The First Day of School (Among Other Things)

School started today. Isn't that such an ominous sentence? Doesn't it immediately bring terrible thoughts of pile after pile of homework to your mind? No Abby, I'm not talking to you, we all know you love school, but not everyone does. Well, I have one thing to say to all you pessimists who can relate to the third sentence in this blog post: Stop being so pessimistic, school's not that bad.
Ok, some of you are thinking "Katherine, give me a break, you're a homeschooler. You sit on a couch watching Star Trek and eating doritos all day."
Well... I have very little to say to that except that if you think such a thing, you should really do some research. Here is what I did on my first day of school:
Health, Algebra 2 (I'll actually do Geomoetry this year, I'm just finishing up last year's work), Exploring America (which encompasses history, writing, literature, and Bible and included me beginning a two-page summary of my worldview), Spanish, read 1/3 of Peace Child, worked on memorizing the periodic table of the elements, Classical Roots, Analogies, Art, and a few other things that were undoubtably so boring that I have already forgotten them. Oh, and I haven't even started Advanced Comp or Chemistry yet. To put it simply, that's not sitting on a couch watching Janeway beat up the Borg. Not at all. I know very well that my friends who attend private (or even public) school are probably all doing something vaguely similar to what I'm doing. So hey, I'm as much an expert on the first day of school as any other Sophmore on Planet Earth. Thus I can truthfully say, from experience, that the first day of school isn't as bad as everyone seems to think it is. In fact, school in general can actually be pretty fun, and if you look at the first day for me, school probably will be pretty fun this year. Even for a homeschooler. And no, I'm not a social invert.
But anyway, getting on with what I was saying, the first day of school was actually pretty fun. Spanish was just...well... It was the first day and was pretty much just housecleaning that I fastforwarded through (BJU Press Distant Learning stuff). Art started simply enough, but I flipped through the book and saw what looked like some awesome lessons. Math is, well, math, 'nuff said. I don't like it but I don't hate it. It has always been that way it will always be that way. Classical Roots... I don't know if I've ever told anyone, but I absolutely positively love my Classical Roots book. It has all these awesome famous quotes in Latin and is filled with writing assignments that are simply a blast. I also love dissecting those words and figuring out their history. Analogies started out rather dull, but I know that it will be at least somewhat fun, eventually. My Health book is a complete crackup, it was talking about how our bodies are the Holy Spirit's temple (which they are, of course, don't get me wrong here), but instead of using the word "body" it used the word "temple" pretty much constantly. I kept thinking of an area of my forehead, which wasn't exactly what the book intended. It looks like it'll be halfway decent, although it looks relatively dull. Now we get to my American History/Exploring America. This thing is AWESOME. Basically it combines History, Literature, and Faith. It has the regular history book part, but it also comes with a book of complete source documents! How awesome is that? I get to read the words of Benjamin Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt without any editing or frustrating people interjecting their own summary of what so-and-so said. I love, love, love it. Of course, I am now supposed to be writing a two-page summary of my worldview which is going...well...interestingly. I'm not the kind of person who really talks about my worldview, so it is rather interesting getting it down on paper. I'm not sure how to describe half of it. But moving on, I haven't started the literature for this course yet, but I've seen the books and they're wonderful classics like Uncle Tom's Cabin and To Kill a Mockingbird. Mom also supplied a list of extra credit literature which I will, naturally, be reading as well as the required lit. I've already started with the afore-mentioned Peace Child which is, to put it gently, not for the squeamish... I absolutely can't wait to start my TPS courses. Chem sounds very fun and Advanced Comp will be good, I'm sure, except for that pesky Be Verb rule... I'm working on memorizing my elements and you'd probably be surprised how fun it is to memorize "Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine, Neon, Sodium, Magnesium, Aluminum, Silicon, Phosphorous, Sulfer..." Yeah, that's as far as I've gotten. But tis fun!
So yes, the first day of school wasn't bad at all, and I got to read with Tollers sitting on my shoulder (what do you know, he's interested in the classics as well as fantasy!).

And because I feel like it, here is a list of books that I know I will be reading this school year. First of all we have my school-required-and-extra-credit books:

Peace Child
The Scarlet Letter
Narrative of the Life of David Crockett
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Company Aytch
Humorous Stories and Sketches
Up From Slavery
In His Steps
Mama's Bank
Christy
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Giver
Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Adventures of Huck Finn
Portable Poe
Walden
The Day They Came to Arrest the Book
My Antonia
Grapes of Wrath

And as to my own, personal reading:

The Sword of Shannara (I should at least finish it, no?)
Pendragon
Emma
The Silmarillion
The Unfinished Tales (I need to read these two again)
The Virtual Mummy (I'm maybe halfway through)
Brush up Your Shakespeare
The Treason of Isengard
Twilight (Because Abby's making me ;) )

Naturally, more books will come along and will be read... But for now tis a good start for a list, don't you agree?

Ah, I'm boring you, so ttfn, I'm off for now... Be expecting a full-size post about Tollers to be coming along soon, I'm on the wrong comp for pictures of him right now, so you will be spared that mammoth post until at least another day.

Oh wait, I just remembered, I'm not done with this post! I did say "Among Other Things" in the title, if you will recall, so I intend to continue boring you with this post.

I wanted to talk to you all about the Taizé service at ICF... Most of you know that I haven't gone to ICF since I went that one time eight years ago, but I decided to go to the Taizé service (which is very different from the normal service and only happens every few months) with Abby. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it all turned out to be very peaceful and relaxing. I did a reading from Isaiah, which I butchered, and actually turned out to, oddly enough, be my favorite Bible passage! The service was very quiet and was composed mostly of singing with beautiful flute music, reflective pauses, Scripture readings, and prayer. Twas all very nice and worshipful. I fully intend to go next time. Of course, next time I won't sit on the floor... I think every bone in my body cracked when I stood up =D. But it was definitely worth it and was overall a very nice, calming time of worship.
Oh yes, and speaking of church services, I'm planning to go to the ICF afternoon service (as well as my usual ICA morning service) next week, because I've heard that the youthgroup at ICF is very good... Thus I might as well try it! Regular youthgroup is starting up soon and I'm very excited about that. Hopefully it'll be good this year around. The Highschool group was quite good last year. I'm going to try helping out with worship again this year... We shall see how that goes.

And that, I think, is really all. Namarie!

~Manwathiel