Mother's Day

Yesterday at Chinatown, looking through the shops, I was searching for a gift for my mother, as today is Mother's Day. I came upon a tea pot of the type used by the Three Happiness Restaurant, which I visited yesterday and my mother visited the last time she was in Chinatown.

She seemed pleased

Story/reminiscing time: My family frequently calls my mom "Mummer" due to a mispronunciation I made when I was about five years old. I was trying to address her, but accidentally combined "mom" and "mother" to make "Mummer." It has remained ever since.

The Chinatown Trip

Today was one of the busiest and most interesting I have had for a long time. As I said yesterday, the Chinese class, some people who were in the Chinese class but no longer are, and a member of the senior class who is actually Chinese went to Chicago's Chinatown for a day of cultural immersion and exploration.

The car ride up (and down) took three hours, all of which I and the other student in the car slept through. Fortunately, neither of us were driving.

The restaurant the teacher had intended us to go to was closed for renovation, so we had to find a similar thing nearby, which fortunately wasn't too difficult - same restaurant type (Three Happiness Restaurant) but smaller. So instead of looking at real dishes, we looked at a menu to decide what types of dim sum to get for our table. Some of the more notable dishes I tried were (pardon the lack of real Chinese words):

• Extremely tough spare ribs
• Super salty ball of shrimp
• Noodle-wrapped chicken
• Sesame seed ball of red bean paste

I was actually fairly successful in using chopsticks. When we were all finished there, I was very full, as were the rest of the students. From there, we went on to peruse some shops. This happened for most of the day. A lot of the shops were very similar, with lots of Buddha statues, glass sculptures, fake swords, and a whole lot of other interesting stuff that I cannot identify with English words. At one such shop, I purchased a teapot, which I will hopefully use for holding tea.

We also went to a Chinese grocery store, which contained all kinds of interesting Chinese (surprise!) foods. I purchased a bag of White Rabbit candy, which is amazing.

There was a little museum of Chinatown history, which mostly contained information panels about Chinese festivals. On the second floor, we saw a short documentary about how Chinese men came to America during a gold rush, to Chicago via the then-newly connected railway system, and later brought their families to create Chinese associations in Chicago, which blossomed into Chinatown.

I didn't take a camera or any electronic device (and many shops prohibited photography), but some of my friends did take pictures, so I may be able to get some up later.

That was a really long and interesting day! Tomorrow, I have all the homework.

To Chinatown

The Chinese class in which I am a student is going to Chicago's Chinatown tomorrow; it's like a field trip but also an application of what we've learned about Chinese language and culture. It should also be a great opportunity to eat some new types of food or buy some unusual souvenirs. We'll be leaving at 8:30 AM and arriving back at the school at 9:30 PM, leaving us almost the entire day to explore Chinatown.

This is pretty exciting for me; I actually get to see some of the culture I've been learning about in the classroom. I'm not really big on shopping sprees and souvenirs, but I might get one to remember this trip.

More details and an account of what happens will appear tomorrow!

Newspaper Feature

Talking to people drains my energy; that's part of being an introvert. But I also really like to be recognized and talk to people about things that excite me, like Lojban or computer science. That's why I was really excited (not to mention surprised) when my school recommended me to be featured on the local newspaper's "student of the week" section.

They sent me a four-question questionnaire with some very vague questions like "what makes you happy?" I wasn't really sure what to talk about, so I did my best to mention Lojban and Abiathar and such as much as possible. With this and my recent entry into NHS, it seems - in the words of Londo Mollari - my star is rising.

The Mile

It seems that my frequent goings-out to run around the moderately large property have turned out to have been very worthwhile. The PE teacher, despite the suddenly warm and humid weather, decided to have my gym class run the mile today; it's one of the five national standard fitness tests. The course was a grassy soccer field, with some odd detours to make it exactly a mile after running around the perimeter four times.

I was not expecting a time any better than 8 minutes. To my shock, when I came in after the fourth lap, my time was 5:51, almost 2 minutes faster than my best. Since school graduation requirements mandate that everyone is involved in a sport in high school, I suppose I'll join crosscountry.

Clinton Chess Tournament, May 2014

Yesterday, I went up to another instance of the Clinton scholastic chess tournaments, in which I provide a simultaneous exhibition - playing all the students at once. The turnout for the tournament was decent, but almost all the players were brought there by my local chess club.

Playing the simul

Of course, I won all ten of the simul games. Some of the parents did hold out very well.

Ice Skating?

Well, I tried something new today.

My high school took all its students to the local ice rink for some skating. I had tried to skate once before, on a similar school trip in 5th grade, and failed miserably. Fortunately, it's been a few years, so I seemed to be a little more in control of my balance.

I managed to stagger over and onto the ice without falling down. Like most of the other people who had never skated before, I used the wall as a crutch and continued to remain upright, though some stumbling did occur. In an uncharacteristically brave moment, I let go of the wall and moved out toward the center of the rink. Of course, within moments, my feet went opposite directions and I fell.

I actually continued a cycle of moving around a little bit followed by falling for quite a while, bringing my total to eight in an hour. Near the end, I was actually able to move around with only some less-than-elegant rebalancing required. Like in most things, I did my best to figure out for myself how skating works, which resulted in a probably very strange version of procedures for such things, but it worked for me.

Like everyone says, trying new things is a good thing. I'll never be a hockey player, but this experience was enjoyable. My elbow still hurts, though.