Many thanks to Kirstie for the new layout. Now I see Yuna both on my desktop and on my blog. haha. the only thing I can say is Yuna ga kirei deshita!~

Anyways, Italian exam tmr. Still haven't studied yet... the mock exam was so easy.. hahaha.. oh and for lab, i was looking at some Italian video. the video is about these two ppl who visit Italy. and in one of their visits, they go to this University and interviewed the students. and there were 3 students. gosh, one of them is soo cute. haha.. he has this really nice voice and his name is Luca. (in the video) so i was like hey.. are all the Luca in the world good looking or what? (remember Baird Wallace?) oh hey, talking about Baird Wallace, I must have forgotten to mention this. the other time I went to the Japanese tea garden, I saw this boy who was walking in between two elderly people. he seemed the quiet type, very well dressed and neatly too and he looked like a split image of Baird Wallace. and he had the kind of features that I would describe as the perfect feature.
erm ok yeah whatever. Why am I talking about this anyway? hahaha i must be so bored.

My room is so cold, and I'm starting to get a headache so i better scoot out. and dinner's ready anyways. the family has invited some missionaries and elders (whom aren't old at all..)from the Mormon church. feel so weird eating dinner with ppl i dunno. oh well, better go then. have a quick dinner and STUDY ITALIAN!

I MISSED ANTHROPOLOGY CLASS TODAY. FANTASTIC!

Well, I was over at my sis' place over the weekends and she said, just go back on Monday. So i said ok. Monday morning, my sister went to school cos her class was at 8 am. at about 8.20 am, my bro and me are getting ready to get me to school. Until we asked... WHERE IS THE CAR KEY? so we searched high and low and no car keys. my bro went to check her class schedule, we RAN to Berkeley's Tan Hall. Gosh, so many steps, run run run.. I was running out of my breath and sweating like mad pig while in my jacket and we finally got the keys from my sis, and ran back up. climb climb stairs, run, run. stupid lift not working, run up 3 storeys.

By the end, I felt like jelly. I was sweating like mad. sitting in the car... we headed for school. it was already close to 9am. and when we reached the area, class already started about 15 minutes. Driving to Pleasant Hill, my brother decides to take some new route that he thought will be faster. and he got us lost. ......................... like WTH... we circled around for 15 minutes, and by the time we reached Pleasant HIll itself, there was only 5 minutes left to Anthropology class. and i thought crap. no point going.

Out of all classes to miss, ANTHROPOLOGY. for every hour of class I miss, the teacher will minus my credit. plus notebook will be graded, so if i miss today's notes, i dunno how to compile my notebook (and I've worked so hard on it too!) and i have absolutely no friends in anthro class, so far i haven't talked to a single human soul in that class yet. sigh. hopefully i can get the notes from someone. and anthro is the only class where i'm competing with others for my grade. IE: my teacher is using a bell curve, so only a certain number of ppl can get As.

After getting us lost, my bro decides to try the route again and got us lost a second time. OKAY... and we got to my homestay, dropped off my bag, drove me to school and i was 10 mins late for psychology class.. ahaha.. the rest of class went on as normal. my math teacher is back and he's boring me to death as usual. GAH! I should have studied for math assessment!!!! why am i in intermediate algebra. i'm wasting money.

Italian exam on wednesday. and i just got a new laptop and i seem to be stuck here. and it's almost 11 and i'm starting to feel sleepy. i think i shld go and STUDY bfore i fall asleep. HMM i shld really restrict my internet use. must practice self control.

I'm at my sister's place now and it is WARM! Yay!! SO happy! Her room is nice and warm. Unlike my cold room T_T I hate cold rooms because I want all rooms to be nice and warm. Cold rooms that chill you to the bone are just uncomfortable.
and did i mention that I'm getting extremely fat bcos i keep eating and eating to keep myself warm? hahahaha! : / sigh.. i guess you guys won't be able to recognize me soon.

Today's lessons are so boring i wanted to sleep. For anthro, the teacher just talked and talked. no videos, no skulls. :( and he talked a lot about religions and stuff and how evolution doesn't match Genesis. and he talked about this funny religion where they believed in some comet and killed themselves or whatever. it was quite interesting in a way, but what has that got to do with whatever we're learning? anyways, this teacher digresses A LOT. and at 9.50 sharp of course, he was still talking and bags were beginning to be packed really noisily and he was still trying to finish whatever he was talking with some difficulty and finally he stopped and whoosh, the class is gone in the blink of an eye. WTH?!

Pyschology is interesting as usual. lots of cool concepts. Italian was ok. Truth to say, an everyday language class can get a little bit tiring. It's not that I don't like Italian, but everyday is really a bit too much. and english was ugh. we had to read out our 3 journals to two other people. And i was paired with Chaedina and Lawrence. and since I lived closest to DVC i had to read mine first. like 3 journals, gosh, so LONG! plus not fair cos Chaedina only did one journal so far, and Lawrence did only 2. so i had to read like the longest. T_T

Math was sooo boring. the sub teacher can get rather confusing and i think the class is starting to get quite frustrated with her. I was like going to fall asleep soon. and so far i haven't done any math homework yet cos her directions are so unclear. yesterday, she said, do 2.1 every other odd. and i was like HUH the whole 2.1??? so i asked the guy beside and he said, 2.1 every other odd. then he opened his book and flipped to 2.1. then i said, that's quite long isn't it. then he said "um.. *flip one page* *flip another page* *flip another page* *flip another page* *laughs* yeah."
SEE? that's why i dun want to do my homework!!! like our permanent teacher always give a certain set of question like qn 13-34, every other odd. and stuffs like that. not the whole CHAPTER. plus she just gave us 2.2 today to do. =_= siao.

HAIZ. I MISS MY FRIENDS. YO PPL! E-MAIL ME HAPPY MESSAGES PLS! I FEEL SO UNWANTED HERE

Normal 5 lessons today. and I just finished my stupid journal. the THIRD one. Sheesh.

I officially enrolled in Anthropology yesterday and dropped German. lots of work to do for anthro cos I have to do a notebook which will be graded. Have to do an extra good one so I can get extra credits. I am getting more familiar with the terms like hominids and australopithecus and Homo Erectus etc. I'm taking Physical Anthropology anyways, just in case you're wondering. Now, we're learning about the fossil findins in places like Hadar and also footprints in Laetoli. yeah, yada yada.

Had pyschology and we played a mini game to illustrate some parts of operant conditioning and also he taught positive reinforcemetns and stuff. Have to do a dialogo with your partner tmr for Italian class and I'm doing it with my Jap friend Momoe. She's from Hiroshima. She's okay, but she smokes.

English class was as usual. and math class we'll be having a sub teacher for the whole week. She goes a bit faster than the other guy but she gives confusing homework directions, so I haven't been doing my homework. and she gave us some exercise to do today. It was pretty easy, and I was checkign my answers with the guy beside and he got quite a couple wrong. oh well, I knew all the stuffs already, what to do.

Anyways, got quite a number of homework to do today. Italian, math (which I shan't do), anthropology (continue doing the notebook), read my English book, read my Psych book and stuffs. so yeah.

Oh and today it was freezing. sheesh, waited for the bus for so long. and yeah, the thing about US students is, they pack up at the exact time class ends. it's like in anthro, we're watching a video and at exactly 9.50, people all start packign their bags and they pack super fast too. and in like few seconds, they dissapear. woah.. years of training

Another day at school as usual. I could hardly get out of bed. I wish the weekend never ended.

Had to go to school earlier today cos I had to print my English homework. I have to do 5 journals and that was only the first one. Have to do one like every two days, so I'll be doing English homework practically everyday. So sickening. Must do at least 2 pages some more.. :S

Had anthropology again. Still haven't added the class but I think I should be dropping German to take it. It looks pretty difficult tho. With all the foreign terms like australothepicus.. crap, don't even know how to spell it. and yeah, he showed us this video on archeologist findings and stuffs. Honestly, the teacher's not very clear. the stuff he writes on the board are so vague and it's hard to understand. Hopefully I'll be able to do well...

Pyschology is REALLY interesting, The instructor is soo funny and he was doing anologies on ppl coming in late. and everytime he's talking about it, someone comes in late. So it was like, hilarious. And he went on to other topics, and class was halfway through already, so he said, going back to the ppl coming in late anology, he points to the door, and just at that moment, someone comes in late again. It was hilarious!

yep then I had Italian. and then English. ugh. we were doing hate crimes again. There was this Spanish guy in my group, so Khine might be interested. He has a pretty interesting accent. and I had the OH SO "INTERESTING" math class. remember the lst time i talked about l=wh or wadever. he was doing the whole minus sign thing again, and this student asked if we must do all that. He said not necessarily, but he liked to have one solution to all problems. Then he gave this example. He said you would want a computer program that works on all computer.

Then I thought, yeah. BUT you want an easy and straight to the point computer program, not some stupid long winded one. SHEESH!

Yesterday was ok. We all played game, the host family, housemate and me. and later I watched some movie which was pretty good. Chris O' Donnell was inside, he appeared few minutes and died. I was like ..... WTH.

TGIF! HAIZ. Just one week of school and I feel so =_= already.

And I hate my English homework. I have to write a journal on my surroundings including infos like population, number of working people, average income, demographics, places to hang out etc. like wth. I've only stayed here for 5 freaking days How the heck am I supposed to know all that?

CRAP.

And I hate my math class. It's so darn easy. If I'm supposed to feel smart in that class, I don't think so. I feel so BRAINLESS in that class cos it's so darn easy. it's like the teacher likes to do step by step and honestly, some of the stuffs can be done in your head. No need to write down everything dude. and he takes so long just to solve on problem because of that. seriously dude, move on, i'm so falling asleep. For example, the question A=lw, solve w. ok, simple question. all you do is think a little and come up with an answer that w=A/l.
the teacher insists that we do this:
A=lw
-lw=-A
w=-A/-l
w=A/l
WHOA! Like how stupid and brainless is that? I'm like slapping my head and doing Italian homework everytime in Math class. and someone asked the teacher, why can't we just do A/l=w immediately, and he said, the w is on the wrong side. i was like =_='' and he said he will minus a mark if u do that in tests. I'm like Nuts man STUPID MATH CLASS! I've taken intermediate algerba in like sec1/2 and honestly, I am wasting my bloody time there. AHHHHH

the only highlight of school- Italian class. It's getting really fun! haha, we get to do fun things, dialoges with your partner and I love the teacher. He's really really nice and funny. and it's still easy for me, so I can still understand most of the stuffs he says. haha. LOVE Italian class

But I have a slight problem now. I'm added into antropology class and I have to say in spite of the mind bloggling terms, it's pretty fun. He showed us ape skulls, ancient human skulls and stuffs. so cool! But the thing is, I either take anthropology and DROP German or.. Take German and drop anthropology. I was thinking of dropping German.
Yes, sounds mad. But I was thinking that I HAVE to take this anthro class sooner or later, might as well take it now. Plus, taking conversational German, I can trasfer credit to UC, so no point taking. I'll just wait till summer and take first term German where I can learn more German.

But then again, I may be taking second term Italian come summer. Hmm.. maybe I'll NEVER get to learn German after all.. oh well.

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Oh my gosh. this is hilarious!

All right, on to today. I had 5 classes in a row today. my alarm rang at 7 and I fell back to sleep and woke up at 7.28 and I was like oh crap! Then I quickly got up, shower took a really hurried breakfast and rushed to the bus stop. but the bus took so looong to come. the bust stop was those kind where they just stuck a pole to the ground so there's no seat and it's so cold! yep. I waited for more than half an hour. and finally reached school. Went for the anthropology class which was at 9. I am actually just sitting in for that class just in case I can't take conversational German, I have anthropology as a backup. IT was pretty ok, lots of cheemolgy terms and he showed us a plaster skull. pretty cool.

Right after that, I had psychology. We didn't actually start, but it seemed pretty interesting. And the teacher was old, but he looked quite fun too. and he's funny. and after that, I had Italian. and yeah, it was pretty good. It was kinda easy though, cos I already knew most of the basic stuffs, and when he taught numbers 1-100 i didn't even have to bat an eyelid. and he looked at my course list (nice Italian teacher) and he said the psychology proffesor is an interesting guy. so yep, I hope it's true.

Right after that, I had English. looks pretty cool to me. and we have lots of essays to do for the next few months. And after that, I had maths which was sooo boring. He was teaching us how to add and minus fractions by making changing the denominator and I was sooo bored to death and thinking I'm like wasting my time there. Sheesh. I should have done better for my assessment and taken somethign else. and so that's it. from 9-2. Five straight classes with no breaks in btwn. rather tiring.

and i came home. did stupid math hw. and planned my english essay. and planned my italian monologue. and got ready for german class. and it was quite hectic cos my host parent was preparing dinner and also getting ready for class and all. and finally we went for each of our classes. It was soo dark and kinda spooky going to class. and the conversational German class was full, with mostly adults taking night classes. There is a 13 years old boy there and I have no idea what in the world he is doing there. German class was so hard to understand cos the teacher was speaking in German half the time. And we learnt simple stuffs like Wie Heisse du? and stuffs like that. We had to share textbooks cos some people haven't gotten it yet. and i shared with this guy and we talked quite a bit about classes and stuff, interesting person. Some of you guys might find him cute but yeah, I'm looking for Dan remember? haha.. and most of the people in the class already had some german experience in high school, like the guy next to me, so he found those stuffs easy. NO FAIR! AHHHHHHHH German is so hard! but yeah, love the videos she showed us.

Still dunno whether I can take German for sure, cos my host parent doesn't know for sure whether she can go to the class or not. She's still waitlising. so yep. hopefully i can cope too, cos I'm taking double language classes. and everyone has to do a monologue in Italian tmr. Here's mine. (actually everyone's about the same).

Buongiorno classe! Mi chiamo Belda. Come state? Oggi, sto bene. Abito a Pleasant Hill. Mi piace mangiare la pizza, dormire e parlare italiano. Grazie! Arrivederci!

Well, I haven't officially got internet yet. I still need to get a laptop first before I can use my homestay internet. Anyways, I've moved into homestay. It's a great house and my bed is soft and huge. The table's a wee bit small but it's ok. The homestay family are really friendly people and they like to help a lot but I haven't really gotten to know them very well. They have a furry nice-to-touch cat called Stinkers and a dog called Puka.

Today was 1st day of school. It was crazily chaotic. There were tons of people and the place was just crowded and lots were in line at the registration counter. Well, of course I had lots of problems of my own, especially my courses which were giving me a big headache. Remember I told you guys I couldn't take German class? ok, so i said fine. I took physics class and a night conversational German class. so I thought, ok, things would be fine now. and i was happy, i bought the books etc.

well, there were problems, which I found out yest. First was that the last bus from that runs from DVC is at 6.30. BUT my physics class ends at 6.50. so there is no way to go home from school unless i walk (impossibly far), or cycle (really far too plus it's SUPER DARK by 6.15) yep. it gets dark real quick and winter and it's pretty freaky at night. so, there is no way to take the darn physics class and I had to think of some other class to take (BEFORE THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL TOO!)

ok, so i went to school today. and decided, crap about physics and went to sit in for Italian class. I actually tried signing up for the Italian class earlier but somehow the computer wouldn't allow me to, so i gave up and took the german conversational and physics class instead. yep, so I sat in during Italian class and it was okay I guess. Of course I would rather take German, but oh well, I guess Italian is ok. I asked the teacher to sign my add form and ate lunch with my bro (who was my support for the day) then went back to school for math class. and i had tons of math hw on first day of school and still haven't done them yet.. hehe.. after math class, i decided to sign up for english 126 to replace the German class. (you see, the German class is at night and there is a possibility that i might be able to take the class if my host mother gets the night class that she wants which is same day same time. but she's on waitlist. so everything depends on her). yep, so i went to the english class, sat in for 15 minutes and realise, gosh, i didn't meet the pre-requirements for this class. there was one more hour to go in the class, so i decided not to waste my time, I got up and left.

rather embarrassing tho.. cos it was a small classroom and i just got up and left and the teacher said bye. hah. yep, so at the end of the day, I just went to line up at the registration. (took so long) and dropped my physics class and took my Italian class. I don't know whether i'll be taking that conversational german class, but honestly, i looked at the textbook and fell in love with it cos it looks so darn interesting. :)

anyways, shall write more if i have any other chance to access to internet.

Actually I wanted to write a long happy entry on how I registered for my classes. But now it's turned to tragedy. SIGH. So the moment I found out German class was full, all plans were foiled. I'm still waitlising for it, but I can't even check its status unless I pay my fees and I don't even have enough money for it yet.

If I do get into the class, school will start at 10am everyday. If I don't... School will probably start at 11am on tueday thursdays and 12 on mon,wed,fri. waste time only. I better find some other class to sign up for. don't want to waste time.

Anyways I have decided not to take Hospitality cos it means I have to take a number of calculus lessons, microeconomics, accounting etc. and my math level is only at intermediate algebra and I have to take like 3 or 4 classes bfore i can even reach the higher level of calculus so forget it. and thanks to my pathetic math assesment results, i have to take math everyday doing probably sec 2 work. (cos i forgot a bunch of stuffs during the test and my math level has officially been reduced sigh)

I had orientation yest. It was full of talks about how to transfer, credits, UCS and UC etc. and we also had counseling about the classes we were going to take. SIGH. just thinking about classes makes me think about German again. SO UPSET! HIKS. Anyways, the Malaysian guy was in the same class but we didn't talk. and I made a new friend, a Jap girl called Megumi. She's really nice. and I didn't make anymore friends because most of the people in the class were boys and a bunch of rowdy and loud Indonesian boys at that. Sheesh. A bunch of them came late and one got scolded by the teacher and later he started calling her nenek which means oldwoman/witch in Indonesian. Yep, so I had lunch with Megumi while we selected our classes for the term. Hiks German.

Well, anyways, my bro is probably taking me to the grape garden today. Few days ago, we went to several places. We went to twin peaks (beautiful view) ,Ocean beach and cliff house (fantastic view and I was running around on the sand) and the most crooked road in the world (forgot the name) and treasure Island and Golden gate park. Basically we got a lot of wonderful view of San Francisco from up above and at night it's really fantastic. the bay bridge get lighted up and the whole city is bright and it's really cool. at day time, if you go to high up places like twin peaks, you get to see a magnificent view of the ocean, the hills and the golden gate bridge. At golden gate park, we went to see the Japanese tea garden and the windmill (the tulips haven't bloomed yet, so i'm going back in spring.)

oh and there's also Japantown. There;s going to be a spring festival in Japantown in spring. There's going to be Cosplay. Maybe I'll go down there and take pics for all u cosplay fans out there. yep. that's about all I feel like writing. I'm going to think about my course fees and German now.

oh and I'm getting PO-ed with my bro. he made me WALK to UC Berkeley. and now he wants me to walk back home. shucks la. it's not that far, but still i don't like it. Plus even though the weather's not that cold on my body, my ears feel like they're going to drop off and my nose keeps watering. oh well.. at least i can literally see myself blowing steam out of my mouth. HMMPH

I just checked on UC San Diego. There is no way I will be going there because the majors just aren't suitable for me. SIGH... guess I picked the wrong spot for my story. Oh well, Dan's still in LA though. haha.. but i doubt I'll be going to LA either cos it's too expensive.

I had Assessment on wednesday. There were about 70-80 international students there. They all seems to be friends already cos most were already sitting in clusters and laughing and joking. There are so many Indonesians there! heard the language being spoken all over the place and by a particularly large bunch of Indonesians at the back. Quite a number of nationalities. Chinese, Korean, Jap, Malaysian, Indonesian etc. some from Europe too i think. dunno. Anyways, didn't get much chance to make friends. Only talked to this Malaysian guy sitting in front of me cos he asked me whether I was from malaysia.

the english paper was on this passage "green banana". and u have to write a summary on it and a personal response. UGH. so GP!! and the math.. gosh. the math was TERRIBLE!!!!!! there was 4 levels. 2-5, with 2 the easiest, and 5 the most difficult. I chose 3. it was basic algebra, root squares and stuffs we learnt in sec 2-3. GOSH! I couldn't remember much and i was like dying. and the worst was that the malaysian guy took level 5 and was the first to finish in like 15 minutes. I was totally flabbergasted cos I took level 3 and there I was still slowly doing. and while I was doing, others were already getting up and finishing their work. Finally, time was up and I couldn't even finish the blasted paper. MY MATH SUCKS!

and the international students at DVC are all smart. I can kinda tell....so freaky. Their maths are most probably great, their english maybe not that great, but they catch up fairly quick.

Anyways, orientation next monday. i'll get my results then. XD Hope I make some friends too. Most of them are already acquainted with one another, probably through IEC. (international english centre)

yosh, gotta go.

I can barely open my eyes now cos I'm so tired. Haha.. cos of the jet lag, me and me bro has been waking up at like 3,4,5 am for the past few days. Then suddenly, yesterday, we woke up at 3.30PM!!! O_O then it ended up that we couldn't sleep last night, and so now I'm so sleepy once again.

Well, talking about the new year (which I spent the half the day sleeping in till 3.30 hehe..) On new year's eve, me and my bro went down to Embarcadero at SF. Gosh, there were so many people. We took the BART there cos my bro was afraid there might be a jam. When we reached, there was a roadblock there and the whole road was filled with people, wearing party hats, cheering and all. It was pretty cold, but the mass of people kinda made it a little warmer. Oh well, compared to the sticky sweaty mass bodies stuck together experiences in Singapore, this is really much better.

So, we hung around for quite a while cos it wasn't twelve yet. There were flyers on the floor that said"BUSH STEP DOWN!" and some others. After a while, my nose was starting to get rather cold. After walking around for a bit, we stayed put and waited and finally, the fireworks started. and oh boy was it spectacular. It was lighted near the golden gate bridge, all kind of colors and it lasted for a good 10-15 minutes or so. The finale was especially great, they released a whole lot of fireworks at once, and of different colors. A bunch of Jap girls in front of us were screaming and jumping in excitement.

And so, people were all screaming HAPPY NEW YEAR! and making a whole lot of noise and the crowd was really wild that night. In fact, the cops even had to come in. I think it was cos' there was this limousine parked on the streets, and a bunch of people started climbing on top and dancing and then the cops came, and all of them started to run but a few got caught. After that, we went back by BART and got really squished and I guess the people were so high, I've never heard so much swear words in a day in my whole life. Whatever they were saying the whole night were practically: Have a *toot* *toot* *toot* new year

Yep, that's all about new year. I still spent the day sleeping in after all. :) oh and it's been raining a lot, cold breeze and fog. In fact, some places got flooded and all. The views around here are fantastic. Great hills and seas, my bro and I took a drive nearby UC Berkeley. Gosh, their stadium is fantastically HUGE and we drove upwards and whoa, fantastic view. But due to the rain, there were many road blocks and we couldn't go further up. Plus nowadays, I really find it to stay awake, especially in the car. And even now.. I'm trying not to fall asleep as I write.

Oh yeah, on a last note. I visited Pleasant Hill. Lovely town. It looks so nice and neat. I couldn't go into my school cos it was closed, but yeah, saw the town. And assessment in two days and I can't even remember my math.