homework

So. Much. Homework. Tonight.

Current Events
4 pages of circumference problems
reading
blogging
something about an article
multiplication
researching the 2nd Continental Congress.

There goes my life.

Burundi!

My mom's friend Wendy is teaching nursing in Rwanda for a year. Rwanda is a country in Africa where they had a genocide (but not the one we read about in A Long Walk to Water) so they lost a lot of the people who were doctors and nurses. Wendy is there to teach people to be nurses at a hospital in the capital city.  Since she is in Africa, she gets to do a lot of things the rest of us can't do.

For example, she sent me and Jack a postcard from Burundi, which is a neighboring country. She said Burundi is going to have elections next year and there might be trouble, so she had to go now. According to wikipedia, Burundi is one of the 5 poorest countries in the world.

The other cool thing Wendy got to do was go to Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda and hang out with gorillas!. My mom showed me a picture where Wendy is in the picture, and there's a bunch of gorillas just lounging about behind her!

Camp Douglas

Camp Douglas was a prison camp from the Civil War, located on the south side of Chicago. Isn't it weird to think there was a Civil War orison camp this close by? I always think of the Civil War as happening far way, in the South. My uncle and his wife got married at a Civil War plantation in Mississippi -- that's what I think of when I think Civil War. But no -- there were confederate POWs on the south side of Chicago, near the University of Chicago.  I told my mom that I want to go to the cemetery and see the memorial some day.

Back to Hogwarts

I've been reading the first Harry Potter book recently for my Independent Reading Project lately after seeing all the movies and I really like it. I just finished the Diagon Alley chapter where Hagrid buys all of Harry's school supplies and I'm hoping to read more adventures of The Boy who Lived and his friends.

My brother is Potter-crazy and my entire family have seen the movies. Every summer, Jack takes one week where he reads all the books in a row. He eats, sleeps and reads Harry Potter. I don't know if he will have time to do that this summer. He's going to Greece and Rome to look at archeological sites, the Vatican, and other old stuff.

Plus, I would like to see the spin-off/prequel film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Overall, I'm excited to see what happens.

Bloggy Blog Blog

Will it ever be warm in this town again? It feels like it won't.  Things are dire in this town. There's a mayor election run off, Patrick Kane has a broken clavicle, which is the collarbone, and we have tests to take for the next 2 months. Yuck.

Mom asks if there is anything good in our lives? Alas, no. There is nothing good, I say. We asked Jack if he agrees and he said "reality is an a priori construct. Nothing is good, we're all going to die." I have no idea what he is talking about, but he is probably right.

Drained of ideas

I feel like I am completely without ideas on things to write about. Crazy. How do professionals authors do it? Mom says they just keep writing, even when they don't think they have anything to say. I guess. But that seems like a waste of time. Supposedly, even if you write about nothing, you could end up with one good sentence you can use someplace else. Ugh. So hard.

More plagues

Now is the winter of our discontent. Or of our bad health, I guess. Dad was sick, then I was sick, then Jack was sick and he's STILL SICK. He stayed home from school today because of barfing. I did not stay home. I went on my merry way to school and spent the day learning many things. Ha ha. Now Jack is getting in trouble with mom and dad for not doing his homework. It's kind of refreshing for them to be freaking out about Jack's homework instead of mine.

Last Friday was our school dance. It was a neon dance. We had glow sticks and stuff. I had a good time. This was the first dance I went to, since I hate noise and loud music. We'll see if I go to any more.