Last Day of School Before Yosemite

     Today is Friday, the favorite day for all students. First off, it's the last day of school for each week! When Friday is over, you have the weekend, which is two days of  rest. Not much usually happens on Fridays, but today was the last day of school before our eighth grade goes to Yosemite. As expected, there was a lot of chatter about Yosemite. Many people were like, " I didn't even start packing yet! Did you start packing? " Moreover, today was the last day of the trimester for us. I heard lots of discussion about what teacher people thought they had. When school resumes on tuesday, we will have a new schedule, which I'm really looking forward to. However, I didn't get my favorite history teacher which is pretty disappointing. Overall, a pretty normal day.

Love

     Nothing special happened at school today, so I guess I'll just leave that part out. Well, since school wasn't that interesting, I'll talk about something I heard at chinese school.
   
     During chinese, our teacher shared about love. She talked about Heidi Baker, a person who was called by the Lord to go to Africa. Specifically, Heidi Baker went to Mozambique. She was offered to take over an orphanage that nobody was able to support, not even large churches or donor nations. She loved the kids and provided for them. Our teacher said, "when Heidi went to wash their clothes, the clothing would get destroyed when you wash it because it was that old." These kids were very poor and even went dumpster diving. In Africa, there aren't fancy trash cans like we have. Instead, they just have huge piles of trash, and the kids will go look for food that people don't want. Obviously, this pile smells really bad, but she loved them so much that with the help of God, she could go help them find food. Due to poor conditions, the kids had skin diseases and many problems, but she still loved and cared for them. She even held them in her hands even though the diseases were contagious. Because of her love, many children got to know Jesus and got saved.

     Heidi demonstrated an enormous amount of love, and to be honest, I don't think I would be able to do what she did. If I encountered kids like the ones in Africa, I wouldn't even want to get close to them.  John 13:34 says, " A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. Again, in 1 John 4:7 it says, " Beloved, let us love another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God." We need to ask God to help us love others like he loved us because we can not do this on our own strength.

School

     Today is Wednesday, the favorite day for most students. Why you might ask? Well, Wednesday is the one day each week where students are able to go to school later than usual. On normal days, we need to go to school at 8:20, but on Wednesday, we need to go at 9:30. That's one more hour of sleep! I had a math test today, but it was really easy since it was about special right triangles. In band we're playing this song called mexican festival. I really feel like our band can play more difficult pieces, but I'm not the conductor. A couple years ago, our band director did this song with the Intermediate Band, and here we are playing it as the Advanced Band.
     As I am about to go off to High School, I've been talking with my friends a lot about electives. Although most people advise against this, I am going to take Chinese at Monta Vista. My second elective is going to be band, although that is going to be the last time I will touch my instrument. Bye bye, clarinet. Anyways, I opted for a 7th period even though it's not guaranteed. I want to take Java because I just feel like it. The 2nd trimester ends next friday, and I will be 1 trimester closer to MVHS.

   

2/23/16

     Let's start off talking about my day at school. I started off the day with PE, probably one of my favorite classes because we just talk and have fun. For our final project, our teacher made us teach the class for a day, and today the group teaching did a decent job. Next I had band. Personally, I don't really like band because it's kind of boring, but I guess the music that we get to make is pretty cool. Following band I had science. We did some writing about the milk, food coloring, and detergent experiment. Science isn't that bad of a class, but just not my favorite. After Science was Language Arts, the least favorite class of most of the students in our village. Recently, our teacher went on maternity leave, so we were left with a substitute teacher. We do not accomplish much in class, and many people do not pay attention. I don't even think they're teaching the curriculum. While other classes are doing grammar and such, we are reading some story and doing nothing. Then I have History. History is a class I decently enjoy. The teacher is really chill and makes learning about US history fun. Lastly, I have math. Math is one of my favorite subjects, and today we learned about special right triangles.

     Today we will be discussing: What does the bible say about cursing?

     In life, whenever we are frustrated or something doesn't end up the way we want it to, we tend to swear. Some of which include the f-word and s***t. As we continue to do this, it slowly becomes a habit. Naturally, you will begin to say it more often without even thinking. Now, what does the bible say about this?

     In the bible, the concept of swearing is used in how we relate to people. In Jesus's Sermon on the Mount, he talks about the consequences of swearing and cursing another person. He said, " You have heard that it was said to those of old, You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgement. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgement; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire.(Matthew 5:21-22)

     When people curse us, our first instinct is probably to curse them. However, Jesus wants us to do the opposite. In Luke 6:27-28, Jesus tells us to love our enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you. These people that are cursing you, may need encouragement, or acceptance because of the way they have been treated. Before we blurt out some dirty words, we should think before we speak.

     In Matthew 15:10, Jesus says, " it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person." This quote is telling us that unclean words come from an unclean heart. As we speak more and more unclean words, our purity goes lower and lower.

     What can we do about this? One way to prevent yourself from swearing is to read God's word. The bible purify's your thoughts and will affect your actions and words. We should try to filter what comes out of our mouth, so that what comes out is positive and uplifting, instead of the words that can hurt feelings.

Thought of the Day

The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant.

Matthew 18:35 - This is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.

One of the most important things we need to do is to learn how to forgive others. When you are mistreated by people, ask God to help you to forgive them as it is not always easy to forgive from the heart. It may be easy to simply say, " I'm sorry," but what matters is, do you really mean it?

Snowwwww

For the first time in forever, I finally saw some snow. Ha, see what I did there? This weekend, I went to Cisco Grove with my Boy Scout Troop to go Snow camping. The past few years we did this, there was no snow. I didn't go skiing at all last year, and was pretty excited to see the snow. We built some snow caves, which was pretty fun. We had a snowball fight which didn't end out the way we expected it to. Basically, I threw a "snowball" and a someone. Little did I know he was a baseball pitcher, and he fired a snowball back at me. The first throw missed, so I walked away casually. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a snowball comes at my face at like 60 mph and connects with my face! Immediately, my nose starts bleeding, and there's is blood all over the snow. That was pretty disgusting. Anyways, I had a lot of fun snow camping, although my feet got wet and super cold. Overall, it was a good experience because now I know how to prepare better the next time I go snow camping. I'll remember not to mess with baseball pitchers anymore.

Music

So I was on Discover Weekly the other day, looking for some more songs. Most of them were good, and I ended up adding about half of them. The only problem I had, was that one-fourth of the songs were in Spanish! I enjoyed the music, but I simply could not understand what they were saying. Another problem was that some songs sounded really good, but the lyrics were just terrible. I just didn't like the message that was being conveyed through the lyrics. About half the songs I have are Christian music. The lyrics are great, and the music is great as well. The other half is just random songs that I find, or are recommended to me by friends.

Starting a Blog/Break

Today is a special day. That's right! I'm starting a blog. I was getting bored, so I thought starting a blog might be better use of my time than watching Youtube and doing worthless things all day. The hours that I have spent on Youtube are more than I would expect.

I've been on break for the past few days, and before break, I made a few goals. Here they are:

1. Catch up on reading the Bible

2. Do C++

3. Exercise

This year, I started a one year Bible plan. The reason for this, is that I've realised how much time I've wasted doing unimportant things, and I wanted sharpen up my Bible knowledge. Now that I'm 1 1/2 months into the year, I really feel that it's changed me. Reading the Bible really allows me to change the way I look at things. However, I'm really falling behind, as I have been getting lazy. I can see it affecting my decision making, and the words that come out of my mouth. Now, it is time for a change.

Why in the world would I want to do C++? Well, that's a good question. You see, before this year, I wasn't really interested in programming, and never really took academics seriously. As I am about to enter high school, I feel that it is important change gears, and start taking things more seriously. One of the main reasons I decided to start self-learning C++, is because of my friend Nicholas Zhang. He was the one who told me about how he self-learned Java and C++, and that he is now taking AP Computer Science. I was really amazed by the things you can do with these languages.

Exercise. Usually over breaks, I stay indoors and do nothing. This is really bad, and I wanted to change it. There's a lot of bad things that happen when you sit at a computer the whole day. It's just not healthy for the body. I've started swimming for about 4 months, and honestly, I'm not that fast. I swim for 1 hour a day 5 days a week. I know this is not much compared to others, but hey, I just started swimming. Have you ever had that feeling where one day you were like, " I'm going to run a mile everyday," and you didn't? I feel like I can really relate to that. A lot of times, I want to go running, but when I actually think about it, I don't want to go anymore.

Well, there you have it. My first blog. It wasn't really about today, more about this year so far.