I think that it is better to fall in love than to learn to love. However, I think that almost all relationships are a combination of the two. When you fall in love you really are learning to love that person, but in a much less pressured way. If you marry someone before you love them, love can feel like a duty. While many wonderful relationships have come about in this way, but many such marriages have led broken, awkward relationships. Without the pressure of the knowledge that you will spend the rest of your life with a person regardless of how you may feel for them, love becomes more natural. Falling in love is really just becoming close to a person, wanting them to be there and wanting them to feel the same way about you. Simply put falling in love is learning to love, if in a slightly gentler way.

A couple weeks ago we got our choice sheets so we could decide what classes to take our sophomore year. We're going to block schedule so we will have eight classes rather then seven. I'm pretty okay with it, although I've heard that they are trying to split our lunches into thirds. Not by grade or anything, like we have now, but by what part of the building you are in during third and seventh periods. This would also mean that some people would be eating lunch at eleven while others would be eating at like one or two. Not only that, but it would vary from day to day so you wouldn't ever be able to get used to it. This seems very stupid. We should all just eat at the same time. Everyone but the freshmen already eat at once. There isn't room in the cafeteria so they already let people wander the halls. It's not like the freshmen would make things all that much more crowded...

Sorry getting off soapbox now. Yeah, other than choice sheets, I haven't really done anything special the last two weeks.

Global Warming

Global warming affects everyone whether they believe it exists or not. Over the past several years I don't feel that the United States has worked as hard as we ought to have to fight global warming. Austin, however, tends to be a fairly green town, at least by our standards. Many people own smart cars (small cars that use less gas and therefore pollute less) and lots of people have been cutting back on their driving. Our city has also recently implemented a better recycling program. It is now possible to recycle a greater variety of things. Our dinky crates have also been replaced with larger bins about the size of our garbage cans. My family has cut our trash output in half. Our school recycles as well.

Last week our school put on Grease. I went to see it and it was really good. I also saw Legally Blond with my uncle, which was brilliant. It's about this valley girl who chases her ex-boyfriend into Harvard Law School. I think it was a movie originally but they made it into a musical and it was amazing.
I'm still on my Lost kick and am now half way through the fourth season. I'm also rereading the Harry Dresden books in anticipation of Turn Coat in early April. Wise Man's Fear is actually coming out on the same day which is not cool...
That's about it, I guess....

Technology

Like most American teenagers, technology is a big part of my life. At school we use computers a lot, especially in this class. We use them to make movies, write blogs, do research, ect. I use technology a lot at home as well. I have an ipod nano and share computers and televisions with my family and use all of them on an almost daily basis. I listen to music, watch my favorite shows, talk to friends... I'm fairly dependent on technology for entertainment. I feel that the modern technological innovation that belongs in the same category as fire and electricity would be the ipod.
Over the three day weekend (we got Monday off for Martin Luther King day) I discovered Lost. Its a show about people who get stranded on an island when their plane crashes, and I love it. Lost quickly took over my life and became my latest obsession. I'm hoping to catch up but I'm only on the second season (I think the show is on season five), and I don't know where I can get my hands on the third season.
Two days ago, we got a new president. I've supported Obama since the very beginning and am very excited the he is now in office. They screwed up our schedule that day at school so that we could stay in class and watch his speech. Obama's election was a great step forward for our country, and fit wonderfully right after MLK day. I'm really excited about the changes that should be coming in our country's near future.
Other than that my life has been fairly normal. I go to school, do homework, hang out with friends, do homework, go to church, do homework, play with my dog, and do homework. I'm reading Harry Potter to my grandmother, Kathy and we're a third of the way through the seventh book. I'm pretty sure she knows who Ron is now, so we're making progress!

Diversity

The United States of America is, at it's heart, a nation of immigrants. While Native Americans do live here, the vast majority of the population came here, at some time or another, from a different place. They came to make better lives for themselves. Whether they were escaping religious persecution, famine, or simply just looking for better lives for themselves, they came.
This led to a great diversity in our country. We are in fact, known for our great diversity. Look around at Americans and you see all colors, beliefs, personalities, in this regard we certainly aren't limited.
But we also come with a dark past. As a people we have committed hideous crimes. We massacred the natives of this beautiful land, enslaved African Americans, persecuted, in a kind or cruel irony, many different peoples for various reasons. And yet, we have made progress as well.
This progress shows in our schools where children of all races and beliefs playing together without worry. It shows in our tolerance of others when we listen, however grudgingly, to opinions and beliefs that differ from our own. It shows in our politics, in our rights and our new President Elect.
The 44th president of the United States of America, a country that clung to slavery long after many had abandoned it, will be a black man. He, like many others, has brought reminded us of a very important fact. That true tolerance, true acceptance, true diversity, doesn't come from celebrating our differences. Human beings as a rule, do not understand people by finding the differences in each other. We connect by finding that which is the same. Love of other people comes from knowing why they feel how they feel. It comes from seeing what we have in common that makes the other people human as well, no matter how they see things. The truly great thing about our country isn't how far we've come, it's how far we will be able to go.

Favorite Place in the Country

Gosh, this is such a hard question. One of the problems with living in such a large country is that there are so many places... This of course leads to lots of amazing places. Let me think.

I love Austin, it's amazing. But I love it the way you love your home town, it's not like exotic or anything. I suppose if I had to choose, I'd say Boston. It's a beautiful city. Also it's filled with so much amazing history. It has this amazing feeling partly because it's old, for an American city anyway. It feels like you could be there forever and never run out of things to do, places to go, ideas to explore. As an added bonus it has a subway. I love subways. To me they speak of freedom. It may be different once I can drive... Until then, at least, subways are a symbol of self-sufficiency.

Boston is also a religious center for me. The discoverer and founder of Christian Science,Mary Baker Eddy, lived in Boston for a long time. It was in Boston that she founded the Mother Church. Boston is important to me in many ways.

Terrorism

Here in the United States, we have experianced terrorism. The most well-known attack in (semi) recent years was the September 11th Attacks. They occurred on September 11, 2001. On that day 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners. They flew them into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Passengers on the fourth plane realized what was happening and were able to overcome the terrorists and fly the plane into a remote field instead of its intended target. Over six thousand were injured during the attacks and 2,998 were killed.

Other terrorist attacks have taken place but none so well known as those of September 11. People attack our country for various reasons. One of the most prominent is that our country has a tendency to make other people mad. Many disagree with our foriegn policy and, occasionally, disagree with it strongly enough to attack us. Many people also attack for religious reasons.

The best example of how the U.S. responds to terrorist attacks is, once again, the response to 9/11. Like most people around the world, fear tends to bring out the best and worst in Americans. Immediately after the attacks, many people showed great courage by returning into the affected buildings to search for survivors. Some of these rescuers, many of them firemen, did not come out again. At the same time, many people responded with hysteria and paranoia. To this day, some people believe that Muslims, even Arabs in general, are not to be trusted.

The response on a higher level was, basically, tighter security. Everywhere. Airline security got so bad that some people now show up for flights hours in advance. Security got even tighter after attempted terrorist attacks in Europe. Now, not only will one's nail clippers be confiscated, but one's shampoo will be taken away as well. The government also responded to the attacks by sending troops into the middle east, beginning a 'war on terror'.

School

As I've said before, I attend Anderson High School in Austin Texas. School goes Monday through Friday, from nine in the morning to four fifteen in the afternoon. I have to be there at seven thirty for band practice and normally leave at about four thirty except on Mondays, when I have band until seven that evening.

Our school has a wide variety of clubs most of which meet anywhere from weekly to monthly. Some of these clubs include the Darfur club (working to end the genocide in Darfur), the GSA (Gay Straight Alliance), Mu Alpha Theta (Math club), Spanish club, French club, Key club, and Anime club. The main reason we have so many clubs is because its relatively easy to start a club. All you really need is enough interested students and a teacher sponsor. In many ways, the variety of clubs reflects the personalities and beliefs of the students on campus.

For an American school, our academics are fairly rigorous. We are an IB school which naturally causes our classes to be a little harder. For all our core classes (Math, Science, English, and Social Studies) there are two levels of difficulty. For Freshmen and Sophomores there are regular and Pre-AP classes. Juniors and Seniors have regular and AP classes. Pre-AP and AP (or IB) classes are significantly more challenging then their regular counter parts. There are also many electives that can be taken as Pre-AP or AP classes.

This year I am taking all four of my core classes Pre-Ap. I normally have anywhere from one to five hours of homework on weekdays and about two to twelve hours on weekends. Band and homework fill up my schedule pretty fast. Currently, we normally have a football game every Thursday or Friday and a competition almost every Saturday. Games take up pretty much the entire night and competitions normally take at least five hours.

While I feel pretty busy most of the time, I enjoy Anderson. It's a lot of hard work, but it's still a lot of fun. While I sometimes wish was taking easier classes, I need them to be competitive and I get a lot out of them.