Brain Freeze!

Recently I got a little journal called the "Brain Freeze Journal" by Potter. It is super adorable and it looks like an ice cream sandwich. (As you can see here). 

The journal has a really cute soft brown cover, and inside it has lines. The only parts I didn't really like about the journal was that on the inside between the brown and pink part (so the white part) there were no lines, making it harder to write. I guess that'd be useful if you were to draw something but it's placed in such an awkward position I didn't really know what to do. The other part I didn't like was that the cover was only on the front and back, and none on the side. You can't see it in this picture but on the other side of the journal it has the binding glue and nothing to cover it, which made it sort of ugly. Other than that though, it looks cute enough.

If you were wondering what I did with my journal, I used it to record the Japanese vocabulary I didn't know on the journal to review. It's super handy... and cute!

A Feast!!! ( The Indian Family Kitchen)

Recently I read the book The Indian Family Kitchen by Anjali Pathak. I'm a lover of Indian cuisine so I thought, "why not try this recipe book out?" This book is full of colored picture of the finished dishes (which I liked) and it is hard covered. The dishes looked like they were super easy to make and the spices look simple enough to find, even though they are Indian dishes. I currently don't have time right now to make those dishes, but I'll do it soon and post a picture of it right on this blog!



Cover:

Can I become Superman now? (Super Genes)

Super Genes: Unlock the Astonishing Power of Your DNA for Optimum Health and Well-Being by Deepak Chopra M.D., Rudolph E. Tanzi Ph.D is a self help book illustrating on how anyone (even you) can change your daily lifestyle but alternating a few things in your genes.

The first part of the book is the explanation on how your genes can affect anybody's daily lives; how your problems (physically) are not because of your habits, but because of your genes. The first part struck to me as interesting (I love genetics stuff), the second part wasn't that well put. It was mostly on how you can change your lifestyle to change your genes. While it is good advice, I didn't believe the advice was good enough to actually pay money for it. I mean, I can find a lot of the "how to change your lifestyle" tips on the internet for free. Overall though, I'll give this book a 3/5 stars.

Let's Paint! (Pop Painting)

OK! I absolutely love Pop Painting by Camilla d' Errico. Why, you ask? Well it so happens that the first page I turned to was a page teaching you how to draw fluffy things, and the example was Totoro. As someone who studies Japanese and is consistently emerged in Japanese culture, I loved the reference used so that automatically got me interested in the book. As I read through the book, I noticed that the painting style is all similar to anime, a style I usually draw in, which got me more connected with the book. Pop Painting has a great text to picture ratio in the book. Almost every other page has a colored picture (YES THE WHOLE THING IS IN COLOR) to it. The colors too, are vibrant and lively. The book itself is just really beautiful 238 page book. The tone of the text is relaxed, from teaching you how to find inspiration, to what to wear while painting, and how to shade. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes painting or drawing in a more anime-like style.

 This is the cover of Pop Painting by Camilla d'Errico.

An example page of the book. This is one of the step-by-step drawings in the book. Notice how detailed and how abstract the coloring is.

A Great Book for Artists Alike (Classic Human Anatomy in Motion)

Classic Human Anatomy in Motion: The Artist's Guide to the Dynamics of Figure Drawing by Valerie L. Winslow is a great book for artists alike who are struggling with body proportions or movements within the body. As the titles suggests, this book shows how to draw different part of the body while it's doing an action, not just when it's standing still. For me, I've always had trouble drawing hands, as I couldn't get the proportions right. What I found super helpful in this book is that it explains why I should draw the hand a particular way, and how the proportions matches up. What I also found interesting is that this book is very descriptive about the different muscle groups and body parts. I've taken anatomy before and I can say that this book is very accurate on these descriptions.

Author's Site: http://valerielwinslow.com/

Winter Break

I guess I will write about my winter break time, after all. So I spent all last week doing basically nothing, besides my birthday (which was a week ago from today) and Christmas, I just sat around playing League of Legends. Now I'm frantically trying to make stuff up for my Theory of Knowledge essay and getting really distracted with different things.

Blogging for Books

Hahaha... So I haven't been posting anything for a while. I guess there goes my goals for posting everyday. Anyways, I'm trying out this new thing called blogging for books. I'm not sure how it'll go but stay in tune!

Break time!!!

10/22/2015
  Ok. I promised myself I would post today after I haven't been posting in two weeks.
  So what's up with me?
  Well, today and tomorrow are conference days, meaning there's no school. Usually I would be super excited and jumping up and down, due to the fact that a no school day means more rest... But alas, that is not the case.
  I worked on the Halloween room for Sparrow today, and boy was it a paint in the butt. (huehuehue, see the pun?) Anyways, we painted Beauty and the Beast characters because Holly (our Sparrow) likes the movie.
  I've been prepping for SAT lately and I have a pre test tomorrow (not PSAT)... I've been going to the class after school from 3-5:00p.m. only to have to go to marching band afterwards.

Test Week

10/4/15

I decided I'm going to write a title about what the post actually is, instead of writing the date.

  Next week is my first "test week". Which means tests in most classes. Since I'm doing full IB, my tests usually line up with each other, which sucks. So next week, I have a test in Math and Bio. Which means massive studying because I didn't  study before (cause I'm dumb). 

  At least busy club weeks are over. Now it's mostly studies and marching band. Speaking of, our football game show on Friday wasn't that all great... Which means I get to worry even more.

  But acedemic comes first. Which means I will study right now. See ya~

9-28-15

  Day off? More like 4 hours off.
  So supposedly today was a no school day, a day where I can do all my procrastinated homework because being full IB student doesn't work unless you can procrastinate. (Please do not quote me on that).
  What I got to do instead was wake up at 7:00 and rush out the door to go send the Japanese students that came hosting away (we helped with luggage and waved them goodbye), after 20 minutes, I get to drive home and rest (or in my case, do all my procrastinated homework).
  I'm going to be leaving actually in 5 minutes to go to PSU to get the homework left in my brother's Chinese School class -_-. Thank's for taking some of my precious homework time, bruh.
  When I return, I have to go to a Sparrow meeting at 1, and then a German meeting at 2. I should be done and drive home by 3 only to go to marching band practice at 5. I'm waiting for Mike to stab me with the mallets I'm using because I haven't have time to go and practice on a real set of vibes. Listening to the music while pretending to play the vibe is about as much as I've done to practice.
  Did I mention this week is homecoming week? That means float planning and marching... Maybe teaching Jaymi some Chinese yoyo because our theme is "under the big top (circus)".
  Busy busy.



  I MISS YOU SABRINA!

Daily Life 9-24-15

  Whoa! I haven't blogged in a long while. It is has been a while where I'm not drowning in stress.

  That's a lie, I haven't been unstressed since school starts. Why you ask? Full IB... and well, starting last week, we started preparing for a Japanese high school's visitation at our high school in good old America. It shouldn't be that hard, except I decided to be a emcee... No problem right? Apparently, there is a bunch of problems. For one, other people giving the speech decided to start writing their speeches today, which is fine because we're not memorizing the speeches anyways. The problem is that our Japanese teacher has to correct their speeches so I can't practice with her. Also, since there are people in water polo in choir (one of the groups performing for the Japanese students) we have to switch our schedule around. Being a perfectionist, I get super angry when things don't go accordingly, and switching stuff last minutes irked me. Besides speaking Japanese (and English) for the emcee stuff, I also have to speak German because German club is officially a club this year (yay!). Problem is, I still haven't gone through the speech successfully with Frau, and the thing is tomorrow! THE BIGGEST PROBLEM THOUGH is that the Japanese students are showing up at 1:45, their normal time. The problem is that everything moved back 15 minutes (because our school moved back 15 minutes everyday) and second lunch ends at 1:30. We have 15 minutes to set EVERYTHING up before the students come. UGH! It also doesn't help that I started getting sick today and I'm losing my voice. If I lost my voice tomorrow... Both Noriko sensei and I are super stressed out right now.
 
  Right after the Japanese student welcome ceremony, I have to go to a Chinese Yoyo performance. Since I'm the co-head coach of this year's kids, along with the manager, I have to organize the whole performance along with who's going to be there, what we're going to say, how long the performance is, etc. Remember how I said I can't stand people who do "oh by the way" things? Well, 6 students just dropped out on me for Friday's performance (yay 6 people total) and coming back on Saturday's performance. Seriously? That means I have to reorganize the performance just for them. Whatever, at least I get to go shopping with the cool Japanese students after Saturday's performance.

  Another thing is that we had a club fair on Wednesday. I'm the co-president of Sparrow along with my friend, Jaymi. We had 5 people in Sparrow that stayed from last year. So I was thinking, 'I'd be super happy if we get 20 people. That is would make us a big club and we can get things done with this amount of people.' Well, let's just say we met our goal... A little too well. 110 people signed up for Sparrow and I'm currently entering all their info onto Google contacts, which sucks a lot. I got to person number 64 before I decided to take a very long break. Running a club that big can go two different ways: really well, or really badly. I'm defiantly hoping it could go really well, but it would take a lot of effort to do that. I'm up the challenge though, defiantly.

  Things should calm down a little next week, but considering that homecoming is next week, probably not. I have three clubs that wants to meet me on Monday, a no school day. Did I mention I'm doing marching band now? Yep. I'm playing the vibes and rack now, which shouldn't be a problem to learn except I haven't had time to practice at all. I'm starting practice next week which means... TWO WHOLE PRACTICE BEFORE THE HOMECOMING PERFORMANCE YAY. That was sarcasm. There's going to be so many people there, and I gotta perform in front of them with two rehearsals. Also, I gotta design a float for Sparrow and JNHS.

  I've slept less than 5 hours per day.

  Well now that you know why I haven't been group chatting a bunch or have been posting on this blog, you know why.

8-30-2015

I had to return to Chinese School today, two weeks earlier than when school usually starts! I'm really stressed out about leading the yoyo team this year, but I think things will work out. Anyways, I'm glad I get to rest now.

8-30-2015

Nothing exciting really happened today. I went out to do some shopping but that's about it. 

8-28-2015

I played with tennis with Jaymi today.

Daily Life 8-26-2015

AHHHH SCHOOL IS STARTING SOON NOW THAT I CHECK THE CALENDAR.

At least I have something to do now, these days have just gotten boringer and boringer.

Currently I'm at the Cheesecake Factory writing this post, which is probably going to be the highlight of my day, but everything is so loud and annoying and I just want to sleep.

I ALSO HAVE TO BABYSIT MY BROTHERS WHO ARE ANNOYING AF YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW.

So yeah, hope you are having a great time in Japan.

Edit: I have been here for 4 hours.

Daily Life 8-24-2015

So she finally leaves today to head over to Iyo, Japan. I hope she remembers I made this blog for her, haha. If not, well she can look at this when she comes back.

Nothing really eventful happened today either... I guess nothing really eventful will happen until school starts. So... yep.

Sabrina, if you're reading this, my life is boring. You know that much.

Daily Life 8-23-2015

Sorry I totally lied about posting everyday since I skipped a few days. Anyways, I'd been busy preparing my bestie's going away party (which was super fun) and now, I'm back to being un-busy to be able to post.

Daily Life 8-19-15

Ok! I'm going to start writing about my daily life starting today, even though my bestie hasn't left yet. She's leaving in five more days. :< Anyways, I haven't done anything right now except for gaming so....Yep. Exciting, huh? I promise (I don't really promise) there are more exciting posts coming in a few days.

The Purpose of This Blog

   Hey y'all,
  So I started this blog because my bestie is going to Japan for a foreign exchange trip. I will post everyday, filling in about what's going on everyday because she has minimal communication while in Japan.  Maybe the stuff that I write will entertain you too, who knows?