Wow....

I promised I'd update soon, but...I haven't. Oh well. I'm doing my best.

I'd gotten over my snit(for specifics on my snit, you can just look at my last blog entry) by the time Rachel finally got here, and I was SO EXCITED!!!! She's a great friend, and I miss her SO MUCH already. It's hard to think that it will be something like a year before I see her again....which is why I try not to think about it.

She did actually stay at my house for pretty much every day of her visit except the last one, because she didn't want to cause a ruckus when they had to leave for a plane at 4:30 in the morning. And mostly, she did stuff with me. We did things with her other friends, but it just worked out that she spent the most time with me. Which is....pretty cool. And made me feel like an angry, stupid teenager after my being angry with her.

Anyway, we went blueberry picking, and we made millions of blueberry-flavored desserts, and we went to our town's Corn Fest (which got rained out on the final night of the Festival because of the torrential downpour that Gowanda and Silver Creek shared with us). It was so fun! We also went to Amish country and waved at all of the Amish people, and we watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off on her last night at my house. Anyone who hasn't seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off, it's a great movie from the 80's and I highly recommend it.

We also did VBS together. Well...the first two days, at least. Truth be told, I wasn't thrilled about helping out with VBS this year, but I kind of got conned into it. I went up to tell the group of ladies at my church that I wasn't going to be able to do it, and they started in before I could tell them that!

Honestly, kids can be REALLY annoying. But it was fun, and Rachel helped me keep from losing my temper (mostly).

The day before she left (but she had already left to stay at another friend's house), I ran a 5K. That's about 3.1 miles, for anyone who didn't know that. Wait a minute---I didn't exactly run. I ran the first mile, then went run-walk for a 2:2 minute ratio for the rest of the race. I know, I know. Not that impressive. But I finished. And that made me pretty proud. Most of my fellow soon-to-be 11th graders? They haven't. So there.



Even if I did come in 194th place, even if the ambulance actually came in ahead of me, I finished.

Not to mention I'm joining cross-country. Not gonna lie, it's HARD. I can't run the full course without walking. Admittedly, my school has one of the more challenging cross-country courses, but still, I'm pretty much the slowest person on the team. I won't lie and say I don't care. I do, somewhat. And yes, it bothers me a little, just because in so many academic and singing activities, I'm one of the best. Or at least not last.

But this is something that's not my forte. It's not my comfort zone. It's not something I've ever really tried before this summer.

And I'm so WEAK, compared to the rest of the cross-country team! Especially the guys. They're all REALLY hardcore. Or at least they have more muscles, because they're guys. And in general, guys have more muscles than girls. I think that there are definitely people that break the stereotype in each gender, but part of it's how we were physically created.

After running the course--at least, that's what I did--we went to the weight room and did core training, and that HURT. We did three sets of 10 on different machines, but in between each set, we had to do sit-ups or push-ups. Eventually, Mr. Huber(our coach) told me to just work on sit-ups, because admittedly, I can't do a full push-up. I have no upper-body strength at all. Seriously, I got a 1 second time for the flex arm hang in gym class.

This year, I want to do a lot of things differently. I want to do better in my classes, do as well as I can. I want to be better in gym class. I want to help out with the different clubs I'm in and finish out the cross-country season, maybe even do track.

But most of all, I want to sing, sing with no inhibitions and no nervousness, just sing.

Which is one reason why I'm annoyed that we don't know what the musical is yet. I REALLY want to know, so I can get ready and get in character and generally be awesome.

Speaking of awesomeness, something that is NOT awesome? I can't take German this year. It stinks, because I don't take honors math(I possibly could, but it was hard for me to keep above a 90 and I didn't remember a lot of it). Algebra 2/Trig, the math class I have to take this year, is exactly the same time as German 4, the German class I'd be taking this year. And to make it WORSE? I have one free space in my schedule, which I already knew German didn't fit into, but NO GOOD CLASSES are available in that free time. I mean, Spanish 2 might be interesting, but I WANT GERMAN.

You might not get it, but German's important to me. I love learning the different words and phrases, and doing all sorts of fun stuff with my German class. It's probably one of my favorite academic classes(Chorus doesn't count). With German, we get to do fun things. In English and History, we just have to do what the tests want us to know.


It's hard to explain. Also, German is the one thing I've always been really good at, and I like it. It's not just that we do fun things in class, knowing German has always been fun for me. I've always been the best in my class(at least until last year, which I'm still a little bitter about). It's something that I can know the answers to. It's....it's a part of me, as cheesy as that sounds. And it nearly kills me to think about not being able to do it this year.

Stupid schedules.