I really only found the football game interesting/exciting for a few minutes time in the fourth quarter, because not much happened. 10 points were made in the entire game.

Other than that, it was freezing during the game. My toes were killing me (and many others were complaining about their toes as well). I was happy they warmed up when I walked back up the river to my dorm, but my lips and hands were swollen after I warmed up.

One of my roommates, however, had to wait thirty minutes for her feet to warm up again. My other roommates had left the game early because it was too cold. See, only north eastern people can tough out the cold.

Please note: the bag meal selections have been revised to maintain the original intent of the program: a simple meal replacement. Some individuals were using the system to “stock up,” rather than to replace a single meal. As such, you can now still enjoy a more personalized bag meal with additional healthy side selections, but within the traditional parameters of a single meal.

That cracked me up. The dining services seemed to have been revised a few weeks before so that you could choose exactly what you want (what snacks you wanted in the meals). Except, the parameters on the snacks that could be chosen were very loose. For example, I could order two sandwiches (the main meal) and then five orange juices. Or five bagels. I had a list to choose from and I could choose five of whatever (I could mix the selections up). I guess they realized giving one person five orange juices was allowing people to be able to stock up. Now the selections are way smaller though, unfortunately.

Class: Hahaa

TF: Yeah, there’s some grade inflation in this class.

Ah, I love easy graders. Don’t let academics get in the way of your education. If all graders were like this, academics would not be in the way of education at all.

Anyway, I’m pretty happy with my scores. They aren’t the best, and I definitely take this as a learning experience (especially since I came out from Life Sci feeling like I wanted to cry, and then feeling like I want to cry even more that night because I thought I failed economics, too–boy, the life science test day was a bad night). When I got back my life science midterm, I was seriously pretty excited. I thought that at the most, I would get somewhere below a 70.

I was above average on all my of midterms, which I’m happy about. But, I am still unsatisfied about the scores I got on my midterms. They were pretty low. None of them were in the 90s.

I want scores in the 90s next time. That’s my goal for my next midterms.

Well, at midnight yesterday, my sister came to visit me and then dropped off a minimalist painting she drew as my present. My first reaction was, “What?!” Because it was just a lotus flower on a background of pure brown. The minimalist style. But, I like it. It’s a nice and simplistic picture.

After my sister left, I went to sleep.

After I woke up, the day was pretty much ordinary. I went to my classes, there were people who wished me happy birthday, but overall, nothing big happened. I had my Chinese one-on-one discussion today, so I had to go back to Vanserg (I despise walking to Vanserg, since it’s so far away). But when I got there, Zhang Lao Shi was there. She’s very nice, and she was the one who was supposed to talk with me. I had a good time talking with her.

When I got back to my dorm, I did hardly anything. But soon it was six and I went to eat dinner with my sister. We went to Yen Ching’s. I have found an appreciation for that restaurant. The restaurant owner, waiters, and waitresses were all so nice! It might have been because my sister and I spoke to them in Chinese the entire time. But we were given free soup, and then two extra free fried wontons, and when we asked them to put the meal in a take out after we finished, they gave us a free box of rice! I’ll be going back to Yen Ching’s in the future. Plus, their food is also pretty good! They actually have some authentic Chinese food.

When I came back to my dorm after dinner, my roommates had put a banner that read “happy birthday Yingna!” And I got a balloon. Later, my roommates had some of our hallmates come to our dorm and they sang me happy birthday, and we ate ice cream cake. We also had (diet) coke and cookies and they gave me a card that had the theme song from Shrek in it. It was really cute.

At 10, I went to meet my big sib/lil sib family from CSA at Berryline, where they said happy birthday to me and got me some tea. I wanted tea, cause I ate ice cream only a little before.

Overall, I liked my birthday.

I’m so old now.

I guess the train of thought that the math professor has is that homework questions are supposed to challenge the brain–students have time to do the homework questions. Whereas in the exam, the test is just supposed to show that you understand the basics and can apply them fundamentally. The test creators know that the homework questions are quite hard and they realize that not a great number of students would be doing well in the exams if the homework questions were on the test. I’m happy.

I also like that at the math midterm review today, it was actually an enjoyable review because the professor put a lot of funny stuff on the powerpoint slides. Some stuff were not relevant to math at all, but they made the review more fun. Although, it was very fast-paced. If you didn’t know the math before the review, the review wasn’t going to help.

Studying for life science wasn’t too bad. I’m actually beginning to really like life science. Once I get the concepts down, it’s fairly easy. Or, maybe it’s just because any like I had for math has been taken out and I’ve pushed it towards life science. Seriously, after this semester, I hope I don’t have to take another semester of math again. Or if I do, I’m going to try applied mathematics, or an easier math course. I’m just not good at math, and that makes me frustrated in so many instances! I can’t imagine traces right off the bat and form a 3-D image in my head. I try to, but my drawings have mistakes. Maybe it’s my lack of confidence in my math skills that’s making everything hard? Perhaps. I just don’t see how other people can be doing math so easily when I am struggling.

I will look over notes that my sister forwarded to me. She had taken the course earlier this spring and her TF had written powerpoint slides apparently. I’ll be looking through those 150 slides tonight (or tomorrow morning) and go through a few practice exams. I have to remain confident.

In other news, I went to a dance rehearsal yesterday for a traditional Asian dance with fans and it was hard! You think it looks easy, but the student teaching went through a lot of the dance moves in a short amount of time. She taught 1/7 of the dance today (40 seconds). I have no idea how I’ll be remembering those moves. I tried it in my dorm when I got back and I couldn’t put it together. Bah… I want to try another dance tonight, but it’s at 11PM, and that’s pretty late for a dance rehearsal. I also got rehearsal scars yesterday. This other girl slammed her fan onto my hand and I got a few scratches. In the beginning, I think part of my skin was torn, but not entirely, so I had blood well up under my skin and it couldn’t be wiped away.

In better news, I checked up a dancing club on Youtube yesterday and I became more excited about joining. This is the promotion video they had for earlier this year. I went to a rehearsal last week and stumbled through the moves they taught, since I had missed the first rehearsal. But it was an interesting experience.

I’ll also be going to the WIB convention this weekend. Time to head off to economics and then go to WIB!

Yesterday, I didn’t bring my umbrella to Chinese class since it was only drizzling lightly in the morning. When I had to come back to my dorm, it was raining much harder. I ran in the rain from building to building. They were my checkpoints. I was soaked by the time I got back into the dorm.

Today, again, I went to the Quad for a financial club conference without my umbrella. Fortunately, my sister is on the board of this club so she was there as well. I used her umbrella in coming back to my dorm, which did leave my sister to walk in the rain. But, it was okay. It was her turn to tough it up and build up her immune system by running in the rain.

I’m hoping that it will not rain tomorrow. I have so much work built up–I will be devoting a big part of my time in Lamont tomorrow.