SLACKER!

Yes, I know, I haven't been writing, but there hasn't been much to write about. In the period of time between then and now, I have been learning new things in taekwondo from different student teachers everyday. I've learned from a variety of skill levels going from black to purple belts. They're all skilled enough to teach me, a white belt, so I get different teachers each time. It's fun to learn from different people. My very limited moves at this point are the down block, high block, middle punch, high punch, knife hands, middle block, and chop. Nothing fancy at all, but I have been excited to properly learn all these new skills. I hope to master them soon.

-Sam Rho

Getting Back on the Road

If you read this blog about a week ago, you know that I was involved in a car accident that caused my car to flip over on its side. Well, I think I've started to get over the shock of that occurrence. I've been driving a little bit recently, but only for short periods of time. Today, I managed to get myself to my mother's workplace, which is only 10 or 15 minutes away, so I didn't have to feel afraid for too long. Yes, it's true, I am actually afraid to drive right now. Even the smallest things, such as accidentally going closer to the curb or seeing a bird on the side of the rode cause my heart to pound. I'm hoping that this will go away soon, being afraid isn't really helping me drive, it's just causing me to freak out a whole lot.

-Sam Rho

Tiredness

Yesterday was really exciting! After church, where there was a celebration for the reverend's 70th birthday, there was another party at my mom's friend's house. There, I got to swim in their pool and hang out with the friend who is going to be going to Korea soon. I'll miss them, but hopefully they'll be back soon.

-Sam Rho

Taekwondo!

Today was fun! I woke up right and early to go and help my mom with her work as well as go to my taekwondo lesson. Of course, this is my third class, so I'm not exactly black belt material yet, but it's fun to go to class and just follow what everyone else has done for months!

I got to learn the low/down block, the high block, the middle punch, and the high punch today as well as put some of those together. I had a wise, old black belt woman teaching me some of the simplest things, I guess, in taekwondo. I felt a little silly, but then I realized that everyone else had already done this before, so I didn't feel as bad knowing everyone there knew how I felt. It was actually fun! Of course, I am the type of person that sweats a whole bunch, so I was basically drenched by the end of the 40 minute class, but I had fun and I felt like that was really all that was necessary to keep me going.

Helping my mom today consisted of stapling, watching Gintama, and playing Pokemon! I got past the first gym! I haven't played a Pokemon game Ina while, so I'm having fun!

-San Rho

Job

Whenever everything in life seems to go wrong, I think of old man Job. Sure, he seemed like any ordinary rich guy, but he also had a deep faith in God. Today, I learned about a real life situation happening to a church friend of mine that just seems terrible. Hopefully what happened to Job occurs to them.

The father of my friend has a doctorate in biochemistry, so he's a freakin' boss. He was working in a lab and doing all these things that I probably wouldn't understand. Anyway, the boss of the father decides that there is no need for more researchers and the budget, I guess, was running low so the father, and probably other people, was fired. The next thing you knew, the family had lost their main income. Then, the family learned that their visa to America had expired. I don't really know how those work because I'm made in America, but they have to leave the country in a week. So basically, this is just a really bad situation for them.

Job, who lost his family, wealth, and health, still managed not to disrespect God, though his friends didn't really help with that. This family, on the other hand, was freaking out. Of course, who wouldn't? They had just experienced a giant income loss and were being kicked out of America within a week. I hope, though, that they can persevere and allow God to lead them to whatever path they are meant to go. Hopefully it will lead them back to our church, because I like to keep my friends.

Oh, and I learned this all because I woke up early today to help my mom go and run the cleaners place. That was fun, I got to staple the tags onto the clothes and watch Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King! I was happy. I need to get my mom a phone for her birthday, but I don't know how this will work... Perhaps I'll have to change phone companies with her, because she needs unlimited data for Kakaotalk... I'll figure it out later.

On a final note, I tried out Pokemon White 2 today, the girl's protagonist's hair causes her head to be REALLY wide! Haha. I didn't really get far, but it was fun to guess what they were saying in Japanese!

-San Rho

Today was nice

With the exception of an angry old lady who just wouldn't let go of the accelerator, today was rather nice peaceful. I'm happy. I just went to the oral surgery center, got some antibacterial fluid, and quickly went back home. After lunch, I went to my mom's work and just stayed and helped her until 7 at which point we went home. Nothing too exciting... I am glad.

-Sam Rho

I'm Alive

I love God. I just survived a T-bone collision car crash. I'm barely injured. Thank God.

I was leaving home today to go to the oral surgery place for my checkup. I had my list of questions, it was like any other day, nothing extraordinary. Then, as I was making the first turn from the intersection between my home street and the other road, a car hit me. I was scared for my life. I hoped that I was a good Christian. A few seconds later, I realized that the car was sideways, so I unhooked my belt and climbed out of the car. I was barely hurt at all. In fact, I was almost fine. The driver of the other car was fine as well, just a passenger who got injured. Thank God that no one was killed.

-Sam Rho

Being sick sucks

This morning I woke up feeling both hot and cold at the same time. It was a terrible feeling and I never want to feel that way again. I woke up and tried to cool myself off by splashing water on my face, but it didn't really help because I was cold anyway. I was just so confused.

I attempted to go back to sleep, but after many failed attempts, I got out of bed and prepared to face the day. That really didn't happen, though, because when I woke up I was freezing. The outside weather seemed to be mimicking my state because it was pouring down rain. I realized, after about an hour of laying down, that I was actually sick.

I was really annoyed because I didn't enjoy being sick at any point. I thought that this might have been caused by my extraction of wisdom teeth, but I quickly pushed aside the thought because this felt like an all out flu. I was aching and just feeling terrible. I attempted not to think about it by watching videos on YouTube and going on Facebook, but I was starting to feel worse, so I just went ahead and decided to watch some tv. After that, I decided just to take a nap and woke up about an hour or two later.

I feel a bit better than I did this morning right now, but I still feel awful. I've been watching Gintama for a while now... I feel rather helpless... My stomach aches, my face is hot, and I'm having trouble thinking correctly. Not happy right now. Hopefully I'll recover by tomorrow for my follow up check up at the surgical center that took out my teeth.

-Sam Rho

Generations

Nothing long, just like to say that my aunt, cousin, and niece came over last night and left right after church today. That was fun. My niece is actually older than I am, so I really only conversed with her. It was kind of funny to see the resemblance between the three of them. It was like looking through time. One generation at a time.

Nothing really special today, just making sure that I write something.

-Sam Rho

Chewing

You know, I never really realized it, but chewing food is really important when it comes to digestion of food. It also really sucks when you can't chew. It's been a few days since these wisdom teeth of mine have come out and I was really hoping that I would be able to chew at this point, but because the areas where my teeth once were seem to touch whenever I attempt to chew, it hasn't been the best experience attempting the feat. I started with yogurt and liquids, when it came to food, right after having the teeth pulled. I then moved on to rice and smaller foods of that nature. I could easily swallow all of those, so there was no problem. Yesterday and today, I attempted to eat apples, which was a stupid decision. I would get about halfway through the slice of apple and then I would get tired of attempting to suck the juice and then swallowing the piece and just throw the slice away. It was ridiculous. This was all a result of a lack of an ability to chew.

On the positive side, I've been getting better at eating slower, which is good because I don't want to choke when I finally get the ability to chew back. This slowing of my eating process, along with a lack of a large amount of food, has also allowed me to lose about 4-5 pounds, which is always a plus. I hope that I can get back to Taekwondo soon, though. I feel like I've forgotten some of the things, mostly because I only learned them for one day. Perhaps the internet can help me.

OH and tomorrow is Father's Day! Hooray! I... I think I should really start on that card that I told myself to make... Haha... woops...

-Sam Rho

Olding a little

I forgot to write here yesterday. I have no excuse. On the happy side, though, I managed to finally install Windows XP on the desktop! Everything worked as it did before and I'm really excited about that. Just to test out that everything was working, I decided to watch a few videos on Youtube. It was a nice experience to watch the videos from a TV screen connected to a desktop rather than just from my laptop. It wasn't really that different, but it just felt nicer because I was watching from that screen.

Anyway, I'll REALLY try and write here err'day, but I'll probably forget sometimes because I'm not the type of person that can remember things really well.

-Sam Rho

Writing Something

Just making sure that I have something on this blog that shows I was here on this day. I wouldn't want to mess up a rather long streak of successfully writing days. I've actually been studying pretty successfully with regards to SAT Reading Comprehension. I managed to finish the part of the SAT book from Kaplan about it and I have another few books that I can read, but I'm just glad to have at least finished one book. It feels satisfying. I've learned a bit, but I have much more to learn  before I can do much better than before.

Also, I had a successful installation of Windows XP over Windows 8 on the desktop at home today. I was glad to have that over with. Windows 8 was unable to work with a few of the programs that I have wanted and also my father seemed a little more comfortable with using XP, which is good because he's the one that uses the desktop the most often.

-Sam Rho

A lack of teeth that mimic the skill of Solomon

I dunno if that title made sense, but I got my wisdom teeth pulled out today. I can't really remember anything about it, which is probably a good thing, but I wish I could have seen my teeth leave my mouth. According to my dad, the surgeons usually crack or break the teeth after opening the gums and pull out the pieces, or something to that extent, so I guess I wouldn't have been able to see them anyway. The numbness from this surgery is still here, the bottom half of my face just feels like dead weight to me right now. I have been drinking a few liquids... some smoothies, some milk, but not much. I don't feel hungry right now, but I feel like if I don't eat something soon I'll be waking in the middle of the night to drink some milk.

I'm having trouble concentrating right now, although most of the laughing gas and the other medications seem to have worn off, with the exception of the numbness. I've literally just been watching Gintama and playing Minecraft all day. According to my parents, I look better because I haven't eaten anything... I'm not sure if that's a good thing. Anyway, I hope that I can concentrate soon and continue studying SAT vocab as well as other skills necessary to do well on the SAT. I'M GOING TO AIM FOR THAT 2400, although I've heard that getting into really good schools like MIT, Cornell, Harvard, etc. seem to decrease your health because of the extreme studying conditions. Perhaps I'll reconsider attempting to get into MIT, I think I'll be fine with University of California: Berkley, University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, or Georgia Tech. As long as I can hab duh goot education while still habing duh decent health.

I've been skipping around because I don't have all the episodes yet, but this is fun to watch, I have to say.

In Minecraft, survival and adventure maps have been what I've concentrated more on currently

I apologize if something here didn't make sense, as I said before, I'm not very concentrated right now.

-Sam Rho

Wise teeth

Tomorrow is going to be a fun day... I start off by waking up, only to be put to sleep again by surgeons(?) or some people like that maybe they're just dentists. Anyway, I'm getting my wisdom teeth pulled out tomorrow. That's going to be fun. All 4 at once, no less. Awesome.

In other, not so unhappy, news, taekwondo is really fun! I'm enjoying it and I hope to continue taking it for a while, although I will have to work on my abs... Meaning I'm going to have to practice doing situps. And I'll also have to memorize a series of punches and kicks. I'm excited!

-Sam Rho

Windows 8

I recently changed the OS of a computer in my home from Ubuntu to Windows 8. Originally, the computer had Windows XP, but that just had a terrible virus on it, so it was replaced by Ubuntu. For a while, things went smooth, but I was uncomfortable because I was unable to use it properly. So, i decided to change the operating system to Windows 8.

At first, it seemed fun, sort of like having the Windows phone, but then I realized something was wrong. As I went to shut down the computer, a series of alert boxes showed up saying that disks were missing from areas that didn't necessarily need to have disks, such as disk f, g, h, i, and j. These are parts of the computer that were designed for either CF cards, SD cards, usb ports, or things of that nature that, at least I thought, were allowed to be empty. Perhaps this is just the virus that never left the computer coming back to haunt me... or maybe I just installed the OS wrong. Whatever it may be, it doesn't make me happy to have to keep on clicking continue just to shut down a computer.

-Sam Rho

Arguments

I just finished arguing with an acquaintance over who should be the president of the youth group. It's not exactly a very important position, but it looks good for college. Anyway, I was trying to convince this girl that she should become the president. Of course, I'm not very good at arguing, but I tried to use the example of her being the most important part of any praise song the youth group does because she played the drums. It is, in my humble opinion, true that the drum can play a very large part, especially when it is only one in 3 instruments. It is necessary to have it be correct at all times. It seemed like a pretty legitimate reason that she was important and should take over the seat of president.

The other options for this position are myself and this other friend of mine that is a very good athlete. I really don't want to become the president because I don't enjoy having to converse with my pastor. He's a great guy and all, but sometimes it seems like he doesn't have a clue about the bible...

Anyway, my acquaintance/friend was trying to convince me that I should e the president, but I argued that the president should live near the church so that they can easily go and meet up with the pastor... At which point the argument sort of stopped abruptly as another member of the youth group lessened the tensions by joking around about my acquaintance/friend's inability to be the president because of a lack of mental skills.

There was a little more to the argument, this is only my side, but I feel like it was pretty even in the end when it came to use of evidence and information. I wonder who will end up being the president?...

-Sam Rho

I'm not creative with titles

Today... is a happy day. That's right. The end of many years of school for one of my friends... and the end of 4 years of prison in an Intermediate school for my sister. Haha, not really the prison part. I think she's rather enjoyed her four years of middle school, actually.

Yes, today is the last day of school for the school system that I attend. First, my sister had her farewell ceremony today. She's just finished her 8th grade year and she will be moving to the high school next year as a freshman. I'm not sure if I can think correctly right now. My mind is just somewhere else. I think I'm worrying about all of the things I'll have to do in the coming school year. That's not going to be exciting.

Anyway, what's also happening today is the final year of high school for my senior friends at Handley. They're all going to leave soon and go on with their lives in college. It will be sad to see them go, but today is a day of happiness. They get to graduate and be excited to be finished with all of High school. A few of my friends even managed to get into the positions of Valedictorian and Salutatorian. Congratulations to those people! You managed to fit enough AP classes into your schedules to get the highest GPA's in the entire school! That's way more work than most people would probably be willing to do, but you persevered! I look up to those people and I'm sure that they will all be very successful in the future!

Well, time to get ready for Handley graduation. Congrats to the JHHS class of 2012!

-Sam Rho

Advice to Juniors?

As I was looking through documents on my computer, I stumbled upon this one... I remember that Carolyn sent this to us after some sort of Mr.Hess seminar... just something to read:

Advice for juniors

1. take a free fourth block/ set up your senior year schedule so that you have the least amount of work possible
2. don’t worry about little things on your college applications- the sats don’t matter as much as I thought they did
3. go to the zoo
4. get a stumbleupon account
5. if you have incriminating things in your room, make sure you actually hide them instead of leaving them in your backpack or purse
6. make friends with teachers- you might need to eat lunch in their room second semester
7. buy urban decay primer
8. go to tufts
9. be nice to everyone
10. don’t get your eyebrows waxed if you’ve been using acne medication
11. revenge won’t necessarily make you feel better, but sometimes it does
12.  when you go to panera, order the bbq chopped chicken salad sometime
13.  if someone says that you’re singing the national anthem at 3:45, make sure you’re there by 3:40 at the latest
14.  only cut your own bangs when it’s absolutely necessary
15.  buy things on ebay
16. only paint your nails when you know you’ll just be sitting around for a while (like in government class)
17.  say what you actually mean
18.  have a bonding experience with your fellow classmates, preferably after the dance in someone’s basement
19.  when red things are spilled, clean them up now, not tomorrow morning
20.  don’t do things you know you’ll regret later just because you feel like it at the moment
21.  sometimes, being cute is more important that being smart
22.  schools don’t care if you take physics/calc 2. Even schools that are well known for their math and science. It’s okay if you want to take the copout route. See advice #1
23.  wear your retainer
24.  you can’t always assume that people are telling you the truth and/or the whole truth. Sometimes they’re lying, and you don’t even suspect it, so just be on the lookout. Even though it sucks.
25.  Time heals everything, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time. It doesn’t feel like it at the time because time hasn’t passed yet duhh

Part Two

1. Drink at some point before you go to college. Otherwise your first time you won’t know what you’re doing and you won’t be with people you know that well and you’ll have a higher chance of having a bad experience
2. If you’re going to make a piece out of a plastic bottle, buy a drill bit- breathing in aluminum foil is bad for your brain. Being an mvgs student, I assume you value your brain.
3. If you feel like you want to puke, just puke. Holding it in will make you feel worse
4. Don’t have sex unless you know for 100% certain that you won’t regret it later. And by later, I mean ever in your life.
5. Don’t do it in a car.
6. Get a macbook
7. Don’t drink and drive. But really
8. Don’t smoke out of the window in your basement. No matter what you think, it will end up smelling
9. Figure out how you’re getting home before you leave your house
10.  Dedicate the shots you take to things and write them down in list form

Multitasking

This school year ends on Tuesday for me. That's really nice, with summer and no school and all, but I'm going to miss it. I had great teachers this year, with the exception of Biology, and I had an amazing time, both at my base school and at MVGS. I'm really going to miss Governor's School... I liked hanging out with all the smart people, it made me feel a little less smart, but that was expected. Anyway, the last graded assignment I have this year is an art project. I'm not taking any art classes, instead this is final assignment is for AP Biology. I really hate that class because the teacher didn't teach me much at all. Most of the things I learned were right before the AP test from a review book. Anyway, I had to create a pictorial depiction of any sort of histology related thing. I chose blood, and that was the most exciting thing ever... really... I enjoyed it so much... drawing a bunch of circles... so fun.

Meanwhile, I was also watching videos on Youtube, thank goodness for that. I was getting really bored of drawing all those circles, so I would just watch random videos. Beatboxing, Minecraft, Smosh, and a bunch of other things. They really helped to pass the time, which actually wasn't good, but it was fun.

AND, while doing all that, I was also playing Minecraft, searching for more diamonds and things of that sort. Hopefully I'll be more productive in the future...

I just realized that I can turn off my phone alarm now... I CAN SLEEP PAST 6AM... THIS IS.... probably not going to change anything... I'll still probably only get about 7 hours of sleep because of my strange sleep cycle. Whatever. It's just nice to have the option.

OH, and I have to study SAT Vocab over this summer, YAY! I'm actually kind of excited because this will be a fun challenge. My mom is taking a pack of about... I think it's like 120 words? Anyway, she's just asking me to define them at random and also making me use them in sentences.

Hopefully as this all goes on, I'll be practicing my writing skills on here for colleges, hopefully.

-Sam Rho