That’s why I changed the design around a bit, mostly the header. It looks somewhat cooler to me to have the name blend into the page background. Still using K2 because it rocks. I got bored of the green and it looked too “tree hugging, earth loving”. Black is in and it’s here to stay – at least until I get a better design idea. You like it right?
Oh yeah, this K2 style is called “BlackGrad”, lame name, give me a better one.
I am finally posting something here after 10 days of nothing. With school and afterschool activities I have not found the time to write anything here and had no real motivation either. But now I am back at least for a while. At school, everything is going well. My Precalculus score is quite good and that goes for all my other classes. My fish in Art is pretty much finished and Mr. Kane seems to like it. Essay in English finished, World History project on the way to being finished and my science classes are doing OK though I know I can do better. Now I have to do my Mandarin mooncake project and finish up my history project and that’s it.
Enough school stuff though. What’s going on in the world of blogging and the computer world. Of course the iPod nano, iTunes 5 and the iTunes Phone and other Apple stuff and that’s pretty much all I know. I’m not even going to start commenting on the nano because everyone has already done so and it would be a waste of typing power and database space (it is important).
Michael of Binary Bonsai hasn’t posted in almost a week so not much on K2 or anything else for that matter. No big news in WordPress news.
Now for afterschool stuff, as many of you in AIS may know, I am in the B Soccer Team and currently play as a right forward. We had our first friendly game against ICS on Thursday (yesterday) and we lost 5-0. Sounds bad, I know, but it was our first game as a team and we weren’t expecting to win anyway. The ICS team wasn’t strong but they liked to push which was no problem for our guys, who pushed back. All of their goals were within 5 feet of the goal, so nothing to be proud of for them. Our team played well, all we need know is more players so we don’t have the same 11 tired boys running around for the full match.
This became quite long and you should be happy because I might not write for another ten days (heh) and this post stops here.
They came to Hong Kong and played at Southorn stadium on Saturday, September 3rd and me and my friend went to watch it. They are pros and they had so many tricks… that I don’t even know what to say. Since it’s more a show than an actual serious basketball game, it was really entertaining. My favorite part was Big G, this dancing mascot that really rocked. I’d post some pictures but I didn’t have my camera at the time and was only able to take a few shots with my cameraphone. My friend took about 200 pictures with his phone (half of them being of girls at the event :)) and I am still waiting for him to send them to me (the basketball ones) but in the meantime, a really bad-quality picture from my phone:
Blog comment spam used to be a bunch of advertisements for viagra and online casinos but times have changed and now I get comment spam with a bot telling me how good my site is and that the article was really informative. It almost makes you feel good until you look at the e-mail address or site link behind it and find out it’s just spam. I’ve been getting quite a few of these lately and I think it’s quite funny and maybe even smart to advertise this way. Some “amateur” bloggers might not know these types of messages are spam and that shows these might help whoever is advertising. I’m actually not getting that much spam over here (that’s a good thing) but once in a while I get “This article really made my day” written by “texas holdem”.
English Essay – 956 Words
When I first came to the United States at the age of eight, the only English words I knew were hi, bye and cat. At that time, I thought I would never learn how to communicate with people around me and I was hit with the idea that I would have no friends in America. Now, I think back and say, was I wrong or what? Having lived in Ukraine for eight years and knowing how to speak only Russian, it felt weird going to an American school with American children in America, I felt that I was the odd one out; everyone around me could communicate easily with each other, laugh and all I could do was just sit at my desk looking dumbfounded as to what was going on around me. The first few days of grade one were terrible, I didn’t understand what the teacher was saying or what she was writing on the board, I didn’t understand what the girl sitting next to me was trying to whisper to me, I had no idea what was going on. I hated it and I knew something had to be done about it.
At that time, I thought I would never learn English and that all the other students would think I am dumb and I thought I would have no friends in America. Trust me, I wanted to learn the language badly but I had no idea how I could start. Since my teacher and my parents noticed I wasn’t getting anywhere by not knowing the language, they arranged me to have a tutor at school that would teach me and a couple of other kids from Mexico how to speak, read and write in English. I would go to that tutor everyday and learn some English; how to describe the weather, what day of the week it was, colors and many other basic elements of the language. Since I really wanted to learn I worked hard and memorized the words and phrases by reciting them on my way home after school. My tutor gave me some easy books to read at home and practice and my parents helped me at home with writing and reading. After a few months I was beginning to speak some simple English and I was proud of myself, so proud that I started to talk a lot in school, a habit I still haven’t quite lost. This habit of talking has gotten me in trouble with my teachers over the years but this is one of the major things that helped me speak English much better and lose my Russian accent. At the end of grade one, I was able to communicate easily with my newly made friends and we had a lot of fun.
But I wanted to be even better at English. Just simple English was not enough for me, I liked the way my teachers talked and used “hard” words, and I wanted to learn “hard” words too. So somewhere in grade two, I dumped the easy picture books and went on to chapter books. Easy ones at first but those got harder too as I went along. I was doing well in all of my subjects and I knew that knowing English was what helped me. I was feeling like I needed a bit more of a challenge and I was able to skip grade three altogether and move straight on to grade four. By that time, my English was better than a lot of the “local” American kids in my class. By this time, I was reading Harry Potter and much harder books than the ones when I first started with my tutor back in grade one. My mom worked in the city library at that time and I think that also helped me a lot. I used to go to the library very often and just sit there looking at and reading the non-fiction books, then going over to the fiction section and borrowing novels to read at home and at school. I really liked it; I began to enjoy watching the news; something I knew most of my friends didn’t like to do.
In this essay, I’m not just trying to tell you, the reader how I knew no English when I first came to the United States and English now being my “first” language. I am trying to say more. When somebody really wants something in life and I mean yearning for something, that person will usually work really hard to achieve it. When I was in a situation where all the kids around me had fun and could communicate with each other while I was standing at the sidelines and not knowing anything, I really wanted to join in and have fun with the other kids. So I worked hard and learned English. Learning English changed my life a lot. In the beginning, I didn’t know anything and I was having no fun. I like to have fun and I love to talk, even back in Ukraine. And now I was here in America and I couldn’t talk to anyone because no one spoke Russian and therefore, I couldn’t have any fun. Learning English was really a life-changing moment for me. I was living in a society where everyone spoke the language and I knew I had to learn it. I actually think there was no escaping learning the language for me since everything and everyone around me was English and American. Now that I know the language, I can communicate with so many people all over the world because as of now, English is the international language and knowing it made my life easier and more fun.
