A doll House First Reflection

WOW it has been a long time since we have had to do one of these thingies.. Anyway on to the play, the minute I saw groups on the board when i walked into the room I absolutely dreaded starting the play. I normally dislike reading aloud but throughout the class today i found that the slower pace that reading aloud brings enabled me to spend more time analyzing the words and how they fit into the context. I found humor in the self centered nature of both Nora and her husband, and some of their bantering back and forth brought forth laughs from our group.  Also just after reading the first little bit of the play, there is already a great deal of conflict introduced. Nora has her little debt and shady business she is hiding from her husband, and her relationship with her husband seems entirely fake and to centered on agreeing with each other that there is no possible way they will still be in a healthy relationship throughout the entire play.  Those are just some of my opening thoughts, not really all that profound, but I'm looking forward to how the play develops.   

rambling again

now that i am out of school related stuff to talk about, how about the weather??? Texas is crazy!!! we go from snow and ice and all sorts of crazy combinations to the next week it being a comfortable 70 degrees outside with the sun shining with all its glory.  yesterday it was so nice and warm with hardly any wind for most of the day, i seriously considered getting the boat out just so i could sit out on the lake and enjoy the nice day and its still FEBRUARY!!!!! totally bonkers this weather is. what else spring break is only a couple of weeks away so hopefully teachers will not kill us beforehand so we may enjoy the break to its fullest, and with spring break comes frozen grades which sounds nice and exciting (unless i fail calculus, that does not sound good). Then after spring break we take some test that are way to hard and then we be DONE!!!! that sounds really awesome right now. too bad its still kinda a ways away. oh well guess we will have to survive until the end like we have done the past 12-13 years or however long we have been in school. 

Government

8 weeks ago my adventure into how our government was/is designed and how it operates began.  Man what an adventure it is, every day is between a half to a full chapter of information. and there are so many terms and little details to pay attention to, it is difficult to keep up with whats what.  we just started to cover the voting process and everything has gotten a thousand times worse!! between the shifts from congressional caucuses to primaries and how these changes have caused shifts and alterations in the system has me even more totally confused.  From all this confusion i have learned why our teacher has continually said younger people do not vote nearly as much, and that because it is too freaking confusing what you would be voting for and what the person in said position would be able to do to make your life or community better.  So as of now i am happy with the one thing i have learned and will just try to keep my head above water with the rest of it.

behind again

ugh. I'm so glad this is almost over!! too much stuff going through my brain to try and keep up with it all.  The ton of work we are responsible for in English right now is not helping.  The ton of questions we had to do out of bedford book were obnoxious and some had no relevance to East of Eden because of the format of the story. On top of irrelevant question many others were so broad, you could have written an entire book for a response on just one of them.  So basically those questions need to go die and become reinvented so as to actually be a helpful exercise rather than one involving improving my creative writing ability.... lets see what else can i rant about.. hummmm the practice AP test we took today had a totally obscure poem in it that made it seem like i was supposed to take a whole bunch of irrelevant sentences and put them together into some meaning about women or life or something.  OK i feel better now that's all, I'm glad we have this open as a venting outlet. 

not much going on

seemingly the cold weather not only brings out chills in our bodies but our minds too.  The first part of the week school has been quite calm, teachers are not hounding us with work compared to the week before the day seems just to glide by and it is very nice.  This change in pace has also been very nice since i have been battling one of the stupid bugs flying around.  Probably the only good thing coming from being sick is i have been reading quite a bit of East of Eden and am to a point where it is impossible to put the book down. There are hardly any wasted actions or stories related and so the book kinda like the days just glide along making for a very pleasurable read.  Also since it is kind of a pain in the butt to fall asleep when every time you swallow a sharp pain shoots down my throat, i have been plowing through my outside reading A Clockwork Orange. If anyone wants to read a book with completely unique language and themes this is it! The book is totally bizarre, but through the unique language the author makes his story realistic to the point it is almost frightening.  So if you have not started your outside reading and need a short good book, A Clockwork Orange is the way to go.

District Swim Meet

This past Friday and Saturday your very own Belton High School Swim Team traveled down to College Station to participate in the District swim meet.  Friday was prelims where everybody competed in two individual events trying to be one of the eight lucky people to advance to finals the next day.  We swam well as a group, with a bunch of people making it to the Saturday Finals and many more in the top ten, so hopefully they will make it in the top eight next year.  (as for me i got the first place seed in both events). So after some pizza because we got done late (thanks dumb Aggie's) a nice rest in anticipation for the big showdown Saturday night. 
    Never has a morning felt so long in my life.  All the pressure and anticipation of the upcoming races kept growing on me, almost to the point i was planning to explode. The electricity in the building as the first relays hit the water was astounding, and our girls and boys relays represented well with a second place showing only adding to our teams excitement.  then my dreaded time came, the 200 free,my nerves were on edge making my mind think anything but happy thoughts.  Good thing all these nerves go away when the water rushes over you and all of a sudden you realize there is a job to do. A short (haha i wish) minute and 46 seconds later, i finally hit the wall first followed by my good buddy and team mate Benjamin York. Next for me came the 100 free which after the 200 was not as nerve racking but ended with the same result (thankfully). Our 200 free relay went well, getting second by only a few inches... :( but we got our revenge in the last event, the 400 free relay, when I followed by Benjamin York, Austin Couillard, and Mitch Anderson got first place by a landslide win of 9 seconds, shattering our old school record by over three seconds.

Over all both the Girls and Boys teams got second behind our A&M consolidated rivals.  During the meet, 7 school records were set, 3 on the girls side and 4 on the boys... that is what i did with my weekend and will be doing the same in two weeks at regional meet in Mansfield.  Again even if you don't care about swimming, it would be cool for some "good luck's" for support. and ill let y'all know how Region goes.

ok back on track.... well i hope

nice long relaxing mondays off are absoultly wonderful! To bad that it is championship swimming time again and so rather than spending some nice time outside, I got to spend three hours in cold wet water and then go home and scramble to try and get ahead on any possible homework so when I get home from our meets, completly mentally and physically exhaused, I may be able to retain some of my sanity by not being absolutely overwhelmed with homework. In some of the little down time between working on various things on monday, i could not help but thinking how great it is going to feel when the pressure of swimming in my lasat high school meet is over and we get past the Ap test and have all sorts of time to be bored and hang out with friends all the while gearing up for hopefully a wonderful, memorie filled summer. i just hope the summer goes by much much much slower thqn the school year because boy has it flown by.

P.S. if you see a swimmer in the next couple of weeks, it would be cool if you said good luck to them, I know nobody cares about swimming but it would be cool if some people pretended for like a couple of seconds..