to be there either and don't try to get us into the material, it just makes the class so much worse. Obviously, teenagers probably don't make that very easy on high school teachers, but all in all, I'm just really stoked about my teachers this semester.

Fun fact, in my history class, there are only 16 kids. SIXTEEN. Plus, twelve of them are girls and four are guys, and the class is set up in about three rows and the first two are packed with the girls, almost like a huge wall and then there are the guys slumped at the back. It's probably not that funny, but it cracks me up every time I think about it.

Speaking of people, a lot of people have been really nice to me this week, and I have no idea if they're reading this right now, but I thought it'd be appropriate to thank them here, so shout out to Lily and Akhila if you're reading this! It's when people (not that many - think less than a handful, here as pretty much only two of my closest friends actually read my blog) randomly come up to me and tell me that they've been reading and loving what I've been writing that I realise that I'm pretty lucky. I mean, 2000000 people don't read my blog, but I have a small little community of loyal friends/followers who get me and that just means a lot. So thanks a bunch.

There are a bunch of other exciting things that I wanted to talk about (like NYFW which is so amazing, holy crap), but that would make this a ridiculously long post, so I'll save that for next week.

How was your first week of school? How did you spend the end of summer? What's been making you happy this past week? Share your stories and leave your comments below!


Thank you so much for reading!
- J


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