Almost There!

The fall 2008 semester is winding down both at GGC and GCA, and things are getting tense! It's been the usual: teachers cramming in as much as they can while the students choke and keep thinking "slow down!", projects all due the same week, and, of course, the lovely cumulative finals that everyone loves. So, nonetheless, things have gotten very busy, which is why I have not posted for a few weeks. I shall do my best to inform you of what has happened.

GGC has been hectic ever since Thanksgiving break was ended. For physical science, we had about three days of classes with a quiz and a test and also a science project on Robert van de Graaff and his generator all in one week. Hannah and I were nervous about presenting the project, but we did well, and I'm confident we got an A. I also did well on the test, only missing one question. However, the science final was a different story. It was today, but I began studying on Saturday afternoon and spent about ten, eleven hours on Tuesday studying. Now this final was like two tests combined into one since one half was on physics and the other half was on chemistry. I think I did good on the exam, but I'm waiting to see the grade posted. Spanish was also busy but not as much. I had an essay about a party, an interview, a "pop" quiz, and then the final within a period of a week and a half, but I'm not concerned about passing the class because my midterm grade was 97.7 and I've gotten A's on all my quizzes and tests. I'm not concerned about the music final on Tuesday because it's not cumulative and won't be that hard.

However, there was one class that just made me boil on Tuesday and left me in a foul mood for two days. Dr. Rafshoon, my history professor, gave us a little review in preparation for our final test, and she implied during the review that all Southerners are slave-beating White supremicists. That was it, and I left the class fuming. To cool myself down, I did a little writing therapy, which helped vent my anger. I was going to take Dr. Rafshoon again next semester, but I'm going to skip her, take a world history class, and finish US history when I get a better teacher. In the meantime, I'm reading a book about Southern secession and why it was right; I swear, the more I read about Lincoln the less I like him.

Mom is done with her ecology class (she took her final this morning, which had some hard questions that she wasn't expecting), and tomorrow night she will take her mycology final and be done with college for a few weeks. Next semester will be easier for her, as her cellular biology class is said to be very fun and she'll only be taking one class. Plus, her class will be during the day so she'll be able to spend the evenings with us.

Geneva is also winding down. This week is review, and next week the school is having their annual Christmas party and then three days of finals. Mandy is studying like crazy for her Latin class so that she will get an A on the test and not have to take the final exam, and she's also studying hard for her geography test since she's been having more trouble with that class. Both Seth and Mandy are looking forward to their Christmas break.

With all the business, there has been some time to be social. Last Friday, Mandy and I went to the Abrahams' house to babysit their three adorable children, and we spent the night there. The next morning, Bethany Abraham dropped me off at home, and she and Mandy went to a cookie exchange hosted by a lady from our church. Yesterday (Tuesday night) we had Cliff spend the night with us. We watched "The Dark Knight" (great Batman movie and great sequel) and then they watched "The Italian Job" while I studied in the back. I'm hoping that maybe someday soon we'll be able to film another funny video like what we did for "Bobby's Bad Day," but we'll need to get Cliff writing. Speaking of being social, I'm looking forward to Monday when I can buy tickets for me, Sarah Howland, and her aunt to go see Celtic Woman in late March, and we're really excited about going, as this will be our first show.

Well, I think I've said everything of interest that has happened since I last posted. I'm going to relax after studying like crazy for three days and watch "Gladiator" with the family.

Thanksgiving Week

For only having school two days this week, Thanksgiving week has been very hectic with plans to do this and that. Monday and Tuesday weren't bad, beyond the usual school days and getting up. On Tuesday, I was happy that the history debate on John Brown was over and that I could turn in my Clannad paper. However, it was on Tuesday that I began planning to see what projects I should get done when because next week is going to be hectic with due assignments. I've already done some of the due assignments, though some will get done today and some I cannot finish without my science partner. It was weird on Tuesday to go home and relax with no thought of homework. On Wednesday, we had to do some last-minute shopping and Mom began cooking the food for Thanksgiving that evening. Some point early in the week, we watched the chick flick "Music and Lyrics" which was entertaining and really makes fun of 80's music and modern pop artists.

On Thursday, we hung out around the house and then around noon and drove up to Grandma Linda's house. The tables were set up in the garage and were decorated with pretty tablecloths and Thanksgiving decorations. There was plenty of food on the kitchen table, and we all greedily stared at it. After Uncle Josh and his family arrived, we prayed and then loaded our plates with turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, the green jello dish, sweet potatoes, and lots of other excellent stuff. We took our plates to the garage and enjoyed the meal. After eating, we went around the table and Dad asked us what we were thankful for. After this, the kids took off to the backyard to play croquet, and I snapped several shots of the game. The game was entertaining, with people often clustered around one area and trying to push others backwards, and with the hills adding a little extra challenge. Closer to the end, Mandy and Gabe ended up getting very close, but Mandy won by a hair. Mandy gloated over her victory and said something about putting ice down Gabe's shirt, so Gabe went inside for some ice. He chased Mandy around and put it down her shirt... twice. Mandy chased him a little down the street for revenge, but she can't run right now because it could stir up her asthma. After this incident, we had dessert and gathered on the patio to talk before we returned to the garage, where it was warmer. Another hilarious moment was when Grandma Linda gave Rivers a hat covered with flowers. Rivers wore this hat most of the time, and she often put her hand on her hip, which made everyone laugh. Around seven PM, we began packing up and split up the remnants of the food among everyone. After we had say good-bye, we went over to Uncle Josh's house to watch "Sense and Sensibility" with them, as he had never seen it before. We enjoyed more family time there and stayed until about 11 PM or so. Then, we went home and went to bed at midnight. For pictures of Thanksgiving Day, follow the Facebook link and enjoy!

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=43747&l=6cecf&id=603748360

On Friday evening, we took Mandy over to the Greers' house, where she was to spend the night for two nights with her BFF Bethany. However, when I woke up this morning, Mandy was home. Apparently, Bethany got the stomach bug which seems to be going around our church, so Mandy came home. We were going to go up to the Howlands' farm today, but the event was rained out, so we are going to relax with books and computers today.

The weather down here has been cool and often gloomy. It was very cold earlier this week, but it has warmed up a little to the 50's during the day. The past two days have been cloudy and rainy, though we can't complain about the rain. The leaves have been falling, so the trees are looking barren. Mom's birds disappeared for a few weeks, but today they have come back in full force. One could say, fall is over and winter is coming soon. I'm still hoping to have some good snow this year.

Health-wise, most of the concern has been about Mandy. Earlier this week, Mandy was feeling very tired and yucky, and she went home early on Monday, where she slept for several hours. We weren't going to bring her to school on Tuesday, but she woke up feeling better so we took her. Dad's been making sure she takes her vitamins and her wellness pills, and she's also been taking her inhaler. So far, she's been doing good, so we hope her asthma doesn't kick up again.

Well, I must go. I have some homework and a little writing I'd like to get done... not to mention the fact that lunch is sounding pretty good right now. Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving! :)

Physics Lab

Today I had an interesting physical science lab. After we had turned in last week's lab, Dr. La stood up and asked if anyone had heart problems. One smart-alack decided to say "I have a pace maker," but of course he wasn't telling the truth. Then Dr. La asked if any of us had claustrophobia, were afraid of the dark, or if we could stand to be frightened. No one answered, though a few smart-alacks made comments about it. Then Dr. La pointed towards the storage closet and told us that he would take one group at a time (usually for lab the class is divided into four groups of four or five) into that room and that no matter what happened, even if someone screamed or banged on the door, that the others outside should not open the door. At this time I kept wondering what he was going to do, either a late Halloween joke or something else. My team wasn't the first to go in, so we did another small experiment. During the experiment, we heard screams from the closet, but they sounded a bit forced, which made me suspicious. Finally, my team went into the dark closet, and the teacher turned on a sodium lamp. We talked out about how light impacts color, and nothing creepy happened. We did scream, to scare the others outside, but we tried not to laugh afterwards. One of my teammates Kimberly kept stifling her laughter, so we could not leave the closet until we were good and looking scared. When the final team went in, a classmate named Megan decided to pull a joke on those inside, so she put duct tape on the door handle and on the door in the hopes of making it unable to be opened. Her plan backfired when one of the guys inside caught her, but we all laughed. When Dr. La came out, he looked at the duct tape and then just laughed his weird laugh.

Well, gotta dash. I've got pizza dip to make for sci-fi night tonight.

The Cat That Did Not Learn

Well, we had an incident with a cat on Sunday and Monday that we hope will be a lesson to her.

It all began on Sunday morning when Mom lamented that Claws had not slept with her like she does every night, and we realized Claws had been missing since Saturday afternoon since we never put the flea stuff on her. We did not have time to look for her on Sunday morning, but after church we went to the backyard to see if she was nearby, since Claws never roams far from the house. We thought we heard meowing somewhere, so we followed the sound to the neighbor's yard and, lo and behold, the fat cat was found... up in a tree branch thirty or forty feet above the ground. We don't know why she ran up there, but we think the neighbors' possessive, protective dog Rossi may have had something to do with it. We tried coaxing her down, but she wouldn't come. By nightfall, it was cold, and she was still up there. On Monday morning, I put on my coat and went to see the poor cat, who was still on the branch and was meowing pitifully. By now, we figured we'd have to borrow a ladder to fetch Claws down. However, when we arrived home on Monday afternoon, we saw Claws on our front porch, meowing to be let in. We let her in, and she ran inside to chomp down on food for the next five minutes. She hasn't been back outside since yesterday, and we hope that she'll figure out how to climb down from trees next time she gets stuck or just to avoid them altogether, as this is the second time in two months she has gotten herself stuck in a tree. Stupid cat. Maybe she'll finally learn her lesson.

Most likely, she won't.

Family Tree

I love researching the family tree. It's been so much fun. Lately, the Cunningham family joined a website called Geni, where you can put and organize your family tree. We started off small, but we've added on significantly on the Cunningham side and on Mom's side. For example, for the past few months I've been trying to find more information on "Grandpa" Jesse Jenkins but have had little success. I finally found him yesterday, and we discovered that his wife's name was Jane, not Cora, and that Cora Jenkins (Jesse's descendant) married George Large, my great-great grandfather on my Mom's side. I haven't found much on the Large side of the family (though I'll keep looking), but I did trace the Jenkins family back to the eighteen century, where it suddenly ends. My guess is, Thomas Jenkins may have been a slave and was freed during that time, which could be why there are no records of his parents. I also found more on the Pope side of the family and discovered that Thomas Pope moved from England to Plymouth in 1627, seven years after the Pilgrims first arrived there and about ten years before Captain William Cunningham arrived in Virginia. Anyway, Thomas seems to have been a part of the Plymouth colony and bought lots of land from the Indians, land that became a big homestead for the family for years before they began moving west in the nineteenth century. Mom also added on to the family tree, and she informed us that we have Rushmore blood in us, that they were florists (a big comparison to the belligerent Scottish Cunninghams... haha), and that our ancestors once owned the land that Mount Rushmore was built on. I'm still looking for information on the Irish Dawson side of my family, but none of them are listed on Rootweb (though I will still keeping looking). I'm also working on finding members of the Kline, Cline, and Long side of the families, and I hope I can find which generation it was that one of the men married a Cherokee woman. So, I'm having a blast with this project.

I can't think of much else to post, but I will mention a few things. First, Seth and Mandy got their midterm grades for Geneva. Mandy has all A's except for a C in math, and Seth has a mixture of A's and B's with one C. Mom got a 97 on her paper on beer in science class, which she is happy about. I had a debate in class last Thursday whether Jackson was right or wrong in forcing the Cherokees to leave their homes. I never got a chance to speak, and I was sort of chomping at the bit to do so. I'm still waiting for Dr. Rafshoon to give me a grade on my debate paper, and it's unlikely I'll get it this week. I'm nervous about my physical science quiz, because the teacher informed us yesterday that the highest grade in the class was 80 something while the lowest ones were in the teens. I didn't think the quiz was that hard, but now I'm more worried over what I missed. I'm excited about an upcoming music project because I get to write about one of my favorite Irish bands, Clannad (they invented the Enya-esque sound before she used it but put out a much greater variety of music than she does), and I think I'm getting too picky about which three songs I have to use for the paper. The weather down here is cooold! It has suddenly cooled down to the point where you must wear a coat outside. Nights are cold, and days are cold and windy. The weather is too cold for late October, which may mean a colder winter. Maybe we'll get a nice snowstorm this year with actual snow instead of that powdery stuff that you can't make into snowballs.

Funny Incident

I was not present to witness this incident this morning, but I heard about it this afternoon.

On Wednesdays, if Mandy has to babysit for the Young Mother's Bible Study, Mom wakes her up around 7:15 or so, so that Mandy can accompany Mom to school and babysit there. Well, when Mom woke up, she thought the clock said 7:00, so she got up and got ready, not noticing that the coffee pot (which is timed, I believe) had not started. When she went to wake up Mandy, Mandy said, " Mom, why'd you wake me up at 6:15?" Mom denied it was 6:15, but Mandy insisted. Well, Mom figured out that it really was 6:15, so she sent Mandy back to bed to sleep for another hour.

Also, on an unrelated sidenote, I have my college midterm grades. I have all A's! Now if I can keep them up for the rest of the semester....

A Busy Week

It's been a busy two weeks since I last posted. Dad, Seth, and Mandy returned safely from Virginia. There, they helped build a shed (which I hear was greatly admired by Mr. Barringer) and picked apples for apple cider (we have some in our outside fridge). Seth was a bit unlucky in that a two by six fell on his arm while he was helping build, but his arm is fine; he also got stung by a yellow jacket when it crawled up his pants, but he hasn't given him much grief. From what I hear, the boys did pull a prank on Mandy, but I don't know what they did; all I know is that it made her cry. They were happy to be home, and Mom and I were glad as well. For us two, it had been a quiet week, as she had spent her time working on her college projects. We sometimes would watch a "Criminal Minds" episode together, and we enjoyed steak and a movie on Tuesday, but otherwise we did little else besides school. It was very quiet at home, but now it's back to normal.

School has caught our full attention again this week. Mandy wrote a short story for English class about Jesse and Cora Jenkins in an attempt to escape slavery (I believe she based them on our ancestors Jesse Jenkins, who was a Black man who owned about fourteen slaves and married a White woman named Cora). Mom has been busy with her classes as well, and she got a 100 on one of her recent tests. Yesterday, there was nearly a panic attack when she discovered her paper that she had worked so hard on was not what she was supposed to do; but her mycology teacher was merciful and said she would accept the paper. GGC posted the spring 2009 semester schedule, so yesterday Mom and I looked up to see what classes we would be taking. I talked to my faculty advisor Dr. Timpte, and I learned that in the spring I will have completed all my core classes, so I'm really happy about that. In the spring, Mom will be taking a cellular biology class (or something like that), and she's considering a second class. I'll be taking physical science 2, history 2, political science, and psycology, and my schedule is a bit weird and I'm still trying to make sense of it. Midterm have passed for me and Mom, and she has a 98 in one of her classes. I'm not sure about my grades, but I think they could be all A's, though the grades won't be posted until next week.

A few things have happened at GGC. First, I took my first history test and got a 98, and I also took another physical science test and got a 93. I got also got a 100 on a recent music test. History class is getting busy, as I'm currently reading a book on Frederick Douglass (in preparation for a discussion of slavery that's coming up XD), and we have a debate on Andrew Jackson next week in a discussion of whether he was a "pragmatic politician" or a "scheming devil" in dealing with the Cherokee. I got on the "scheming devil" side, which won't be hard to argue, especially since I am of Cherokee descent from that time period... hehe. I also got a project to work on for science class, and my partner Hannah and I are still working on the topic and what to do exactly, especially since the topic and teams are due tomorrow. It's getting busy around here, so posts might become scarce.

On a side note, the weather here is cooling down. It's getting down to the 50's at night and can get to the lower 80's or the higher 70's in the day. The leaves have begun to fall, and our yard and porches are covered with them. There are some beautiful days with absolutely gorgeous blue skies. I love this time of year, but the constant switching from cold to hot is making it difficult to choose what to wear during the day. I am somewhat looking forward to cooler weather so I can wear my cute long-sleeve shirts that I have been wanting to wear.

Well, I gotta go. My stomach is ordering me to get food while the line at the cafe is short, and I still have to finish this reading and get prepared for the debate next week :P