Fun Day Friday

Day #13 Journal

Friday, July 22, 2016

For Art of Acting today, we were given scripts for the play Dracula Bites to act out for the final showcase. In this play, the director, Gregory, wants to put on the Dracula play based exactly on the book. In mine and April's particular scene, we play as the characters, Flora and Nattie. Nattie is in charge of supplying the props for the play, while Flora is her assistant, and we are both supposed to act stressful because Gregory is asking for the most ridiculous and extravagant props. From reading a part of the play, I think it might be a little hard to remember the lines because we have so many other assignments to keep track of too.

We're preparing for showcase in Performing World Music too. We're still figuring out how to perfect Rose Rhythm. The pressure is on because we have only about a total of 2 hours to learn it, and we also have to prepare to make instruments for one of our final assignments.

Dorm Life

In PhotoLit, we're just now turning in our dorm life portrait assignment and analyzing them in class. My photo was a picture of my friends Cody and Samuel taking a selfie while Leanna is in the foreground. It was funny because I took the photo without them knowing and I think it turned out good because they're not acting the photo out, but they're just living their "typical dorm life". I was told that I could do a bit better on the lighting and the angle, but it otherwise looked good.






Since we have a little extra time today, we got to choose an organized optional activity. Some chose a yoga class, while others chose an engineering class, but because I was behind on some assignments (and some blogs), I decided to spend my time in the library (this place is starting to feel like a second home!).

After doing all the hard work in the library, reward finally came because tonight we went to Malibu Jacks. At Malibu Jack's there's go-cart racing, laser tag, mini-golf, arcade games, and more! The best part was the fact that we got unlimited arcade games for two hours! The arcade games I played were a roller coater simulator, a basketball game, a whack-a-mole game, and---my personal favorite---ski-ball! (I kept playing so many times in a row, that the machine kept reading please play a different game).

Hiking and Rappelling

Day #12 Journal

Wednesday, July 21, 2016

For communications class, my group and I presented our starting line-up video. Sure, it was kind of last-minute, but we got it done! Our video mostly consisted of us goofing around in the library and talking about what we learned about each other. It was good that we got to hang out, even if it was a little bit, and it was really good to get to know Ethan, Megan, and Bray better. In the video we also had to include our group logo. Our logo is a dabbing Squidward with a pineapple, and it reads, "dabbing is the way of life." This project taught us how to collaborate as a group, and I thought it was very effective.

In EDU class, we are working on the bibliography for our infographic. It was a little frustrating trying to figure out how to format it, but it was relieving to know we finally got it done.In GUK 101, we had a couple of speakers come to teach us some interviewing and attire tips. These tips were very helpful and I'll definitely keep them in mind for when I interview for a job.

Miguel's Pizza!

For our final day in Water, Wildlife, and Wilderness, we went rappelling and learned how to backpack at Red River Gorge! After hiking for about a mile into the woods, we reached the 80-foot-cliff we were going the rappel off of. We were separated into two groups: one for rappelling and one for backpacking. I was the last in the first to rappel down the cliff and was very nervous about it. But once I slowly stepped my way down, I felt great for facing my fears. In the backpacking group, we—you guessed it—learned how to properly strap on a hiking backpack. Our instructor, Geri, told me that she once had to carry a backpack that weighed at least 70 pounds with how much supplies she had to bring! Once we were all finished rappelling, we all hiked a mile back to the vans and went straight to the pizza place, Miguel's, for dinner. There, we got to order our own personal pizzas with a limit of $10. Some students actually bought a whole pizza, but I only got two slices.

Water, Wildlife, and Wilderness!

I've Got Lots of Work to do

Day #11 Journal

Tuesday, July 20, 2016

My partner, April, and I performed our open scene in acting class and it turned out to be pretty funny and amusing. In our scene, April represented a person who was simply trying to enjoy a book while sitting in the library. On the other hand, I'm supposed to represent "that one annoying friend" and won't stop bothering her while she is reading. The actions, objectives and obstacles are different for both characters. For instance, my character's objectives were to just get my friend to talk to me, my actions were to annoy her until she pays full attention, and my obstacle was April's concentration on her book. For April's character, her objective was to finish her book, her action, obviously, was to read each page, and her obstacle was my character trying to direct her attention from the book. When we finished the class clapped and said we did good.

In Performing World Music, I'm working on a part of Rose Rhythm that's a little bit harder than what I played before. We're now finally able to use sticks with our drums which makes it even better. The song is sectioned out into several different parts that, of course, require both stick and hand. It's very difficult to learn, but I know we'll get the song down by the time Show Case comes.

In photographic literacy, we're going over our next assignment, which involves taking a portrait picture that is supposed to describe life at the dorms. I don't know what I'm going to take a picture of yet, but hopefully I figure out soon. Once pictures are uploaded though, we get to analyze each others photos and critique them.

I'm a little stressed out about GUK 101 class because we have to do a cover letter, resume, a college application, and a 300-word discussion post! Though a bit overwhelming, I know it's good that the work is hard because it prepares me for what college will really be like. I'm relieved that I got plenty of library time to at least get half of the work done. I'm especially relieved that my group's starting line-up video is finished!

Water, Wildlife and Wilderness was interesting. Today we went over to UK's Natural Resources and Environmental Science building and tested water in two different locations using various tools and chemicals. We first tested water at NRES's rain garden and then tested water in the nearby creek. The results, of course, showed that the water was healthy (though I still wouldn't recommend drinking it). After the class, we still had at least thirty extra minutes, so we took an impromptu trip to UK's Commonwealth Stadium where they actually held a Pokémon Go session. Unfortunately, there were so many people under the server at once that hardly anyone in our group could play. But it's still amazing that UK had the stadium open for FREE. This usually doesn't happen...or at least not often.

Snakes and Salamanders

 Day #10 Journal

Tuesday, July 19, 2016.

Today's classes were Communications and Education. In communications we didn't do much, but go over our upcoming assignments. The one I'm a bit nervous about doing is the starting line-up video because most of the people in my group are busy, including myself. In education, we are starting our first assignment, which is creating an infographic for a specific topic. My group is Hannah, April and I  and our topic is about endangered languages because we wanted to go for a unique topic and it was something we all have a common interest in.

In Gear Up 101, we went over a couple of insightful presentations about making a Resume and Cover Letter. I'm glad for having Gear Up 101 because it is very helpful for learning important information about college that I would otherwise not have known.

Water, Wildlife and Wilderness was interesting. Since yesterday's animal was the raptors, today's animals were amphibians: salamanders, frogs, tortoises, and snakes. Many people are afraid to touch these kinds of animals, but I really like holding them and petting them. There were so many different kinds of salamanders that I can't really remember all of their names,  but I remember one was called a Tiger Salamander. We got to look at two little frogs, a small tortoise and a snapping turtle, and we also got to hold a corn snake and a hog-nose snake. The snakes were really tricky to hold, but once they got comfortable, they were nice to hold. A lot of people fear snakes, but I just think the harmless ones are cute.

Amphibians Galore!!!

Lunch was at Bowman's Den, which makes me really happy every time we go because I like the Chic-Fil-A and I like to grab some Starbuck's while I'm there. For the rest of the day, we really didn't do much, but study hour and dinner.

Ahhh! Raptors!

Day #9 journal

Monday, July 18, 2016

Today in art of acting, we were given our first acting assignment: an open scene. How our scenes worked was that we were all given the same lines, and we had to act out those same lines differently depending on what kind of scene we chose to act out. We also had to write about it, listing the objective, action, and obstacle of the scene and tell a little bit about what its setting is. April and I are working together and didn't perform our scenes today, but I just know that ours is going to be a lot of fun to work on.

In Performing World Music, we are starting to really make progress in playing our song, Rose Rhythm. For now, the only difficult part about playing it is trying to keep a constant rhythm without slowing down or speeding up too fast.

I like my next class, Photographic Literacy because it's the class that I feel the last amount of pressure in. In all the other classes we have a lot of assignments piled up that are a little stressful to complete at times, but in Photographic Literacy, we simply get to take pictures and discuss the good things about them and what can be improved.

Today starts my first day of my first elective: Water, Wildlife and Wilderness. I've been waiting since the first day of Gear Up for this class because I really appreciate nature and animals, and I love to hike in the woods. The start of the class wasn't really much because it was all introductions, of course. But I did like learning a little bit about my lovely instructor, Geri Philpott. From her presentation, I learned that she is a part of UK's Natural Resources and Environmental Science (NRES) program, which is a interdisciplinary, environmental science degree.

The best part of this elective, though, was the fact that we got to me some live Raptors! We were able to see all of these owls because most of them were injured in some way, but were rescued.

This first raptor we saw was a A Red Tail Hawk Owl named Kentucky. He is an owl that's been trained for
twelve years.

The next owl we saw was an Eastern Screech owl named Valentine. One of his wings was injured from being hit by a car, but he was rescued a few years ago.

The last two owls were a Barred Owl who went by the name Luna and a Great Horned Owl named Howard. Luna was a little shy at first, but eventually cooperated when she got comfortable. Howard is an owl known to eat other raptors' eggs and eat other birds much bigger than himself. I described these two owls together since I wasn't able to take a picture of them separate.

The last thing we did today was go to the Lexington Legends baseball game. The sweet part about this was that we got one of the best places to sit at in the stadium: the Pepsi Party Deck. There, we ate dinner, which was hot dogs, chips, cookies and some drinks. During the game, I hung out with my friends Cody, April, Leanna, and Samuel. We weren't really interested in watching the game so instead we played our own game, Hangman: Sponge Bob References Addition. We played this for a majority of the game until we decided to just walk around and explore different parts of the stadium while singing classical Disney songs. At the end of the game, I checked the score and the Legends ended up losing 2 to 4, but they did however, get 11 strike-outs. I was expecting for there to be fireworks at the end like last year, but there weren't any, I'm assuming, because it wasn't a Friday.

An Okay Sunday

Day #8 Journal
Sunday, July 17, 2016

This morning I woke up at 7:45 and was disappointed to find out that I missed the group leaving to church because everyone was leaving at 7:45 for their Sunday activities. Since I didn't have anything else to do (laundry already done), I decided to stay in my room until my mom was to to pick me up at 11 to spend time with her and have some lunch. With so much time, I spent the morning exercising a bit, reading the bible, listening to music, working on my assignments. I was content with this, that is...until I received a text from my mom. I opened my phone to see that my mom wasn't going to be able to visit me because one of the tires of my aunt's car got punctured. When I saw the text, I was really sad about my mom not being able to visit, so I prayed about it for awhile. I was happy to hear that my mom was near home when it happened, though.

After spending the whole morning in my dorm alone, I finally came back into civilization when it was time to go to lunch (ha-ha). Once lunch was over, me and a small group headed over to the Will T. Library for about an hour to do some work. In there I was able to get a lot of work done, including my blogs.

Around two o' clock, we got back into our small groups and began our annual Gear Up Summer Olympic games. The games were made up of a bunch of different activities: basketball, football, Frisbee, hula-hoops, tic-tac-toe, and a sponge game. The object of the games is that whoever performs each activity the best for each team gets to move on to the final Olympic games for next Saturday. My group both started with basketball, where we each got three attempts at making a three-pointer. No one in my group got it, but Jason was very close at it. The next thing was a version of Frisbee where we had to had to throw it in a goalie about 10 to 20 feet away. The best ones at this activity were Mercy and Samantha. The next few games we played against other teams we lost, but I was okay with that because we at least got to come out and have fun working as a team.

After all of the Olympic Games, we went to dinner around 5:30. After dinner we had free time from 6:30 to 9:30, which was later time for a hall meeting. I don't quite remember what I did at that time, but I think I decided to stay in my dorm. After a full day of being around a lot of people, I  like to stay alone for awhile.

My First Saturday

Day #7 Journal
Saturday, July 16, 2016

Ahhh, Saturday. The best day of the week...to me, at least. What I really appreciated about this morning is that I got a little bit extra sleep than usual because we didn't have to be downstairs in the lobby until 8:30 instead of 7:45 as usual.

 Today we did some community service by branching out to different groups called FUSION placements. We had different kinds of work to do depending on our interests and our choices. My FUSION group was at the St. Agnes House, which is a temporary home for people to stay in when they or a loved one have a medical condition and are unable to take care of their self. It is a very generous organization because people who stay can pay $10 a night, or if they're having financial troubles, they can stay for free. The St. Agnes House is also centered mostly on prayer and even has a small chapel in the very front of the building. At this FUSION placement, we were to clean up and/or organize every room and common area. We mopped, dusted, scrubbed, and vacuumed. My role was to be in charge of everyone and make sure they had enough supplies in order to clean everything properly. It was difficult at time to run up and down the stairs, but I enjoyed this because I like to organize and clean things and I am skilled at this. I also liked this because I felt great and accomplished knowing that I was helping such a good cause.

After this, my group went back to Woodland Glen IV to eat lunch, which I'm very glad was a Jimmy John's sub and some potato chips. During this time, we had plenty of time to just chill, hang out, do laundry, or maybe catch up on some homework. Since I was downstairs, I decided to join the "coloring group", a group in which another student, Juniper, hosted. She was very kind as to let me and many other students borrow her colored pencils and markers, and let us color pictures from a coloring book she had. This was very generous of her and I'm glad we got to hang out.

The picture I chose to color was a dragon. I worked on it for probably over an hour, using colors such as a pretty sea blue, orange, pink, red, and some gold. Some people may think that coloring is a bit childish, but frankly, I think coloring has a calming effect and is good for stress.

Later, After dinner, my friends Leeana, Erica, and Jillian and I all decided to have a make over. Since I had a lot of make up, I went over to my dorm really quick to grab all of my makeup and we all joined in Erica's dorm. In there, we listened to music and did each others' make up and hair. The best one at doing make up was Erica because she learned all of her skills from watching YouTube videos. She did Jillian's makeup really dark because Jillian wanted the marvelous "Gothic look", and she did Leeana's makeup very delicate and beautifully as they would on Broadway. I didn't really have my makeup done because I don't like how cake-y it feels on my face, but I did however like Jillian and Leeana's looks.

Even later that night, Leeana and I decided to go downstairs and to see what movie was playing for movie night. Since we waited a little late, we missed the first movie, but by the time we got there, another movie was just starting: The Addams Family Values. There really wasn't many other students down there, and pretty soon enough it was just me, Leeana, and another student, Samuel watching the movie until it ended. After the movie, we decided to watch Gabriel Iglacias until it was curfew. I liked the movie and the three of us had a lot of fun watching it.