Cool Opportunity

Okay so in French class I've got this cool opportunity. Madame had five of the people in my class who would be interested in maybe teaching or doing something with French in the future talk to her. She told us that the gifted education program in our school distrect is doing a unit on french and we get to go to the middle school and teach French once a week. Tomorrow is our first day. I'm very excited!

Books

So since today is tuesday, I don't have Russian. I had to hang out at High School all day because I don't have a car on Tuesdays. (usually) Tenth Period I went to Madame's room and helped put change in those little paper sleeves for a fundraiser we're doing for the hurricane victims. Then I asked her if she had anything for me to read. She told me yes. She'd gotten some new stuff over the summer when she went to France.
11th period I paid a visit to Señora. She had a ton of stuff for me to look through. She even had Peanuts and Garfield cartoons in Spanish. I'm going to be reading the Garfield book when I learn more spanish.

In French we've been learning the tense 'Le Futur.' It involves the letter "R" as Madame keeps telling us. Anyway basically you take the infinitive and add an ending. Here's an example:

Rester
Je resterai
Tu resteras
Il restera
Nous resterons
Vous resterez
Ils resteront


Le futur translates as "will" The first sentence above, Je resterai means I will stay. So yeah. That's basically French in a nutshell today.

In Spanish, we're still talking about the same old same old. Reviewing what we've learned before. The only difference is that now we're going over telling time again. whoopee *rolls eyes* It'd be nice in a way if all my language classes went as fast as Russian.

Speaking of Russian, I'm behind in that class because I'm supposed to be learning five new words a day. I haven't been. BAD BAD BAD! I'm supposed to have mom help me set up these note cards so that I'll be able to learn the words more quickly. Part of my problem though is that I'm in a play and I've got practice like every evening so I haven't had time to make the cards.

By the way, I'm working on downloading a Russian font as I type...

Ah. Mom just asked me when we are going to do cards. I guess now would be the time.

The Final Step

The title needs a little explanation...

A few days after creating my "11-step plan" for writing a Literary Novel, I was sitting in english class. I can't remember how it came about, but I mentioned to Mrs. Haynam that I was going to write a literary novel since "anyone can do it." she gave me a really odd look and then said "can I see a copy of it when you're done?" I took this as a challenge and so I've begun the writing (actually I'd already started. -prologue complete)

I've decided that as I write this novel, I'm going to use my list on how to write a literary novel, and various techniques I pick up as we dig through Beloved more.

Okay. Now that you've got the background, here's the reason for the title...

I was on my way home from Kent and Russian class (more on that later) and I was trying to think of a good idea for my story. I've got a prologue and that's about it. So I'm driving along, sipping a milkshake when an idea comes to me. Suddenly I'm thinking... "step number 12, the book must contain some sort of magic (see number 6)" So that's it. It really should be somewhere higher on the list, but that's okay.So now I'm calling it my "12 step plan to writing a literary novel..." I'm thinking about putting it in a booklet and selling it for a ton of money on infomercials. *evil laugh*

Okay. Enough about that, now onto Russian class
Right after Prof. Barber started teaching today, I got really sleepy. I kept telling myself I had to keep awake. It was hard though because my eyes kept crossing and I was just having the worst time. So I'm sitting in my chair, not letting my eyes close for a second 'cause I didn't want to fall asleep in class. I'm reapeating the words that prof. Barber is saying and then the next thing I know, She's saying "your home assignment is..." I don't think I was actually asleep, it was just like my brain turned itself off... it was weird because there's like this blank so I have absolutely no idea what the lesson was about though it might've been about locative words because I seem to remember her saying something about them. In fact...Now that I think about it it was almost like an out of body experience though it was in body.

I remember her saying something and I remember myself repeating it, but I was watching myself reapeat it from the inside of my body...weird.

Since this post has turned out to be uber long...for those of you who wish to skip all the little important details, here's the language summary of the day:

French- Not as boring as usual, we talked about being an exchange student
English- got in groups to work on a project
Russian- I have to learn five words a day, and do some listening activities this weekend
Spanish-BOOOOORRRRIIINNNGGGG we spent the last week reviewing the same thing everyday! I know it can't be helped with 28 people in the class, maybe I'll say something to Señora anyway though.

Russian Revelation

I'm in physics at the moment, got done with my lab early and so I'm killing time. I had a revalation in Russian Class yesterday. We learned how to conjugate our first verb. Zhets which means to live. Anywhoo. I realized that it's exactly like french or spanish it just uses a different alphabet. So I'm thinking that that takes away the reason that Russian would be so hard. That's about all I've got at the moment. Oh I absolutely hate french but I can't figure out why. It's like I'm finally taking all the languages I want, but I'm not enjoying it.

Teen Angst and odd languages

Things aren’t always black or white,
They’re sometimes shades of gray
It’s times like these I have to wish,
Those things would go away

It never seemed to matter
‘Cause you were always there
But now that it is finished,
I’m trying not to care

The words you spoke so dearly
Will never leave my head
The burning images I see
Are all in shades of red.

It never seemed to matter,
‘Cause you were always there
But now that it is finished,
I’m trying not to care

Simple things remind me
Of relationships now lost,
I think about all that we shared,
Was it really worth the cost?

It never seemed to matter,
‘Cause you were always there
But now that it is finished,
I’m trying not to care.


Personally, I'm proud of this. It's the first poem I've written that has decent rhyme. Usually, I can't rhyme to save my life. Please let me know what you think as I'm trying to get a variety of opinions on it. I wrote this...I think it was thursday actually. I've only just now posted it. I've decided I write teen angst really well for someone who's never had any. I suppose that poems I post really have nothing to do with the theme of the rest of the blog, but in a way they do. They're in english aren't they? so there you go! HA HA HA! I WIN! Okay. I'm done now. I'm just tired and behind on my homework already...

Tomorrow is my first quiz in Russian. It's not a big deal, we just get a printed word and have to write it in Russian. Hopefully I'll have no trouble with it. Though sometimes I connect the letters funny.

Russian is a funny language. No offense to all of you Russian speakers out there...but in my opinion the whole voiced/unvoiced consonant thing is kind of weird. I mean...Think about it. If the consonant at the end of the word is voiced then you have to make it unvoiced and therefore it's not pronounced the way it looks...

I suppose that I shouldn't complain. Especially since it's not like english makes sense...or even french for that matter I mean come on! The french for everything is so long! Like instead of saying please they say "If it pleases you" While I'm on it, Let me talk about Spanish. Half the time they don't even use pronouns!

Okay, So I didn't mean for that entire paragraph to come out...so I'm gonna sign off for now, get my shower, work on Beloved *urgh* And then get to bed. I've got another long day tomorrow...

Addendum

So After I was done with my last post, I was at Study Spanish.com. They have a Spanish Word a Day and there was a way you could put it on your site...So I did. It's down on the left side of the page a little ways. Enjoy.

How to Write a Good 'Literary' Novel...

Before I actually start this post I've got to give an update.
Right now, I'm enjoying Spanish more than french. I absolutely love Señora Bey who is muy loca and extremely funny. I'm also understanding Russian better now that I've been going to class everyday though the drive is loooonnnngggg! French is alright. I also love Mrs. Haynam, my english teacher.
Okay now on to the reason For this post.
*warning, this post may turn into a rant and be rather sarcastic. Proceed at your own risk*

I never mentioned it, but over the summer for my english class, I had to read and take notes on a book called Beloved by Toni Morrison. It's one of those literary novels that college classes are in love with and because I'm taking English Ap. I had to read it. Right from the start, I knew I was in trouble...

So anyway, since this is not the first book that I've read like this (This book reminded me a lot of The Poisonwood Bible And Wicked Though not as much with the latter) I've compiled a list of how to write a literary novel...

How to Write a Literary Novel, (and Earn Money Doing it)
1. Decide you are going to write a literary novel
2.Sit down at the computer, or with a notebook, and begin writing
3. Have the book's main characters be girls or women.
4. The book Must make absolutely no sense!
5. If the book does make sense then got to #6 the following (do it if the book doesn't make sense too)
6. Have a chapter that's really odd, from the point of view of a random animal, or has no punctuation. (or All of the above)
7. Make the book at least a hundred pages longer than necessary
8. Make up a bunch of junk that could be considered "symbolisim"
9. Have so much of this "symbolism" that people could pretty much make everything in the book symbolic.
10. At least one sex scene is required (This may be an implied sex scene see #6)
11. After it's published and people begin to approach you about it's mature themes and symbolism agree that both are in the book even though you never really put them there to begin with.

Alright. So that's about it. Sorry if it doesn't make any sense it's just really frustrating. I really do think that Barbera Kingsolver and Toni Morrison both woke up one day and were like "I think I'll write a novel today." They began typing and presto. You get Beloved and The Poisonwood Bible. I could actually go on about the stupidity of Beloved for several more pages but I won't. Besides I do have to admit that I like symbolism. I've written a couple of symbolic poems and whether it was put there intentionally or not, I had a thought about a place that might be symbolic in Dances With Wolves (The movie) I was watching it one day when I realized or at least I felt that Kevin Costener's horse and the wolve he befriends are both symbolic. The wolf of his future, the horse of his past. And when the horse is killed it symbolizes the fact that he can't go back to his past. When the wolf is killed it's symbolic of the future of the Indians and Costener's future. He can't live with the Indians.

That's an example of how you can take just about anything and make it symbolic. Okay so...I think that's about the end of it. Or at least, the end of the rant. You'll probably be hearing a lot more about Beloved because in english we're going to be analizing it to death. Yipee! *rolls eyes*