School is almost over!!! I can't wait!!! The college system (not in the whole USA, but in Ohio University) works in quarters, which is almost the same as the Brazilian "trimestre". The school year start around September for the fall quarter. Then, a little before thanksgiving you have a quite long vacation, or class if you want, which are the winter intersession classes. In the beginning of January, the winter quarter begins. With only one week for a break, the spring quarter starts (which I am in right now). It will end in a couple more weeks. After that, you have the summer I and summer II quarters. You can have classes (if you want to graduate earlier, or if you failed a class), a lot of people do. You have classes from 8:00 until 17:00 straight, every weekday. It's crazy. Then everything starts again. But I don't have to worry about summer session... I'll be in Brazil :)

My Day

Today I left home at 9 in the morning. Went to college, took an exam for 2h then a quiz for another 40min. Had "lunch" in 15min then went to work from 1-5. Went to Jen's house for a bit then to a funeral. Then to Jen's house, then Fri drove us to Mongolian Barbecue. We had dinner and came back (45min each way). Here we stayed out of Jen's house for a bit, but I forgot my phone in Fri's car so he came back and we stayed there for some more time. Then I came home and here I am! Almost 18 hours after I left my house I'm finally back. Good night.

Tonight was great! We had the Crystal Falls' night. Crystal Falls is a mini golf, or put-put place. For the Brazilians, put-put would be a golf for fun. All you have is the final part of golf which is put the ball in the whole. It's fun. We had several students and staff from Ohio University there, which was weird. Hang out with my Math teacher felt kinda funny. Anyway. This got rained out though and we ended up leaving. So we went to my girlfriend's house to finish watching Da Vinci's code. I like that movie. It was great to hang out with friends. Usually I don't have much free time at all so I spend all my time with my girlfriend. So this was a different night. I wish I can do it more often.

I got my new car!! Chevy Malibu. Maroon. V6 with plenty of space, in a great shape and does 28.5 miles per gallon. And I'm finally done with all this car stuff. Ron (my girlfriend's dad) was really nice and did a check up on the car for me. He changed the engine belt, oil, oil filter, air filter while I held the light, LOL. And her mom helped cleaning, since the other owner smoked. And now it looks beautiful and it runs even better. The shifting is so smooth and the bright lights are... well... pretty bright, lol. That matters to me because I'm always driving on country roads with plenty of deer.
Now that this is done and my old car is finally sold, I am ready to go back on paying attention to classes. Two more weeks.

Ah, my schedule is so screwed up. This week has been crazy, but it's almost over. My new car runs so smooth. I loved to drive it. And it's good to know I won't have to worry about cars for a few years now. It's just start planning the trips. If someone knows about a place around here for me to drive to, tell me.
I feel I'm getting sick. I don't think us that bad. And, actually, I'm happy since I don't get sick for such a long time! I don't know what changed (maybe it's love), but my health is a lot better.

All this car stuff has been a really fun and new experience for me. I don't post or a long time. But the thing is: I bought a new used car and I was trying to sell my old ford Taurus. Hopefully tomorrow by noon I will have it sold. But it was funny. When I started getting the phone calls about the car I had no idea of what to say and how to sell it. But as I got more phone calls and commit more mistakes, I got the whole know how thing. I loved it, and i'm really excited about changing my major to business now actually. Let's see how it goes.
My routine here was totally broken this week. I loved it! The problem is that because of that I lost my study routine too. So tomorrow I have a calculus test that will be terrible. A "C" may be a good grade for that one.

I was hunting a new used car so I could finally get rid of my ford Taurus 93 that is almost giving up, and could also get out of Lancaster and experience some more of Ohio (and Canada, why not?). Well, I found a beautyful, prettyful and handsomeful Oldsmobile 88. Low mileage, no scratch and felt like new. Ah, beautiful and with more luxury and space than what I would ever imagine for my first real car. I fell in love with that car (and with its price). Today I went there. Bills in my picket and all ready and set to buy it. Sold. I missed it. I was so affraid to spend money in something I could wreck in a second and lose it all, so I was asking for everyone's help to make sure I wouldn't regret it. In the end it wasn't anyone's fault. Used cars are a one-item stock that you just can't hold. But I was so glad I was done worrying about cars for the next few years... Oh well... Craig's list, here I come.

I don't know if it's only me, but it feels like I can never balance my attention to all the areas in my life. My girlfriend and I are great together right now; work is working; I'm keeping in touch with brazil as never before and getting stuff there; I'm taking care of some stuff like looking for a car and I'm on top of that. But still, now I have no idea what's going on in Calculus (which means, if we have a surprise quiz tomorrow I will be hopeless) and haven't being doing my side study of Chinese as I wanted to; this blog isn't being updated; I didn't even sort my clothes out after doing laundry! Plus the sleep that I haven't being doing much. So things that I was on top of before, I'm totally lost on right now. And vice versa. Well, extremes, welcome to a Scorpio life.

Today I got to see kim!!! She's a really old best friend since I was an exchange student in lancaster high school. Ahhh I missed her so much. I think I only realized it now that she's back. We haven't talked for a month and a half. Because I'm terrible to answer facebook and my car is in a bad shape so I can't drive down to visit her.
After all that time I was affraid today was going to be awkward. But it's funny how with some friends the more time you stay apart, just means you'll need more time later to tell everything that happened. Timeless friendship. I missed her. :-)

I have this Chemistry quiz tomorrow and I started to freak out again about it. I realized how I've been freaking about about anything graded lately. And after the going crazy party, I've been doing as well as I did in the first quarter where I would just lie back and relax. All the tension that builds up on our mind overcome any study, and make us believe we are not ready.
And in Chinese I lost it like everyone is doing it. I think each one has a day. He started going over an expression and wrote the characters in Chinese on the board. Then I asked him to write the pinyin (the equivalent pronunciation in our alphabet) and he said "I don't want you guys to rely on pinyin that much, we just went over this, you should know" and didn't write anything down. He probably does that because he is a native speaker, and he can't measure the difficulty of what he's teaching. So I wont take Chinese next quarter and will probably be changing my major to Business Administration... Not that whole excited about that though...

It's funny how my situation here is weird: I planned and worked to manage to come here, pay a heck lot of money for college, to take 20 credit hours of hard classes, work as much as I can (which includes as much and more than what I want several times) to not make actually that much of money because of the immigration restrictions. Plus the leaving the family, friends and life in Brazil. And all that by choice. Then I meet people here that pay less than half of what I pay for college, take less classes, easier, and complain about the teachers, the tests and studying. Then don't work or work just a little to be able to maintain the car their parents gave them, and still complain about work and not having free time.
In other words, they have everything, but never had to work or accomplish anything for it. It's just out there, cheap and easy for them to take. So they wont give value for it, and they will careless. Unfortunately, teenage in America is ending up to be this superficial, unreal world. Even though recession shook it up a little, it didn't (and wont) change much. Let's see where this goes....

It feels like my head is going to explode! I'm so tired!
I think I've been burning the candle from both ends as Steve always say... I need some decent sleep.

I've always realized and it really pisses me off sometimes that Americans are too whiny. They complain about so many things, work, school, and how their life is hard. Of course this is a general comment and apply more for my generation, since I've seen a lot of old folks here that fought really hard to be where they were, and faced depressions and wars. But my generation is the mama's children generation. By the time they were born, the country was already too rich and too successful, thanks to their parents. And now their life will be too easy and they wont face problems and difficulties that would be good for them to grow up.
That's one of the reasons I would like to raise my kids (if I end up having my three kids) in Brazil, in a really simple place, regardless of how much money I have.

I'm getting behind on posting here. While I was doing my English homework for my last class I realized I have no idea how to use "on", "in", "at" and these prepositions! Now my girlfriend always make fun of me. I have been a lot more excited about stuff lately. Not sure if it's the caffeine from pop or mood, but it's good and I get a lot of things done. Even though, nothing that exciting happened lately. Just school, work and making websites to Brasil. It's good to hear stuff from home...

No time.

Today was a good day. I won't get enough sleep and tomorrow I'll be exhausted, but you gave your whole death to sleep, right? Why waste time? LOL. I was thinking today how I haven't been spending time with people. I txt a lot, facebook, call and email. But time with people, flesh, live, it's been rare. It's funny how technology can keep people in touch but at the same time keep a distance. We get so used to it we don't even realize it. And I've been passing the chances I have to stop and have a useless talk with someone, just because of a rush. I think, and almost being sure, that to have no time is not a state or situation, it's a psycological condition we put to ourselves. The stressful feeling of being busy and having no time make us, when we have that 2 or 3 hours free after work, sit down and watch an useless tv show instead of hanging out with a friend or do something constructive, just because we have no time for that.
If you can, watch the movie wallie. I'll talk about it next post.

Not that interesting. Personality flaws.

No matter how I solve problems if feels like there will always be areas with problems in my life. I'm feeling pretty well right now, with the tests gone and really happy that I spent some time with my host parents and gas awesome homemade pizza, but now I think about other things that I should so better, spend more time on, or at least pay more attention to. I am too perfectionist. So I am never in a peaceful state, and may never be. That helps me to go farther, experience more, other countries, things, dreams. But also never let me rest. I think that the price and my lesson to be learned in life (one of them). I see that every person has their flaw. And I see these flaws as gifts that god gave us as am opportunity to evolve. In my case, I think the best way to work with it would be Buddhism. I should try, but there's nothing in Lancaster. I had an opportunity once, but I missed.